Sayings of Jesus: Divorce and Remarriage

We have a number of Christian friends who are divorced and remarried, for whom what the Bible has to say about that is extremely important. Strictly speaking, whenever we ask what the Bible says on something, what we’re really wanting to know is what does God say—how does he think and feel about it? We’re looking to the Bible for a window on that. What we find will depend on how we read the Bible—which must be not just what we think it’s saying, but just as importantly, why.  

Whatever our personal circumstances vis-à-vis divorce and remarriage, the subject is a test case for relating what we read in the New Testament to Christian life and practice today. In this case, it’s all the more significant since the passages involve the words of Jesus himself and are essentially the same in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

Luke offers the shortest version:

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Luke 16:18.

Mark is similarly unambiguous:

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:11-12.

And so, too, Matthew:

“I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality,* and marries another woman commits adultery.” Matthew 19:9.

*Matthew uniquely includes that exception “for sexual immorality”—the Greek word is porneia—but it’s not material for our purposes.  

On the face of it, these verses are clear and unambiguous on a “plain reading.” Few things could be better examples of “the Bible says” and “the Bible clearly teaches”—and directly from the mouth of Jesus. Surely conservative evangelicals will teach and affirm these statements as biblical truth. Surely, even for “liberals,” there is no wiggle room here. 

Whenever we’re looking to the meaning of a text, we should first take note of the context. Here, it’s Jesus being asked his opinion on a question that his audience would have been very familiar with:

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”—to which Matthew adds, “for any and every reason?”

Notice it says they were “testing” Jesus—this was intended as a “trick question.” That’s because although divorce was allowed in Torah, the grounds on which it was permitted was the subject of great debate.

The key text was Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which says that if a man marries a wife but “she does not please him” because he “finds something objectionable about her,” he may “give her a bill of divorce and send her out of his house” (NRSV). Other translations say, if he “finds something indecent about her,” or “found some uncleanness in her.” The debate was about what that italicized phrase meant; generally the Hebrew word meant “nakedness”—either literally (as in Genesis 9:22-23) or euphemistically in reference to sexual behaviour (as in Leviticus 18 and 20).

In Jesus’ time, there were two main rabbinical schools, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. Hillel tended to broader, more liberal interpretations, while Shammai tended to stricter, more limited interpretations. According to the Talmud (Gittin 90a), Shammai said that a man may divorce his wife only for adultery. But Hillel said he may divorce even for a minor issue, such as over-salting or burning the dinner—any type of shortcoming (hence, Matthew’s “any and every reason?”). Rabbi Akiva later interpreted that to include finding another woman who was better looking and wishing to marry her instead.          

Torah comprised 613 commandments, which sounds comprehensive, but they could never cover every life situation—especially once Israel moved from being a nomadic people to living and working in new, settled, and urban environments. All this meant there was a constant need for rabbinical interpretation of Torah’s meaning and application: what did faithfulness to the Word of God look like in these new situations with new characteristics? (When Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but I say to you,” he is offering his rabbinical interpretations. This is the background to many of the questions that Jesus was asked, such as the rich young ruler’s question in Matthew 19:16—which directly follows the passage we’re looking at here—and “Who is my neighbor?” in Luke 10:29.)   

What was true for Torah is equally true for our Bible today: there is no such thing as uninterpreted Scripture. So the question—then, as now—is really which interpretation? Whose interpretation? When we talk about “the authority of Scripture”—a commonplace phrase in evangelicalism—what that means in practice is the interpretations that individuals or groups take to be authoritative.   

The “trick” underlying the Pharisees’ question was whether Jesus would affirm Hillel or Shammai (Akiva came later in the first century). It was a win-win question because, either way, Jesus would make enemies.

But rather than affirming one or other school, Jesus comes at it from a different direction. He challenges the assumption that God was ever OK with divorce in the first place: “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.” By which, of course, he meant the hardness of men’s hearts.

This is very significant: Jesus is saying that this passage is not simply divine instructions shouted from on high: “Write this down and tell everyone to obey it.” The Word of God through Moses is pragmatically reflecting a reality of human life with its weaknesses and flaws; in this case, it is impacted by the hardness of the human heart. Simply asking what a word means is therefore the wrong question to ask (biblical scholars take note)—especially when that is asked as a way of getting around practising it. The foremost interpretive question is always what the heart of God is behind the text, in the background to the subject. Not just what it says but why it says it. The interpretive challenge here is the tension between two hearts: the loving heart of God and the hard hearts of men.  

Jesus’ biblical interpretation is not about a legalistic insistence on “the Bible says” at all costs. He is critiquing people (in this case, men) interpreting and applying the Bible without regard to the harm being caused to others (in this case, to women). He’s critiquing prioritizing the interests of “sound doctrine” (as that’s perceived) over the interests of people. Jesus is focusing on a failure to ask what the heart of God is behind a text, that underlies the subject in question.     

Jesus was well aware that there was a complete power imbalance between men and women in the biblical period—epitomised by “he may give her a bill of divorce and send her out of his house” (Deuteronomy 24:1). That a man was entitled to do that on the authority of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 was not even being questioned, only the grounds on which he could do it. And of course, it was men who were debating and deciding that.  

Jesus was also well aware of the very serious consequences for a divorced woman in first-century Israel. To have no husband, father, or grown-up sons to protect and provide for her meant there was every likelihood she would end up in dire straits—quite likely in prostitution or forced to accept a shameful, second-best relationship on the only terms available to her. This may well have been the situation of the Samaritan woman at the well whom Jesus met in John 4. That would explain Jesus not condemning her or saying “go and sin no  more”—even though conservatives today tend to read that story as if he had (no doubt because they would have).  

Jesus approaches the Pharisees’ question not by reference to other verses in Torah, but by reference to the heart of God for people that sits behind Torah. This is consistent with the way Jesus interpreted all Scripture—that’s what he was looking for. A simple example is his reading of the Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27. In other words, the Sabbath was for people’s well-being—not to “keep God happy” by their meticulous obedience “because I say so” (aka, “because the Bible says so”).

Examples of Jesus’ interpretation of the Sabbath in practice are to be found in Matthew 12; Mark 2 and 3; Luke 6, 13 and 14; and John 5, 7, and 9.

Jesus’ way of reading the heart of God for the Sabbath applies to the whole of Torah. It’s reflected in the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:40), where Jesus says, “All of the law and the writings of the prophets take their meaning from these two commands” (ERV). Loving God and loving people is the interpretive grid for what all the commandments were about: why they were given and how they were to be applied and not applied. Other translations say they all “hang on” these two; “everything that is written is based on these two.” 

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that the Great Commandment is intended to apply in principle to statements in the New Testament as well, but that would require a case to be made.    

Understanding this background explains not simply what Jesus says, but more importantly why he says it.

He centres things on the story of  Adam and Eve in Genesis—the very first marriage in Scripture.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:4-6.

He “made them male and female” is a citation from the creation account, which for his hearers would call to mind its context: Genesis 1:26-27. I suggest this is an example of what’s called “metalepsis”—a literary term to describe a biblical writer quoting partially from (or alluding to) another longer text, which intends to bring the entirety of that other text into view in what they’re saying here (without needing to copy it all out). For that to “work,” such an allusion needs the hearers to be familiar with the original, which would have been the case here. The main point being made in Genesis 1:26-27 is not that he “made them male and female” (everyone could see that). It’s rather that men and women God made bear the image and likeness of God (this is repeated in both verses).  

The image and likeness of God is not suggesting we look like God in appearance (male or female). Rather, as men and women made in his image and likeness, we are called to reflect and practice the nature and character of God—which, throughout Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is characterized by covenant and covenant faithfulness.

As an excursus, it needs to be said that neither Genesis 1:26-27 nor Matthew 19 are evidencing twenty-first-century conservative Christian views on same-sex marriage or gender matters. Matthew 19 is not “Jesus defining marriage as between one man and one woman” (as I recently heard said). By all means hold a conservative view on those subjects, but please don’t quote Genesis 1:26-27 and Matthew 19 as your biblical proof. That is a “reading-in.” Neither passage had those subjects in mind in what it was “saying” to its original author and audience. These are our questions, but they were not their questions—which, as we can see, had to do with divorce and remarriage.   

Read as a whole, Genesis 1:26-27—and the reason Jesus alludes to it in Matthew 19—is all to do with permanence in relational commitment (it’s not about sexual coupling except as a secondary reflection of that).  

Jesus is presenting the heart of marriage through the lens of covenant: namely, a formal commitment entered into by a stronger party (known as the suzerain) with a weaker party (known as the vassal) that was widely practised in social relationships throughout the ancient world. It’s one of the overarching “big themes” in Scripture. Covenant characterized God’s relationship with Israel throughout the Old Testament and it characterizes our relationship through Jesus in what’s called the new covenant. The gospel itself is centred in covenant (for more on this, see my small book, Telling The Old, Old Story: In A Postmodern World, and my PhD thesis, Atonement and the New Perspective).

Jesus is saying that to be the image and likeness of God is to love and pursue covenant faithfulness just as he does. This should be our desire and ambition.     

Marriage is important in human relationships not as “a thing in itself” (not least because the shape and form of “marriage” in the Bible is wide-ranging) but because of its covenantal nature. Covenant faithfulness reflects how God relates to us and his heart for how we relate to him and each other. That’s why in Scripture we see marriage as a picture or metaphor of relationship with God.  

Jesus is addressing the fundamental problem of how the rabbis were debating divorce and remarriage as a “the Bible says” matter. He’s focused on God’s heart for covenantal joining and he’s coming against the covenantal significance of marriage being treated without sufficient seriousness—especially insofar as it supports selfishness on the part of the stronger party and does harm to the weaker party. He’s appalled that the whole debate is focused on how a man can get out of it if and when it suits him (invoking supposedly biblical support for that through a proof text).      

So, is Jesus timelessly forbidding divorcing and remarrying (with or without the exception clause in Matthew)? If we take his words as static, timeless truth, requiring no “interpretation,” unaffected by cultural considerations then or now, we will surely reach the only “obvious” conclusion: yes, he is. A face-value application ought to be the only possible conclusion for conservative evangelicalism, given its concern to resist any influence from contemporary culture (aka, the “spirit of the age”). Indeed, that approach is routinely taken toward subjects on which the Bible is far from clear.

And yet, we know that by no means do all conservative evangelicals interpret divorce and remarriage that way in practice. I know of many pastors who are divorced and remarried, some more than once, not to mention many lay people who fulfil leading roles in churches. Divorced and remarried people are routinely accepted and welcomed on the same terms, despite what “the Bible says”—despite, even, “what Jesus says.”

So, why is that? In fairness, I don’t think it’s intentionally ignoring what the Bible says. Whether they would explain it this way or not, I think it comes down to elements drawn from three factors.

The first is biblical interpretation.

Yes, conservative evangelicals interpret the Bible, too! Interpretation is not just something “woolly liberals” do, “playing fast and loose with the text” by “interpreting away its plain meaning” (which is the standard critique of “interpretation,” especially by those who don’t think they do it). Evangelicals are indeed interpreting here: they’re recognizing that the circumstances that gave rise to Jesus saying what he said, then, are not identical to our situation now—even though Jesus’ words were clear and unambiguous. They recognize that a different reading and application is warranted “then,” versus “now.” I agree with their interpretation—my plea is to please be consistent vis-à-vis this and other subjects. 

One of the reasons that relationships can break down without catastrophic harm to the woman today—one of the helpful reasons for us not needing to apply Jesus’ words in an unbending, timeless way, as the lesser of two evils—is because the consequences are not what they were in that first-century world. Thanks to women’s liberation, a single divorced woman can now make an independent life for herself. We have the contemporary culture to thank for that, rather than the church.      

The second factor is pragmatism.

So many marriage relationships break down today. According to forbes.com, 50% of all first marriages in the US end in divorce. The rate is even higher for second and third marriages: 67% and 73% respectively. 40% of new marriages include at least one partner for whom it is a remarriage. Pragmatically, we would end up decimating the evangelical church if we applied Jesus’ words without some recognition of that. Evangelicals are pragmatic (the history of evangelicalism shows they always have been) when they need to be—unfortunately, they’ve often been late to the pass in seeing it. 

Pragmatism also recognizes that people do not want to be alone—indeed, Genesis 2:18 tells us that it’s not good for people to be alone—so without pragmatism, we are going to be excluding from our churches an awful lot of people, who, quite frankly, are going to get remarried anyway. Surely only hardheartedness would apply the Bible in such a way as to require people to grow old lonely and alone for the sake of supposed doctrinal purity (especially when that is founded on a genuinely contested interpretive matter).        

Lest we think the Bible is too pure to ever entertain pragmatism, how else are we to read Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:9: “It is better to marry than to burn with sexual desire” (LEB)? I believe Paul is saying we need to get real, folks, and recognize that sexual desire is a powerful force in what it means to be human and, in light of that, to impose singleness and celibacy on people in the name of God is neither kind nor wise (rather, we should encourage it to be expressed within a monogamous, formal, covenantal context that we know as marriage). Pragmatism and idealism have to have a conversation.  

And the third factor is pastoral accommodation.

I was very uncertain whether to use that term. I do not mean begrudging acceptance with a sigh and a frown. I mean grace, kindness, mercy, forgiveness and second chances. I mean, “There but for the grace of God go I” (a saying attributed to the English Reformer, John Bradford). It’s the recognition that we live in an imperfect world, where life often does not work out as it ideally could or should. Pastoral accommodation reflects kindness and compassion toward those affected by relational breakdown. It rejects “hardheartedness”—which according to Jesus was the root issue in Deuteronomy 24:1-4—and abounds in its opposite, “warmheartedness.”

Pastoral accommodation is for those who hold a high view of marriage, as they know God does, but for whom things haven’t worked out as they might. People who want to be in a faithful relationship that reflects covenantal commitment, even though it’s constrained by the circumstances in which they find themselves. It’s about redemption—“in spite of.” 

Pastoral accommodation reflects Isaiah 61:2-3, which interestingly is a continuation of the “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” verses that Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61:1-2, in his Luke 4:16-21 mission statement. If we follow metalepsis here, Jesus is saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” These are reflections of God’s heart and desire for people, with which a second chance in marriage is entirely consonant.  

NB “Pastoral accommodation” does not mean anything goes and nor does it ignore the circumstances of a party’s first marriage breakdown, especially if the root causes are not healthy; rather, it grants space to explore that, pastorally, without Jesus’ words casting an ominous shadow.        

A combination of these three factors should lead us to not weaponize “the Bible says” against people—and still less, “the Bible clearly teaches.” I do not believe Jesus would be happy about us doing that. And what goes for this subject surely goes for other subjects, as well.

The Bible is easily weaponized—the very notion of its “authority” renders it susceptible to that. As with any potential weapon, we need to treat it with great care.