In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us to a level of righteousness that far exceeds what “religious” people usually settle for. And he says one of the places where this kind of righteousness will be most obviously expressed is in marriage.
The religious leaders in Jesus’ day didn’t want to violate scriptural commandments against adultery, but they also wanted to get out of marriages they found less than satisfying. So they took a few statements in Deuteronomy 24 completely out of context, and said the law gave you the right to divorce your wife if you found some “indecency” in her.
The way they interpreted “indecency” included almost anything you didn’t like about your wife. The way she looked, the way she cooked, or the way she folded your clothes. Instead of practicing adultery, they practiced serial monogamy, going from wife to wife to wife whenever they got bored.
They were looking for loopholes, but Jesus wants us to see what marriages look like when we’re poor in spirit, and mournful over our sin, and merciful, and pursuing peace. In the Sermon on the Mount, he shows how your relationship with your husband or your wife is a good barometer of your relationship with God. People who take marriage lightly are taking God lightly.
And that’s doubly emphasized by the one situation Jesus mentions where divorce is acceptable – when there’s been sexual immorality. He says in Matthew 5:32, “Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” The marriage bed is a really big deal to God!
But there’s still one question remaining… divorce might be permissible in the case of sexual immorality, but what about remarriage? Jesus says remarriage equals adultery, but does the same exception apply here too? Is remarriage permissible in the case when a divorce was caused by sexual immorality?
Some well-respected pastors and theologians say no. As John Piper writes, “Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in some cases. Rather it reaffirms that marriage after divorce is adultery, even for those who have been divorced innocently, and that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of the adultery of her second marriage unless she had already become an adulteress before the divorce.”
I respectfully take a different position, and believe that the sexual-immorality exception to divorce also applies to remarriage. Here are a few of my reasons:
- Jesus’ main purpose in the Sermon on the Mount was not to lay down new law, but to illustrate the deep spiritual reality of the law and call us to transcend the law with a higher righteousness than the Pharisees. When we try to nail down exactly what Jesus allows and doesn’t allow (usually so we can dance as close to the line of what’s allowable as possible), we’re not exceeding the righteousness of the Pharisees. Jesus is pushing us toward radical love, commitment, and sacrifice (in other words, as far away from divorce as possible), but there’s also more:
- Jesus’ statement on divorce in Matthew 5:31-32 should be read as a continuation of his statement on sexual purity in marriage just before it. Jesus is showing the tragic potential consequences of sexual immorality (divorce and remarriage) while at the same time calling us to a higher righteousness (forgiveness and reconciliation).
- The Old Testament and New Testament repeatedly emphasize the weighty spiritual significance of marital sex. In Leviticus 20, Moses says that the marriage bed is so sacred that a violation of it deserves death. Jesus says that sexual purity in marriage is so crucial that we should be ready to lop off body parts to protect it (Matt. 5:30). And finally in Ephesians 5, Paul pulls back the curtain and shows us why sex is so huge: because sex in marriage is actually a profound picture of our relationship to Jesus. He says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Defiling the marriage bed can destroy your relationship with your spouse, the same way that defiling your body can destroy your relationship with God (Matt. 5:30).
- When Jesus gave the Sermon, the death penalty for adultery was still on the books in Israel, but very rarely carried out. Instead, people just got divorced. So in light of the profound seriousness of marital sex, Jesus seems to be saying that when it is violated and divorce results, we should act as if the death sentence was indeed enforced and the offending party is no longer alive. In that case, obviously, the surviving spouse would be free to remarry.
Even in light of these considerations, it’s important to remember that divorce is always tragic and does not conform to God’s highest desires. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). Divorce and remarriage are sad marks of our sinful world.