The Lord of Marriage
Jesus the bridegroom's final word on the age-old divorce debates
This newsletter is chapter II of an upcoming eBook on the scandal of Church-sanctioned divorce. If you haven’t already done so, please check out chapters I, III, IV, V, VI, and VII, as well as the preface, afterword, and appendices A and B.
In the previous chapter we set the stage and tone for this series on divorce, arguing that Christians must abandon this most foundational of sinful practices.
Here, we will survey Jesus’ teachings on divorce and remarriage in Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 16, showing that He consistently and unambiguously forbade divorce and remarriage during the lifetime of one’s spouse, full stop.
How Jesus reset the divorce debate
We’ve all heard the sayings “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
So it is with the never-ending, ever-repeating divorce debates.
No matter how clearly and consistently God puts the issue to rest, still we find ourselves asking “What did He really mean by that?” We cannot hear because we do not want to hear.
Jesus encountered this attitude when the Pharisees sought to embroil Him in their long-standing controversy over what constituted acceptable grounds for divorce. Since Moses’ restrictions on divorce and remarriage in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 described customs of that time without outright banning them, many unscrupulous interpreters seized on this passage as one providing tacit, if not outright approval for divorce.
How wrong they were.
Here’s how the dialog between Jesus and His rabbinic interlocutors began (Matthew 19:3-6):
“And Pharisees came up to Him and tested Him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast 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 not man separate.’”
In other words, Jesus’ answer is “Do not divorce, since God has made husband and wife one flesh for life.” That He begins by making this point speaks volumes about where Jesus was coming from on these matters.
Notice also what Jesus did not say in His response. Tellingly, He offers not even the slightest hint of what He considered to be valid grounds for divorce. In fact, unless my ears are clogged, it sounds an awful lot like Jesus is saying that there are no valid grounds for divorce, that one should just flat not do it. One gets the impression that had the Pharisees not pressed Him further, He would have simply left the matter at that and walked away, case closed.
Jesus’ answer shows that the Pharisees were arguing over the wrong question from the outset, that their entire divorce debate was wrongheaded. The Pharisees asked Jesus whether it was lawful to divorce one’s wife “for any cause,” but it never even occurred to them to ask whether divorce itself was lawful! I mean, of course it was, at least on some grounds…wasn’t it?
The Pharisees wasted no time in asking the obvious follow-up question, and one can almost hear the panic in their voices as they did so (Matthew 19:7, 8):
“They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.’”
Oops. Things were going from bad to worse for the Pharisees.
Though they were determined to drag Jesus into “controversial speculations” (1 Timothy 1:4) based on their dishonest, self-serving reading of Moses’ instructions in Deuteronomy, Jesus refused to take the bait. Instead, He again brought the issue all the way back to Moses’ first book, Genesis, where God’s standard for marriage was first instituted.
The first word on the matter turned out to be the last.
According to Jesus, the pattern for marriage that God established in the beginning was still the rule. God’s earlier precedent in uniting Adam and Eve as the first husband and wife trumped Moses’ later precedent in permitting divorce.1 The former was based on God’s unchanging standard for all humanity, while the latter was based on Moses’ mere concession to hard-hearted Israel.
With this revolutionary paradigm shift, Jesus had now completely reset the divorce debate. The entire premise on which the religious establishment’s fifteen-hundred-year-long divorce controversy rested was an utterly misguided sham.
And spoiler alert, as we will see in future chapters, this is precisely the situation that the Church finds itself in today.
Whereas the Pharisees’ response to Jesus was “What do you mean we can’t divorce; haven’t You read Deuteronomy?” Jesus’ response to the Pharisees was “What do you mean you can divorce; haven’t you read Genesis?”
Who was testing whom here again?
Oh, but Jesus wasn’t done yet. The Pharisees made a fatal mistake in asking their follow-up question (Jeremiah 42:20; Matthew 22:46), for the bombshell that Jesus uttered next made even His disciples weak in the knees.
“A wicked and adulterous generation”
Before getting to Jesus’ final words to the Pharisees in Matthew 19:9, we have to back up to Matthew 5:31 and 32 for context provided by Jesus’ earlier pronouncement on divorce in the Sermon on the Mount:
“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.”
In His classic “You have heard it said…But I say unto you” formulation that is typical of this sermon, Jesus states that a husband who divorces his wife is responsible for making her commit adultery. This was because the husband was essentially forcing his wife into remarrying during his lifetime, and hence while she was still married to him. In that culture, single female divorcees were particularly vulnerable, and thus would almost certainly remarry as soon as possible to secure ongoing protection and provision. Further, since divorce among the Jews of that day was a one-sided affair, with husbands having unilateral power, Jesus lays the blame for the wife’s adultery squarely at the feet of the husband in this scenario.
However, careful teacher that He was, Jesus qualified His statement with the phrase “parektos logou porneias” (“παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας,” “apart from/besides a matter of fornication”), which set aside the case where a husband put his wife away for her adultery—in that scenario, it is she who is held responsible, since she committed adultery of her own volition prior to being put away. Furthermore, the adulterous wife in this scenario would be in no position to remarry, since adulterers were sentenced to death by stoning according to Jewish law (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; Ezekiel 16:38, 40). Since this law was still in force at the time (Matthew 1:19; John 8:5),2 the Pharisees would have immediately understood the full import of Jesus’ legal qualification.3
Jesus ends His comments on divorce in this sermon by stating, without qualification, that any man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. This is because, regardless of this man’s background, the divorced woman is still bound to her first husband so long as he lives. In other words, Jesus is saying “Do not remarry while your spouse is living, since that is adultery.”
For Jesus’ original audience, as well as for the average American Christian today, these teachings are as radical as they are rational. Although their implications are difficult to come to grips with, their logic is inescapable. How many untold scores of Jesus’ contemporaries were in such adulterous remarriages, without even realizing it? How many Christian couples today are in this very predicament?
It was not without reason that Jesus referred to the divorce-happy people of His day as “A wicked and adulterous generation” (Matthew 12:39a).
Did He just say what I think He said?
If you are finding yourself reeling in response to all of this, then you are not alone, for this was exactly how the disciples reacted.
Mark records in his Gospel (Mark 10:2-9) the very same encounter with the Pharisees described above in chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel. However, Mark adds a private exchange between Jesus and His disciples that took place after the public interchange with the religious leaders (Mark 10:10-12):
“And in the house the disciples asked Him again about this matter [of divorce and remarriage]. 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.’”
There you have it.
The disciples in essence asked Jesus “Really?!” to which He replied “Yes, really.”
If there was ever a time when Jesus would have mentioned an out clause if one existed, it would be here. And yet not only does He not mention an exception the rule, He restates it without qualification, as if to say, “Read my lips: Remarriage after divorce is adultery.”
So you can rest assured. You heard Him correctly the first time. Because a husband and wife are for life, we can say with confidence that any remarriage that takes place prior to the death of either original spouse is adulterous.
As if to more fully establish the matter by adding yet a third witness (Deuteronomy 19:15; 2 Corinthians 13:1), Luke’s Gospel says the very same thing on this topic as Matthew’s and Mark’s (Luke 16:18): “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.” Again, as with Mark’s account, Luke records no qualification to Jesus’ statements.
No caveats. No loopholes. No exceptions.
There is, however, one lone witness that purportedly offers a genuine exception to Jesus’ rule of lifelong marriage, one which provides the only glimmer of hope for proponents of Christ-approved divorce.
With this background in mind, we are now ready to return to the text we began with in Matthew 19 for Jesus’ final truth bomb on divorce.
Excluding the “exception clause”
Most modern Christians would agree that, in general, one should not divorce, but that it is permissible on certain grounds, with adultery being the most often cited. Proponents of this view point to the so-called “exception clause” in Matthew 19:9 as proof positive that Jesus made an exception whereby divorce is allowed, though not required for fornication. In fact, it is not an overstatement to say that their case for divorce from the teachings of Jesus hangs almost entirely on their interpretation of this one verse. But does their claim hold up under close scrutiny, or does it fall apart as quickly as the Pharisees’ argument?
Here’s Jesus again, setting the record straight, once and for all (Matthew 19:9):
“And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, not for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
By now, this should sound very familiar: Any husband who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. This is one of Jesus’ core claims on divorce and remarriage.
Here, as with His prior statement in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ assertion is qualified, this time with the three-word clause “mē epi porneia” (“μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ,” “not for/over fornication”). In adding this phrase, Jesus was again stating that the divorce scenario under consideration did not involve the sin of fornication. By adding this important reminder/remainder phrase4 Jesus was doing two important things at once.
First, He was giving His audience a reminder that divorcing one’s wife for porneia (πορνείᾳ, “fornication”), or illicit sex of any kind, was not a live option (pun intended) for Jewish husbands. Again, this was because fornication in the context of marriage is adultery, and God had already ruled out adultery as a grounds for divorce in the Law of Moses by making it a death penalty offense (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; Ezekiel 16:38, 40). Thus, under Jewish law, a wife who was put away5 for adultery received “a death certificate, not a divorce certificate.”6 It follows logically, then, that the husband in that scenario would not be committing adultery by remarrying another since he is no longer bound to his deceased former wife.
Second, by excluding fornication from the scenario He was laying out, Jesus was thereby including every non-fornication ground for divorce left over in the remainder. This makes perfect sense since non-fornication offenses were the only grounds available to Jewish husbands on which to divorce their wives in the first place. Fornication was off the table as a cause for divorce, but as the Pharisees’ original question reveals, everything else was apparently fair game and open season, at least for debate.
Now we can see why Jesus’ statements on divorce are qualified in Matthew’s Gospel, but not in Mark’s or Luke’s. To understand this pattern, one has to take into account the original intended audiences.
It is well known that Matthew’s Gospel was written with a Jewish audience in mind, whereas Mark’s and Luke’s were tailored to gentile audiences. While the Jews divorced for indecent, displeasing behavior on the part of the wife that nevertheless fell short of the capital offense of adultery (Deuteronomy 24:1, 3), gentiles living under first century Roman customs divorced for any reason at all, including adultery.7
Thus, when addressing the Jews, Matthew includes the necessary qualifications when Jesus’ statements do not apply to cases of fornication, but when addressing the gentiles, Mark and Luke include no such qualifications, but instead present Jesus’ statements in their unqualified, absolute form. This is just what one would expect if Jesus taught that there were no grounds whatsoever on which one could lawfully divorce.
On the other hand, if we interpret Jesus’ qualification in Matthew 19:9 as an “exception clause” that allows for divorce and remarriage in cases of adultery, why would Jesus mention this supposed exception when speaking to the Jews, who did not divorce for adultery, while neglecting to mention it to the gentiles, who did divorce for adultery? It makes no sense.
But it gets dicier still for the divorce exception advocates.
If Jesus either or explicitly or implicitly permitted divorce and remarriage for the now innumerable exceptions that our modern, allegedly “conservative” evangelical scribes and Pharisees put forward, then why did the disciples exclaim immediately upon hearing of this “exception” “If this is the case, it is better not to marry!” (Matthew 19:10b). Jesus does not reply “Oh no, you’ve got me all wrong, you can now divorce for all manner of sexual sin. And if you think those new allowances are great, just wait until you see what the Apostle Paul has in store for you! I think you’ll really be pleased. So, marriage is really quite a reasonable ask, once you factor those puppies in.” No, rather than offering such false reassurances, Jesus instead provided an extended commentary on…the relative merits of celibacy (Matthew 19:11, 12).
Folks, could it be any more obvious that the position most of us now hold is not Jesus’?
Fellow Christians, we need to WAKE UP!!!
IF WE TOLERATE DIVORCE FOR ANY REASON, JESUS IS NOT ON OUR SIDE!
WWJD (Why Would Jesus Divorce)?
This leads us to the much broader clincher argument, one that should seal the deal and forever rule out divorce for the committed follower of Christ:
The teaching that the sins of divorce and adulterous remarriage are permitted under certain conditions directly contradicts literally everything else Jesus teaches.
This is not a small problem for the pro-divorce Christians, but rather the single greatest obstacle facing their ill-considered, ill-advised position.
Jesus came as one under the law to minister to those under the law (Galatians 4:4, 5) concerning matters related to the law (Matthew 22: 15-46; Luke 2:46-49; etc.). And about that law, He said that He did not come to do away with it, but rather to fulfill it, and that those who would relax even the least of the commandments, and give others license to do the same, would be called least in the kingdom (Matthew 5:17-19). This is what the Pharisees excelled at, substituting their man-made rules for God’s commandments, and thereby nullifying them (Matthew 15:3-9; Mark 7:6-13). Jesus made it perfectly clear that this sort of charade would not cut it under His rule—Kingdom righteousness had to surpass man’s cute, oh so clever workarounds for circumventing full obedience to God’s commandments (Matthew 5:20).
Indeed, one of the most salient takeaways of Jesus’ kingdom manifesto known as the Sermon on the Mount was that the bar for His followers’ conduct was much higher than the half-hearted, half-baked standards that God’s people had grown accustomed to. Hate was now to be considered as murder (Matthew 5:21, 22), lust as adultery (Matthew 5:27, 28), words as oaths (Matthew 5:33-37). From now on, it was “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), which was really God’s standard all along (Leviticus 11:44, 11:45, 19:2).
So given this, are we to believe that the man who told us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38), and forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22), who said that unless we forgave our brothers from our hearts that we would not be forgiven (Matthew 6:15, 18:35), that we could not even worship God until we reconciled with our offended brothers (Matthew 5:24), who told us to suffer wrong rather than going to court (Matthew 5:40), that adultery, even of the heart, was so dangerous, that we would be better off maimed than damned (Matthew 5:27-30), and who, in the next breathe, literally in the next verse, taught us that remarriage after divorce is adultery (Matthew 5:31, 32), are we seriously to believe that this same man would also teach His followers that they can divorce and remarry during the lifetime of their original spouse, an act He just said was adultery, under the condition that their spouse…first committed adultery against them?!
How is this not “an eye for an eye” (Matthew 5:38-42)? How is that behavior any better than that of the pagans, tax collectors, and sinners (Matthew 5:46, 47, 18:17)? How could the man who forgave His murderers in the very act of murder (Luke 23:34) teach His disciples anything remotely like this? “You have heard it said that My Father outlawed the pagan practice of divorce for adultery, but I say unto you that it’s OK to follow the heathen’s lead now. Grace is far less demanding than the law. After all, they cheated on you first, so it’s only fair.” What an insult to attribute such low and worldly thinking to Christ!
Come on Christians! This teaching obviously reeks to high heaven of man’s petty, willful, fallen mentality! It is unworthy of our Lord and His high, holy, pure, and perfect kingdom values. Which is easier for man to do: stone his cheating wife, or forgive her? Divorce his unfaithful bride and remarry someone better, or remain faithful to her even when she is unfaithful to him, even if this requires him to live in celibacy for the rest of his life to leave open the door to reconciliation?
The whole reason Jesus came to earth was to die for His unfaithful bride! So how can we, His followers, refuse to lay down our lives for our unfaithful brides and instead throw them under the bus and run off with another?
O my brothers and sisters, how did we ever miss this?! Were we so preoccupied with ourselves, our hurts, our rights, our desires, that we forgot to look to the cross, to Christ’s hurts, His rights, His desires?
Today, if you hear His pleading voice, do not further harden your heart (Hebrews 3:15)! Instead weep! Wail! Rend the garments of your heart (Joel 2:13)! Return to God, the husband of your youth (Proverbs 5:18; Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32). All the day long He has held out His hands to receive back His wayward people (Isaiah 65:2). Do not spurn His merciful invitation while it still stands.
Forgive us, O Lord!!!
Standing with the Lord of marriage
Let’s settle this Church. No more waffling back and forth, paying lip service to the sanctity of marriage, but denying it with our actions.
Either man can divorce, or he cannot.
Either marriage is for life, or it is not.
Jesus did not say “yes” and “no” on divorce, or any other topic. He never once spoke out of both sides of His mouth. Neither was He mealy-mouthed, vague, or cryptic in His pronouncements. He is the Word incarnate (John 1:14), the perfect communicator. His original hearers knew exactly what He was saying.
Jesus is also the Lord of marriage. He is the husband, head, authority, and bridegroom of His bride-Church. His name is Faithful and True (Revelation 19:11). By His words and deeds, He left no question as to where He stood on these matters.
The only question that remains is “Are you standing with Him?”
Unfaithful to marriage
We know what some of you are thinking. If Jesus is so clear on divorce and remarriage, then why have I never heard this teaching before? In part III of this series, we will expose how the Church became unfaithful to the marriage doctrine of her youth when she formally departed from the teachings of Christ, the Apostles, and the Church Fathers five centuries ago.
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In saying that Moses “permitted” divorce, one should not take this to mean a positive, active permission, as with a legal permit. Rather, he merely “permitted,” “allowed,” “let,” or as the King James and other versions put it, “suffered” divorce to occur for the time being in a negative, passive sense. This is a far cry from the Pharisees’ framing of Moses’ “command” (“ἐνετείλατο,” “eneteilato” [Strong’s 1781]: “to give orders,” “injunctions, instructions, commands,” “to enjoin”) to divorce, as if he all but put them in a headlock and forced them to divorce against their wills! Jesus instantly recognized what they were doing, and made sure to correct them: Moses “permitted” (“ἐπέτρεψεν,” “epetrepsen” [Strong’s 2010]: “To turn to, commit, entrust; I allow, yield, permit,” “to turn over, i.e. allow”), rather than commanded them to divorce, and even then only because of their hardness of heart.
See sections 4.5.4., 5.11., 6.3.3.2., and 6.5.7. in Leslie McFall, The Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage. Comberton, Cambridgeshire: 2014.
For a detailed summary of the Biblical and historical evidence in support of this claim, see “Appendix A: The Death Penalty for Adultery.”
See section 6.1.3. in McFall, The Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage.
The Greek word for “divorce,” “ἀπολύω,” or “apoluó” (Strong’s 630), can be translated more generically as “to set free,” “release,” or “put away,” depending on the context. See, for example, the King James and similar translations of Matthew 19:9.
See p. 76, McFall, The Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage.
See Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.