Matthew 5:31-32 The Law Explained Part III Divorce

Well, Jesus continues to explain how we as Christians are to relate to the law and his commandments, and, at risk of oversimplification, we are learning how to live—live in light of the gospel of grace that we have received through Jesus' life when he fulfilled God's law and its demand over us, and when by his substitutionary death he bore our sins.

As we've seen already in Matthew 5:21, when the law stated, "You shall not murder," Jesus points us to its deeper meaning, calling us to examine the attitudes that we harbour towards others in our hearts. Resentment and anger constitute a form of murder and have no place in the Christian's life.

Then there's secondly the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," as we looked at last week. It's an indictment not only concerning literal adultery and sexual immorality, but also various forms of lust and sexual desire that we may foster in our hearts and minds towards someone other than our marriage spouse.

Jesus is calling us to radical holiness of life.

So we come to Jesus' third exposition in setting forth his kingdom ethics, now through a teaching on the subject of divorce, which naturally follows adultery in verses 27 to 30.

Divorce is, by definition, the legal dissolution of a marriage covenant between a husband and wife; it is one of the most difficult and saddest things a person or family can go through. Divorce, separation, and broken families are far too commonplace, even in churches and among professing Christians.

Therefore, we need biblical clarity on how Jesus and the scriptures would have us understand divorce, and that's what we want to do this morning.

As a saddening antidote, it's interesting that children's toy manufacturing businesses have always held a keen interest in—and a watchful eye on—divorce statistics. They can often predict whether they’ll have a more or less profitable year simply based on the direction that divorce statistics are going. If the statistics are in an upward trend, they're likely to get more sales; in a downward trend, less sales.

Why is that? Well, when divorce occurs, one toy from two parents turns into two toys from two parents.

I say this to illustrate what is the pain in my heart as I think about that; to sober us to the great tragedy that is divorce, which occurs as part of our fallen world and condition. There are very few families untouched by it in some way especially within our extended families.

So this morning, I'm going to give you an overview of what the scripture has to say about divorce. However, more than that, I really want us, in the context of this radical call to holiness that Jesus is setting before his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, not merely to know some facts about divorce and when it's permissible. That would be wrong.

I want us to see that Christ wants men and women who love him to have a high and uncompromising view of marriage. The church ought to lead society, so to speak, by exemplifying strong biblical marriages. This passage and doctrine ought to make us wary of divorce, bemoan its existence, and grieve us over it as a horrid manifestation of sin in the human heart.

Now, when we come to look at the topic of divorce in the Bible, great care must be taken. The wider biblical context of all that scripture has to say about divorce is necessary for a clear reading.

For example, if I were to preach on divorce from this scripture alone, keeping myself and all of you ignorant of other passages that speak about divorce, we would potentially come to a wrong reading because we must pull in all biblical data to make a clear picture. I'll show you what I mean as we go along. There are other passages that need to be brought in; we're going to do that and try to keep it simple and clear.

As we begin, let me give three biblical truisms or principles concerning marriage, divorce, and remarriage in the event of divorce that we can develop as we go forward.

First, on marriage: Christians are called to honour and protect their marriage vows before the Lord, and in the event of marital breakdown, seek the reestablishment of peace through every available spiritual and practical means.

Secondly, on divorce: termination of a marriage union is biblically permitted only in the cases of a) adultery or sexual immorality; b) willful desertion; or c) other serious violations of the marriage covenant—and these not entered into lightly.

Third, on remarriage: in those circumstances where a Christian's divorce was biblically permissible, the faithful spouse is free to remarry in the Lord and will not commit adultery in doing so.

We will develop each of those a little more as we go through.

Biblical Marriage

So first, let us consider the biblical view of marriage.

One of the most chilling verses, for me personally anyway, that any Christian man can read in scripture is the words of Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives." Yes, we got that. Then he says, "just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her."

Every Christian husband ought to be sobered by these words. The reason is that God holds up what is really an impossible standard for us: an ideal which we cannot attain to, yet we are to pursue. Ladies, your husband is not Superman; he is just a sinner saved by grace as you are! This analogy of marriage compares Jesus' love for his bride, the church, with the kind of love a man ought to have for his wife in marriage. It shows us God's perspective on marriage.

God said at the beginning that it is not good for the man to be alone. He put Adam into a deep sleep, as you know, and from his side he takes one of his ribs and fashioned the woman. Now, Adam was fashioned from the dirt, wasn’t he?

It shows us, with some of us men doesn't it? But not the woman,  Eve was fashioned to be a helpmate who completes all that is lacking in men and more.

I love this quote by Matthew Henry: “Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.”

So God's creational ideal is that one man and one woman come together for life in the marriage union. However, we know that the fall changed everything.

Polygamy, for example: Lamech was the first polygamist in scripture. Polygamy is rife in the Old Testament and the ancient world. Though it is in some ways tolerated by God, it was always viewed as a distortion of what God had made.

The scripture says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

So the picture is this: if the bond between Christ and his bride, the church, whom through his own life and death he has wedded himself to eternally, is unbreakable and permanent, then so too in human marriage it ought to be the same—unbreakable and permanent.

This is the view of marriage that Christians are to have before them as the ideal.

So what then about divorce?

In Matthew 5:31, in the text we're referring to, Jesus is citing an Old Testament passage and engaging with a prevailing view in first-century Judaism on divorce.

The key passage is when Jesus says, "It was said, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce." He is referring to Deuteronomy 24:1.

There is a lot going on in that passage, and a lot that is not directly relevant here. To explain that passage simply: in Old Testament Israel, the law through Moses gave a regulation that if a man divorced his wife, he was required to give her a physical certificate of divorce.

The text in Deuteronomy 24:1 reads: “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favour in his eyes because he found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of her house,” and so on.

We don't need everything there. The point is that two schools of interpretation had arisen over what Moses meant by this keyword "indecency."

Two schools of thought existed: the majority, liberal view—which is the wrong view—took "indecency" to mean not only obvious causes such as adultery, immorality, and desertion, but trivial things: burning your husband's toast in the morning or him not finding her attractive anymore! They were divorcing their wives on trivial matters, making the commandment out to be a licence for an easy, clean divorce!

But actually, the certificate of divorce Moses prescribed was a concession put in place because of the hardness and sinful hearts of many men divorcing their wives without legitimate grounds. This certificate was a legal means to guard and protect the woman.

The commentator Leon Morris puts it this way: "The bill of divorce was a protection for the woman. A capricious husband could not drive her from his home and afterward claim that she was still his wife. He must give her the document that set out her right to marry someone else."

It is this passage in Deuteronomy 24:1 that's in view in Matthew 5 as well as in Matthew 19, another significant passage on divorce.

In Matthew 19, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus on the topic of divorce. Matthew 19:3 says: "Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him and asking, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?' And he answered and said, 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate. They said to him", here's the trap: "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

There you have it—the reference to Deuteronomy 24:1. Their argument is essentially: "Hang on a moment; Moses permitted men to divorce their wives." So they held the liberal view.

Jesus, in response, takes them back to the creational principle of marriage between one man and one woman for life.

The text continues: "Because of the hardness of your heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery."

Jesus turns their false conceptions of the law on their head. From the beginning, God ordained and regulated marriage; it is not to be terminated apart from egregious violations of that marriage covenant, such as immorality, as the example Jesus gives.

Divorce was never permitted or commanded by God for trivial matters, as they wanted it to be.

That's why our vows today say things like "in sickness and in health," and it means more than just our physical well-being! It means through thick and thin, we are in this together. That's why we say "through richer and through poorer," meaning far more than our financial position, it means in all seasons of life, we will commit to our marriage spouse no matter what and hold faithful and true to our vows.

This is God's ideal from the beginning, and this is what Jesus is holding up—a lifelong commitment until death separates.

That is the biblical view of marriage.

Biblical Divorce

So let's look next at the biblical view of divorce.

Our world is broken, and the sin nature of man manifests in many ways. Sometimes this occurs in the violation of the marriage covenant.

Although God hates divorce and divorce always occurs because of sin, it is not always sinful for Christians to become divorced and then remarried.

We also need to understand that in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, when Jesus gives the example of grounds for divorce because of sexual immorality—in verse 32—when he gives sexual immorality as an example, we must not read this as an exhaustive list of legitimate reasons for divorce.

This is a contextual rebuke in which Jesus uses hyperbole against those who had distorted the meaning of "indecency" from Deuteronomy 24:1 and thought that simply by terminating their marriage from an earthly perspective and legally, they were free of accountability to that marriage before God.

Sometimes divorce is biblically permitted, even I believe for Christians to initiate.

We do not have time to call in all different nuances and examples. This is highly case-by-case and pastorally dealt with.

For instance, it is not required that a Christian divorce a spouse who has been unfaithful and committed immorality or sexual sin. Reconciliation is possible through repentance, and the marriage can still survive and continue. I know of one example of that.

These situations must be treated case by case.

Immorality

The first and most obvious ground for divorce, according to Matthew 5:31 and elsewhere, is sexual immorality. The word translated "unchastity" or "immorality," sexual immorality here depending on the translation, is the Greek word "pornea"—sexual contact with someone who is not your spouse. Sexual contact of any kind is tantamount to sexual immorality. This is a violation of one's marriage and might be grounds for divorce.

Think of Joseph and Mary as an example. Remember Joseph as a righteous and God-fearing man, who actually intended to divorce Mary, to whom he was betrothed. Now, he had not been sexually intimate with her, but he was concerned that Mary had become pregnant. He naturally thought he needed to put her away quietly—in other words, divorce her secretly, yet protect her at the same time. He was preparing to do so. Was this unrighteous? No. The law permits that.

So there is sexual immorality.

Desertion

There is also desertion.

The second ground for divorce is desertion of one's spouse.

The Westminster Confession includes desertion as a basis for the termination of marriage. It states: “Nothing but adultery or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause for sufficient dissolving the bond of marriage.”

I simply put it: desertion occurs when one's spouse abandons the other. This too can sometimes be grounds for legitimate divorce.

In fact, a close friend of mine experienced desertion. One day he came home from a Bible conference in Australia to an empty house—deserted—and was eventually divorced.

This is an incredibly sad situation and I believe it is grounds for a believer's divorce. Yet cautiously, every case needs to be examined with its nuances and pastorally dealt with by godly, wise, biblical elders.

The key text on desertion is 1 Corinthians 7:2–15. I'll read that for you. This also shows us that Jesus' example of sexual immorality is not an exhaustive list.

1 Corinthians 7:12 says: “If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.” So a believer can be married to an unbeliever. So long as they find themselves in that situation, they must not divorce. Continuing, “And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away." You must remain as you are, Paul says. “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.” And this is the key bit: “Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases; but God has called us to peace.”

In other words, in the case of desertion, if a professing believer (by their fruits an unbeliever) deserts their spouse and leaves, the remaining believer is not under bondage to that marriage and is free to divorce.

Again, I say cautiously, slowly, and with great patience. The goal is always reconciliation.

One commentator wrote: "Physical desertion is as serious as "porneia", immorality. Each is a ground for divorce because each breaks the marriage covenant to leave, cleave, and become one flesh (Genesis 2:24)".

Violations

Third—and this is where we get into somewhat dangerous ground, though I am convinced of this myself—a third reason for divorce is sometimes permissible: multivariate forms of abuse.

I say this carefully because it does not occur in the Westminster Confession, though I stand with a growing number of Reformed scholars and Bible commentators who are starting to include this in their definitions as more development on this doctrine occurs.

Many classical majority views on divorce, which I have stated so far, recognise adultery and desertion as grounds for divorce; other serious violations of the marriage covenant are often excluded.

Yet these violations can, in some ways, be even worse than affairs or desertions. I'm talking about abuse. Say you have an unbelieving couple, and one of them comes to know Christ, but serious, egregious physical and emotional abuse occurs as a result.

I see no reason why scripture would deny spouses who are abused by their marriage partner the right to escape that situation through seeking divorce. I cannot make a biblical argument against it.

Again, a case-by-case approach is required and must be handled carefully and prayerfully. The goal is reconciliation, to keep the couple together; but in a broken and fallen world it is sometimes not possible.

As Kevin DeYoung says, you might open up a "Pandora's box of trouble" once you get beyond immorality or desertion.

You see, we then have to define abuse. A man or woman may claim to have simply fallen out of love and then create false scenarios of claiming abuse. This is wrong and not what I am talking about.

A lack of interest, falling out of love, are not grounds to end a marriage. It would be to commit adultery in such cases.

I am talking about serious abuse.

Biblical Remarriage

Let's look now at the final heading: the biblical view of remarriage.

This is an area where some controversy among biblical commentators arises. Everyone agrees that remarriage is permissible in the case of a spouse’s death. Scripture is clear on that.

Yet some argue that even when grounds for divorce have been legitimate—such as adultery, sexual immorality, desertion, or serious abuse—some say remarriage is not permitted. John Piper, for example, holds that view. It is the minority view. I do believe that view is mistaken.

I don't want to bog us down with technical arguments, but a couple of further points are needed.

First, understand in the context of the first century, no one questioned that a divorce freed someone to remarry. It was culturally normative. If a divorce was legitimate, remarriage was legitimate.

One commentator, Craig Keener, says this: "The ancient Jewish marriage contracts that we have found agree, in the context of divorce, meaning precisely that the woman was free to remarry and meant nothing else than this."

This is important. Given the historical context and norms, if God meant to expressly forbid remarriage except in the case of death, surely we would find that in Scripture. We would find a clear example where remarriage is forbidden, but we don't.

I would take it from Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, which we read earlier. When Paul says that the deserted spouse is not under bondage in the case of desertion, he means they are no longer bound to that marriage covenant, implying, with no reason to believe otherwise, that they are thus free to remarry.

Part of the problem with those who argue remarriage is not permitted is that they read with literalism what is contextually hyperbole and exaggerated statement.

Let’s look at our text to illustrate this.

The passage says in verse 32: “...except for the reason of unchastity makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

If you read those last clauses straight off the page without further thought, you might think Jesus is forbidding remarriage, because in God's eyes the woman whose husband leaves her must now commit adultery if she remarries! Since adultery is forbidden, therefore she cannot remarry!

If we just read it straight off the page, that's the conclusion we might come to. However, this literalistic reading ignores the hyperbole here. It does not line up with what we have seen in 1 Corinthians 7, therefore it must be wrong. This reading makes no sense.

One scholar I consulted notes that the NIV translation captures what he thinks is the true sense of the text: “The better reading is makes her the victim of adultery.” In other words, this divorced woman becomes the victim of another's adultery. Jesus is holding the man who has divorced his wife to account and giving it as hyperbole, an exaggerated statement.

By his unlawful divorce of his wife, he is making her the victim of his adultery. That's what Jesus is saying here.

He is dispelling the idea that many in his first-century context held—that they were no longer responsible for a marriage so long as they gave their wives a certificate of divorce.

I could say more, but I'll finish on this quote before some concluding thoughts.

Todd Bordow, whose very helpful PhD thesis on divorce I consulted, says this: “If a woman is divorced by a sinful husband, the sinful husband is still responsible to her in God's eyes. Thus, if another man marries her, it is as if he is marrying a woman who is still married to another. Remember, we are dealing with hyperbole, but the point is to emphasize that the guilty party cannot adjudicate himself of responsibility in God's eyes simply by cutting off a spouse legally in man's eyes."

That is what Jesus is doing in this passage, and by no means does it cancel out the possibility of a believer's remarriage.

Conclusion

Some concluding thoughts.

We have taken the liberty in this message to address divorce as a topic going beyond what is even contained in the text.

We have looked first at marriage. This is the most critical thing I want us to see: Christians are called to honour and protect their marriage vows before the Lord. If marriage breakdown occurs, seek with every available spiritual and physical resource to rebuild and reconstruct that marriage.

Second, on divorce: the termination of a marriage is biblically permitted only in the cases of adultery or immorality, wilful desertion, or other serious violations of the marriage covenant. These must not be entered into lightly.

Third, on remarriage: when a Christian's divorce is biblically permissible, the faithful spouse is free to marry, but in the Lord, and will not commit adultery in doing so.

The last thought I want to leave you with is not about divorce: it is Christ's call to us to this radical way of holiness and the reminder that in the Gospel, Christ will not give you a certificate of divorce.

Though you have broken his marriage covenant over and over again, we store up idols in our hearts, we do not love him as we ought, we break his covenant repeatedly, we are reminded that in Jesus Christ he has loved us in a way that words cannot express. He loves the unlovable. He will not divorce us; he will not leave us; he will not forsake us.

We should, in our own marriages, seek to exemplify that type of love for one another—so that we would have strong biblical marriages to unconditionally lay ourselves down again and again, to sacrifice and self-deny for the sake of the other.

We must protect this creational sanctity of marriage.

Sometimes, because we live in a fallen world as fallen people, the image of the ideal is shattered. But Christian, if you are married, guard that which the Lord has given you; defend it.

Our enemy wants marriages destroyed, but in Christ's strength, with the Gospel at the centre of your marriage, hold fast through the storms of life.