Christian Counter Culture 4

Righteousness: Marriage and Speech

Matthew 5: 31-37

Fidelity in Marriage and honesty in speech: this is discipleship at its sharpest. Jesus the embodiment of righteousness now says that in certain circumstances remarriage to a divorced person is tantamount to adultery. So I must confess to a basic reluctance to attempt an exposition of these verses: divorce is still a controversial and complex subject, which touches people’s emotions at a deep level. There is almost no unhappiness so poignant as the unhappiness of an unhappy marriage, and almost no tragedy so great as the denigration of what God meant for love and fulfilment into a non-relationship of bitterness, discord and despair. Although I still believe that God’s way in most cases is not divorce, I hope I will speak to you this morning with sensitivity, for I know the pain which many suffer and, and I have no wish to add to their distress. Of course we should remind ourselves that this is not the unforgivable sin. Yet it is precisely because I am convinced of the teaching of Jesus on this and every subject is good – intrinsically good, good for individuals and good for society – that I take courage and speak.

Fidelity in Marriage: these two verses can hardly be thought to represent the sum total of our Lord’s instruction on the mountain about divorce: Matthew records the fuller version in 19:3-9. I will interpret the shorter in the light of the longer. Part of the background to the Pharisees question was a current controversy between two rabbi’s Hillel and Shammai. Shammai took a hard line that divorce was only permissible for grave matrimonial offence, something unseemly or indecent. Hillel took a very lax position (which accordingly to contemporary sources most followed): in essence you could be divorced from your wife for any cause whatsoever! If your wife was an incompetent cook and burnt her husbands food, or he lost interest in her because of her plain looks and because he became enamoured of some other beautiful women, then these things were unseemly and justified him divorcing her. Our Lord’s reply to the Pharisees question: is it lawful to divorce ones wife for any cause, was in three parts. It is revealing to consider them separately and in the order in which he spoke them. In each he dissented from the Pharisees:

  1. The Pharisees were preoccupied with the grounds for divorce: Jesus with the institution of marriage. Jesus’ reply was not a reply. He declined to answer their question. Instead he asked a counter question about their reading of scripture. He referred them back to Genesis, both to the creation of mankind as male and female and to the institution of marriage by which a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife and the two become one.. This biblical definition implies that marriage is both exclusive (a man…his wife) and permanent (‘cleave’ or ‘be joined’ to his wife). It is these two aspects of marriage, which Jesus selects for emphasis in his comments that follow. First, ‘so they are no longer two but one flesh,’ and secondly, ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’ Thus marriage, according to Jesus is a divine institution by which God makes permanently one two people who decisively and publicly leave their parents in order to form a new unit of society and then ‘become one flesh’.
  2. The Pharisees called Moses’ provision for divorce a command; Jesus called it a concession to the hardness of human hearts. The Pharisees responded to Jesus’ exposition of marriage and its permanence by asking: why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away (19:7)? Verse 31 says as much. Both of these, however, were garbled versions of the Mosaic provision typical of the Pharisees disregard for what Scripture really said and implied. They laid their emphasis on the giving of a divorce certificate, as if it were the most important part and then referred to it as a ‘command’. A careful reading of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 reveals something quite different. To begin with, the whole paragraph hinges on a long series of conditional clauses: ‘After a man has married a wife, if he finds some indecency in her, and if he gives her a certificate of divorce and divorces her and she leaves, and if she marries again, and if her second husband gives her a divorce certificate and divorces her, orif her second husband dies, then her first husband who divorced her is forbidden to remarry her….’ So the trust of the passage is to prohibit the remarriage of one’s own divorced partner. The reason for this regulation is obscure. It appears to be that if her ‘indecency’ had so defiled her as to be a sufficient ground for divorce, it was also sufficient reason for not taking her back. It may also have been intended to warn a husband against a hasty decision, because once made it could not be rescinded, and /or to protect the wife against exploitation. For our purposes here it is enough to observe that this prohibition is the only command in the whole passage; there is certainly no command to a husband to divorce his wife, nor even any encouragement to do so. All there is instead is a reference to certain necessary procedures if a divorce takes place; and therefore at the very most, a reluctant permission is implied and a current practice tolerated. How then, did Jesus respond to the Pharisees question about the regulation of Moses? He attributed it to the hardness of people’s hearts. In so doing he did not deny that the regulation was from God. He implied, however, that it was not a divine instruction, but only a divine concession to human weakness. It was for this reason that ‘Moses allowed you to divorce..’(v8). But then immediately referred again to the original purpose of God saying: ‘but from the beginning it was not so.’ Thus even the divine concession was in principle inconsistent with divine institution.
  3. The Pharisees regarded divorce lightly; Jesus took it so seriously that, with only one exception, he called all remarriage after divorce adultery. This was the conclusion of the debate with the Pharisees, and this is what is recorded in both: 5:32 & 19:9. It seems to be assumed that a divorce would lead to remarriage of the divorced parties. Only this assumption can explain the statement that a man divorcing his wife without cause ‘makes her an adulteress’. His action could only have that result if she married again. Separation without divorce is a modern arrangement unknown to the ancient world. Since God instituted marriage as an exclusive and permanent union, a union which he makes and man must not break, Jesus draws the inevitable deduction that to divorce ones partner and to marry another, or to marry a divorced person, is to enter a forbidden, adulterous relationship. For the person who may have secured a divorce in the eyes of human law is still in the eyes of God married to his or her first partner. Only one exception is made to this principle: ‘except on the grounds of unchastity’ (5:32/19:9). Not only is this an authentic word of Jesus, part of Matthew’s gospel (every MSS has it included) but the Greek word used ‘porneia’ clearly means some act of physical sexual immorality. What then did Jesus teach? That this reluctant permission of Jesus must be seen for what it is, namely a continued accommodation to the hardness of human hearts. In addition it must also be read both in its immediate context (an emphatic endorsement of the permanence of marriage in God’s purpose) and also in the wider context of the whole sermon and indeed the whole Bible, which proclaim a gospel of reconciliation. Is it not significant that the Divine Lover was willing to woo back even his adulterous wife, Israel? So to be preoccupied with the grounds for divorce is to be guilty of the very pharisaism, which Jesus condemned. Chrysostom sums it up: “For he that is meek and a peacemaker, and poor in spirit, and merciful, how shall he cast out his wife? He that is used to reconcile others, how shall he be at variance with her that is his own?” So, speaking personally as a pastor, whenever somebody asks to speak with me about divorce, I have now for some years steadfastly refused to do so. I have made the rule never to speak with anybody about divorce, until I have first spoken with him (or her) about two other subjects, namely marriage and reconciliation. Sometimes by God’s grace a discussion on these topics makes a discussion of the other unnecessary. At the very least, it is only when a person has understood and accepted God’s view of marriage and God’s call to reconciliation that a possible context has been created within which one may regretfully go on to talk about divorce. A pastoral principle consistent I believe with the teaching of Jesus.

Honesty in speech: let me finish in a slightly lighter note. These Pharisees used scripture for their own ends and as it suited them: we must be careful to never do the same! “Again you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfil to the Lord the vows you have made’ “. (v33). This was not an accurate quotation of any one Law of Moses, but it was a working summary of several OT laws, which required people who make vows to keep them. And the vows in question are, strictly speaking, ‘oaths’ in which the speaker calls upon God to witness his vow and to punish him if he breaks it. Even a superficial reading of a selection of commandments indicates plainly their intention. They prohibit false swearing or perjury that is, making a vow and then breaking it. But the Pharisees took these awkward prohibitions and tried to restrict them. What they did was move the emphasis from the vow itself and the need to keep it, to the formula itself. They argued that what the law was really prohibiting was not taking the name of the Lord in vain but taking the name of the Lord in vain. False swearing meant profanity not perjury! Jesus expressed his contempt for this kind of sophistry in Matthew 23:16-22: READ.So Jesus sets down what we must avoid: v34-37. He begins by arguing that the question of the formula used in making vows is a total irrelevance, and in particular that the Pharisees’distinction between formulae (which mention God) and those, which do not, is entirely artificial. However hard you try, Jesus said, you cannot avoid some reference to God, for the whole world is God’s and you cannot eliminate him from any of it.

So if you make a vow keep it: we must keep our promises and be people of our word, then vows become unnecessary! Do not swear at all: let what you say be simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’! (James 5:12). Anymore than this comes from evil, says Jesus (either from the evil in our hearts and its fundamental deceit, or from the Father of Lies). If divorce is due to human hard-heartedness, swearing is due to human untruthfulness. The law permitted both; neither was commanded, neither should be necessary.

The modern application of this is not far to seek. Swearing (oath taking) is really a pathetic confession of our own dishonesty. Why do we find it necessary to introduce our promises by some tremendous formula: the only reason is that we know our simple word is not likely to be trusted. So we try to induce people to believe us by adding a solemn oath. The same must be true of all forms of exaggeration. We are not content to say we have had an enjoyable time, we have to describe it as fabulous or fantastic but the more we resort to such expressions, the more we devalue human language and human promises. Christians should say what they mean and mean what they say. Our unadorned word should be enough, yes or no, and when a monosyllable will do, why waste our breath by adding to it?

Pastor David

January 25th 2015.