Mat 19;1-12 When Jesus had finished these words, He left Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan; 2 and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there. 3 Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” 4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.” 7 They *said to Him, “Why, then, did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8 He *said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” The disciples *said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” 11 But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by people; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”
In our continuing to follow Jesus’ footsteps through the Gospel of Matthew verse by verse, we move to Chapter 19 now.
In verses 1–12 and 13–15 of this chapter, we find the will of Christ declared on two subjects of great importance. One is the relation of husband and wife. The other is the light in which we should regard little children concerning the matter of their souls. These are two incredibly important topics.
The Foundation of Society: Marriage and Family
Marriage, family, and children—on these depend the well-being of nations, the happiness of society, and a blessing on each of our families and our children. How important it is to have right views of these! Nations are nothing but a collection of families. Churches are a collection of families. The good order and blessing of families depends entirely on keeping up the highest standard of respect for the marriage bond and on the right training of children. We ought to be thankful that on both these points, the great Head of the Church has pronounced his will so clearly.
The Problem of Divorce
This teaching starts with the question of divorce. Just as sin destroyed everything, it has also affected marriage. In the days we live in, divorce is becoming more and more common. I know many office friends, relatives, and neighbors who have experienced the pain of divorcing their wives or husbands—there is so much divorce. I have gone to family courts and seen the courtrooms filled with people and hundreds of thousands of cases waiting for divorce.
The impact on men, women, and children is so terrible. Some of those children grow up to become criminals. It is no exaggeration to state that most of the ills in our society have their roots in family breakdowns. In developed countries, the situation is even worse. A few years ago, they brought in a rule for no-fault divorce. You do not have to give any reason; you just want to divorce your spouse, and you can easily get a divorce. Out of every three marriages, there is one divorce. Even though we do not have no-fault divorce and people must give proper reasons, cases are still increasing.
If there is one common basic reason why these people go to that extent, it is that they have never understood the great dignity of the divine institution of marriage the Lord is teaching in this chapter. Nobody taught them this. We have to praise God that in his providence he is teaching us this.
May God speak to us through his word and, as he promised in the New Covenant, write his laws in our hearts. This chapter will speak to everyone in our church: married people, old and new, to examine your marriage lives, and young unmarried people, to learn what marriage is in God’s eyes.
Outline for Understanding the Passage
I intend to help you understand this passage in five headings. We will not cover everything today, but you will know the broad outline.
- Pharisees’ Crafty Question – 1: Is it lawful to divorce for any reason?
- Lord’s Devastating/Shattering, Authoritative, Majestic Biblical Answer: He gives four reasons why you should not divorce.
- Pharisees’ Twisted Question – 2
- Lord’s Biblical Clarification
- Disciples’ Shocking Application
Understanding the Background (Matthew 19:1-2)
Let us understand the background for this question.
“When Jesus had finished these words, He left Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan; and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.” (Vs. 1-2)
Verse 1: The beginning phrase “When Jesus had finished saying these things” is Matthew’s typical way of ending a teaching section and beginning a new narrative of events. Remember, Matthew organizes his Gospel in alternating sections of teaching and narrative. For example, the Sermon on the Mount (SOM) teaching (Chapters 5–7) ended this way; in 7:28, “Jesus finished these sayings,” which was followed by the events of nine miracles in Chapters 8–9. Chapter 10, containing teaching to send disciples and prepare for long teaching, and Chapter 11 begins the same way. Then some events are described in Chapters 11 and 12. Chapter 13, with its great parables, ends the same way in 13:53. Here in Chapter 19, the great teaching of Jesus on humility and care for his little ones (all important teaching) is now ended. It ends with the phrase, “He finished these sayings.”
It says he goes from Galilee. To where? “He came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.” If you see the map of Israel, it is split into two by the Jordan River. The Jordan River is a very important feature in the center of Israel that runs into the Dead Sea. Galilee is in the north, and Judea is in the south.
- Galilee was a rural area with more ordinary, poor farmers and fishermen—a humble and despised place, not famous like Judea or Jerusalem. The people who lived there were simple folks. They were not refined, cultured, or highly esteemed, and they were very close to the Gentile world. Most of the Lord’s ministry was conducted in Galilee. Only occasionally had he gone south to Judea and Jerusalem. From Chapter 4 onwards, people sitting in the dark saw a great light, with most of his ministry here in Galilee. Now he is leaving that place. You should know something: Jesus was leaving Galilee for the last time. He would only come again after his resurrection, telling his disciples to come here, and he would publicly reveal himself.
So now the Lord leaves Galilee and goes to Judea. Judea is the more populated area, with a lot of business, close to Jerusalem, where richer people and Pharisees lived. So, now he has a different audience. Remember, he is going to Jerusalem. He is taking a route that crosses the Jordan, goes to this place, and then will cross again and come to Jericho and Jerusalem. This place is beyond the Jordan, so they called it Perea, meaning “beyond the Jordan.”
Now he goes to this place called Perea. En route to Jerusalem, he is going to do ministry here in Chapters 19 and 20. Perea has a different city, a different kind of population, different problems, and it marks the final chapter of his life’s work. Matthew gives us only a selection of events and of the teaching that the Lord delivered during this time. There is much more material on this period of the Lord’s ministry in the Gospel of Luke—fully ten chapters cover the months taken on this slow southward journey—and further material in John. So this verse signals the end of the Galilean ministry and the beginning of the Perean ministry. There were a lot of “high-society” people and a lot of divorces also. It was a territory also under the control—and this is very important—of Herod Antipas. It was his territory, and you remember he was the one who had John the Baptist beheaded.
Verse 2 says, “Great multitudes followed him… and He healed them there.” Mark 10:1, a parallel passage, also says, he “taught them.” So it is very much like the Galilean ministry: A crowd gathers, he teaches, and he heals them, giving them the Word of God. Look at our Lord. Though he moves toward the cross and his own death, he is still burdened with the souls of people, the teaching of the truth of God, and bringing them to an understanding that he is, in fact, the Messiah. We take it so casually. We talk about our workload, tiredness, and sleeplessness. See the Lord. Every time he did miracles, how much virtue went out, and everything he teaches, how draining he must have felt. How tired he must be, yet he continues to do that as he moves toward his greatest suffering on the cross.
So, in your mind, journey with the Lord. Imagine you are leaving the Galilean ministry. Welcome to the Perean ministry of our Lord! We will be here for two chapters, 19 and 20.
1. The Pharisees’ Hypocritical Question
Verse 3: “Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?’”
His steps were dogged by the Pharisees. They did not leave him alone to do this mercy work of healing and teaching, not even for another six months. They are his arch enemies. They incessantly hatch sinister plots to take his life and discredit him. We found them in Chapter 3, and again in Chapters 5, 9, 12, 15, and 16, and now we meet them again in Chapter 19. They will not stop attacking him. He completely unmasked them with his teaching and truth, and showed they were hypocrites. They hated him, they despised him, and they wanted to do everything they could to get him and destroy him. They cannot do it directly because of his popularity, so they ask him a subtle question. The Pharisees were not, of course, really interested in learning the truth about marriage and divorce; they wanted to trip Jesus up.
They had two things in mind. It is very important that you understand this:
- They wanted to discredit him with the people so he would lose popularity.
- Secondly, they wanted to destroy him. They wanted him to become unpopular, first of all, and then they wanted him to become dead. And that was in their mind.
They had concocted a test question. This is not a guess or whimsical question they ask. This is not something that some Pharisee shot off the top of his head. This is a calculated, studied, thought-through question, and they come to test him, to discredit him, and to bring about his destruction.
Verse 3: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” On the surface it seems like a rather innocent question, but they had thought this thing through. It is a clever, wily, sinister, astute question meant to attack Jesus Christ, to discredit him, first of all, and secondly, to destroy him.
Now let me tell you why.
First of all, let me tell you how they intended to discredit him. How? That is why you should put yourself in that social, cultural, and political situation of the place where Jesus was standing. Where is he now? Judea Perea, with its “high-society” people. Divorce was a sensitive issue among the Jews in this area, both socially, politically, and religiously. Just like contemporary polarizing political issues, divorce was a very, very major situation. Everybody knew about it, and divorce was very, very common. Women were treated as if they had no rights at all. Josephus, the historian, says the Pharisees were leaders in this, not only by what they taught, but by the example of their lives. They were continuously divorcing their wives. They were also teaching that you could divorce your wife for any reason. That was basically their doctrine. That is what they believed, the majority of them. In sinful Judea, it was a popular doctrine among people who wanted to get a divorce. If a pastor tells some people, “You can divorce your wife for any reason; that is God’s will,” some of them inside might think, “Wow, how nice!”
The Debate from the Bible
Where did they get this from the Bible? From Deuteronomy 24:1: “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house…” (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
This law was given by God for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it graciously protected a woman from an unjust and cruel husband who no longer loved her, to prevent worse evils such as cruelty or murder. He could not simply send her away to fend for herself—which, in that culture and time, would have left a woman in a very vulnerable condition. Instead, God required that he go through proper legal and social channels: that he write her a certificate of divorce and indicate clearly that they are no longer married. He was protecting vulnerable women. He could not just send her away and then take her back. If you are leaving a woman, do not do it in a hurry; you have to take time, think deeply, and decide. If you write it, it is irreversible. Do not say, after marrying another, “Oh, my old wife was good; I will go back and get her.” No, no, it is irreversible! Written. God was protecting women and restraining men in their natural tendency. This way, she had a certificate and was eligible to remarry.
Second, this law also regulated the matter of remarriage. It indicated that, if a woman was sent away and became married to another man, and if she left that second man, she could not return to her first husband and remarry him. To do so would be an abomination before God; and would move Him to bring His hand of judgment upon the land.
That paragraph in the Mosaic Law is not about divorce per se but about remarriage, and, in particular, remarriage to the same spouse after an intervening marriage. Nevertheless, it is the only passage in the voluminous Law of Moses that actually stipulated the possibility of divorce, and so it became the focus of discussion.
The debate that was going on in Jesus’ day was centered on the words, found at the beginning of that passage, that indicated the reason for the divorce in the first place: “because he has found some uncleanness in her.” The NIV has translated this as “something indecent.” The debate concerned what could be considered sufficient “uncleanness” to permit a man to divorce his wife.
If a man found “something indecent” in his wife, he could divorce her. So came these Rabbis to explain this “uncleanness.” One school, the school of the Rabbi Shammai, held that “something indecent” meant a sexual sin that was verified by witnesses. That was the strict view, of course. They argued that unless adultery was found, divorce was not permitted. It is right.
Not many people liked that strict teaching of Rabbi Shammai. It was not popular. But there was another Rabbi, Hillel, who lived twenty years before Christ, so his teaching was very fresh. He said “uncleanness” or “indecent” essentially meant you could divorce your wife for any reason you want. In that male-dominated society, Rabbi Hillel soon became a popular teacher, like today’s prosperity preachers. Most Jews followed the advice of Rabbi Hillel, which became the dominant popular view.
He took “something indecent” to be virtually anything that a husband found objectionable in his wife, even something as trivial as her burning dinner. You could divorce your wife for putting too much salt on your food, calling that “indecent behavior.” You could divorce your wife if she spun around in the street, or if she dressed in a way that someone saw her knees. You could divorce your wife for taking her hair down, or for speaking to men. You could divorce your wife if she said something unkind about her mother-in-law. This is the mentality that leads to practices like instant divorce.
One saying taught: “A bad wife is like a leprosy to her husband. What is the remedy? Let him divorce her and be cured of his leprosy.” It was even taught, “If one has a bad wife, it is a religious duty to divorce her.” A later Rabbi, Akiba, took it to mean that even if a husband found a woman he thought prettier, he could divorce his wife to marry her. You could divorce if you found somebody prettier because then she became “unclean in your sight” since she was not as nice looking as the one you saw.
By the way, remember, we are talking about the man divorcing his wife. The wife had no such rights in the Jewish practice of the time. In other words, for most Jewish males of the time, divorce was easy to get and easy to justify. There was little conscience about the sanctity of marriage. You could divorce her if she was infertile. You could divorce her if she did not give you a boy child. Now see, this became the popular view. Can you imagine that this was the teaching in that land, and the whole place was filled with that kind of person? Just like in some places today where one out of every three marriages ends in divorce, imagine the situation then. To come and ask that question among such people—how sensitive the issue was!
Now, that was what was going on in the background when these Pharisees asked our Lord this question about whether or not a man could divorce his wife “for just any reason.”
The Pharisees’ Trap
The Pharisees knew Jesus did not teach this, and they knew his teaching on divorce. How? In a confrontation with them in Matthew Chapter 5, he had said to them, “You say you don’t commit adultery. I say to you, you are the worse kind of adulterers, and you proliferate adultery all over the place,” he said in Matthew 5:31–32, “because you get divorced without cause.” He taught that when you get divorces without cause, you cause adultery everywhere, because the person divorced who remarries is an adulterer and makes an adulterer of the one they marry.
So they knew Jesus took a hard and firm line on divorce, and that was not a popular doctrine. But to teach that here openly would create major opposition. This was a burning issue, and the whole place was filled with divorced people.
I think what they were hoping here is that Jesus would come out with some very strong, overt statement on divorce, and alienate and intimidate all the people who really did not want to acquiesce to that. Maybe they had already divorced somebody, and he would, in effect, say to them, “You are a bunch of fornicating adulterers.” He would lose support with the masses who were used to and favored the current permission of divorce on almost any grounds. The fact is, whatever answer he gave he would offend someone.
They intended to trap him into such a narrow-minded, rigid, hard-line viewpoint that his popularity would be devastated among the people. They wanted to show Jesus as being intolerant, and they also wanted to show him as not being committed to the great teaching of the Rabbis and the great teaching of the Pharisees. They were hoping they could discredit him by forcing him into a corner as some kind of a hard-bound, hard-nosed legalist against the popular view.
Look at the question. He just had to say, “Yes” or “No”—an objective type question. If Jesus had simply blurted out an answer, “I’m telling you that’s exactly right. You can’t get divorced for any cause. If you get divorced for any cause other than fornication,” as he says in verse 9, “you commit adultery, and everybody else that gets involved commits adultery,” the crowd would rise against him. He would lose popular support because people always want to live at the lowest level, and they would reject him.
The Political Threat
But more than that, they were not only interested in discrediting Jesus, but they were also interested in destroying him. They wanted him dead. Even if nobody believed what he said, he was a pain to them because of his intimidating confrontation of their errors in life and doctrine.
You ask, “How in the world could this cause him to be destroyed?” I will tell you how.
He was standing, not in Galilee, but now in Perea. This was the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. Just a few miles from here was a city called Bethany. There was a fortress there, a palace called Machaerus. In that fortress, just a few months back, a very famous man by the name of John the Baptist was put in prison, and then his head was cut off. Why? “Because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife.” Herod Antipas divorced his wife without cause and seduced and took his brother’s wife. John said it was wrong and adultery. “For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her.” He lost his head because he spoke up about God’s law of divorce.
Now, in that jurisdiction, Jesus comes and talks about divorce. Can you imagine the political risk for Jesus? Do you see how cunning the question is? The aim was not only to discredit him before the masses but also to politically get Jesus into trouble and maybe cut off his head like John the Baptist. What is more is what Herod thought when he heard about John the Baptist: Matthew 14:1–2 says, “At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, and he said to his attendants, ‘This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.’”
Herod was thinking John the Baptist had risen. These Pharisees maybe knew that, and they came and made him talk about the same issue of divorce. Then Herod would do everything to destroy Jesus.
Do you understand the point? By asking this question, they were making Jesus publicly pronounce the reigning monarch of the area as a fornicating adulterer, and therefore put his life in jeopardy. So this was not just a whimsical question. Do you understand now? They wanted to discredit him with the people, and they wanted to destroy him. It was a sinister attack; it was a crafty, explosive question politically.
Now they put Jesus in a position where whatever answer he gave, he would offend someone. If he had said, “You can divorce him for any reason” (agreeing with Hillel) to avoid the risk of losing popularity and life, then also, they could show him as saying one thing in the Sermon on the Mount and now something different, portraying him as a false teacher who wrongly explains Scripture and is cruel to women. All the women’s support they could get. If he says the other, all the crowd and Herod will come after him. Do you see the fix they were trying to put him in?
The Lord’s Majestic Answer
That is why I call the Lord’s answer the Lord’s devastating/shattering, authoritative, majestic biblical answer. He gives four reasons why you should not divorce.
What would the Lord answer? They did not realize he is the one “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” It just staggers you. It is so profound, devastating to them and their teachings, and their whole system. He unmasks them, strips their clothes, and makes them run naked after this discussion, and it is so astute. So shrewdly he evades the public and political danger they tried to bring on him, so marvelously. It is nothing for him—a simple question. But for us, it is utter genius. And this is the answer:
Vs. 4-6: “And He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.”
Jesus did not answer their question immediately from his own viewpoint. He went beyond himself, beyond the customs, beyond the Rabbis, and beyond the traditions. He went all the way back to God. He goes beyond traditions and their generation and goes to ancient creation. “You are trying to trap me into trouble by making me say what I think? I will not answer. Let God speak to you. Let me quote God.” And, boy, that really puts it in perspective. “Your argument,” he is saying, “is not with me. God’s Word is the foundation of this issue. Let’s go back to the Word of God.”
And then I love his beginning. It is so sarcastic. They spend all their time reading the Bible, interpreting the Bible, and sarcastically he says, “Have you not read?” You claim you read the Bible all your life, day and night. Have you missed the first chapter of the Bible, the first fundamental, basic reading of any Sunday Children’s lesson, the simple lesson of creation? Open the Bible, the first chapter: Genesis 1:27, Genesis 2:24. “Have you not read,” he says. And he just points up their utter ignorance. That is a slap at their religious pride, their boasted knowledge of the law. Rather than affirm that, he indicts them because of their utter ignorance. You who are so clever, you who claim to be the ones who possess and maintain the law and interpret the law—have you not read, even the beginning?
From that first chapter, he lists four reasons it is not lawful to divorce for any cause. “I am not saying it. Let’s get it from God,” he says. “Let’s just let God speak.”
Reason 1: One Man Created for One Woman
Did you get that? One man was created for one woman. Look at verse 4, where he quotes from Genesis 1:27: “Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them a male and a female?” Now the word “made” here means “created.” He said, “Have you not read about the creation, men, fellows? You are not aware of it? You haven’t gotten into that text? Do you remember what it says? That ‘he made them a male and a female.’” Chrysostom, the great 4th-century preacher, makes the point that God did not make one man and many women, but one man and one woman.
You see, when God created, he created Adam and he created Eve. That’s it. Do you understand that? Adam and Eve, that was it. There were no spares or options. He did not create Adam and Eve and a backup, just in case. He did not create eight people, or nine, or seven, or thirteen, or three and say, “Work it out. If it doesn’t work out, try somebody else.” When God created, he created Adam and Eve, period. There were no spares. There were no options. There were no alternatives. And that was the divine intention in the very beginning: One man, one woman, divine plan, no option.
He did not make provision for polygamy. He did not make provision for divorce by making any spare people. It seems like a rather obvious point. There was not anybody else around. You see, divorce for Adam and Eve was not advisable, it was very foolish. You understand that? It could get very lonely in the garden. There was not an option. If they had divorced, my friends, Genesis would have ended in Chapter 1, and so would everything else. There was no option, and that is the whole point of what he is saying.
When he made them, he made them a male and a female, and that was it. Very basic. So, in the case of Adam and Eve, divorce was not only wrong, it was inadvisable. Not only that, it was impossible. It was absolutely impossible. There were no alternatives. There was nowhere to go, no one else to talk to, nothing. That is the way God meant it. If it is not you two, it is not anything. This is God’s intended creation: a non-optional, indissoluble union. You understand that? One man, one woman, created that way.
When God did that, he set in motion for all of human history how it is to be: one man, one woman, no options, indissoluble. And just because spares came along as time went on did not change God’s original intention, you understand? It did not change it at all. And God never intended two people to be married and be poking around seeing if they like somebody better. That is not an alternative that God ever intended, and that is obvious by virtue of his creation.
Reason 2: An Intimate, Incomparable Bond
The second reason why divorce is not permitted for any reason is an intimate, incomparable bond. The first reason is one man created for one woman. The second is a strong bond. When God brought the one man and the one woman together, he really brought them together.
Vs. 5: “…and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Genesis 2:24)
He leaves, he breaks the relation in the home, and he cleaves to his wife. This is Genesis 2:24, God’s divine, wonderful order. God’s perfect purpose and plan is that they should leave their parents and cleave. When the Scripture says that a man leaves his parents and is united to his wife, it is clear that it means he is forming a tie that is intimate and permanent and takes precedence over all other ties. This bond is more sacred than one’s first family and his relationship with his parents. To bring them into this, he says to break the closest bonds a man or woman has in this life. In a culture where ties to parents were very sacred and important, that is saying a lot! For us in our culture, where the mother bond is so strong, even that God says to break and come into this union. How permanent and higher, how incomparable this bond should be! How stupid and foolish to cut this with a divorce!
Leaving and cleaving. Many marriages have struggles because there is not, first, a full “leaving” from father and mother. And the word “cleave” is the word we want to note. It means basically “to have a bond that can’t be broken.” It is a word that is used really for glue. It means “to be stuck.” It is permanent glue until death. You are cleaving; the idea of glue means “A man should be glued to his wife.” It also means to be fused to his wife.
There also is inherent in the word another thought: it means a continual process of pursuing hard after something. And so you have the idea then of two people who are stuck together, and are so because they pursue hard after each other. They leave and keep cleaving, gluing, and fusing with one another all their life, closer and closer. So you have two hearts diligently and utterly committed to pursuing one another in love, stuck together in an indissoluble bond, gluing and fusing together. Glued in mind, glued in will, glued in spirit, glued in emotion.
Leave and cleave. In the Hebrew language, the word for marriage, kiddushin, basically means “set apart” or “consecration” or “sanctification.” To “consecrate” means “to set something apart to God.” That is their word for marriage. So marriage is a consecration of two people to each other. It is a consecration that says, “I am totally separated, apart from anything else unto you. I am totally consecrated and devoted to you.” It is a union, then, of two people whose utter devotion is to the other, who become the personal possession of the other person. The word that is used means that he is to be “glued” or “fused” to her in an inseparable bond. They were to be “married.” They were to be legally, culturally, and socially joined together in such an official sense that they are “cleaved together” for life. They were to be joined in such a permanent bond that ‘coming apart’ would tear pieces out of both of them.
That is why 1 Corinthians 7 says you do not belong to yourself; you belong to your spouse, and your spouse belongs to you. It is an exchange. It is an utter and total complete abandonment of myself to my partner. That is kiddushin. One person becomes the utter and exclusive possession of the other person, as much as a sacrifice brought by a Jew to the altar was kiddushin to God. So am I offering myself utterly, totally, and fully surrendered to my partner. That is the essence of marriage: an indissoluble union with no option. A strong bond, pursuing one another, one male, one female. And that is the purest perspective of marriage.
The relationship established is more than the parent-child relationship. That is why it is so close; the parent-child relationship must be severed to establish the marriage relationship—leave. Though a child shares the deep recesses of the mother in the womb, it can never be one flesh with its mother in the way the mother is one flesh with the husband. The marriage relationship is the more intimate, more mysterious “one.”
Reason 3: One Flesh—Indivisible
There is a third reason why marriage does not allow itself to be broken, and that is because of one flesh. One man, one woman, a strong bond, and thirdly, one flesh. He says it at the end of verse 5, “They two shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh.” And the point of the second statement, “they are no more two,” is this: You can’t divide one. One is the indivisible number. They are not two anymore, so you can’t separate them anymore. They have become one, and one is indivisible. You can’t have half a person. Half a person is nobody. They have become one person in the union of marriage. It is an indivisible number.
Now you say, “What does that one person mean?” I think it is a divine perception. When those two people come together, they literally, in God’s view, become one person. They abandon themselves to each other. They become the total possession of each other. They are one in mind, spirit, goals, direction, emotion, feeling, and will. And that oneness ultimately is best seen in the child they produce, which is the perfect emblem of their union. Because that child bears all that they are in one, it becomes the emblem or the symbol or the representation of their oneness.
One is an indivisible number. You can’t talk about breaking up two people in a marriage. When you break up a marriage, you slice one person in half, and what do you have? You have two halves, and that is nobody, to follow the same metaphor. “One flesh” vividly expresses a view of marriage as something much deeper than human convenience or social convention. The Jews had lost sight of the essential truth that marriage was not a casual union but the closest of all possible unions. It created a new family, and the relationships of family are unbreakable and unchangeable. And the Lord makes that point emphatically and specifically himself by adding his interpretive comment.
This certainly means sexual union, but it means much more than just that. It means that they become so identified with one another that their joining together creates an entity all its own. They are no longer “he” and “she,” but “they.” What is his becomes hers. What is hers becomes his. She takes his name. He cares for her as if she were his own body. (I even believe that there’s a spiritual dimension to this. That is why it is that, when you see an old couple who have been married for many years to each other, they even start to look like each other!)
Reason 4: God Has Joined
Then finally, the fourth reason, the strongest of all biblical reasons why divorce is not God’s desire, is the climactic implication of all these at the end of verse 6: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man divorce.” Now the word “put asunder” that we say so often is chriz; it means divorce. It is used that way in 1 Corinthians 7:11. It means “divorce.” What God puts together, do not divorce. This is not quoting from Genesis or anywhere; it is by the authority of our Lord himself as the final prophet to the church, his majesterial pronouncement, based on the implications of all that God has done in Genesis.
And God said, “I make marriages and you better not take them apart.” And he is not necessarily talking about Christian marriages or non-Christian marriages. He is saying, “I make marriages. I put two people together in a union.” It is a God-ordained institution. It is God who has made a man and a woman complement each other, so they come together with the capacity to enjoy each other, to be fulfilled by each other, to be a strength to each other’s weaknesses, to produce children, and to procreate the world. I believe it is a miracle of God that every union exists.
Every single time that a couple comes together and experiences the joy of companionship, or the joy of friendship, or the joy of sex, or whatever else, they are experiencing the miracle of God. The miracle that man should so love a woman, and a woman should so love a man that they can abandon themselves to each other in the fullness of a meaningful relationship—that is an act of God.
Even unbelieving people can enjoy the joy, the thrill, and the meaningfulness of a loving union. We know that. That is a miracle of God; every marriage is. It is simply defining that in the very beginning God said, “I make marriages,” and when you get a divorce as a pagan you are just as much ripping apart something God put together as if you were Christians doing it. To see divorce as man undoing the work of God puts the whole issue in a radically new perspective.
You can make a comparison of it. It is like a child being born. I believe that every child born into the world is a creature of God. Do you believe that? God created everyone. It does not matter if their parents are both unbelievers. It does not matter if they are pagans in the middle of some tribe in Africa who do not have a clue about God. That child is a miracle of God, and the same is true of marriage. The marriage that produces the child is an act of God, whereby two complementary people are brought together to enjoy the fullness of human life. It is just as much an act of God.
That is why I say this: Abortion is to childbirth what divorce is to marriage. As abortion kills the creation of God, so does divorce, and that is exactly what the verse means. “What God has joined together, let not man divorce.” You better not break up a marriage, my friend, yours or anybody else’s. You better not do that because you are tampering with the work of almighty God, who makes marriage.
So they say to Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to get a divorce for any reason?” He says, “Listen to what God said. What God said is this: One man, one woman, and no options. What God said is a strong bond. What God said is one flesh, an indivisible number. What God said is, ‘I make marriages. If you tear them up, you’re tearing up what I made, and you’re in a very, very serious position.’”
So what Jesus is doing is taking them all the way back to the beginning. And instead of losing credibility with the people, he gains it, doesn’t he? Because all he says is what God said in the Bible, and makes them look stupid by saying, “Haven’t you read this?”
💡 Application
So many of the arguments and cultural debates we hear today would be brought to an end if we did the same!
God created mankind male and female, so in all our thinking about marriage, consider that God made male incomplete without the female. If you start thinking in those terms, you will realize the views of Hillel and Shammai are very far from the original design.
He did not build into the design of marriage the idea that the legal union of a man and a woman may be broken. When a man and a woman leave their fathers and mothers and are legally joined together in marriage according to God’s design and according to the laws of the land in which they live, they are no longer—as far as God himself is concerned—two separate entities that just happen to be living together in the same house. He views them as one flesh for life. And that is how they are to view themselves.
I believe that this has something to say to those who look at the husband or wife that is sitting next to them, and who secretly wonder if they have made a mistake. I am not speaking here of someone who is married to someone who is violating the marriage covenant. Rather, I am speaking of someone who is just “disappointed” and “dissatisfied” with their spouse. They think back to the time when they got married to them—all starry-eyed and idealistic—and as they see what they have ended up with, they wonder if they have somehow managed to marry the wrong person.
I suggest to you that our Lord’s words—“what God has joined together”—have relevance to that concern. If you have gotten married to someone—even if they are far from your ideal—they are nevertheless the one whom, in the providence of the Almighty God, you have married. He or she is the spouse God has given you, and you have been joined together to him or her in God’s sight in a permanent bond.
And “what God has joined together” is something that we are not to “separate.” If you are married, you are not married to the wrong person. Stay together with that husband or wife as a part of God’s appointed plan for you. Let Him work through that which He—however it has occurred—joined together.
And pray for that spouse. Who knows but that it is in God’s plan to change your spouse on the inside—rather than you changing to a different spouse on the outside!
The Exception
We must avoid going to extremes, saying more than what the Bible says, such as “no divorce at all.” In some extreme cases, the Bible gives the provision.
You might notice that Jesus does allow for one exception; and that is in the case of “sexual immorality.” The original word, porneia, is one that is very broad in its possible meanings. But I believe that it is meant to be understood as an act that brings someone else into the marriage covenant—whether through an actual physical act of adultery, or through an emotional attachment to someone outside of the marriage that is not repented of, or—even in some cases—an unrepentant addiction to pornography. These are all acts that involve bringing in someone else into the marriage as a violation of a “one man/one woman” covenant; and when such a thing is done, the covenant of marriage is being persistently broken.
It is clear, from the whole tenor of the passage, that the relationship of marriage ought to be highly reverenced and honored among Christians. It is a relationship which was instituted in Paradise, in the time of man’s innocency, and is a chosen figure of the mystical union between Christ and His Church. It is a relationship which nothing but death ought to terminate. It is a relationship which is sure to have the greatest influence on those whom it brings together, for happiness, or for misery, for good, or for evil. Such a relationship ought never to be taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly; but soberly, discreetly, and with due consideration. It is only too true, that thoughtlessly entering into marriage is one of the most fertile causes of unhappiness, and too often, it may be feared, of sin.
Here God has constituted them as one flesh by creative design and purpose. God has pronounced that the one flesh union is so intensely close that it warrants even severing the deepest human ties of mother and father in order to establish it. What therefore God has joined together by creative design and divine purpose, do not allow the puny man to come along and separate. It is the activity of God; let not man put asunder.
What the Lord says is the divine ideal, standard, and will for marriage is one of monogamous, purposeful intimacy and undisrupted permanency. A man shall leave and cleave to his wife, not wives, or one wife in sequence. In that glued, fused state, two shall become one flesh—total intimacy, sacramental, tangibly, physically, involving more than physically. Leaving father and mother means a thorough psychological, physical, and emotional attachment, so then they are no two, but one flesh. They are constituted by God’s act as one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined, let no man put asunder by writing a small divorce letter.
If you think, “You have become too old, too fat, I don’t want you anymore,” remember: “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
We will see other questions: Are there proper reasons to divorce? What about already divorced people? We will see those later.
This whole question of God’s design for marriage is that he established it at creation, though God realistically accommodated himself to the hardness of men’s hearts. The standard is monogamy, intimacy, and permanence.
A Final Challenge
Who needs to understand that? Every married person and every unmarried person here. When you are committed to marriage with the conviction that either this marriage will become more and more enriching in obedience to the law of God and in the power of the Spirit of God, or you will suffer till you or your spouse dies, you are into this for life.
Only when you realize this are you prepared to work on it to make it a continually enriching, satisfying relationship under God. When two sinners share the multilevel intimacy of marriage, you cannot have a happy, harmonious marriage without hard work. You do not need to spend energy looking for cracks and loopholes to get out of it. Whatever your problems in marriage, whatever your conflicts, hear the word of God: It is God’s intention that two shall join together.
Those who are not married: Take marriage seriously. I do not want to scare you, but it is a one-time life decision. Be very, very sure you want to make this commitment. I have had instances where I speak to the boy and girl, even the night before, “Are you sure this is the man?” One pastor, just the night before the marriage, after all arrangements were done, encouraged his daughter to say no. It would be embarrassing for a few weeks, people will talk, and some money will be wasted, but all that can be made up. But once you walk the aisle and say “I do,” get into the marriage, and go into that marriage bed, you are in it for life. Nothing can change that. It is a lifetime decision. It is not like buying clothes. It is not to be just taken emotionally. It is not like making big decisions about where to work or buying a house; it is the greatest decision a man or woman can make—marriage.
This is a lifetime commitment. Once you say “I do,” it is for all your life until you die. Let that sink deep into your heart and mind. Remove all the fog from your eyes and mind. Think deeply: Am I really serious? In a moment of passion, not knowing what marriage is, when you hear sweet things, messages, and wishes, back off and think deeply. Love is blind, but marriage will open every lover’s eyes.
Back off and think deeply: Do I see in this woman and this man that which, under God, can make me enter a lifelong, most intimate, strongest, greatest relationship, with irrevocable commitment?
If you cannot answer confidently, please back off, back off. That is okay even if it is your marriage day. Take the embarrassment of saying no in front of the church and crowd, take the financial loss. But contract a marriage that is contracted in full commitment.
I beg with you: There are worse things than being single. You do not believe me? I can bring many, many witnesses of married people who often thought, “Oh, if I just lived single,” because marriage has become a horrible experience—a useless, terrible hell—that hindered and destroyed their lives.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure. That leisure may be a lifetime. There is no way out. “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
You may get out of that relationship with legal courts; even the supreme court may approve your divorce. All those cannot scrub out the words of Lord Jesus spoken in majesterial authority: “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
May God lay a constraint on you to take marriage seriously.
Let us see the next verses. We will answer other questions of divorce, but for now, think deeply about marriage: What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 