Context, Context, Context: Will We Notice the Motives of the Enemies of Christ?

The Pharisees’ Stated Issue: Divorce

The Real Issue: Sin

Text: Matthew 19:1-12

Historical context: Jesus was closer and closer to his crucifixion. He had completed his public ministry in the northern parts of Israel (Galilee) and had set his face towards Jerusalem, where he would give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The confrontations with Pharisees and scribes and others hostile to the truth were approaching a boiling point.

V. 3 of Matthew 19 is so important to read carefully: “And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (Mt 19:3, ESV). Did you catch it? To test Jesus.

Their motives were not about theological accuracy. You don’t have to do a whole lot of research of 1st century Judaism to see that divorce was rampant, that women were of little value in Judaism, that divorces under Rabbi Hillel’s teachings were permissible for a wife even burning her husband’s breakfast or for anything the husband deemed an indiscretion. In the stricter Rabbinical teachings of Shammai, the conditions for divorce were more limited to what the husband considered sexual immorality. The sects within Judaism were in conflict with one another. So, what was the motive of the Pharisees? To test God.

The same Moses to whom the Pharisees refer in Matthew 19 also wrote this: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah” (Dt 6:16, ESV). Interesting how those whose motives are to trap Jesus fail to cite that verse. Why might that be?

So, what did Jesus do? He took them right back to God in the creation, back to the Scriptures, not to extrabiblical Rabbinical traditions of sinful men. Here was Jesus’ response: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female . . .” (Mt 19:4, ESV). In other words, Moses came much later in the history of redemption. The Fall happened in the garden, and it changed everything that came afterwards. Man’s sin is the underlying reason that God allows divorce. Moses provided reasons for it; Jesus provided reasons for it; Paul provided reasons for it, etc.

Jesus drives the point home further in v. 8: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8, ESV).

God ordained marriage between one man and one woman (Gen 1:27-28; 2:24; Mal 2:14; Mt 19:6). And God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). And yet God allows it under certain circumstances. The point Jesus makes again and again to the Pharisees is that divorce, like other sins, is a consequence of man’s moral rebellion against God; we are hard-hearted (sklērokardia). That’s the word Jesus uses in v. 8.

Some people would like to make divorce the unforgivable sin. Or they labor to put a scarlet letter upon divorce, such that it’s “the really bad sin” but their own sins of legalism and pride are mere trifles, of course. They’re experts at seeing the speck in others’ eyes, but blind to the beams in their own eyes (Mt 7:3).

Again and again, Jesus drives home the point: Our fallenness, our hard-heartedness, is the crucial sin for which we need new hearts. And that heart transplant comes by way of the gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5:21).

Encouragement: I know many, many people who have been divorced. And you know what? They’re sinners–just like you and I are. But they’re not less valuable people. Let us not forget that. Christ came into the world to save whom? Sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). Let us not erect barriers to forgiveness that Christ has demolished. Otherwise, we’re just like the ghastly Pharisees Jesus rebuked in the gospels.