27 What Jesus Taught about Divorce (Matthew 5:31-32)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 27th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we'll study Matthew chapter 5, verses 31 and 32. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast. You can also go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 27. While you're there, you can find all previous episodes in this series on wednesdayintheword.com. Thanks so much for listening today. We are continuing in the Sermon on the Mount for Mass View's Gospel today. During his early Galilean ministry, Jesus sat down to preach a sermon to his disciples and a large crowd of followers. At this stage in his ministry, many people were coming to him to hear him teach and to be healed, and he was very popular. During this time, he taught this body of teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount, and I suspect Matthew includes it as an example of the kind of thing Jesus was teaching at this stage of his ministry. Now, as I outline it, the Sermon on the Mount has four main sections, and we are in the second of those sections. The first section is the Beatitudes, which is Matthew 5, 1 through 16, where Jesus describes those who have saving faith and will receive eternal life. The second section is Matthew 5, 17 through 48, and here Jesus corrects the vision of holiness that the Pharisees have been teaching. That's the section we're in now. The third section is Matthew chapter 6, verse 1 to chapter 7, verse 14, where Jesus warns his listeners to avoid the self-deception of the Pharisees. And then he concludes in Matthew 7, 15 to 29, that it's not enough to claim to believe you must live out your beliefs. I have argued that this sermon is targeted at the Pharisees, and in particular, the way the Pharisees understand Scripture. I think Jesus is correcting and contradicting their understanding. Now remember, the Pharisees had a reputation of being champions of the Old Testament. If you lived back then and you wanted to understand what the Old Testament means, you asked a Pharisee because they were the ones who knew. Now Jesus comes along and attacks the way the Pharisees have understood and applied the Scriptures. And it would be easy to mistakenly conclude that Jesus is rejecting the Scriptures themselves rather than the way the Pharisees interpret them. And Jesus says when he starts the section, I came to teach and clarify the truths taught in Scripture. I came to implement those truths in the hearts of my people. Everything in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment and consummation in me, the Messiah. So no, I did not come to abolish the Old Testament scriptures. The second section of the sermon is often called the antithesis. It is so called because Jesus quotes the law or he paraphrases one of the commands of Moses, and then he says, But I say, and makes an oppositional statement or an antithesis. And we have this structure. So far we have looked at anger and lust, and today we're going to look at divorce. And this is Matthew five, thirty one and thirty two. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now exactly what this passage means and how we should apply it has been highly debated throughout church history. If you read through the commentaries, you'll see a wide range of perspectives on exactly how we're to understand Jesus. On top of that, divorce is just a difficult topic. Most everyone has been touched by divorce in one way or another, either through friends or family or personal experience. Each situation is unique and it's hard, if not impossible, to make hard and fast rules that will apply to each and every situation. I'm going to give you my approach to this passage as a fellow Bible student. I assume you're listening because, like me, you believe that Jesus is the Messiah. He is our Lord, our Savior, and our teacher, and we want to understand his perspective on things, even when he talks about a difficult topic like divorce. Well that means we're going to have to deal with Old Testament background issues, cultural issues, textual and grammatical issues today. My goal is to go through this passage like any other passage, trying to understand what Jesus meant in context. I am not here to pass judgment on or condemn any other believers for the choices they have made in their lives. I don't pretend to be wise enough to analyze every situation and say here's the one and only path to wisdom. Christians who are divorced are not second class believers, just like Christians who are arrogant are not second class believers. We are all sinners in need of the blood of Christ. All of us fail in many ways, but we trust the journey and the path of faith that God has for each of us. I'm hoping to at least give you my perspective on how to understand what Jesus means in the context of the sermon. It's not the only perspective, it's the one that makes the most sense to me, and again, I do not claim to be an expert. As we talked about in the last podcast, Jesus addresses this issue from the point of view of the man, which is not surprising in his culture. He's addressing the teaching of the Pharisees, all of whom were male. The Old Testament laws concerning adultery primarily address the responsibility of the man, and in that day divorce was typically initiated by the man. I think Jesus is speaking to the kind of self righteousness a man could gain from having never committed the act of adultery under the law. Fundamentally, he is talking to married men about how they are to relate to married women because he's speaking to a culture where virtually everyone of adult age was married. In that culture, all men were expected to marry, and in that culture, women had to marry for the most part because they needed the cultural support and protection of a husband. Now you're probably aware that throughout history, many cultures have sadly had double standards for men and women. In many cultures it is never right for a wife to sleep with someone other than her husband because she might compromise the bloodline. But in those same cultures, a man can have a mistress or sleep with prostitutes because he's not going to get pregnant. Now given how common that double standard view has been across cultures and history, I think it's significant that Jesus focuses the issue on the heart of the man and how he is to think of adultery and divorce. That's all the review and the setup. Let's dive into the passage. The first point I want to make is grammatical. You'll notice that most of the sections begin with the particular phrase you have heard it said. We saw it in 521 and in 527, and we're going to see it again in 533 and 538. This little section, 531 and 32 on divorce, has an abbreviated version. It was also said, or the NSB translates, it was said. I think that suggests that this little section is intended to go with the last section that we looked at last week on adultery. I don't think Jesus is starting a brand new thought, he's continuing his previous thought. So let me back up and read the whole section then because I think we're to understand them as one unit. So I'm going to back up to Matthew five twenty seven. You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. All right, let's remember the far context. This is all part of Jesus' explanation in five twenty that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And in this subsection we're on the topic of adultery and marriage. As I understand the cultural situation, the Pharisees considered themselves to be righteous because they had not legally committed adultery. They could correctly say that they had obeyed the laws concerning adultery and divorce and therefore they were blameless. In response to that attitude, Jesus has two points to make. First, he says, let's talk about your heart, and this is the section we looked at in the last podcast. Jesus says, let's talk about what's going on on the inside. Let's talk about nurturing, encouraging, and inflaming lust for a woman that you are not married to. To covet or to lust after something is to cling in your mind to that which God has forbidden you. For example, that man is not my husband. Coveting or lusting is to nurse, indulge and encourage feelings and desires that would only be appropriate if you were my husband. It's a refusal to live within the will of God, and that's the real problem. God has forbidden sexual relationships outside of marriage, and yet as I covet, I am pursuing them in my mind. Jesus tells his audience, you may not have legally committed the act of adultery, but inside you wanted to and you resented God for denying you. You are an adulterous person by desire and attitude. Now he's making his second point about getting divorced before seeking out that other relationship. Likewise, you Pharisees consider yourself righteous because you obtained a certificate of divorce first, but in reality you're using that commandment to pursue a kind of legalized adultery. If you were to sleep with another woman while married to someone else, yes, obviously that would be adultery under the law. But you think if you give her a certificate of divorce first and then marry this other woman, you think now it's all legal and you are blameless and righteous. Now as I understand the cultural situation, the Pharisees had a way of using the law to justify themselves. They developed a way to carefully manipulate and follow only the letter of the law so that they could do exactly what they wanted to do and still be able to say, look, I followed the law. They considered themselves to be blameless or righteous under the law because they had not legally committed adultery. They very carefully legally divorced their current wife and then very carefully legally married the next object of their infatuation. And even if they repeated this pattern several times, they said that's okay because legally we have not committed adultery. And Jesus is saying that's not the way it works. Now in each of these sections we've been looking at, our first task is to go back to the Old Testament and figure out what Jesus is quoting or what he's referring to. So let's go back and look at what we have in the Old Testament about divorce. We're gonna start in Leviticus twenty one, where God is giving regulations for the priests concerning marriage. I'm gonna read Leviticus twenty one, six and seven, and in this passage they refers to the priests. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they offer the Lord's food offerings, the bread of their God, therefore they shall be holy. They shall not marry a prostitute or a woman who has been defiled, neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband, for the priest is holy to his God. Priests had a special role to play in the religious life of the nation. They had various duties concerning the temple and worship, and they had to keep a high standard of holiness and ritual purity to be able to perform these jobs. Now members of the tribe of Levi were eligible to be assistants to the priests, to be singers and musicians, gatekeepers and guards. Members of the house of Aaron were eligible to be priests, and they drew lots to decide who would serve where. They conducted the sacrifices, the grain offerings, and the worship services at the temple. And God decreed that priests are not to marry a prostitute or divorced woman. Now how are we to understand that juxtaposition? Is he saying that there is no difference between a prostitute and a divorced woman? Are they equally sinful or something? I don't think so because a few verses later we have instructions for the high priest. The high priest administered the Day of Atonement and acted as civil authority. He had to isolate for seven days before the Day of Atonement to avoid becoming defiled, and he could declare someone else's high priest if he became defiled, and that person also became high priest for life. So Leviticus twenty one thirteen through fifteen says this again talking about the high priest. And he shall take a wife and her virginity, a widow or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry, but he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him. Now remember the high priest has a more unique role in the priesthood, and he has an extra restriction on marriage. He is not to marry a harlot or a divorced woman or a widow. Now clearly there is nothing evil about being a widow. A widow didn't do anything wrong to become a widow. She is no longer married simply because her husband died. There's nothing wrong with marrying a widow. But for the purpose of the symbolic religious purity of the high priest, he is only to marry a virgin to keep his offspring holy. Now remember the Mosaic law is complicated. Part of it is intended to promote civil order among the children of Israel. For example, you're not to condemn someone on the basis of only one witness. Part of it is intended to communicate moral principles like thou shalt not covet. There we're talking about right and wrong. And then we have laws that are symbolic and involve religious rituals, and they seem to be intended to embody a spiritual truth and a tangible practice. For example, there's a commandment about not mixing two kinds of fabric in your clothing. That doesn't promote civil order, that doesn't describe morality, there's nothing inherently evil about mixing fabrics, but the prohibition is designed to make you think about God, about what God wants and the kind of people he wants. And part of what he wants is a people who worship him and him alone. And this law about mixing fabric is designed to make you think about not mixing in other religions, for example. Now some of the laws have more than one of these three aspects to them, and whenever we're studying the Old Testament law, we're left to decipher what kind of law am I looking at? Well, I think the context here suggests that by limiting the high priest, God is not laying down an abiding moral principle that no man can ever marry a widow or a divorce woman. We don't see any other laws against marrying widows, but if you're a high priest responsible for carrying out the religious life of the nation, it is forbidden for you because of your special role. So this passage doesn't tell us that much about a theology of divorce and marriage, except that it assumes divorce is practiced in the nation. It assumes there will be divorced women in the nation of Israel and the priest should marry them. So my point being then that there is no law against a typical Israelite man marrying a divorced woman, but there is a law about a priest marrying a divorced woman, and it seems likely that the issue here is not moral, but rather it is a religious and symbolic one. Now there are only a handful of passages in the Mosaic Law that refer to divorce, and to my knowledge, most of them are like this one. They assume that divorce is happening and they put down some sort of restrictions on it, and many of those restrictions seem to have to do with religious or ritual purity. Now let's look at the passage Jesus quotes. He is referring to Deuteronomy twenty four verses one through four. When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce, and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. You'll notice right away that this passage is not a straightforward command about divorce. It's not saying that if your wife commits adultery, you can legally divorce her, and here's the rules for how you do that. This passage is forbidding one particular thing. A woman is divorced by husband number one and marries husband number two. At that point, husband number two could divorce her and she could go on and marry husband number three. In fact, she could marry any man in Israel except her first husband or one of the priests. When it says that she's defiled, she isn't defiled in such a way that no man could ever marry her again, she could take husband number three as long as he's not a priest. She is only defiled in terms of one particular man in Israel, and that is her original husband. I think the idea here is that when the couple is divorced, that is the end of that marriage. That bond has been broken, and she has formed a new bond with someone else. And to make clear how seriously God takes that new bond, her first husband is forbidden to marry her again. But notice this passage is intended to speak to one kind of situation that could happen when divorce is going on. It is not intended to give a rule for every single situation that could arise involving divorce. It is not intended to give us general rules for when you can divorce and when you can't. However, it is the closest passage that we have to any kind of instruction about how divorce should work, and therefore the Pharisees wrote about this passage a lot. Since it's the passage that has the most to say about divorce, this is the passage they leaned on when trying to figure out what was legal and what wasn't, what they could do and what they could do. Couldn't. My understanding is that divorce was common among the Pharisees. We have a quote from Josephus. He was a first century Jewish historian. He describes himself as a Pharisee, and he was in fact divorced. Now I am assuming that he is representative of the way many first century Jewish men, particularly Pharisees, thought about divorce. And Josephus wrote, At this time I sent away my wife, being displeased with her behavior, and here sent away means divorced. Then he goes on, that I took as a wife a woman from Crete, the man who wishes to be divorced from his wife for whatever cause and among people many such may arise must certify it in writing. Josephus was describing his understanding of the Jewish practice of divorce fairly close to the time of Jesus, and he himself was divorced. He says a man can have many reasons for being divorced, and the legal way to divorce someone was to put it in writing. Now, since divorce was common, the Pharisees were interested in establishing exactly what the law required so they could justify their behavior, and the literature we have suggests that there were two schools of thought. One was more strict and one was not. Now, as you might imagine, among the Pharisees there was a great debate over this little phrase some indecency in Deuteronomy 24 1. Basically, there were two schools of thought. One followed the rabbi Hillel, who thought some indecency meant any cause at all, for example, a poorly cooked meal. The other group followed the Rambi Shemi, who thought some indecency meant immorality, and typically they understood that to mean adultery, but it could extend to loose or immoral conduct. At the time only the man could initiate a divorce and it was relatively simple. All a man had to do was write his wife her certificate and return her dowry. Though a woman couldn't initiate divorce, they could force a divorce by committing adultery. It's true under Jewish law, adultery was punishable with death by stoning. However, at the time of Jesus, adultery frequently went unpunished because first the Jews were under Roman rule and forbidden to enforce their own laws, and second, divorce and adultery were rampant. So the debate among the Pharisees centered on this Deuteronomy passage and in particular the meaning of this phrase some indecency. The more conservative Pharisees understood that there had to be some moral offense, which was typically adultery. The more liberal Pharisees thought it meant anything at all. If a husband is displeased with his wife for any reason whatsoever, he could divorce her, and he could feel fully justified doing so because it was in the law. Deuteronomy 24 3 talks about the second husband hating her and divorcing her. The word hate there can be used very broadly. It can mean to be displeased or to reject a fact that the more liberal Pharisees pointed to with satisfaction to bolster their case. This was a big topic of debate in the nation, and later in Matthew, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus in the debate, this is Matthew nineteen three, and the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by saying, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And here we see them inviting Jesus into the debate. This is like asking a politician today where he stands on abortion. They're trying to get him in trouble. Each of the sides of the debate had a strong following, and the Pharisees thought that if they could get Jesus to pick one camp or the other, then he would anger the other half of the population. The Pharisees thought they had Jesus in a lose lose situation. If he says, No, you can't divorce for any cause at all, then he's going to contradict a very popular practice. On the other hand, if he says, Oh yeah, you can divorce for any reason whatsoever, they could accuse him of contradicting his earlier teaching here in the Sermon on the Mount, and they can point out his inconsistency and he'll anger another segment of the population. So they figure they have him. Now notice that the Pharisees' question concerns lawfulness. They're not asking Jesus what's the wise thing to do? What's the holy or honorable thing to do in this question of marriage and divorce? They aren't asking, what does God think about divorce? They only want to know the legal particulars. Where's the fine line? What technicalities make divorce permissible? When's it lawful? Essentially, the question they're asking is not what's the right thing to do, they're asking how much can I get away with? Now we'll look at chapter 19 in more detail when we get there, but it does shed some light on the question that Jesus is speaking to. Here in chapter five, I think Jesus invites them to look at the question from an entirely different perspective. In five thirty two he says, But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now there's one more thing we have to talk about before we can try to put this passage together. There are a couple of big translation issues in this verse which complicate the matter, and I will explain them as best I can. Both the ESV, the English Standard Version, and the New American Standard Version, the NASB, translate this everyone who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery. That verb commit adultery is in the passive tense, and the debate is how to translate it. It's difficult to make this distinction clear in English. To try to explain it, I'm going to make up the verb adulterize. If I commit adultery, I am adulterizing. We would then translate his second statement, whoever marries a divorced woman adulterizes. And his first statement in the passive voice, everyone who divorces his wife causes her to be adulterized. So his whole statement would be everyone who divorces his wife makes her to be adulterized, and whoever marries a divorced woman adulterizes. Now the debate concerns what does it mean to make her to be adulterized? Why is that in the passive tense? And some argue that the passive here does not have a true passive sense and we should translate it makes her commit adultery. And most translations take this option. Some of the older ones have an even stronger translation of makes her an adulteress, and that is a legitimate and very possible translation. Now let's think about what that would mean. Well in that day, whether she wished her marriage to be over or not, she would have to marry again. She didn't really have the option of remaining single in the hopes that her husband would come to his senses in the future. And when she did marry again, that makes her commit adultery in a sense. She is forced to commit sin in a sense because she never should have been divorced in the first place, but she had no choice. And that understanding, that translation option is the one that I held for a long time. But more recently I've seen the other side of the debate as holding out more promise. That side takes the passive as a true passive. Scholars who hold this option typically translate it something like he makes her the victim of adultery, or he makes her to have adultery committed against her. The husband is not causing her to sin, he is causing her to be sinned against. And that makes a lot more sense to me of the situation. One of the scholars I read went even farther out on this side, and he noted there are only a few examples of this Greek word in the passive in all of Greek literature, and he says that in all the other cases of this word in the passive, the context is that the children of this union are made illegitimate. To be made adulterized is to cause the bloodline to be questioned. From that, he argued that this is a metaphorical phrase, meaning you're not treating her like a legitimate wife, you're treating her like a mistress. He says the passive phrase does not refer to the actual legal legitimacy of the marriage or the children, but metaphorically, you have treated your wife as if she were your mistress and not your wife. You are acting as if the marriage is not legitimate. Now, again, I only found one scholar who argued for that view, but it does make a lot of sense in the context. Serial divorce and remarriage is committing a sin against your wife in a way that does look much like discarding a mistress. It's flaunting and ignoring the legal protections marriage is supposed to give her. Now, I'm not sure about this metaphorical usage. I think that may be going a bit too far and not enough evidence. But in any case, I have switched my view so that I think we should retain the passive sense here. And therefore, we would should understand this passage as the husband is causing the wife to be adulterized. Her marriage has been broken by him, and she has become the victim of his adultery. He's not making her sin, he is sinning against her. Now I should note the whole point of divorce in Jewish culture was to have the legal freedom to marry someone else. Remaining single was not an option for the typical adult. In some of the Jewish writings that have survived, we have the wording of a divorce certificate and it reads, You are free to marry any man. The whole point was to break the legal bonds with wife number one so that you could legally marry wife number two. All right, let's try to put some of these pieces together. I think Jesus is making two points. One, if you divorce your wife to marry another woman, you're making your wife the victim of your adultery in some sense. And two, if you marry a divorced woman, you are committing adultery in some sense because she is joined to another. Now remember Jesus is aiming this at men because in that culture divorce was largely initiated by men. It didn't require a court order. The man simply had to write a certificate saying you are free to marry any man. Now Mark has similar language in another context, a context that is closer to Matthew nineteen. This is Mark chapter ten verses eleven through twelve, and here Jesus adds, and he said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. So Mark gives us both sides. He says, If a man does this, he's committing adultery, and if a woman does this, she's committing adultery. Now scholars debate what that means in terms of our understanding of the culture. It's possible that the culture was shifting at the time of Jesus such that women could initiate divorce. Or perhaps Jesus is speaking hypothetically and saying, look, the same thing is true of men and women, regardless of the fact that women can't initiate divorce. Or in the Gentile cultures of the day, it seems that it was more prevalent for women to be able to seek a divorce. So maybe Jesus is speaking to that. Those are some of the options. In any case, in the Mark passage, I think however you understand the culture, Jesus is being clear, there is no double standard. This is true for men, this is true for women. The second translation issue we have to talk about is this phrase except for sexual immorality, or as the NASB translates it, except for the reason of unchastity. This is the Greek word from which we get our word pornography, and it's a word that's hard to pin down. It has its roots in referring to prostitution. In some contexts, it can refer to very specific violations of Jewish marriage customs. It can, in other contexts, refer to general immorality of various kinds, so it can either be technical and specific or it can be very broad and general. Matthew is the only gospel writer who includes this phrase. He includes it both here and in Matthew 19. Mark does not include it in the related passage in Mark ten, and Luke does not include it in his passage, which is in Luke 16. Mark and Luke have no exceptions. Now, naturally, the scholars write a lot about that and debate how significant that omission or inclusion is. Some scholars think that Matthew is deliberately trying to soften what Jesus actually said. They would argue that Jesus didn't give any exceptions, but Matthew is adding this exception to tone down the harshness of Jesus' statements. However, other scholars argue that Mark and Luke did not include the exception because it was assumed. Matthew, they would say, is making explicit what everyone would have assumed anyway. They argue that the point is a man who divorces his wife is breaking the unique private bond of their marriage. But if she's broken at first by committing adultery, then obviously he can't break the bond, it's already been broken. If she has violated or abandoned the marriage, then the husband is not violating the marriage by divorcing her because it's already been ended. Mark and Luke do not need to include that language because they think it's obvious, but Matthew's taking nothing for granted and includes it. To my way of thinking, I would equate Moses' phrase in Deuteronomy, some indecency with the phrase in Matthew, except for immorality, and I think both are implying that if the woman has done something to break the bond of the marriage, and most likely that would be adultery, then that changes the situation. So I go with that second option. Now some would disagree with me and argue that Jesus is correcting Moses in this area. They would say Moses was lenient and allowing for divorce, and Jesus is correcting him and saying no, divorce is not allowed at all to divorce is to commit adultery. But as I've argued in the past, I would argue here as in the other sections that Jesus is not correcting the law. He's correcting the Pharisees, and he's arguing that the Pharisees are misusing and abusing the law. I think this becomes even more clear when we bring in the Matthew 19 passage. This is Matthew nineteen three through nine. We talked about it briefly earlier. Some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him, 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 mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. They said to him, Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? And he said to them, Because of your hardness of 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. Now I'm not going to go into detail here on Matthew nine, but notice that Jesus says two things that clue us into how he views the Old Testament. In nineteen eight he tells us how we are to understand Moses' commandment. He says because of the hardness of our hearts, Moses permitted us to divorce. That is, it would be wrong to understand Moses as saying, as long as you abide by the rules of divorce, you are a righteous person. That was not Moses' intent. Rather, it's precisely because you are sinful that Moses acknowledges divorce is going to happen. Divorce is going to happen because sin is going to corrupt and destroy marriages. When sin destroys a marriage, you are not to remarry your first wife after she has married someone else. Second, we know that Moses was not advocating divorce as an option for righteous and blameless people because God told us in the creation account what marriage is. It is God Himself making two lives into one and what God has joined together, let no one separate. You can't just pull one verse out and say, here's the rule, I'm following it. You have to interpret that rule in light of all of Scripture and what we know about God. So you can't take Moses' statement about a certificate of divorce and ignore what Genesis tells us about God's purpose for marriage. So I would argue Jesus is treating the Old Testament as a coherent whole. All right, that is all the pieces of the puzzle. Let me see if I can pull it together. Throughout this section on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the way the Pharisees abuse the law. They see it as a set of rules that separate the righteous from the unrighteous. And they argue that because they have not committed the act of adultery, they are among the righteous. They have divorced their wives, following the rules given by Moses, so they are among the righteous, regardless of how many times they have married and divorced. But Jesus argues, you Pharisees are missing the point. As we talked about in the last podcast, they are adulterers in their hearts when they inwardly refuse to submit to the boundaries God has placed in their lives. They don't commit the physical act of adultery, but they rebel against God's plan nonetheless by fanning the flames of adulterous lust in their minds. Likewise, they were big practitioners of divorce. They don't just start sleeping with women outside their marriage because that would be adultery. They make sure to write a piece of paper first and legally get remarried. They don't break the rules, so they think they're righteous. And Jesus argues that's not righteousness. You can't turn adultery into righteousness by writing a certificate of divorce first. Your intent was to break a bond that God did not intend to be broken. Your intent was to abandon your marriage and commit adultery, and you think you've just found a way to do it legally. So to summarize, he's saying you've heard the Pharisees teach that you are blameless under the law if you divorce your wife and marry another woman before sleeping with her. But I say to you, everyone who divorces his wife and marries someone else, unless his wife has already abandoned the marriage, that person is committing adultery by marrying another person and making his wife the victim of his adultery. Now, the really hard question is how do we apply this? And I will admit right up front, I do not have all the answers. I don't know that I can give you any hard and fast rules that apply to every complicated situation. Here's my best understanding. First, I would say there is no such thing as a righteous divorce, and by that I mean at least one of the parties has sinned. At least one of the spouses has committed a sin against God by breaking the marriage vows in some way. Either the divorcing spouse has broken and abandoned the marriage, or the divorcing spouse is leaving because the other spouse has broken and abandoned the marriage, or both of them have broken and abandoned the marriage. And this should not surprise us because we are all selfish sinners and we will find it hard to love each other as we should. Second, the sin involved in divorce is no different than any other sin. Divorced Christians are not second class believers. It's ironic to me that this teaching has been applied in tragic ways throughout church history. Here the Pharisees were busy dissecting the phrase summon decency as a means to justify their own behavior, and we in some ways continue that debate today. We do Dissect what Jesus means by immorality so that we can justify our own choices and actions and we can look down on others who we think have broken the rules. But the heart attitude is the same. We want to know what qualifies so we can know if we're blameless or if we've broken the rules. But but if we're honest with ourselves, we're all sinners. Whether we've broken that particular role or not, we are all sinners. Instead, we should treat this as we do the other statements of Jesus in this section. It's a sin to hurt my sister with harsh words. It's a sin to nurture lust in my heart, and it's a sin to use divorce as a kind of legalized adultery. What is God calling us to do then? Well, I think to take these words seriously, we are to strive to maintain our marriage commitment. We confess the sins that are contributing to the breakdown of our marriages. We seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and repentance whenever possible. We do not do as the Pharisees and attempt to justify ourselves when we are at fault. We're to strive for what God says is good and humbly confess our failures. Not all of us are divorced, but I suspect all of us have hurt someone with our words at one time or another. I suspect that all of us have fanned the flames of adultery in our mind at one time or another. The bottom line is the same. We need to acknowledge what God says is right, what God says is wrong, and pursue what is right. We need to acknowledge that we are sinners in need of God's grace and mercy. What we don't want to do is refuse to believe that we have a problem with sin. Now sometimes in church history we have treated divorce as the unforgivable sin. Instead, I think Jesus is charging the Pharisees with not taking the law seriously, even as they discuss it in detail and quote passages from it. Marriage and divorce are some of those places where we fallen human beings have to work out our relationship with God. It's another area where we could reject what he has to say or we can wrestle with it and try to live up to it knowing that we're sinners. I think Jesus would agree with Moses that divorce is an accommodation to the fact that we're sinners. Moses and Jesus both recognize that we sinners are going to fail in our marriages, so they allowed divorce with some restrictions and regulations. I don't think either one of them meant that divorce was a righteous option. Divorce results from the fact that the parties involved are sinners. God intends for marriages to last. To follow God means to strive to make your marriage last and to keep your marriage vows, even when you don't want to. Yes, sometimes the sin and selfishness of one or both spouses is going to destroy the marriage, and divorce will be the result. But don't tell yourself that because you followed the rules concerning divorce, you are a righteous and blameless person. You may be the most grievously injured party in the divorce, but none of us can make the claim that we were completely without sin in any relationship, let alone marriage. God intended marriage to be forever, but divorce is a necessary evil because of our sin. Now I know you're going to ask, well, how do you decide that the marriage bond is broken and beyond repair and that divorce is the appropriate next step? Again, I do not have all the answers, but here are my thoughts for whatever they're worth. My advice is seek help early and don't make this decision on your own. Seek help as soon as you see the first warning signs or cracks in your marriage. Pray, talk to a trusted friend, talk to a pastor, a professional counselor, an elder, a relative, and of course your spouse. Don't get caught in the pride trap of I don't want other believers to know that I'm struggling. That road is the road to destruction. We all struggle. No marriage is perfect. What looks like a good marriage now may have been a sinking ship five years ago. You don't know. Ask for help when you need it. Pray, seek advice, pray, and seek wise counsel. God knows our hearts, God knows us. He knows if we're trying to find a way out of this marriage, we aren't gonna fool him. If we're seeking obedience and wisdom, then all we can do is perfectly take what we think is the next right step and ask God for wisdom, grace, and mercy. Thank you for listening to Wednesday and the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no advertisements. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe, leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you found it. A big thank you to Reggie Coates for the use of his beautiful song Tenacious. You can listen to more of Reggie Coates's music at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.