1 When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (ESV)

6 “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.

Matthew 19:6-9 (ESV)

Suppose that a speeding driver is given only a warning and then that same driver, just minutes later, speeds unhindered past another trooper, since the officer despairs of stopping everyone driving over the limit. Instead, he picks and chooses, waiting for drivers whose speed is exceptionally high. Continuing blithely down the highway, the first driver picks up more speed and passes yet another police car, this one stopped by the roadside, where the officer is preoccupied with writing up a ticket. Finally, he is pulled over and assessed a fine of his own. Dismayed, he objects vociferously. After all, three other policeman have let him pass, so speeding must be perfectly normal and acceptable—or so he argues.

Of course, the speeding driver has no case. Yes, he has enjoyed latitude in his run down the highway, but that does not change the norm. At some point, the police will shout, “Enough!” Indeed, Jesus did just this with regard to the Pharisee’s misuse of Deuteronomy 24:1-4. When, in Matthew 19:6, they cited this passage to argue that Jesus was too strict on divorce, He rebuked them: They were treating the fact of earlier divorces as license to put their wives away at will. They had turned descriptive ethics (what people did) into normative ethics (what people should do).

Jesus explained that Moses’ concession was situational, not foundational. He was doing what he thought was his best to bring order out of a stampede—“Since you are divorcing your wives, at least slow down to do the paperwork. And don’t even think of, in effect, ‘loaning’ your wives to other men until you have a change of heart. Once they remarry, the break is irrevocable.”

Notice that Jesus had no patience for the Pharisees’ Scripture twisting; they pictured Moses commanding divorce, while the Lord described it as allowing divorce (Matt. 19:8). Furthermore, the tentativeness of the pronouncement is obvious from the very construction of the Deuteronomy passage, which is a series of “ifs”—“If something happens, and if you do so and so, and if she does so and so, and if something else happens, then don’t do this.” The fact that one could get a firm command to divorce out of such a series of conditional statements is a testimony to perverse ingenuity.

When it comes to matters of divorce and remarriage, many push for greater leeway. Given the widespread nature of the practice, even within the Church, some suggest falsely that its commonality and frequency somehow increase its legitimacy. Others take the path of the Pharisees, using the concession mentioned in Deuteronomy to loosen the standard. They reason that Jesus was stating the ideal, but that for years, God had granted Moses some slack to deal with realities not unlike those of the present day. These apologists for easy divorce are grasping at straws when they should be grasping for holiness.

article adopted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located on Rt. 40 across from the Principio Health Center.