Seeking Truth Or A Loophole?
By James L. Groce
“They say unto Him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?”
The Lord has spent considerable time in discussion of the divine plan for husband and wife in the verses preceding our text. But the Pharisees aren’t interested in the divine ideal, they’re only interested in the EXCEPTION. Isn’t that how it is with people? They’re not interested in abiding by the law, they’re only interested in finding the loopholes. The Pharisees are classic cases of people looking for loopholes in God’s law. They are interested in the exception. Why? In order to accommodate their lust and their multiple divorces and adulteries.
As Christians, we have two choices. We can either listen to the world’s opinion or God’s Word. Those are the only two choices. Either we go with the flow of society and give in to their system or we hold up the Word of God and say, “This is what God requires.”
The Old Testament standard had been lowered by the so-called religious leaders as to make the practice of divorce very, very common. According to some of their teachers you could divorce your wife for burning the dinner, for putting too much salt on your food, for spinning around in the street so that someone saw her knees, you could even divorce her if you found someone prettier, because she became ‘unclean’ in your sight. You could divorce her if she was infertile or if she failed to give you a male child. In other words, you could divorce your wife for any reason at all. This was the popular view held and taught in those days.
Jesus in a confrontation with the teachers of these things basically says in Matt. 5:27-32, “You say you don’t commit adultery, but you’re the worst kind of adulterers. You proliferate adultery because of your false teaching about divorce. The person you divorce become an adulterer when she remarries and makes an adulterer of the one she marries. And when you remarry, you become an adulterer and make an adulterer of the one you marry.
God’s standard didn’t change from Adam to Christ, and it hasn’t changed from Christ to the present day. It’s a good time for us all to meditate once again on the words of Jesus in Matt. 19:4-6: “Have ye not read that he who made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said,
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder.”
“Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!” It’s very unwise to argue with God. God seeks your good so that you will be blessed if you’re obedient to His Word.
The Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery, is the divine Lawgiver’s ordinance, guarding the marriage bond. Let men beware and take exceeding care that they administer in the matter of marriage according to the divine commandment. It’s still His Word that plainly declares, “From the beginning it was not so.”
