A Fresh Look at Divorce and Remarriage, Part 2

The Bible may very well teach that the only reason for remarriage is due to the death of a spouse. Every other instance would constitute adultery.

Here is my plan. I am simply going to give a list of passages from the Bible and provide an explanation as to why I believe this may be so or something we need to investigate.   Here are some reasons:

Jesus said that remarriage after divorce is adultery – Luke 16:18: Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Observations:

·        Jesus does not recognize divorce as terminating a marriage in God’s sight. You see, the reason Jesus says that remarriage would be committing adultery is because the first marriage was still considered valid even after a divorce.  Therefore, in the Jewish culture as well as our own, in which all divorces would seem to be considered valid, Jesus said it is not.  If divorce actually did terminate a marriage, then how is it possible to commit adultery in the remarriage?

·        Jesus also places the same restrictions on marrying the innocent party – here it would be the woman. You see, if a husband divorces his wife and the wife was against the divorce, but the divorce went through anyway, if the wife remarries (as the innocent party), she would be committing adultery and so would the man who married her. According to Jesus, it doesn’t matter if the person initiates the divorce and gets it, or if one is the innocent party of a divorce – to remarry is to commit adultery.

·        Notice that there are no “exception clause” stated by Jesus as there are in Matthew (cf. Matthew 5:32; 19:9). The people who read Luke’s gospel could not say, “But Matthew recorded Jesus give an exception clause.  Therefore, we should read into this passage in Luke an exception clause too.” 

It is important to keep in mind that each of the four gospel writers wrote to different groups of people. For example:

Matthew wrote to Jews

Mark wrote to Romans

Luke wrote to Gentiles

John wrote to Christians

There is a reason why in Matthew’s gospel and only in his gospel the “exception” is used and nowhere else. We will come to this in due time.

·        Look at the context of Luke 16.  Luke was pointing out that the Pharisees were “lovers of money” (v. 14), and Jesus picked up on this and said that they “are those who justify themselves before men, but God knows their hearts” (v. 15).

Then Jesus adds, “for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God” (v. 15b), and then a few verses later (v. 18), Jesus mentions two of those detestable things – divorce and remarriage.

In other words, with enough money, creativity, and affluence, people can justify whatever they choose before others. But with God, who knows and sees the heart, such things are detestable to Him.

But here’s my point:  If it is true (and we still have a ways to go to prove such), that divorce and remarriage are detestable to God, then why is it not the same with us?  Again, look at how many divorces and remarriage are occurring within Christendom.  Have we, like the Pharisees become good at justifying our desires and decisions before ourselves and others what is detestable to God?

End of Part 2