Matthew 19:7-9 (NIV) “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
In a single paragraph, Jesus demolished the arguments of the best legal minds of His day. He not only told the Pharisees that divorce is definitely NOT allowed by God for any and every reason; He also narrowed the allowable reasons down to only one.
Part of the problem that the theologians had was that they interpreted scriptural allowances as mandates. Moses did not mandate divorce for any reason, but allowed it for “indecency,” which had a very specific (and narrow) meaning. What Moses did mandate was that, if a husband determined to divorce his wife for indecency, that he didn’t just quit providing for her, but that he divorce her publicly by giving her a properly written divorce decree. That way there would be no ambiguity about the woman’s status.
Jesu’s point was that marriage was God’s invention, not mans. And divorce was not God’s invention, but man’s willfully breaking apart what God had joined together. God instructed Moses to provide boundaries for it only out of recognition that the hard-heartedness of people would cause this breaking apart of the divinely enabled one-flesh bond, and was an effort to minimize the collateral damage.
Jesus also clearly pointed out that there were no reasonable grounds for divorce in God’s sight except for marital unfaithfulness. In other words, unless the woman had broken the marriage relationship through committing adultery, then the man divorcing her and marrying another would be his own committing adultery, since the covenant was still in force. God was not bound to recognized what man determined as to when divorce was appropriate; but man was bound by God’s determination. And the only reason that God would see divorce and remarriage as appropriate was if the other person had clearly committed adultery already.
And, by the way, a suspicion or accusation of adultery was not enough, since an unfounded accusation of adultery could be lodged at any time by a discontented spouse. That is specifically why God designed a test for a woman accused of adultery when there was no proof (Numbers 5:11-31), because God always knows what is true, and would not let an innocent woman be condemned, or a guilty one go free.
Father, we live in a time and in a society where we have completely lost track of what marriage really is, so it’s no wonder that we see it as a mere social contract that we can define in any way we want, and that can be dissolved “for any and every reason.” Help us, Lord, as Your people, to recapture for ourselves the truth of what You created marriage to be. Once we get it, it can spread out into our secularized society as we reach out with the gospel. But we need to get it first! Thank you for the clarity of Your word. Amen.