FIVE HUSBANDS AND TWO MEN: Christian Divorce and Re-Marriage? (Part 7 of 18)

16. Revision or Reinstatement?

Some Bible teachers are of the view that, in answering the Pharisees on the question of divorce, Jesus re-instituted the ‘original order,’ for the two to be one flesh without the option of divorce at all.  The evidence of Scripture, however, is that He revised the old order, and that was not the only instance of His doing so. In His first sermon, generally called the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), for example, Jesus declared several times, “It hath been said … But I say; …. It hath been said … But I say ….”

For instance, whereas the traditional ‘definition’ of adultery was a sexual act between a married person and someone who is not their spouse, Jesus revised it to include lustful looks and thoughts (Matthew 5:27-28).  Murder used to be defined as the act of killing somebody, but Jesus revised the concept to include causeless anger with a brother (Matthew 5:21-22).  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: that used to be the law, the Scripture; but Jesus revised that, too, saying, “But I say unto you … resist not evil” (Matthew 5:38-39).  In Matthew chapter 5 alone, that revisionary phrase, “But I say unto you …,” occurs as many as six times (vv. 22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44).  Furthermore, there was a sentence of death for anyone caught in adultery, according to the law of Moses, but when a woman was brought before the court of Jesus, apparently caught in the act, Jesus intervened and set her free from her accusers, as if to say that mercy had superseded law and judgment (John 8:1-11).  In other words, mercy, not judgment, is the fulfilment of the law (Matthew 5:17).  So, did Jesus in any way revise the laws of Moses, or He upheld them? He came to fulfil the law, not to challenge it, but did that mean upholding persistent wrong interpretations of the law?

In the matter of Moses and divorce, did Jesus adopt, adapt, or entirely reject the position of Moses?  He did not reject the law.  He fulfilled it by sometimes correcting prevailing inadequate perceptions and interpretations of sections of that law.  In His response to the Pharisees, Jesus made clear submissions:

1. Jesus noted that Moses allowed divorce as a concession to the hardness of men’s hearts, even though it was not so in the beginning. It was a concession, true, but an honoured concession all the same, because God never called up Moses to rescind it.  Heaven appeared to have allowed it in deference to Moses and the state of heart of men.  Nobody ever got charged with transgression before God or men for their practice of that concession granted by Moses and allowed by God.  The problem had not been the concession but the abuse in the practice of it.
2. Jesus then clarified the concession that Moses had made, stating the grounds on which it might be implemented by the man or the woman – porneia – conjugal infidelity, which the KJV translates as “fornication.” Until then, that ground had been abused by many men, especially the liberalist Hillel school.  From the alarmed response of Jesus’ disciples, it would appear that even they had been disposed to the liberalist view, which might suggest how far popular that practice had been, to the detriment of innocent wives (Matthew 19:10).  Still puzzled by Jesus’ public answer on the subject, the disciples brought up the topic once more when they were by themselves with Him “in the house” (Mark 10:10).
3. Whereas Moses’ law gave only the man the powers to put away, in the New Testament ‘amendments’ by Jesus, the abused wife received the same powers as the man (Mark 10:12; Matthew 19:9). The Mosaic law made no such provision for the woman, but Greek and Roman laws did, and the new ‘amendment’ might have been influenced by that ‘contemporary’ cultural context.  Only St Mark’s Gospel notes the wife’s equal privilege in that respect.  A further clue to that might be the fact that Mark had been writing primarily to a Gentile audience, especially those at Rome, the empire’s capital city.

The original order spoke nowhere about divorce.  The “except for fornication” clause was a modification of the original order, based on the concession already granted by Moses but abused by many men.  The Pharisees who had tempted Jesus, citing Moses, had rightly quoted but misapplied Moses.  Jesus’ answer, while it pointed to the original order, while it made it clear that Moses’ exception had been prompted by a declined condition in men, did not cancel the concession but admitted it.

So, did Jesus review or reinstate the ‘original order’ on the question of marriage and divorce?  From the foregoing, the apparent answer is that He reviewed it.  In other words, Jesus allowed divorce, which was not included in the original condition.

Some readers have interpreted “from the beginning it was not so” to mean that Jesus was reinforcing the status quo as at “the beginning” in terms of (as they interpret it) no divorce at all, and therefore no remarriage.   That is a misreading.  There are many other things that were “not so” in the beginning, or from the beginning (Matthew 19:4, 8; Mark 10:6).  For example, in the beginning, humans were clothed with the glory of God and did not need clothes of figs or furs.  It changed.  Even Jesus wore clothes.  In the beginning, it was not so.  In the beginning, there was no death, but now everything dies with time, because sin entered the world through the depravity in the human condition and altered the original order, like the heart-condition that compelled Moses’ intervention in the matter of marriage. In the beginning, human diet was apparently entirely plant-based (Genesis 1:29), but later, God gave meat from heaven to the Israelites in the wilderness, and Jesus multiplied bread and fish.  In the beginning, it was not so.  It is therefore not a valid argument that when Jesus said, “in the beginning it was not so,” He was reinforcing the status as “in the beginning,” which is interpreted to mean that God does not permit divorce, or remarriage in the event of a divorce.

Jesus’ statement was a valid observation (not a reinstatement) of conditions as at “the beginning.”   For example, when He said, “except for fornication,” that exception clause was not there “in the beginning.”  So, if what He meant by “from the beginning it was not so” is that we should go back to the beginning, then even He had been wrong and had contradicted Himself by pointing us to ‘the beginning’ yet allowing a condition for divorce that was never there in that ‘beginning.’

From The Preacher’s diary,
July 20, 2021.

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