Sermon on the Mount: 5th Blessing

MATTHEW 5:31-37

CHRISTIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS 

(FIDELITY IN MARRIAGE AND HONESTY IN SPEECH)

In certain circumstance, Jesus now says, remarriage by or to a divorced person is to be considered adultery. This teaching is one of fidelity in marriage.

Divorce is a controversial subject and complex as well, even today. It touches people’s emotion on a deep level. In the time of this teaching, Pharisees had taught that the “putting away” of a wife was allowed in numerous circumstances. This question came to Jesus and His reply was strongly against their teaching and lax understanding of God’s intentions on the subject.

FIDELITY IN MARRIAGE

Verses 31-32 begin His explanation which is given in more detail in Matthew 19. It is noted that the question raised by the rabbis was “…Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause…?” Jesus gave His reply in three parts.

The Pharisees were preoccupied with the grounds for divorce but Jesus was more focused upon the institution of marriage. Jesus directed them back to Genesis to recall that God intended marriage to be a joining of a wife and husband to be permanent. He reminded them that the two had become one flesh and God had made them so therefore man should not divide (put asunder) what God had joined.

The Pharisees called the provision Moses made for divorce a “command” while Jesus said it was a concession to the hardness of human hearts. Reading Deut 24:1-4 carefully shows a long list of conditional reasons that divorce may be allowed. Jesus reminds them that in the beginning it was not so but that a concession had been made by Moses but such concession was not a command and it was based upon the hardness of heart from the Hebrew men of that day.

The Pharisees took the matter of divorce lightly. Jesus took it very seriously and with only one exception, He called all remarriage after divorce adultery. This one exception was fornication. Jesus teaches that if one married after divorce then one was entering into a forbidden and adulterous relationship. While a person might obtain a divorce in the eye of human law, that person was not divorced in the eye of God, unless fornication was involved. This was the only allowable reason to violate the 7th commandment.

HONESTY IN SPEECH

If the rabbis tended to be permissive in their attitude toward divorce, they were permissive also in the matter of teaching about oath taking.

They taught that the speech prohibited was false swearing meaning misuse of the divine name of God in a profane way. They constructed elaborate rules for the taking of vows. Basically they were teaching that one need not be particular about keeping vows in which the divine name had not been used.

Jesus again begins His teaching with the words “… but I say to you…” and teaches that the wording of a vow is irrelevant. A vow is binding regardless of which words were included. The real implication of the Law is that we must keep our promises and be people of our word and if we do so, vows then become unnecessary. His teaching is very simple but profound. He says there is no need to swear at all, but we should simply let our speech rest on “yes” or “no”.

The modern application of this teaching is timeless. Swearing (oath taking) is really a pathetic confession of our own dishonesty. The only reason to swear an oath is that we know our own words are not likely to be trusted. So we try to induce people to believe us by adding some solemn oath to what we say. 

Christians should say what they mean and mean what they say. Our word should be our bond.