The only prenuptial agreement mentioned in the Bible is God’s prenuptial agreement with us… His covenant. In the Bible, we are God’s bride, and He invites us to marry Him. If we accept His offer of marriage, He permanently seals our marriage to Him with the Holy Spirit. He is so sure of His promises, He put them in writing.
Secular Prenups are the problem
When you ask biblical scholars if they agree with prenups, they answer this questions with a view to secular prenups which are usually no more than dating contracts which essentially say:
If I’m not happy, I will take my stuff and go home.
That’s not biblical.
Does a prenup demonstrate a lack of trust?
Sure it does. It should. But not they way you think. If you truly recognize your sin nature, then you should want to protect your spouse from YOU.
We are all sinners (Romans 3:9-18). Any of us could fall at any time. Just look at the mega church pastors who have fallen in recent months. And that’s exactly what God told us would happen. The Bible is not full of trustworthy people. There is only 1 trustworthy Person in the Bible… it’s God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).
God was so sure that we are untrustworthy, that when the Israelites were headed into the Promised Land, He had Moses write the Song of Moses (Deut 31:30 through Deut 32), which says, we are sinners, and when we get into the Promised Land (marriage in our case), we are going to return to our old idols… worshiping ourselves. And sure enough, when they got into the Promised Land, they turned from their love of God to their other loves. That happens to us when we get married. Slowly we return to viewing everything as to how it affects us.
Does a prenup contemplate divorce?
Yes. Just as God recognized that the Israelites would fail. Just as I mentioned before. It recognizes that you are a sinner, and if you fail (leave or cheat), then you will understand your spouse divorcing you and will care for him/her no matter what. It goes further not to make those situations an automatic, but sets up stop gaps to help restore the marriage.
What it does NOT do (and I believe that this is what some rightly object to) is
- Allow for no consequence divorce or easy to divorce. Secular prenups lower the bar for marriage by allowing an easy out. A Christian Prenup should be a declaration for the commitment you are making before God to love, honor and cherish your spouse until death, no matter what. Are you willing to put THAT in writing?
- Allow for the provisions of the agreement to be grounds for divorce. In other words, if one person does not follow the plans of the agreement, then that is grounds for divorce. There should be no such provision. The only biblical grounds for divorce specifically stated are when a spouse commits adultery or when an unbelieving spouse abandons a believing spouse. Even in these circumstances, God does not want divorce. He wants restoration, but he allows for divorce because He knows our pain.
Should Christians have prenups?
I’m not sure that once you understand the nature of this agreement (not the secular one), how you marry without one.
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