Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 19:1-30

Post last updated on April 24, 2022

 Image credit:  Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo via Wikimedia Commons

Matthew 19 reminds us that better questions often obtain better answers; but it more strikingly reminds us that the character of a question is first found in the integrity of a man’s heart. In the end, an inquirer’s ignorance is not nearly as damning as his unbelieving disposition.

This is evident in the scene recalled here. The Pharisees approach the Lord Jesus, asking a question to tempt him (verse 3). The Lord answers their question accurately, but gives no more to them than the necessary reply (verses 3-9). This may at first sound inconsequential, but is not. We all need better answers than our questions deserve.

Unsurprisingly, the Pharisees harnessed the Law to justify themselves and deny the authority of Jesus. They examine him: What had God intended and allowed under the Law? Could a man put away his wife for every cause? The disciples hear the debate, but it only serves to increase their own confusion. But they at least admit to their incomprehension: “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry” (verse 10). It seems that they cannot reconcile the Lord’s teaching with their assumptions about life. The Lord would cause them to reconsider what is normal life.

That said, their honest inquiry receives instruction that was refused to the insolent Pharisees. The Lord takes his disciples aside and instructs them privately, granting them what he withheld from the proud Pharisees (cf. Matthew 11:25). Ignorance is always better than insolence, as long as it is willing to hear. In the end, the unbelieving Pharisees received only the bare answer of Moses, for they would not consider Moses’ God (John 9:28, John 5:31-47). The disciples, however, are given glimpse of a new age, then ready to dawn.

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In fact, the entirety of this chapter highlights the misapprehensions of those who come to Jesus with a legal spirit. (Actually, this section is one of four in this chapter, all revealing that proud legal spirit in man.) Verse 3 discloses the reason for the Pharisees’ question: They came to tempt him by a question, expecting that Jesus will condemn himself with his answer. They also think they will be justified by Moses’ Law. Accordingly, the Pharisees’ question hearkens back to Deuteronomy 24:1, which reads,

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.

As others have pointed out, it may be that the Pharisees have taken offense at the Lord’s teaching on the same passage in Deuteronomy. His teaching and reference to that passage first appears in what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:31-32 we read the Lord’ instruction and comment on Deuteronomy’s command.

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

The Pharisees come, perhaps hoping to exaggerate the differences in Deuteronomy and the Lord’s own teaching in Galilee. The Mosaic Law had allowed a man to separate from his wife when he gave her a bill of divorcement, and it gave a wider license for divorce than Jesus allowed in his own teaching. Apparently, this was the foundation of the Pharisees’ charge against him, and the reason why they came to tempt him at this time.

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The Lord answers the Pharisees by highlighting how the commands of God are both moral and revelatory. They do more than define moral and legal obligation, though they do that; they also serve the interest of God’s revelation. We see explicit confirmation of this in Galatians 3:19, where Paul writes how that the Law was inaugurated and imposed upon Israel, but only until the arrival of the promise seed (Galatians 3:19). It is obvious from the Biblical record that the Law prescribed various obligations and ceremonies that had not been codified among men prior to its establishment. It is likewise evident that many of the same obligations and ceremonies that were once associated with the Sinai covenant become obsolete when the New Covenant was established.

The only point now made in this respect is that the ­­commands of scripture do more than regulate morals; they direct and reflect redemptive history. And this is exactly the kind of contrast that we see in verses 3-12. This is actually the main point of this passage. The Sinai covenant had represented one order that was giving way to a new order with the ministry of the Lord Jesus, an order that would be confirmed with his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. For this reason, there were allowances in the Law that would be denied at a later time in history. The hardness of the heart alone would no longer be an accepted reason for divorce, once the heart itself was changed by faith in the gospel. With a change in the covenant, there would follow a change in a man’s necessary responsibility toward his wife. The believer would obtain the help of the Spirit, possessing a new heart by the provisions of the New Covenant (cf. Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:26, etc.).¹Whereas it is certainly true that Israelites in the Old Testament possessed a faith in which the Law was sometimes joined unto affectionate obedience (i.e. Isaiah 51:7), that was an occasional description of the Old Testament faith. In contrast, a new heart is the confirmed gift and character of the relationship obtained in the believer by the New Covenant.

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This passage reminds us to understand doctrine by taking note of its context. If some are frustrated by the gospels’ various discussions on marriage and divorce, they only need to understand the context of each passage. Indeed, the reader can obtain a comprehensive understanding of a doctrine of marriage and divorce by reading all that the scripture records on those subjects; but need not be frustrated if a single passage does not give the clear presentation he seeks, for that may not be its main subject or intention. Matthew 19:1-12 illustrates this fact. As we see here, the discussion of marriage is actually subservient to a larger point, and the reader will miss that point if he approaches the text with his questions only. The text must guide our questions, and not only our answers. And it is surprisingly easy to miss the revelatory significance of a passage when fixated on its moral teaching.

Quite obviously, the subjects of marriage and divorce are inseparable parts of this passage, but it more fundamentally shows us how the Old Testament economy was giving way to the kingdom of heaven. The subjects of marriage and divorce becomes the illustration of the larger point, and not the points themselves. Israel’s former age—represented by Moses and governed by the Law—was giving way to a new age, where Christ Jesus replaces Moses as a mediator and prophet (cf. Deuteronomy 18:18). After all, that is part of what the Sermon on the Mount was getting at. The Israelites had “heard of old” what Moses had written, but now Jesus was God himself, speaking to Israel from another mountain than Sinai (cf. Matthew 5:21-22).²Accordingly, Matthew 5:17-48 is frequented with the repeated phrases, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time” or “Ye have heard that it hath been said” over and against its contrast, “But I say unto you.” These many repetitions contrast Moses and Jesus and emphasize Jesus’s authority as the God who speaks from the mount..

The passage, then, most fundamentally deals with the change in the covenants and their associated kingdom that was then at hand. The Sinai covenant would yield to the New Covenant; the former theocracy of Israel’s kings had given way to the kingdom of heaven. It is therefore telling that the Pharisees were concerned with the Mosaic Law (verse 3) rather than the kind of kingdom that our Lord announced. It is equally telling that the Lord contrasted the Mosaic economy to its predecessor. The Pharisees looked for order and imperatives in the Law, but the Lord pointed them to those which were first enshrined in creation, before the Law (verses 4-9).

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In other words, if the Pharisees were then taking issue with Jesus’ teaching upon the Sermon on the Mount, they must first take account of what God had first declared in Genesis. They must remember what was founded in the creation order, for the Law—at least in its Sinai covenant form—was always a temporary imposition. In fact, it is interesting and illuminating that Jesus here refers to Genesis. The one who authoritatively interpreted Moses is also the one who confirms and associates his teaching with the created order (verse 4). To deny the Sermon on the Mount in this regard, the Pharisees would also have to deny Genesis.

In this way, the text contrasts the created order over and against the Mosaic order. Each served their distinct and important revelatory purposes. That said, the scene reaches its climax when the Lord turns his attention to his disciples in verse 10. He will reveal to them what he had not revealed to the Pharisees, that which pertains to a third order—a resurrection order that will effect a new and eternal order.

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It is only in the context of the contrast of creation and Moses that the greatest surprise of this passage comes to the fore. That surprise is bound up in the single word, cause. Remember how that the Pharisees were offended that their legal rights for divorce were now modified by the Sermon on the Mount: “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause” (verse 3)? The disciples also doubted the wisdom of the Lord’s instruction. They wondered, “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry” (verse 10). In the text itself another important contrast is revealed, one that concerns the animating reason—the cause—for self-denial, which is love.

The Pharisees argued for their rights and privileges to dispense with wives according to their pleasure; but in verse 12 we have mention of someone who forgoes their privilege altogether—someone who remains single for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. The creation order was the substantial and sufficient cause of marriage—reason even for a man to leave his parents. Natural and deep affections are set aside for a wife with whom no former relations exist.

When one thinks of it in this way, he is to wonder again at the extraordinary character of marriage. Nature sufficiently predicts marriage, but love confirms it. Indeed, it is a love that disrupts and reorders the other natural loves that precede it. It is in this context that the Lord’s teaching is understood, for he is directing the disciples’ attention to another order still, one in which the resurrection and its attending kingdom is the substantial and sufficient cause of singleness. If the created order possesses the cause of marriage, the Lord taught his disciples that he was bringing about such a radical reordering of the world that some would even forego the best of creation order—marriage.

In this way Matthew 19 does not give us a full doctrine of marriage and divorce; that is not its intention. It does, however, disclose to its readers something about the way that life and its affections are reordered by the work of God in the world and within men. The progress of revelation and its history is then illustrated by marriage itself:

• Union of man and woman in marriage is the expression of the created order.
• Divorce was the permissible allowance under the Mosaic order, because of sinful dispositions.
• Adultery is the sinful rejection of the created order.
• Singleness is the allowable affirmation of the resurrection order, for marriage ceases as an institution among men after its revelatory purpose is fulfilled (Matthew 22:29-32).

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The Roman Catholic Church errs in requiring celibacy of its priests (see 1 Timothy 4:3). Some pagan religions also err, subscribing sanctity to the celibate. That is not what the scripture has in view; nevertheless, it does comprehend that some circumstances and callings will make marriage unlikely for some believers. Others will actually decline marriage for those same reasons. The Apostle Paul seems to have been such a man.

Paul understood the created order and the resurrection order. The Christian must live with both of these in mind. Paul warned against prescribed celibacy (1 Timothy 4:3), but he also recommended singleness to some (1 Corinthians 7:8, 15-33). He reminded others still that marriage was a picture of Christ and his own beloved church (Ephesians 5:22-33). Even so, he would have been aware of the Lord’s own teaching, that human marriage, too, is a provisional institution, and that the present will yield to eternity (Matthew 22:29-32). As he reminds the Corinthians,

But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

The Mosaic Law allowed divorce, something never apprehended in the created order; but the kingdom of heaven recognizes and even sanctions singleness, something unappreciated by men tied too tightly to this fleeting world. It is more than unfortunate—it is, in fact, very wicked—that singleness seems stranger to many people than divorce. The Pharisees looked for a legitimate cause for divorce (verse 3); the Lord reminded his disciples that the kingdom of heaven was a worthy cause for any sacrifice, including that of marriage. He makes us to comprehend eternity, something better than Eden.