Is Marriage an Unconditional Covenant?

About Me: My name is Gretchen Baskerville and I'm the author of "The Life-Saving Divorce": Hope for People Leaving Destructive Relationships. And I've been a Christian divorce recovery leader for more than 20 years. I have a degree in Bible from Wheaton College.

Today's question is: "Is marriage an unconditional covenant, because God never breaks his promises?" That's a great question because many people of faith feel called to a very high standard. When it comes to agreements, our "yes" is to be "yes," and our "no" is to be "no." And we've been taught that God's ideal is that marriage be lifelong, faithful, undefiled, and loving. (See video below.)

So does this mean we cannot divorce even when there's a pattern of adultery, sexual immorality, domestic violence, emotional abuse, severe addictions, or neglect? Is the marriage covenant unbreakable and unconditional?

If so, does that give your spouse carte blanch to kick you, beat you, humiliate you, incarcerate you, cheat on you, be miserly to you, lie to you, deceive you, and finally kill you? How is that a holy marriage? No, I don't think so. God is not mocked. Your children aren't fooled.

I'm grateful to Cambridge theologian and Old Testament scholar Dr. David Instone-Brewer for explaining that in the Bible there are two types of covenants: conditional covenants and unconditional covenants.

In contrast unconditional covenants are agreements that are one-sided, and cannot be broken. In my opinion only God can enter an unconditional agreement because only God is capable of fulfilling such an agreement as only God cannot fail and cannot sin. In the Hebrew Scriptures, which many of us call the Old Testament, God made seven covenants. Five were unconditional. God was going to hold up his end his promises whether Israel cooperated or not. But God also made two conditional covenants. We find the first one in Genesis 17. It is the covenant God made with Abram, where God made a commitment of land to him, and Abram promised to keep the sign of the Covenant. The second conditional covenant is in Exodus 19- 24, where God promised to make Israel his people, but the condition was that the people were required to obey fully and keep the Covenant. We see later, in Jeremiah 3:8, that God divorced Israel for not keeping its side of the Covenant, and for following false gods. Can any of us blame God?