| August 8, 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 15
|
“Truly, this only I have found: ‘That God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Eccl. 7:29). Perhaps in no realm is this more obviously true than in brethren’s hopes of finding some way around what Jesus taught in Matt. 5:32 and 19:9 concerning the subject of divorce and remarriage. In our world of ever-increasing divorce and remarriage, brethren seem to never run out of imaginative methods and lines of reasoning to invent new ways to justify adulterous marriages. The old-fashioned idea of real marital commitment seems to have been almost forgotten in the shuffle. Even brethren who strictly adhere to the truth Jesus taught in Matt. 5:32 and 19:9 (and parallel passages) seem to spend much more time talking about the EXCEPTION that allows divorce than they do about the rule: “What God has joined together, let not man separate.” Now, don’t get me wrong. Jesus DID make an exception. And we need to teach that, because Jesus did. But we need to emphasize the rule more than the exception. We need to instill in our young people (and in the old folks, too) the importance of commitment, the importance of keeping one’s vows and promises.
Brethren have sought out many inventions with regard to divorce and remarriage. Years ago a position surfaced that alien sinners (nonchurch members) are not subject to Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 19:9, thus allowing any number of divorces and remarriages without penalty before a person becomes a Christian. That position was debated in earlier decades and it greatly subsided among brethren. In more recent times, it has been revived with more sophisticated arguments by able, scholarly brethren, but it is still the same basic viewpoint that brethren considered and rightly rejected years ago. Fact is, Jesus taught His disciples the same thing He taught to the Pharisees who were not His disciples, and He indicated it had been God’s will from the beginning, Matt. 19:3-9; Mark 10:10-12; Luke 16:14-18.
Then came the position, which many brethren adopted which insisted that a legal divorce destroys the marriage bond and frees both husband and wife to remarry without penalty whether or not they had Scriptural grounds for the divorce. One brother who defended this line of reasoning for many years, more recently abandoned the theory and embraced the Lord’s teaching. May his kind increase!
Still others, not straying as far from the Scriptures as the aforementioned positions, make an artificial, un-Biblical distinction between “divorce” and “putting away.” Brethren who use this line of reasoning allow for an innocent victim of divorce to wait until their former spouse has committed fornication, and then “put them away” mentally, even though they have already been divorced (put away) by their guilty spouse. The two terms -- divorce and put away -- are used interchangeably in the Scriptures. The mental putting away position virtually removes all meaning from Matt. 5:32. When I first began preaching, I subscribed to this concept, though I did not know all the sophisticated arguments that go along with it. Two brethren I worshipped with in Springhill, Louisiana, Archie Sanders and Les Atkinson, “forced” me to see that it was not enough that some had eventually committed fornication. That must be the REASON for the divorce.
More recently, several new lines of reasoning have surfaced. Some try to void Jesus’ teaching by insisting that He was only explaining the Law of Moses and that His teaching on the subject has no bearing on Christians today. One fellow has even put out a new Bible that puts Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Old Testament, and begins the New Testament with the book of Acts. I am aware that Jesus lived and died while the Old Testament was in effect. I am also aware that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written till the new covenant had been in effect for several years. Only one of them was written with a Jewish readership in mind (Matthew), and it certainly was not written to try to get Jews to keep the Law of Moses. Please note that what Moses allowed, Jesus forbade. “...Moses permitted... But from the beginning, it was not so. And I say unto you...”
One writer, in a similar vein, declares that 1 Cor. 7 is the only passage that gives the New Testament rules regarding marriage. He conveniently makes his case by an extremely broad application of verse 28, but carefully avoids verse 39, “A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives: but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.”
Two relatively new approaches involve a denial of things most all of understood till recently. One approach is to redefine adultery so that divorce and adultery become synonyms. This encourages arriving at the definition of adultery by its use in figurative passages, mostly in the Old Testament. It denies that adultery is a sexual sin, and thus undermines confidence in every standard translation of the Scripture and every dictionary and lexicon in current use. According to this theory, one only need repent of the sin of divorcing and he’s free to marry again, no matter who did what to whom.
The other new (for “us”) position that involves a denial of things long understood by brethren in general is the theory that there has never been but one covenant all along, and that whatever was permitted in Old Testament times is permitted today. Back when they were willing to debate spiritual issues, our Methodist friends tried to use this theory to get around the need for baptism. “God’s covenant began with Abraham and Abraham was saved without baptism, therefore we can be saved without baptism.” Now our own brethren are trying the same ploy to get around the teachings of Jesus on the subject of divorce and remarriage.
It is the desire of many brethren, and the trend of several, to find some way to seek to justify all or virtually all second, third, fourth, tenth, etc., marriages, no matter who divorced whom for what reasons, if any. Some seek to accomplish this by insisting that we are still under the Mosaic system; others by insisting we should ignore what Jesus said because He lived under that system. Some seek to make marriage a church ordinance, so that those outside the church aren’t subject to the rules. Some insist that we can’t trust our translations and our lexicons. But we suggest that all do as God commanded in Matt. 17:5, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!”
--CRJ
In Matt. 11:12-15, Jesus said, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Jesus had earlier identified John the Baptist as the one the prophets Isaiah and Malachi had spoken of centuries before. Those earlier prophets had foretold the coming of a blessed heavenly kingdom under the rule of the Messiah. But it was John who the privilege to announce that finally after centuries of longing and hoping and praying, the kingdom of heaven was at hand.
Unfortunately, through the centuries, the Jews had allowed their fertile minds to imagine what the kingdom of God would be like. Surely, they thought, the Messiah would be a great military leader. Surely His kingdom would elevate their nation above all others and they would enjoy not only political freedom but also financial advantages over all other peoples. They were well aware of the prophecies that told the beating of swords and spears into pruning hooks and plow shares, but they thought that would happen after they had militarily conquered all other nations and brought them by force under Messiah’s reign. Had they properly understood such prophecies, they would have known that the Messiah would not be a military or political king and His kingdom would not be spread by weapons of war. Its warfare is spiritual, not carnal, 2 Cor. 10:4. That is why in God’s kingdom there is no need for spears and swords. Instead, we need a SPIRITUAL sword -- “the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17),
Even Jesus’ friends expected Him to become a military leader, an earthly monarch, but He refused to be a party to such plans. Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to a mountain by Himself alone” (John 6:15). The common opinion was that surely He would lead a rebellion against Caesar, refuse to pay taxes, etc., but He did just the opposite. He admonished His followers to render to Caesar the taxes he claimed as his due, Matt. 22:21, etc.
At His trial, the Jewish leaders tried to use the Jewish misconceptions about the Messiah to convince Pilate that Jesus was a rival king to Caesar. But Jesus explained, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). Carnal warfare would never spread the borders of Christ’s spiritual kingdom. Only the sword of the Spirit, the word of God can do that.
--CRJ