Matthew 5:31-32

Bird's-eye view

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus continues His pattern of pressing the law of God past the external requirements of the scribes and Pharisees and down to the heart. It is no accident that this teaching on divorce follows immediately on the heels of His teaching about lust. Lust is adultery in the heart, and our modern divorce culture is simply the legal paperwork that allows men to act on their lusts with a clean conscience, or so they think. Jesus here is taking a common rabbinic distortion of Moses's teaching and correcting it, showing that marriage is a covenant established by God, not a contract to be dissolved at the whim of man. He is not setting aside the law of Moses, but rather stripping away the self-serving legal fictions the Pharisees had wrapped around it. The central point is this: God hates a faithless divorce, and He considers remarriage after such a divorce to be adultery. The covenant of marriage is a solemn bond, a picture of Christ and the Church, and to treat it lightly is to trample on sacred things.

Outline

Context In Matthew

Jesus is in the middle of His great Sermon on the Mount, where He is laying out the ethics of His kingdom. A recurring theme is "You have heard that it was said... but I say to you." In this, Jesus is not contradicting the Old Testament law. He is God, and He gave that law. Rather, He is contradicting the casuistry and the loopholes that the religious leaders of His day had developed to get around the true intent of the law. They had turned the law into a checklist for external righteousness, which allowed them to have hearts full of murder, lust, and faithlessness while still appearing righteous. Jesus is restoring the law to its proper place, showing that it demands total heart loyalty to God. This teaching on divorce fits squarely in that context. The Pharisees had taken a passage from Deuteronomy 24, which was intended to regulate divorce and make it a solemn, formal process, and had twisted it into a justification for getting rid of a wife for any trivial reason. Jesus cuts through all that and reestablishes God's creational intent for marriage: one man, one woman, for life.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 31 “Now it was said, ‘WHOEVER SENDS HIS WIFE AWAY, LET HIM GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE’;

Jesus begins by quoting the popular understanding of the law, which is a loose reference to Deuteronomy 24:1-4. The Pharisees had fixated on the procedural aspect of the law, the certificate of divorce, and had neglected the substance. In their hands, this provision, which was a concession to the hardness of men's hearts, became a permission slip. The certificate was intended to protect the woman and to make the man think twice before acting rashly. It was a formal legal process. But the rabbis of the school of Hillel had expanded the grounds for divorce to include almost anything, like burning a meal. So the popular assumption was that if you followed the paperwork, you were in the clear. You could send your wife away for any reason, as long as you gave her the certificate. Jesus is setting up this flawed interpretation in order to knock it down.

v. 32a but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of sexual immorality,

Here is the great correction. "But I say to you..." This is the voice of divine authority. Jesus is not offering another rabbinic opinion; He is declaring the truth as the Lawgiver Himself. He radically restricts the grounds for divorce to one category: sexual immorality. The Greek word here is porneia, which is a broad term for sexual uncleanness. It certainly includes adultery, but it can also cover a range of other serious sexual sins like incest, homosexuality, or a deep entanglement in something like pornography that proves to be intractable. But notice, this is an exception, not a command. Even when there are biblical grounds, divorce is not required. Forgiveness and reconciliation should always be the first thought. But Jesus says this is the only reason a man can initiate a divorce without being culpable before God. Any other reason, she's not as pretty as she used to be, you don't get along, you've "fallen out of love", is illegitimate.

v. 32b makes her commit adultery;

This is a startling statement. How does a man who divorces his wife unlawfully make her commit adultery? He is not taking away her moral agency, but he is placing her in a position where her subsequent actions will be adulterous in God's eyes. In that culture, a woman without a husband was in a desperate social and economic position. Remarriage was almost a necessity for survival. But because the first marriage was not legitimately dissolved in the court of heaven, God still considers that covenant to be in force. Therefore, when she remarries, she is joining herself to another man while still being bound to her first husband. That is the definition of adultery. The man who put her away without biblical grounds is the one who created this adulterous situation. He bears the primary guilt for it. This shows how seriously God takes the marriage covenant. Human courts and legal documents do not have the authority to set aside what God has joined together.

v. 32c and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Jesus closes the loop. The guilt is not just on the man who initiated the unbiblical divorce, or on the woman who remarries. It also falls on the man who marries a woman who has been unlawfully divorced. He is taking a woman who, in God's sight, belongs to another man. This is a clear and direct prohibition. It demolishes our modern, sentimental views on divorce and remarriage. We have created a culture of serial polygamy, where people move from one marriage to the next with the full blessing of the state and, tragically, often the church. But Jesus says that unless the first marriage was ended on biblical grounds, that is, for porneia, any subsequent marriage is adulterous. The one-flesh union is a sacred reality, not something that can be set aside by signing a piece of paper. This is a hard teaching, but it is intended to protect the covenant of marriage, which is the bedrock of any healthy society and a living picture of the gospel itself.

Application

The application of this passage must begin with a high view of marriage. Marriage is not a contract between two individuals for their mutual happiness. It is a covenant sworn before God, a solemn bond that pictures the unbreakable relationship between Christ and His Church. Therefore, we must hate divorce as God hates it. For those who are married, this means you must put away all thoughts of divorce as an "option." Your commitment is for life, "for better, for worse." You must work through your problems, forgive one another, and lean on the grace of God.

For the church, we must stop acting like the world. We have been cowed by the no-fault divorce culture, and we often treat divorce as a sad but normal part of life. We must instead teach the biblical standard with clarity and courage. We must also be places of grace and restoration. When sin does happen, and a marriage is broken on biblical grounds, we must care for the innocent party. And when people come to us out of the wreckage of past, unbiblical divorces, we must apply the gospel. There is forgiveness for the sin of adultery, just as there is for any other sin. Repentance means acknowledging the sin, forsaking it, and walking in faithfulness from that point forward. It does not necessarily mean unscrambling every egg. We must handle these situations with immense pastoral wisdom, but that wisdom must be grounded in the hard, clear, and life-giving words of Jesus Christ.