Well, here I go again. I've had this objection to the accepted understanding of a biblical passage for a long time, though I've thought maybe I'm just not getting something about it that would change my mind, and since it came up again I wanted to see if I could get to the bottom of it once and for all.
This is Matthew 5:32 where Jesus says "But I say unto you that if a man put away his wife, save for the cause of fornication, he causes her to comitt adultery..."
This verse is interpreted to mean that forniicatiobn is a legitimate reason for diverose. I don't read it that way and I wantedd to know if everybody does or if some see it the wsay I do. I foudn a three part series on this passage by John MacArthur and it seemed from some of the early statements he makes that he might end up saying what I've been thinking so I listened to the whole thing and he finally gets to a direct statement about that verse at the very end pf Part three:
JOHN MACARTHUR - Divorce and Remarriage, Part 3 (Matthew 5:31-32) - YouTube
that's Parrt 3, I thought I had Part 1 but I guess I lost it. If you start at the f beginning it will roll over to the second and then the third parts, but maybe starting at part 3 is enough anyway for my purposes.
Throughout his discussion he mentions many times that there was only one legitimate reason for divorce given by Moses or by Jesus or by any of the New Testament writers, yet as he quoted passage after passage I saw nothing that seemed to me to say anything like that. Where does it say divorce is not condoned except for the cause of sexual sin or fornication or adulter? Nowhere. What am I missing? The ONLY place it seems to be said, and he finally seems to be saying this too, is in Matthew 5:32, "He who puts away his wife, except for the cause o fornication, causes her to commit adulter."
And that is the common interpretation that I just don't see at all there. What I see there is a simple logical point: if the cause of the man's putting away his wife is fornication, which is the same thing as adultery, as MadArthur also makes clear, then of course divrocing her isn't going to cause her to commit adultery becaused she's already committed it. It's a simple logical point. If you divorce her for any other cause THEN she will commit adultery by remarrying, but if the cause IS adultery, just logically speaking you won't cause her to commit it by divorcing her. The man she marries will commit adultery in marrying her and the husband who divorces her will commit adultery when he remarries, but the woman who is divorced for committing adultery won't be made to commit it by the divorce because she's allrady committed it.
I read that verse over and over and over again and that's all I can get out of it. It's a simple logical point, it is not an "esxception clause" to the prohibition on divorce which is otherwise all-encompassing.
MacArthur's discussion otherwise is his usual terrific thoroughly biblical discussion. I learned a lot from it and I'm impressed at his seweing it as part of the discussion about adultery which starts in verse 27. I think he's right about that.
But I've still got my objection to the interpretation of verse 32 and I continue to be pe rather bewildered at anyone's every getting that interpreation out of it. MacArthur makes a great case for even adultery's not being a legitimate reason for divorce despite what he sees as this exception clause that appears to allow it, but nevertheless I don't think it allows it and I stil ldon't see how anybody gets that out of it.
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