Sermon on the Mount

by Scot McKnight

  Fourth, the fundamental disposition and orientation of pastors, churches, and all followers of Jesus should be toward reconciliation of the husband and wife. Pastors, counselors, and friends quickly learn from the husband and the wife what the precipitating issues are, and once those are learned, there are clear areas where each person will need to go to work because the goal is reconciliation. Churches cannot permit themselves to fall into the “listen” and then “we’ll see how things work out for them” approach. It is too benign, it is too hands-off, it is too passive, and it simply isn’t gospel shaped. The gospel summons us to become peacemakers and agents of reconciliation because of the power of the unleashed Spirit and the potency of a life of loving self-denial for the good of the other. Jesus teaches an Ethic from Beyond, and as followers of this Messianic Ethic we are in touch with the Lord who calls us to surpassing righteousness. Once we come to terms with what covenant love is, and I have defined it as “being with, for, and unto,” we are encouraged to get each couple to begin thinking of what they can do “for” the other person. To ask, “What is best for my husband or my wife?” By what is “best” here we mean for those who follow Jesus down the long road of the sacred union of marriage.

  Fifth, I now want to step into this line of thinking with how I understand Matthew 5:31–32. I have argued, even if not extensively, that Jesus’ intent was to affirm the inviolable nature of marriage, and to make that point clear he simply stated that divorce was wrong. I have also suggested that Matthew “added” the exception clause, but that his addition was implicit already in what Jesus was saying. Jesus did not want divorce, and he said that in a context of permissiveness. That’s not what God wants for his followers. But if porneia occurs, divorce is permissible and remarriage justifiable. But this is not what is to happen for his followers. The problem is that it does because, even if Jesus in Matthew 19:1–9 will push back to the intent of the Creator in Genesis 1—2, we are not yet in Eden or Paradise. In a cracked world, even the followers of Jesus will commit sins that destroy a marriage.

  This leads us to the most contested point of all: the grounds for divorce obviously expand within the pages of the New Testament. Even if we are not accurate in thinking that Matthew added the exception clause to make explicit what Jesus implied, there is one ground of permission with Jesus: porneia. I take porneia to refer to sexual behaviors that ruin the marital covenant. But the apostle Paul, knowing full well what Jesus taught, added another exception to permissible divorce. For him, desertion by an unbelieving spouse constituted grounds for divorce and therefore, implicitly but within the bounds of all perceptions of the Jewish divorce certifications, permitted remarriage for the Christian who had been deserted.

  I believe we can learn from this what constitutes love and marriage as well as what constitutes grounds for divorce. Let me rephrase this in my own categories: if covenant love is commitment to be “with someone and for someone as someone who is working unto divine ends,” then marriages are destroyed when one partner refuses to be “with” the spouse or who becomes someone who is “against” that spouse. When a man obviously fails to be the husband that covenant love demands, or when a wife obviously fails to be the wife that covenant love demands, grounds for divorce may be present because the covenant is being destroyed.

  This contention of what covenant love is and of what destroying it means leads directly now to the issue of spousal abuse. Remember what Exodus said about the expectations of a husband for his wife—food, clothing, shelter, and covenant love. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and psychological abuse are actions that destroy the marital covenant as understood in the Bible. Let’s not treat Jesus’ words (or add to them Paul’s words) and think that every possible ground for divorce has been covered by Jesus or Paul and, if abuse can’t be found within porneia or desertion, then abuse isn’t a legitimate ground for divorce. Abuse destroys what it means to have shelter because the house is no longer safe; abuse is a legitimate reason for divorce. Furthermore, our text in the Sermon on the Mount should never be used to protect aggressive males or be used to justify abuse of a wife.

  But I want to stop right here for a moment because this entire discussion creates tension with what Jesus is actually teaching in this text. We are discussing legitimate grounds for divorce, and that is an important discussion, but Jesus wanted us to know that divorce is wrong. Jesus is saying “No!” to divorce, and we want to ask, “But what about in this case?” We need to keep in mind what Jesus is teaching: the sacredness and permanency of the marital covenant. But, yes, with that reminder once again in place, we have to admit the hard-heartedness even of followers of Jesus and recognize that grounds for divorce will be pushed to the fore and churches and Christians will have to render discerning decisions.

  So now a sixth point: divorce decisions are to be rendered not by the state (as Luther too easily suggested) but by discerning Christian leaders and churches. Aside from the incredibly ineffective issue we have in Western churches—namely, that if we don’t like a particular church, we can go somewhere else—I believe no follower of Jesus ought to pursue a divorce in the legal system without the official permission of that person’s church and its leaders. I make no apology for this. Followers of Jesus are a fellowship; we are responsible to one another and accountable to one another; Jesus is our Lord and his teachings our rule. The only responsible place for a decision to be made is in the context of a local church and its wise leadership.

  Seventh, remarriage is both permissible and not necessary. I hang my hat on the hook of evidence that is implicit in the words of Jesus in 5:31–32: permissible divorces made possible permissible remarriages. While a divorced woman in the first century was much more vulnerable economically and socially, not to mention spiritually and physically, than in our Western affluent world, and therefore remarriage was a much higher priority, there are noble examples of many today who have chosen the harder path of respecting their original sacred union and, out of fear of God, have chosen not to remarry. Not remarrying is a noble choice. But for many that choice will be nearly impossible and so remarriage will be pursued. Our advice: wait and wait. Our second piece of advice: listen to the wisdom of those who love you and those who are your leaders. We are not talking about the infallibility of the church or of the absolute control of the church, but we are talking about the importance for followers of Jesus to live out of a fellowship with others that blesses and mentors weighty decisions in life.

  Eighth, what about remarriage of the guilty partner? I have not used the expression “guilty partner” up to now, but it deserves its time on the table. Our supposition is that a marriage is sometimes destroyed by the actions of one person, more often than not the act of adultery. The act is sinful, and the act may well have destroyed the marriage, and the guilty partner here is responsible. The question that emerges in nearly every church and pastoral office I know of is this one: Can the guilty partner ever remarry? There are some who believe we are to remain rigorous in this matter and prohibit the guilty partner from ever remarrying. But I wonder if this commitment to righteousness fits with the biblical teaching on repentance and forgiveness. While the guilty partner ought to undergo a serious church evaluation and then an ongoing process of counseling and guidance with discernments rendered all along, I believe a guilty person can find genuine repentance and receive forgiveness from God. Not all will agree with the next step, and this discernment is always to be rendered by the leaders and local church context—and never simply by the individual Christian—but once repentance is discerned and forgiveness granted, the guilty partner can, under the guidance of a local church, begin to pursue remarriage.

  Back now to the golf course. My golfing friend, as I learned while we played, had done about as much as anyone can to reconcile. So he kept pressing me on a simple logical point: if divorce is permissible, is remarriage permissible? As you can tell from what I have written above, which fleshes out more than what I said that day, I advised him on the basis
of how I understood the Bible that yes, his permissible divorce could lead to a permissible remarriage. Two years later he got remarried, and he has thanked me for the conversation a number of times.

  God help us!

  Notes

  1. KNT: “a legal document to prove it.”

  2. Hauerwas, Matthew, 70.

  3. See the discussion of permissions in Quarles, Sermon on the Mount, 125–27. Here is the text from 11QTemple 57:16–19: “He may not take a wife from any of the nations. Rather, he must take himself a wife from his father’s house—that is, from his father’s family. He is not to take another wife in addition to her; no, she alone shall be with him as long as she lives. If she dies, then he may take himself another wife from his father’s house, that is, his family.”

  4. On this, see M. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 17–21. See also Garland, Reading Matthew, 68–69.

  5. Life, 426–27. Josephus, too, provides an actual comment on Deut 24:1: “He who desires to be divorced from the wife who is living with him for whatsoever cause—and with mortals many such may arise—must certify in writing that he will have no further intercourse with her; for thus will the woman obtain the right to consort with another” (Ant 4.253).

  6. See also the English translation of Papyrus Yadin 18: http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Papyrus_Yadin_18:_Jewish_Marriage_Contract_in_Greek (accessed 1/11/2013).

  7. See m. Ketubbot 7:2–10.

  8. There is an entire Mishnah tractate about the bill of divorce, called Giṭṭin.

  9. On this, see Tal Ilan, Integrating Women into Second Temple History (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001), 253–62, with texts in Hebrew and English on pp. 257–59.

  10. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:528.

  11. Extensive discussions in D. Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); idem, Divorce and Remarriage in the Church: Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006); A. Cornes, Divorce and Remarriage: Biblical Principles and Pastoral Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); C. Keener, … And Marries Another: Divorce and Remarriage in the Teaching of the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991); idem, Remarriage after Divorce in Today’s Church: Three Views (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).

  12. In one form or another, the “illicit” union/marriage view, or the “incest” view, is held by a variety of scholars. Perhaps most notable is J. Fitzmyer, To Advance the Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 79–111; see also Garland, Reading Matthew, 69–70. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 209–211, advances the view that the exception is from Matthew and pertains to the context of the Gentile mission.

  13. Keener, Matthew, 190–91.

  14. This is the consensus view; see Luz, Matthew 1–7, 253–55. On adultery, see 5:27–30. Keener, Matthew, 189, defines adultery as, and observe the strenuousness of this definition, “unfaithfulness to one’s spouse or accommodating another person’s unfaithfulness to that person’s spouse” (italics added).

  15. Some have suggested that parektos, “except,” instead means “the sexual immorality clause in Deuteronomy 24:1 notwithstanding.” That is, Jesus completely undoes the Mosaic legislation that permits divorce. This view of Matt 5:32 is possible, but it is impossible for the mē epi clause in 19:9, pushing us to think “except” is the proper translation of parektos and mē epi. Thus, Jesus truly grants a permission.

  16. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:532. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 252–53, disagrees and sees the text as law.

  17. “Anonymous” and Theodore of Mopsuestia in ACCS: Matthew, 112–13. A fuller defense can be found in Cornes, Divorce and Remarriage.

  18. Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 92–98.

  19. Stott, Message, 98.

  Chapter 8

  Matthew 5:33–37

  LISTEN to the Story

  33“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37All you need to say is simply ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’;1 anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

  Listen to the text in the Story: Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:3–15; Deuteronomy 23:21–22; Matthew 23:16–22; James 5:12; 11Q19 (Temple) 53:11–54:7; Mishnah Nedarim 1:3.

  As marriage is inviolable, so honesty in words should be invariable. Jesus’ concerns here are theoretical: words were being mapped on an honesty or obligation scale by the magnitude of the source of their vow, and Jesus’ counters the scaling of words by requiring truth. Again, Jesus is using an Ethic from Beyond in a Messianic Ethic framework. Because messianic, kingdom people are honest, they do not need oaths.

  There are a few historical items behind the practicing of scaling words. To begin with, an oath or vow draws on a history of Israel’s experience in the courtroom and with judicial obligations. In the courtroom and in public, there is the command to be honest. Scaling words was influenced by another item: the prohibition of using the name of God carelessly. The most complete form of this prohibition is found in Leviticus 19:12: “Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.” The sacredness of God’s name led to the practice in Judaism of substituting words for God’s name. At this point Jesus enters into this history: the various substitutions for God’s name were not as sacred as God’s name, and that led to scaling one’s words. Four substitutions appear in our antithesis (heaven, earth, Jerusalem, head). Jesus found scales connected to various descriptions of God to be inconsistent with the sacredness of God’s name and how kingdom people were to live.2

  King Jesus presses deeper by summarizing words probably taken from Deuteronomy 23:21–23 (or even Psalm 50:14).

  If you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not be slow to pay it, for the LORD your God will certainly demand it of you and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty. Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the LORD your God with your own mouth. (Deut 23:21–23)

  Sacrifice thank offerings to God,

  fulfill your vows to the Most High. (Ps 50:14)

  At the heart of the Ten Commandments is an Israelite’s honesty about one’s neighbor (Exod 20:16). At the heart of the Bible’s ethic is telling the truth. Honesty mattered then and it matters now. Nearly two-thirds of America’s youth admit they’ve lied to a parent, teacher, or someone else in the last three months; about 60 percent admit they’ve lied to a friend or peer in the last three months; about a third admit they’ve cheated on a test in the last three months.3 As a professor at a Christian college for more than fifteen years, I have seen an increase in wandering eyes during quizzes and exams. We now (have to?) have sophisticated programs that compare student papers to Internet sources and other student papers, but even when students know their papers will be run through this program, they choose to swipe and plagiarize rather than write the paper in their own honest prose.

  From the beginning honesty was the assumption for human interactions. Without that assumption trust breaks down culture into chaos. The serpent dishonestly reframed the words of God in the garden of Eden, and Adam didn’t tell the whole truth to God (Gen 3). Abraham lied about Sarah (cf. 12:10–20); Jacob tricked Esau with twisted words (27:1–40) but was tricked in turn (29:1–30); the brothers of Joseph lied to their father about Joseph (37:12–36) … and it goes on and sadly on. Against such verbal trickery, the Bible constantly commands honesty.

  In framing honest statements in courts, Israelites took oaths that made their statements legally obligating because they implored the presence of God in the commitment—but this only
happened because verbal trickery was too common. As Matthew 23:16–22 shows, those oaths became the source for scaling honesty in words—those connected to the highest level were most honest while words uttered without a connection were less honest. This pernicious tendency is the source of Jesus’ stark and simple demand for kingdom people: invariable honesty.

  The heart of the demand of honesty is the fidelity of God to his covenant oath. “I will be your God and you will be my people,” the covenant words often repeated in one form or another in the Old Testament, express a covenant oath of loyalty by God to his people that he will be with them and for them, and he will make them into kingdom people. Honesty, then, is grounded in the covenant God made with Israel.

  EXPLAIN the Story

  Jesus summarizes what can be found in the following passages: Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 6:3–5; 19:12; Numbers 30:2–15; Deuteronomy 23:21–23; Psalms 24:4; 50:14; and Ecclesiastes 5:4. Perhaps his words combine Leviticus 19:12 with Deuteronomy 23:23. Jesus’ first expression—“Do not break your oath”—could be about swearing falsely or more likely about breaking an oath; the second expression—“fulfill to the Lord the vows [oaths] you have made”—entails a person before God alone. It could appear that Jesus is touching on laws about two kinds of verbal promises, namely, oaths and vows—the first about verbal commitments to another person or party, and the second about dedicating something to God. It seems that all of Matthew 5:33 is about oaths and not partly about oaths (5:33a) and partly about vows (5:33b, NIV).4 This would make the NIV’s use of “vow” inaccurate. Put in the simplest of terms, Jesus is saying “don’t break your oaths” (negative) and “fulfill your oaths” (positive). The vocabulary clearly indicates that oaths are in view.5