ISPringle
Puritan Board Freshman
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.'" -Matthew 5:31-32, ESV
I do not recall where I heard it, if I did I'd go there, but I do remember hearing, or reading, somewhere that the above passage would have been taken as humorous in Jesus' time because it is some type of circular reasoning joke. Essential the joke is: Divorce is wrong because you make an adulterer out of your wife, unless of course she is already an adulterer when you divorced her.
The unless is not that you can divorce on the grounds of adultery, but rather that she's already an adulterer in that case.
I guess I'd just shut-up and accept the common teaching that divorce is OK in cases of adultery, except I simply cannot rationally put the above verse and Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her".
Jesus loved the adulterer as much as the next sinner, so I cannot really figure out how to stick these two together without concluding that one or the other has to be wrongly interpreted.
Any thoughts or help with my above issue?
Thanks!
I do not recall where I heard it, if I did I'd go there, but I do remember hearing, or reading, somewhere that the above passage would have been taken as humorous in Jesus' time because it is some type of circular reasoning joke. Essential the joke is: Divorce is wrong because you make an adulterer out of your wife, unless of course she is already an adulterer when you divorced her.
The unless is not that you can divorce on the grounds of adultery, but rather that she's already an adulterer in that case.
I guess I'd just shut-up and accept the common teaching that divorce is OK in cases of adultery, except I simply cannot rationally put the above verse and Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her".
Jesus loved the adulterer as much as the next sinner, so I cannot really figure out how to stick these two together without concluding that one or the other has to be wrongly interpreted.
Any thoughts or help with my above issue?
Thanks!