The Kingdom of God Way: Divorce

When it comes to marriage and divorce, many people shy away from these ideas and ignore them because they can be uncomfortable or odd in today’s culture. In Jesus’ sermon, he talks about divorce because it’s a real issue. Let’s see what Jesus has to say about it. 

Matthew 5:31 says, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce”. Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 24:1 here. The concept in the law was that if you want to divorce your wife you have to write out a certificate to make it official. This could have been for any reason the husband deemed necessary. This may seem like it avoided chaos and promoted peace. However, Jesus has a different view. 

Later in Matthew’s gospel in chapter 19, Jesus is questioned by the leaders of that day with the question of whether a man can divorce his wife. His answer, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Jesus says the reason Moses wrote this into law was because they were ignorant and wouldn’t accept no for an answer. Right before this, Jesus says that a man and woman come together in marriage and they shouldn’t separate, quoting from Genesis 1 and 2 for his reasoning. Jesus then gives an exception, sexual immorality. We’ll get to that in a moment. 

Going back to Matthew 5, Jesus says that divorce equals adultery because the marriage covenant has broken and therefore it’s as if it never was. Jesus treats divorce as an evil because it is. It destroys marriages and relationships and this is not the way into the kingdom. 

Jesus gives an exception when it is ok to divorce if they choose and that is in the case of sexual immorality. Sexual immorality is a vague term used in Scripture to describe many acts such as intercourse outside the marriage covenant, homosexuality, etc. If one spouse were to commit these acts, Jesus basically says they have already broken the marriage covenant, and divorce would be the result of sin, not the cause of it.  

Jesus is calling all of his followers to be committed in their marriages because divorce separates and destroys. Working at marriage and getting professional help is much better than divorce because divorce is ok by the world’s standards but not to Jesus.