Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery
against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she
commits adultery. — Mark 10:11-12
Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,
and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits
adultery. — Luke 16:18
It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate
of divorce.” But I say to you that everyone who divorces his
wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit
adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits
adultery. — Matt. 5:31-32
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual
immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. — Matt. 19:9
Excerpts from the book (note - free download available in at www.desiringgodo.com - see link on posting site(
Page 307-308: Jesus set a higher standard for marital faithfulness than Moses or the Jewish teachers of his day. He did not affirm the permission for divorce found in Deuteronomy 24. He said it was owing to the hardness of the human heart (Matt. 19:8) and implied that he was here to change that. In this chapter we will try to discern just how high Jesus’ standard of marital faithfulness is.
Page 308: I suspect that Jesus saw a higher standard for marriage implied not only in the creation account of Genesis 2:24 but also in the very wording of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which shows that the one-flesh relationship established by marriage is not completely nullified by
divorce or even by remarriage.........
Therefore, it may well be that when the Pharisees asked Jesus if divorce was legitimate, he based his negative answer not only on God’s original intention expressed in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, but also on the implication of Deuteronomy 24:4, that remarriage after divorce, while permitted, nevertheless defiles a person.
In other words, there were clues in the writings of Moses that the divorce concession was on the basis of the hardness of man’s heart and did not make divorce and remarriage the most God-honoring path.
Page 309: Moses’ prohibition of a wife returning to her first husband even after her second husband dies (because it is an “abomination,” v. 4) suggests that today no second marriage should be broken in order to restore a first one. I will return to this issue later on. But for now I would say that even a disobedient second or third marriage should not be broken, but confessed as less than ideal and yet sanctified by God’s mercy. It is better in God’s eyes than more broken covenants.
Pge 309: Twice in the Gospels Jesus expresses with no exceptions his prohibition of divorce followed by remarriage...
Luke 16:18 - Here Jesus seems to call all remarriage after divorce adultery. These are strong words. Evidently the reason a second marriage is called adultery is because the first one is considered to still be valid. So Jesus is taking a stand against the Jewish culture at the time in which all divorce was considered to carry with it the right of remarriage.
Page 310: Since there are no exceptions mentioned in the verse, and since Jesus is evidently rejecting the common cultural conception of divorce as including the right of remarriage, the first readers of Luke’s Gospel would have been hard-put to see any exceptions on the basis that Jesus shared the cultural acceptance of divorce.
Page 310: The other instance of Jesus’ unqualified rejection of remarriage after divorce is found in Mark 10:11-12....These two verses repeat the first half of Luke 16:18 but go further and say that not only the man who divorces, but also a woman who divorces and then remarries is committing adultery.
Page 311: But what makes the matter more controversial is that in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 there seems to be an exception to the rule of no remarriage after divorce. Both these verses are generally interpreted to say that Jesus allowed divorce and remarriage where there has been “sexual immorality” by one of the partners. Is that what the “exception clauses” mean?
Page 311: So Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in some cases. Rather, it reaffirms that to remarry after divorce is to commit 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, and that a man who marries a woman who is put away by her husband, even innocently, commits adultery.
Page 312: All of my adult life I assumed that adultery and desertion were two legitimate grounds for divorce and remarriage. This was the air I breathed, and I saw a confirmation of this in the exception clause in Matthew 19:9, even though, as I see it now, the rest of the New Testament pointed in the other direction.2 But there came a point when this assumption began to crumble.
Page 312: I was initially troubled that the absolute form of Jesus’ denunciation of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18 is not expressed by Matthew, if in fact his exception clause is an opening for divorce and remarriage.
Page 313: The second thing that began to disturb me was the question, why does Matthew use the Greek word porneiva (porneia, “sexual immorality”) instead of the word moiceiva (moicheia) which means adultery? Sexual immorality in marriage would naturally be adultery. But the word Matthew uses to express Jesus’ meaning is one that usually means fornication or sexual immorality without reference to marital unfaithfulness.........The question nagged at me why Matthew would not use the word for adultery (moicheia), if that is in fact what he meant.
Page 313: Then I noticed something very interesting. The only other place besides Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 where Matthew uses the word porneia is in Matthew 15:19 where it is used alongside moicheia......Could this mean, then, that in Matthew’s record of Jesus’ teaching he is thinking of porneia in its more usual sense of fornication or incest or prostitution that does not denote marital unfaithfulness, that is, adultery?
Page 314: The next clue in my search for an explanation came when I noticed the use of porneia in John 8:41 where Jewish leaders indirectly accuse Jesus of being born of porneia. In other words, since they don’t accept the virgin birth, they assume that his mother Mary had committed fornication and that Jesus was the result of this act.
Page 314: Matthew 1:18-20....The Relevance of the Exception Clauses for Joseph’s Betrothal to Mary....In these verses Joseph and Mary are referred to as husband (anj hrv ) and wife (gunhv). Yet they are described as only being betrothed to each other.
Page 314: In Matthew 1:19 Joseph resolves to “divorce” Mary though they were only betrothed and not yet married.........But most important of all, Matthew says that Joseph was “just” in making the decision to divorce Mary.....In other words, this “divorce” was permitted according to Matthew.........In handling this crisis he called Joseph “just” in the plan to “divorce” her. That means that Matthew, as a follower of Jesus, would not consider this kind of “divorce” wrong. It would not have prevented Joseph (or Mary) from marrying another.
Page 315: Since only Matthew had told this story and raised this question, he was the only Gospel writer who would feel any need to make clear that Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce followed by remarriage did not include a situation like Joseph and Mary’s. That is what I think he does with the exception clauses.
Page 315: A common objection to this interpretation is that both in Matthew 19:3-9 and in Matthew 5:31-32 the issue Jesus is responding to is marriage, not betrothal. The point is pressed that “except for fornication” is irrelevant to the context of marriage. My answer is that this irrelevancy is precisely the point of the exception clause........I don’t think it sounds pointless if you hear it the way I just suggested or if Matthew 5:32 goes like this: “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife—excluding, of course, the case of fornication [porneiva] during betrothal—makes her commit adultery.” In this way Jesus makes clear that the action his earthly father almost took—to “divorce” Mary because of porneiva—would not have been unjust. It would have been right. That is the kind of situation the exception clause is meant to exclude.
Page 315-316: This interpretation of the exception clause has several advantages:
• It does not force Matthew’s Gospel to disagree with the seemingly plain, absolute meaning of Mark and Luke.
• It provides an explanation for why the word porneia is used in Matthew’s exception clause instead of moicheia.
• It squares with Matthew’s own use of porneia (for fornication) in distinction from moicheia (for adultery) in Matthew 15:19.
• It fits Matthew’s wider context concerning Joseph’s contemplated “divorce” from Mary (Matt. 1:19).
What are the implications of this high standard of marriage?
To this we turn in the next chapter.
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