What God Has Joined Together, Let Not Man Separate, Part 1 -piper

~~[b]~~What God Has Joined Together, Let Not Man Separate, Part 1[/b]
~~[i]~~by John Piper[/i]

Mark 10:1-12

And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. 2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

As we come to the end of our series on marriage—this week and next week—it is fitting that we think together about the implications of the meaning of marriage for divorce and remarriage. For many of you who have walked through a divorce and are now single or remarried, or whose parents were divorced, or some other loved one, the mere mention of the word carries a huge weight of sorrow and loss and tragedy and disappointment and anger and regret and guilt. Few things are more painful than divorce. It cuts to the depths of personhood unlike any other relational gash. It is emotionally more heart-wrenching than the death of a spouse. Death is usually clean pain. Divorce is usually dirty pain. In other words, the enormous loss of a spouse in death is compounded in divorce by the ugliness of sin and moral outrage at being so wronged.

The Devastation of Divorce

It is often long years in coming, and long years in the settlement and in the adjustment. The upheaval of life is immeasurable. The sense of failure and guilt and fear can torture the soul. Like the psalmist, night after night a spouse falls asleep with tears (Psalm 6:6). Work performance is hindered. People don’t know how to relate to you any more and friends start to withdraw. You can feel like you wear a big scarlet D on your chest. The loneliness is not like the loneliness of being a widow or a widower or person who has never been married. It is in class by itself. (Which is one reason why so many divorced people find each other.) A sense of devastated future can be all consuming. Courtroom controversy compounds the personal misery. And then there is often the agonizing place of children. Parents hope against hope that the scars will not cripple the children or ruin their marriages some day. Tensions over custody and financial support deepen the wounds. And then the awkward and artificial visitation rights can lengthen the tragedy over decades. And add to all of this that it happens in America to over four out of every ten married couples.
Responding to Divorce

There are two ways to respond lovingly and caringly to this situation. One is to come alongside divorced persons and stand by them as they grieve and repent of any sinful part of their own. And then to stay by them through the transitions and help them find a way to enjoy the forgiveness and the strength for new obedience that Christ obtained when he died and rose again.

The other way to respond lovingly and caringly is to articulate a hatred of divorce, and why it is against the will of God, and do all we can biblically to keep it from happening. Compromises on the sacredness and life-long permanence of marriage—positions that weaken the solidity of the covenant-union—may feel loving in the short run, but wreak havoc over the decades. Preserving the solid framework of the marriage covenant with high standards may feel tough in the short run, but produces ten thousand blessings for future generations. I hope that both of these ways of loving and caring will flourish at Bethlehem.

The Covenant Remains till Christ Removes

One of the reasons that I have emphasized the ultimate meaning of marriage so much in this series is that the meaning of marriage is such that human beings cannot legitimately break it. The ultimate meaning of marriage is the representation of the covenant keeping love between Christ and his church. To live this truth and to show this truth is what it means, most deeply, to be married. This is the ultimate reason why marriage exists. There are other reasons, but this is the main one. Therefore, if Christ ever abandons and discards his church, then a man may divorce his wife. And if the blood-bought church, under the new covenant, ever ceases to be the bride of Christ, then a wife may legitimately divorce her husband. But as long as Christ keeps his covenant with his bride, the church, and as long as the church, by the sustaining grace of God, remains the chosen people of Jesus Christ, then the very meaning of marriage will include: What God has joined, only God can separate, not man.
Getting Serious about Sacredness

O how I pray that one of the effects of this series will be to make us as a people profoundly serious about the sacredness of marriage. The world treats this diamond like just another stone. But in fact, marriage is sacred beyond what most people imagine. It is a unique creation of God, a dramatic portrayal of God’s relation to his people, and a display of the glory of God’s covenant keeping love. Against all the diminished attitudes about marriage in the world—Jesus’ world and our world—Jesus’ words about marriage are breathtaking. This is the work of God, not man, and it does not lie in man’s prerogative to end it.
Jesus Knows His Moses

In our text in Mark 10:1ff., the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” That’s the question. Today, people don’t even ask the question. It is assumed. It’s not only lawful, but easy and cheap. Just Google the word “divorce” and see what you get (“Easy Online Divorce,” “Simple Divorce Online,” “No Fault Divorce, $28.95,” “Easy Online Divorce, $299”). Let me say cautiously and seriously: Those who scorn the design of God and the glory of Christ, and build their lives and businesses and whole industries around making divorce cheap and easy are under the wrath of God, and need to repent and seek his forgiveness through Christ before it is too late.
Jesus knew that the Pharisees in general were an adulterous generation (Matthew 12:39). He knew how they defended their divorces. So he lead them to that very place and asks them in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” He takes them to Moses. But they should be careful here. Moses didn’t just write Deuteronomy, which they are about to quote. He also wrote Genesis. Verse 4: They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” That’s true. It’s a reference to Deuteronomy 24:1.

What will Jesus say in response to this defense of divorce? Verse 5: Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.” This is amazing. It implies, in other words, there are laws in the Old Testament that are not expressions of God’s will for all time, but expressions of how best to manage sin in a particular people at a particular time. Divorce is never commanded and never instituted in the Old Testament. But it was permitted and regulated. Like polygamy was permitted and regulated, and certain kinds of slavery were permitted and regulated. And Jesus says here that this permission was not a reflection of God’s ideal for his people; it was a reflection of the hardness of the human heart. “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.”

Back to Creation

Then Jesus takes the Pharisees (and us) back to God’s will in creation and quotes Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 and shows us the way it was supposed to be. Verses 6-8: “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” That’s the end of his Scripture quoting. Now the question is: What will he do with it? Clearly Jesus sees a tension between Deuteronomy 24 and Genesis 1 and 2. The but at the beginning of verse 6 (“But from the beginning of creation . . .) means: God’s will about divorce in Genesis 1-2 is not the same as his will expressed in Deuteronomy 24.
So the question is: Which way will Jesus go? Will he say: Well, there is still hardness of heart today, even in my disciples, and so Deuteronomy expresses God’s will for Christians today? Or will he say, I am the Messiah, the Christ. The Son of Man has come into the world to gather a people who by faith in him and union with him display the true meaning of marriage in the way they keep their marriage covenant? Will the emphasis fall on the fact that in the church there is still hardness of heart, or will the emphasis fall on the fact that the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17)?

Jesus’ Three Conclusions

Jesus draws three conclusions in verse 8b and verse 9. He says (1) in verse 8b, “So they are no longer two but one flesh.” In other words, since God said in Genesis 2:24, “The two shall become one flesh,” therefore Jesus concludes for his day and ours: “So they are no longer two but one flesh.” Marriage is that kind of union—very profound, just as Christ and the church are one body (Romans 12:5).
Then (2) the second conclusion Jesus draws is that this union of one flesh is the creation, the work, of God, not man. He says in verse 9, “What therefore God has joined together . . .” So even though two humans decide to get married. And a human pastor or priest or justice of the peace or some other person solemnizes and legalizes the union, all that is secondary to the main actor, namely, God. “What God has joined together . . .” God is the main actor in the event of marriage.

Then (3) Jesus draws the conclusion at the end of verse 9: “Let not man separate.” The word translated “man” here (“Let not man separate”) is not the word for male over against female, but the word for human over against divine. The contrast is: “If God joined the man and woman in marriage, then mere humans have no write to separate what he joined. That’s Jesus third conclusion from Genesis 1 and 2. Since God created this sacred union with this sacred purpose to display the unbreakable firmness of his covenant love for his people, it simply does not lie within man’s rights to destroy what God created.

Finished with the Pharisees

That’s the end of the Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees about divorce. He has more to say to his disciples, but he is done with the Pharisees. They ask no more. He tells no more. They came with their question. Jesus gave his answer. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” And Jesus answers: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” No. It is not lawful. It contradicts the ultimate meaning of marriage.
Of course, someone might say, it has always contradicted the meaning of marriage—even when the permission of Deuteronomy was written. But Jesus is not thinking that way. He is calling his followers to a higher standard than the compromise with hardness of heart in Deuteronomy.

Jesus Didn’t Come to Reaffirm Moses

Jesus did not come to simply affirm the Mosaic law. He came to fulfill it in his own consuming, forgiving, justifying obedience and death, and then to take his ransomed and forgiven and justified followers into the higher standards that were really intended when all of Moses is properly understood. Remember Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And then he gives six examples of what this radical obedience will look like in his disciples. Here are just two: 1) “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder . . . but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22). 2) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart’” (Matthew 5:27-28). And there are four more like this in Matthew 5.
Jesus Came to Fulfill Moses

In other words, Jesus came not only to fulfill the law in his own work, he came to take his people to a radical understanding of the law and a radical obedience to the law that is not based on law but on himself, and therefore reflects the fullness of what God wills for us—and especially reflects the gospel, the covenant-keeping work of Christ at Calvary for his church. Marriage among Christians is mainly meant to tell the truth about the gospel—that Christ dies for his church who loves him, and never breaks his covenant with his bride.
In essence, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You are permitted to divorce.’ But I say to you, ‘I have come to conquer the hardness of your heart. I have come to die for your sins. I have come to count you as righteous. I have come to show you the drama that marriage was meant to represent in my sacrificial, covenant-keeping love for my sinful bride. I have come to give you the power to stay married, or to stay single, so that either way you keep your promises and show what my covenant is like, and how sacred is the covenant bond of marriage.”

So when the Pharisees are gone and Jesus is in the house with his disciples, he puts the matter even more bluntly and more radically. Mark 10:10-12: “And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’”

For Next Week

Mark does not report how stunned the disciples were at these words; Matthew does. I will try to show more fully from two important passages in Matthew (5:32; 19:9) and three in 1 Corinthians (7:10-11, 12-16, 39) and one in Romans (7:1-3) why I think we should take Jesus at face value here, and counsel against all remarriage after divorce while the spouse is living. That’s what I think Jesus calls us to as his followers. Keep your marriage vows in such a way as to tell the truth about the unbreakable covenant love of Christ.
Divorce and the Gospel

But in closing today I want to emphasize that what Jesus says here in verses 10-12 is incredibly good news—even to those who have been divorced and are remarried. Here’s why: Jesus says, Don’t divorce your spouse and marry someone else. If you do, you’ve committed adultery. Why is it adultery? Ultimately, it is adultery because it betrays the truth about Christ that marriage is meant to display. Jesus never, never, never does that to his bride, the church. He never forsakes her. He never abandons her. He never abuses her. He always loves her. He always takes her back when she wanders. He always is patient with her. He always cares for her and provides for her and protects her and, wonder of wonders, delights in her. And you—you who are married once, married five times, married never—if you repent and trust Christ—receive him as the treasure who bore your punishment and became your righteousness—you are in the bride. And that is how he relates to you. “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sin’s through his name (Acts 10:43).
The radical call of Jesus never to divorce and remarry is a declaration of the gospel by which people who have failed may be saved. If Christ were not this way, we would all be undone. But this is how true, how faithful, how forgiving he is. Therefore, we are saved.

Ahhh... do not forget PART 2 my dear brother.

Part 2
By John Piper July 2, 2007

Matthew 19:3-12
~~[i]~~And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” 10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it. [/i]

I said last time that there are two ways to be compassionate and caring in relation to divorce—not at all meaning that you choose between them, but that we must pursue both. One is to come along side divorced persons while they grieve and (wherever necessary) repent, and to stay by them through the painful transitions, and to fold them into our lives, and to help them find a way to enjoy the forgiveness and the strength for new kinds of obedience that Christ has already obtained for them when he died and rose again. That’s one way to love. And I pray we will all pursue it. The other way to respond with care and compassion is to articulate a hatred for divorce, and why it is against the will of God, and to do all we can biblically to keep it from happening.

~~[b]~~Keeping an Eternal Perspective[/b]
One of the reasons in the past few weeks that I preached twice on the dignity and worth and Christ-exalting potential of singleness is because I know that divorce throws thousands of people into that situation, many of them against their will. If we are going to stand for marriage as the life-long commitment to one living spouse, then we must be prepared to love single, divorced people with all our hearts and homes and families. And we must keep a clear, biblical, eternal perspective, and remind ourselves repeatedly that compared to eternal life with God, this earthly life—single or married, divorced or not—is very short. James says, “You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). If a person is going to remain single to honor his or her marriage vows, that perspective will be crucial.

~~[b]~~God Makes and God Breaks[/b]
Last week I took the stand that if the most ultimate meaning of marriage is to represent the unbreakable covenant-love between Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:22-33), then no human being has a right to break a marriage covenant. When the impossible day comes that Christ breaks his vow, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), then, on that day, a human being may break his marriage covenant. This explains why Jesus does not settle for the divorce provision of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (Mark 10:3-9), but says, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9). In other words, since God is the one who decisively makes every marriage, only God has the right to break a marriage. And he does it by death. Which is why the traditional and biblical marriage vows have one and only one limitation: “till death do us part,” or, “as long as we both shall live.”

~~[b]~~Four Crucial Questions[/b]
As you know, when a person takes such a stand on the inviolability and sacredness of marriage, and the illegitimacy of divorce and remarriage while the spouses are alive, there are many questions, both biblical and practical, that have to be answered. So what I want to do in this message is to try to answer some of the more pressing ones.

~~[b]~~~~[i]~~1. First, does death end a marriage in such a way that it is legitimate for a spouse to remarry? [/b][/i]
The answer is yes, and no one has seriously questioned it. One key text is Romans 7:1-3:
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. (See below on 1 Corinthians 7:39)

In other words, Paul says that to divorce and remarry while your spouse is living is adulterous, but to remarry after the death of a spouse is not. I think the reason for this is that Jesus made plain that in the resurrection there is no marriage (Matthew 22:30). So if a person said it was wrong to remarry after the death of a spouse, it would seem to imply that marriage is meant to be valid beyond death and in the resurrection. But it’s not. Death is the decisive and eternal end of marriage. The spouse who has died has moved out of the earthly sphere where marriage happens, and is no longer married. And therefore the spouse on earth is no longer married. Therefore remarriage after the death of a spouse is not only legitimate, but speaks a clear biblical truth—after death there is no marriage.

~~[b]~~~~[i]~~2. Second, if a divorced person has already married again, should he or she leave the later marriage? [/b][/i]
The reason this question comes with such force is that Jesus speaks of the second marriage as committing adultery. Luke 16:18, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

My answer is that remarriage, while a divorced spouse is still living, is an act of unfaithfulness to the marriage covenant. In that sense, to remarry is adultery. We promised, “till death do us part” because that is what God says marriage is, and even if our spouse breaks his or her covenant vows, we will not break ours.

But I do not think that a person who remarries against God’s will, and thus commits adultery in this way, should later break the second marriage. The marriage should not have been done, but now that it is done, it should not be undone by man. It is a real marriage. Real vows have been made and sexual union has happened.

And that real covenant of marriage may be purified by the blood of Jesus and set apart for God. In other words, I don’t think that a couple who repents and seeks God’s forgiveness, and receives his cleansing, should think of their lives as ongoing adultery, even though, in the eyes of Jesus, that’s how the relationship started.

There are several reasons for why I believe this:

1) First, back in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, where the permission for divorce was given in the law of Moses, it speaks of the divorced woman being “defiled” in the second marriage so that it would be an abomination for her to return to her first husband, even if her second husband died. This language of defilement is similar to Jesus’ language of adultery. And yet the second marriage stood. It was defiling in some sense, yet it was valid.

2) Another reason I think remarried couples should stay together is that when Jesus met the woman of Samaria, he said to her, “You have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18). When Jesus says, “The one you have now is not your husband,” he seems to imply that the other five were. Not that it’s right to divorce and marry five times. But the way Jesus speaks of it, it sounds as though he saw them as real marriages. Illicit. Adulterous to enter into, but real. Valid.

3) And the third reason I think remarried couples should stay together is that even vows that should not be made, once they are made, should generally be kept. I don’t want to make that absolute, but there are passages in the Bible that speak of vows being made that should not have been made, but were right to keep (like Joshua’s vow to the Gibeonites in Joshua 9). God puts a very high value on keeping our word, even where it gets us in trouble (“[The godly man] swears to his own hurt and does not change,” Psalm 15:4). In other words, it would have been more in keeping with God’s revealed will not to remarry, but adding the sin of another covenant breaking does not please God more.1

There are marriages in this church that are second marriages for one or both partners which, in my view should not have happened, and are today godly marriages—marriages which are clean and holy, and in which forgiven, justified husbands and wives please God by the way they relate to each other. As forgiven, cleansed, Spirit-led followers of Jesus, they are not committing adultery in their marriage. It began as it should not have, and has become holy.

~~[b]~~~~[i]~~3. Third, if an unbelieving spouse insists on leaving a believing spouse, what should the believing spouse do? [/b][/i]

Paul’s answer in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 goes like this:
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord [which I think means, I don’t have a specific command from the historical teachings of Jesus, but I am led by his Spirit]) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. [Which I take to mean that marriage is such a holy union in God’s eyes that a believer, a child of God, is not defiled by having sexual relations with an enemy of the cross; and the children are not born with any kind of special contamination because the father or mother is an enemy of Christ. They’re not saved by being married to a believer or born to a believer, but they are set apart for proper and holy use in the marriage.]2 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

So the answer of this passage is that if divorce is forced on a believer by an unbeliever, the believer should not make war on the unbeliever to make the unbeliever stay. The reason Paul gives for this is in verse 15b, “God has called you to peace.” I do not believe this text teaches that we are free to remarry when this happens. Some take the words, “In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved,” to mean: “is free to remarry.”

There are several reasons why I don’t think it means that:
1) When Paul says in verse 15, “In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved (or bound),” I think he means, “not enslaved to stay married when the unbeliever over time insists on leaving and sues for divorce.” He’s not saying, “The brother or sister is not enslaved to stay single—and thus free to remarry,” because Paul, the lover of singleness, would not have spoken of singleness as a state of slavery or bondage. It is very unlikely Paul would talk like that.

2) The second reason I don’t think he is saying the abandoned spouse is free to remarry is that he just pointed us in the opposite direction in verses 10-11, “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.” With a statement like that in front of me (“if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband”), I am not inclined to think Paul is supporting remarriage four verses later.

3) The third reason I don’t think he is supporting remarriage when he says, “the brother or sister is not bound,” is that Paul’s argument in the next verse (v. 16) doesn’t support that. It supports freedom to accept divorce peacefully, not freedom to remarry. Verse 16 says, “For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” In other words, you don’t know, and therefore you can’t use that as an argument to create an ugly fight to stay married. So the words in verse 15, “In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved,” mean you are not enslaved to this marriage when your unbelieving spouse demands out, because you have no assurance that fighting to stay in will save him.

4) And a fourth reason for believing Paul upholds Jesus’ ideal of no remarriage after divorce while the estranged spouse is alive is verse 39: “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” So it seems to me that Paul and Jesus are of one mind that followers of Jesus are radically devoted to one husband and one wife as long as they both shall live. This ideal tells the gospel truth most clearly: Christ died for his bride and never forsakes her.

~~[b]~~~~[i]~~4. Fourth, the last question we barely have time for is: Are there no exceptions to the prohibition of remarriage while the spouse is living? [/b][/i]

My answer is no. But I am very much in the minority of biblical students, and even among Bible-believing scholars and pastors. So let’s turn very briefly to Matthew 19 to see the main argument for the exception of adultery—that is, the argument that when there has been adultery against a spouse he or she is free to divorce and remarry. Matthew 19:3-12 is very much like the words of Jesus we saw last week in Mark 10:1-12. There are two main differences. The first one is in verse 9 where there is an exception clause: “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” Most scholars say that the words “except for sexual immorality” mean that if there has been adultery, the aggrieved spouse is free to divorce and remarry.

~~[b]~~Piper’s Position[/b]
I don’t think that is what Jesus meant. There is no time to give the fairly involved explanation why. For that I refer you to Divorce & Remarriage: A Position Paper. In a few sentences, since Jesus does not use the word “adultery” here (when he says “except for sexual immorality”), which he uses elsewhere (15:9) in distinction to this word, but instead uses the word typically referring to “fornication” (see especially John 8:41), I think what Jesus is doing is warning his readers that this absolute prohibition against remarriage does not apply to the situation of betrothal, where fornication may have happened.

Matthew is the one gospel that tells about Joseph’s intention to “divorce” his betrothed Mary because he thought she had committed fornication. And Matthew says that Joseph was “just” in doing this, not adulterous: “being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:19). Matthew is telling us that Jesus’ warning that remarriage is adulterous does not apply to Joseph’s kind of situation.

~~[b]~~Bethlehem’s Position[/b]
This view is not widely held. And not all the elders at Bethlehem over the years have shared this conviction. That is why we do not make my own understanding the standard for church discipline, but rather a standard we can all agree on. This elder position is found in the paper called A Statement on Divorce & Remarriage in the Life of Bethlehem Baptist Church.

So the view that I have been explaining and trying to show from scripture for the last two weeks is mine and does not represent the official position of our church in all its details. The elders all agree that marriage, as God designed it, is vastly more serious and sacred than our culture makes it out to be. And we agree that, if there is any biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage, the grounds are only unrepentant adultery and protracted desertion. As with other matters, we live with each other in peace, in spite of this disagreement.

Our united prayer for the people of Bethlehem and those that we care about outside, is that we all recognize the deepest and highest meaning of marriage—not sexual intimacy, as good as that is, not friendship, as good as that is, not mutual helpfulness, as good as that is, not childbearing and childrearing, as good as that is, but the flesh-and-blood display in the world of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. That is what we call you to. Display that. Tell the truth about that in your marriages and your singleness.

~~[b]~~Keeping Covenant Through the Gospel[/b]
And we believe that through the gospel God gives us the power we need to love each other in this covenant-keeping way, because in Matthew 19:11, after his radical call to faithfulness, Jesus said, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.” And it is given to those who follow Christ. We are not left alone. He is with us to help us. If we have been sinned against, he will make it right sooner or later. And give us the grace to flourish while we wait. And if we have sinned, he will give the grace to repent and receive forgiveness and move forward in radical new obedience.

The gospel of Christ crucified for our sins is the foundation of our lives. Marriage exists to display it. And when marriage breaks down, the gospel is there to forgive and heal and sustain until he comes, or until he calls.

FOOTNOTES
1 The imposed divorces of Ezra 10:6ff are an exception to this rule that is probably owing to the unique situation of ethnic Israel living among idolatrous pagan peoples and breaking God’s law not to intermarry with them. We know from 1 Corinthians 7:13 and 1 Peter 3:1-6 that the Christian answer to mixed marriages is not divorce.

2 I found Paul K. Jewett's Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, pp. 122-138, very helpful on this passage.