What Is Love? – Matthew 5:31,32

Cindy Wright and her husband Steve have a marriage ministry, but she confesses that it has taken her a long time to realize what it takes to honor her marriage:

“Love isn’t something that’s stagnant. It has the potential to grow or recede with every passing moment. It’s made up of hundreds of little choices you make everyday. Every day, in large and small ways you have the opportunity to “choose” each other as a priority.”

Jesus is teaching on the law and now addresses issues surrounding the commandment to not commit adultery and helps us understand that it requires so much more than managing not to commit adultery or get a divorce.

“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. (Matthew 5:31-32 ESV)

There is nothing in the 10 commandments about divorce (though the command about adultery makes it related) but in Moses’ teaching on the Law he says in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, “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, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 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, 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.” 

The religious leaders, referring to this passage, taught that a certificate of divorce must be acquired before divorcing your spouse.  They often disagreed on what was an acceptable grounds for divorce (what is the “indecency” Moses speaks of?), with some being quite liberal and others allowing it only on grounds of sexual immorality, adultery being one form of sexual immorality.

Jesus seems to take the latter approach, the stricter interpretation, arguing, in essence, that to divorce on any other grounds causes your spouse, who is still then really your spouse, to commit adultery when he or she remarries.  This puts the onus and responsibility on the divorcing spouse.  It does not mean that the divorced spouse, if he or she remarries, isn’t really married again and should divorce their new spouse.  That would be committing the same fallacy over again.  But Jesus upholds the divinely intended inviolability of the marriage covenant.

Jesus will teach much more extensively on this issue when the Pharisees use it to test him (Matthew 19).  Suffice it to say that loyalty to one’s spouse and to one’s covenant with God and your spouse is highly prized by Jesus and the true intent of the Law is to protect you, your spouse, your offspring and marriage itself through its dictates.

This is the true intent of the command to not commit adultery. It does not only include not committing adultery and divorcing your spouse, but also honoring your covenant with your spouse and trusting God with regard to what He says will bring us the most peace and best represent our covenant relationship with God.