Adultery & Divorce
Sermon on the Mount # 5

a sermon on Matthew 5.27-32
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


When I was an adolescent, my church had a very active group for teenage boys. We had lots of youth activities in which boys and girls were together, but we also had this group that was just for guys. We did mission projects, attended conferences, and went hiking, bicycling, and caving. It was terrific, especially for a young man without a father. Whatever we did always included a devotion, and the topic of our devotions was always the same: this passage about lust.

We were constantly warned of the dangers of lust. Sexual purity is a struggle, we were told, but it is a heroic, noble, and holy struggle. The finer points were discussed, so that lust might not catch us unaware. If you notice an attractive woman, the rule was, that’s OK—it is when you look a second time that you are lusting.

Back then, I wondered why our devotion was always about lust. Later it made sense. If you are looking for a topic relevant to the adolescent male, you can’t do better. And our leaders understood something we did not, how we would be tempted in the years ahead.

Today I continue my series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, confident that today’s topic is relevant to everyone. Adultery and divorce: Jesus comes out strongly against both. We struggle with his teachings. We struggle with adultery because he makes it a matter of the heart and mind, not just the act. He is asking a lot of us. We struggle with divorce because it is so common in our society and because we know there are often good reasons for it, although Jesus doesn’t seem to think so.

Here’s my plan. I’ll start with a brief discussion of the adultery passage. There are a couple of small issues there that, once we figure them out, the rest becomes simply doing what Jesus said. I’ll spend more time on divorce. As I sometimes do I will survey other New Testament passages that treat this topic—three in the gospels, one in Paul. Then I will try to take Jesus’ teaching seriously, not weaseling around it or turning it upside down so that he agrees with whatever I want. Then I will wrestle with how we live out his command in a broken world.

First, lust as adultery in the heart. Once again Jesus takes a command from the Old Testament and explains how keeping it is as much a matter of your heart as your actions. If adultery were only a question of not having sex with anyone you are not married to, obedience would be straightforward and relatively easy. After all, the consequences of getting caught normally function as an effective deterrent. In this matter, however, as in all our obedience to God, the heart is what matters. God sees the heart. What is in our heart is who we are. It comes out in our actions. And even if it does not, because for example we are afraid of consequences, we are guilty or righteous based on our heart.

“If you look at a woman to lust at her,” Jesus says, “you have already committed adultery with her in your heart.” For a first-century Jew in Palestine, like Jesus, opportunities for this sort of thing must have been rare. Women were quite modest. As his disciples moved out into the pagan world, this command became harder to obey. And of course today we find opportunity to lust everywhere: billboards, television, the Internet, public places—just look around. Our context presents a significant challenge. We live in a sex-obsessed culture, in precisely the way the culture of first century Judaism was not. And yet Jesus’ teaching is for us.

I have mentioned already in this series the difference between temptation and sin. If you see an attractive person, that may be temptation, but it is not sin. The boundary between the two comes down to this: What would you do if you could? Would you sleep with that person, given the chance? If you could avoid any consequences, what would you do? That’s sin. Sin is doing with your eyes and your mind what you cannot or dare not do with your body. Is pornography, then always sin? Yes, of course. What is pornography except looking at a woman with lust?

What about this business of plucking out your eye? It is better to lose a member than to have the whole of you tossed into hell, Jesus advises. Is he serious? Absolutely serious, but not literal. Jesus is once again exaggerating, and he is doing so because we are stubborn and slow to accept his teaching. This is a matter of life and death for your soul. Sin, left untreated by the Great Physician, damns you. And for those of us under the care of the Great Physician, he doesn’t want us messing up his treatments by purposely sinning over and over. Do not lust. Take extreme action if necessary. Jesus does not really want you to gouge out your eyes. But he may want you to do other things: get an internet filter … not watch certain shows or not watch TV at all if it is a problem for you. I read about a Christian man who traveled for business. He struggled with lust, so he always insisted that the hotel take the television out of his room, so he would not be tempted. Is that extreme? Of course it is. And it is exactly the sort of thing Jesus recommends.

One last point: This passage talks mainly about men. First century Judaism was patriarchal. I have also talked mainly, although not exclusively, about men. Partly this is because I happen to be a man, and I understand a man’s point of view. I believe, however, that what Jesus says here applies to all his disciples, male or female. For biological reasons, lust tends to be more of a problem for men; but ladies, remember this: Obedience to God is a matter of the heart. However the passion arises, both men and women are capable of adultery in the heart.

Now on to our second topic: divorce, a topic that was as sensitive in Jesus’ day as in ours. As Jesus admits, the Law of Moses permitted divorce. Therefore all rabbis contemporary with Jesus regarded divorce as legitimate, but they argued over what constituted proper grounds for divorce. Keep in mind that Judaism in the first century was patriarchal. A woman did not have the right to divorce her husband. Only the husband could initiate divorce. The case was different in the higher social levels of the pagan world of that time. Roman women could and did divorce their husbands. In this passage Jesus works from a Jewish context, although ultimately his teaching has relevance in ours too.

Some rabbis claimed divorce was only permissible in the case of infidelity. Others argued that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. All agreed that the proper way to do it was according to the rules laid down in Deuteronomy (24.1-4). The husband would give his wife a certificate of divorce. That way there could be no question later of adultery on anyone’s part if he or she remarried.

Just as other rabbis argued over what constituted a binding oath while Jesus did away with them altogether, in the case of divorce Jesus does the same thing. What he says here about divorce causing adultery assumes that divorce is never valid. The point of divorce was to free both partners to find someone else and not be guilty of adultery. Jesus seems to think writing a certificate of divorce does not work. The marriage bond cannot be dissolved. To justify this he will, in another passage, go over Moses’ head and appeal to God’s intention when he created us.

It will help to survey those other passages now. We begin with Mark 10.2-12. Mark was the first gospel to be written. Mathew and Luke both used Mark when they were writing their gospels, and this fact will prove significant as we work with the texts about divorce. Mark 10 says:

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 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.”

Notice two things: First, Jesus appeals to the creation account in Genesis. God’s intention was for marriage to be permanent. Second, in Mark, Jesus does not mention an exception, as he does in Matthew—“except on the ground of unchastity.” This fact has led many scholars to conclude that Jesus originally permitted no exceptions, and that Matthew—or the church he was part of—added a valid exception based on their own experience. According to Jewish tradition, an act of adultery required a divorce. To remain married to a wife who had committed adultery cost a man his standing in the community. Matthew may have added, by way of explanation, an exception to Jesus’ prohibition of divorce that Matthew thought must have been implied. Whether it was or not is an open question.

Luke says very little about divorce (Luke 16.18). All he does is throw in the last line from Mark’s version.

Matthew says the most. Not only today’s text, but two others in Matthew touch the subject. At the beginning of Matthew, we find this: “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Behind the English word “dismiss” is the same Greek word translated “divorce” in the Sermon on the Mount. Joseph was righteous, and his righteousness consisted in this, to divorce Mary quietly (in that culture engagement was as serious as marriage, although the couple did not yet come together).

The other passage in Matthew is 19.3-9. It basically repeats everything in Mark 10.

The final passage I want to consult comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (7.10-16). Paul wrote:

“To the married I give this command—not I but the Lord—[notice he presents this as the command of Jesus] that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

To the rest I say—I and not the Lord—[now we are getting not a divine command but Paul’s advice] that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you. Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife.

He repeats Jesus’ prohibition against divorce, but then he takes up a special case. Elsewhere Paul says that Christians should not marry non-Christians. But nearly all the people in Paul’s churches were converts. What happened when a person became a Christian but his or her spouse did not? Paul said the Christian should not divorce the spouse for that reason, but if the unbelieving partner wanted a divorce, then let it be. In that case, the Christian is not bound, and would be therefore, presumably, able to marry a believer.

What can we conclude from all this? I am aware that most of you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Presbyterian Church is not known for taking a hard line on divorce—in fact, just the opposite. And how many times have I performed a wedding in which one or both parties was entering a second marriage after a divorce? I don’t know the number, but more than a few. How then can I square our practice with what we find in scripture?

One strategy some scholars and pastors use is to limit the scope of Jesus’ instruction. What Jesus was really worried about, they argue, was not divorce per se, but rather the plight of women. And I’m sure he was. Husbands able to dismiss their wives at will. Women with no recourse and no means of making a living on their own. It was not a just or fair system. I am sure Jesus lamented the social problems created by divorce both then and now. At one time I found this argument somewhat persuasive, but no longer. The problem is, Jesus did not ground his prohibition in the unhappy results of widespread divorce. He grounded it in God’s design at creation. A rule based on that, it seems to me, applies in any cultural context.

No, I think we have to take Jesus’ teaching at face value and not try to get around it. Jesus clearly taught that divorce violates God’s intention. God designed human beings to be monogamous. Two people—a man and a woman—become one flesh as long as they both shall live. What God joins, let no one separate. This is what God wants.

From the beginning, Jesus’ followers struggled with this. Paul discovered a specific case in which he felt divorce was acceptable. Matthew too believed Jesus must have intended an exception. The church today has also identified circumstances that would seem to permit divorce. Now we have to be careful about this. Because we are so good at deceiving ourselves and so good at justifying our own actions, it would be easy to make so many exceptions that the rule becomes meaningless. We must watch out for that. But I can name several good reasons for divorce: (1) Violence and abuse. I do not believe God expects you to stay in that kind of environment and suffer. (2) Child abuse. If your children are being abused by your spouse, God expects you to protect them. It would be sin not to get them out of danger and notify the proper authorities. (3) Your spouse enters the marriage under false pretenses. That is, you enter the marriage under a deception. (4) Abandonment. (5) Abuse of alcohol or drugs. You spouse is addicted to cocaine or something like that. And you might be able to name other valid reasons.

Again, I do not want to make an illegitimate path around Jesus’ teaching, but we need not apply a false legalism in the matter of divorce. I like to say, “Divorce should never destroy the sanctity of marriage, but sometimes divorce is simply an acknowledgement that the sanctity has been violated already to the point that it no longer exists.” Divorce is not what God wants, but at times it is the lesser of two evils. Who decides whether circumstances justify divorce? Ultimately that question is between the individual and God, although a pastor or counselor can help. Some cases, such as child abuse, are obvious. Others are more difficult and require great effort to work things out and much prayer.

What about remarriage after divorce? This is actually a much easier question. Divorce means that a person is no longer bound in marriage and is thus free to marry another. That is the point of what Jesus said about adultery. Otherwise all you need is a separation. It may be a permanent separation, but that is different from divorce. So a legitimate divorce always allows for remarriage. That’s the point. Sometimes people ask me, “Do you do second weddings?” to which I always reply, “I do last weddings”—meaning: Yes, I will marry you if you are divorced, but this does not mean I do not take Jesus’ teaching about marriage seriously.

Whenever a Christian gets married, it must be with the intention of a lifelong union. Unfortunately, many marriages do not last that long. If you must divorce, do so for a compelling reason. So often divorce is nothing more than the easy way out. Jesus expects us to show more commitment than that. Now, supposed you are divorced. Must you remain single ever after? I say no, because I believe in forgiveness and second chances. Is the cause of holiness better served by a life of chaste singleness or by remarriage? That is for the individual to decide, aided by prayer and counseling.

A divorced person does well to reflect, following a failed marriage, whether a second marriage is advisable. Many, however, who fail in a first marriage, often through little fault of their own, go on to have happy and successful second marriages.

The church should uphold the sanctity of marriage and teach, as Jesus did, that God’s intention is a permanent union. When marriages are in danger, the church should offer support and encouragement. When marriages fail, the church should minister to hurting people. Often we do the latter well, but we fail miserably at the former. We are there when couples prepare for marriage, and we help them pick up the pieces when a marriage fails, but we are absent when they struggle to make a marriage work. Part of the blame goes to those who do not reach out when they need to. Part of the blame goes to those of us who make them feel they can’t do so.

In conclusion, God intends marriage to be permanent. Divorce is a sure sign God’s will has not been done. Yet, healing, forgiveness, and second chances may be possible. Before you look for that, however, look for grace to hold your marriage together. Look for grace to maintain a pure heart and mind. Jesus’ commands are hard to keep. We need his help if we are to obey from the heart. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
November 12, 2006