Matthew 19


Divorce

¹When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. ²Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
³Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
⁴"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' ⁵and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? ⁶So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
⁷"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
⁸Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
¹⁰The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."
¹¹Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. ¹²For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

Matthew 19:1-12

Explanation:

THE FINAL JOURNEY (19:1-22:46)
Jesus continues to face conflicts with the establishment and misunderstanding among his disciples, but especially once he arrives in Jerusalem, the conflicts with the municipal aristocracy-the local religious and political establishment backed by the Roman Empire-grow more intense. Without an army to support him, Jesus challenges the leadership in Jerusalem, an act that would, apart from God's intervention, inevitably invite his execution.





Inverting the World's Values (19:1-20:16)
Jesus' male contemporaries valued the great and powerful; Jesus summoned status-seeking men to love their wives and children. The world valued wealth; Jesus summoned his followers to sacrifice all for the kingdom, caring for the poor (19:21; compare 6:19-24). Only those who prepared for such sacrifices could enter the coming kingdom.


Grounds for Divorce in God's Law (19:1-12)
The hardhearted person who cannot forgive or live in proper relation to others in Christ's body (18:1-35) will also despise weaker people in society-in Jesus' day, these included wives (19:1-12; compare Mal 2:14-16) and children (Mt 19:13-15). By contrast, Jesus, who is not hardhearted, remains unimpressed by worldly status (vv. 16-22). When we hold grudges against a genuinely repentant spouse and remain hardhearted toward her or him-whether or not we officially cast the person away-we hinder our own communication with God (1 Pet 3:7-12) and ultimately can invite our own damnation (Mt 18:34-35).
It is thus no coincidence that in Matthew Jesus' teaching on marital commitment directly follows his teaching on forgiveness (18:21-35), just as in Mark it follows a discussion of sinning against a "little one" (Mk 9:42-50; compare Mt 18:7-9). The more intimate the relationship, the deeper the wounds of interpersonal friction sear; marriage without forgiveness and reconciliation would be difficult. Some of Jesus' contemporaries for this reason either emotionally neglected or divorced their wives; many of our contemporaries refuse to form close bonds of commitment to begin with. This passage provides a number of essential principles.

Jesus Summons Us to Work Toward God's Ideals (19:1-6)

God wants us to work for the purposes he intended for the world before it was marred by sin. Matthew introduces the setting of Jesus' debate in a manner similar to Mark 10:1, but again notes Jesus' healings (19:1-2). The religious elite, perhaps provoked again by Jesus' indisputable signs (compare 9:34; 12:14, 24; 14:36-15:1; 15:38; 16:1), try to lure him into a debate on the sorts of issues in which they had sharpened their own debating skills.

The two main schools of Pharisaic teachers debated the meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1, in which a man finds "any matter of indecency" (my translation) in his wife and hence divorces her. The School of Shammai interpreted Deuteronomy 24 as indicating that a man could divorce his wife for the cause of unfaithfulness ("indecency"); the School of Hillel understood the passage to mean that a man could divorce his wife for any cause, even burning his toast ("any matter"-m. Gittin 9:10; Sipre Deut. 269.1.1). In practice both schools agreed that the law at least often granted the man a right to divorce, regrettable as divorce was (as in b. Sanhedrin 22a).

Jesus, however, circumvents their whole argument based on Deuteronomy 24. The ultimate issue should not be the right to divorce, but God's original desire for husbands and wives to be one flesh (compare Belkin 1940:231); "one flesh" is the language of family ties and alliances (as in 2 Sam 5:1). The Genesis principle from which Jesus draws this application goes beyond opposing divorce; it opposes marital disharmony altogether. Indeed, the purpose of the Deuteronomy 24 law itself was probably "to check haste in divorce" (Gundry 1982:380), hence to provide some legal protection for the wife (Luck 1987:109; compare Coiner 1968:368-69). Jesus' call to follow and proclaim him comes first (Mt 10:34-39; 19:27-30), but one's relationship with a spouse must take priority over any other relationship but one's relationship with Christ.

Although his opponents claim Scripture for their purposes, Jesus challenges their actual knowledge of Scripture by showing that they are proof texting rather than reading it in light of God's whole plan: Haven't you read . . . ? (v. 4; compare 12:3; 21:16, 42; 22:31). Some Pharisees might have considered Jesus "liberal" (as we would put it) in his interpretations, but his objection was not to Scripture but to human traditions of interpretation (15:2-9; compare 5:17-20; 8:4; 22:24, 32); here he even attributes a saying of the biblical narrator directly to God (19:4-5; J. Wenham 1977:28).

Some People Interpret the Bible in a Way That Treats Others Unjustly (19:7-8)

God sometimes allowed what was less than ideal because people's hard hearts made the ideal unattainable (for example, Ex 13:17; 1 Sam 12:12-13). To be able to exercise some restraint over human injustice, Moses' civil laws regulated some institutions rather than seeking to abolish them altogether: divorce, polygyny, the avengers of blood, and slavery (Keener 1992b:192-96). Jewish lawyers themselves recognized that God had allowed some behavior as a concession to human weakness (Daube 1959).

Nevertheless, Jesus' opponents here assume that whatever the law addresses it permits (Mt 19:7). Jesus responds that Moses permitted this merely as a concession to Israel's hard hearts, implying that his questioners who exploit this concession also have hard hearts. Thus in Matthew (in contrast to Mark) the Pharisees even exploit Moses' concession as a command (Gundry 1982:380). American slaveholders were similarly sure that the practice of slavery in biblical times proved the Bible's approval of slavery (Sawyer 1858), the same way Muslim slaveholders applied the Qur'an (Gordon 1989:xi; B. Lewis 1990:78). Some husbands today twist biblical teachings to justify abusing their wives (see, for example, Alsdurf and Alsdurf 1989). And some churches use Jesus' words in this very passage-words that may have been meant to protect an innocent Jewish wife from being wrongfully divorced by her husband (Kysar and Kysar 1978:43; France 1985:280; M. Davies 1993:54)-to batter innocent parties in divorces. Human nature has changed very little in two millennia.

An Exception for the Innocent Party (19:9)

God's ideal was always that we should avoid divorce; the preservation of a marriage depends on both wills, however, and one partner can sometimes end a marriage unilaterally against the other's will (see comment on 1:19). Roman law permitted either party to divorce the other; Jewish law permitted the husband to divorce the wife, regardless of the wife's wishes (Keener 1991a:51).

Matthew mentions an exception to the general rule about divorce: except for marital unfaithfulness, or literally (and more ambiguously) except for porneia, sexual immorality. The NIV probably rightly interprets the sense for this context, which provides a specific exception for those already married. When Matthew speaks of this exception, his readers very probably would have understood this as a legal charge (as in Quint. 7.4.11; Suet. Julius 6, 74), hence as referring to unfaithfulness; thus, for example, the wife's adultery exempted the husband from returning her funds to her (Safrai 1974-1976b:790). Jewish and Roman law both required divorce for these grounds (Safrai 1974-1976b:762; see comment on 1:19). Matthew's audience would thus probably interpret these words in line with the typical meaning of "infidelity," namely, sexual unfaithfulness to the marriage, as grounds for divorce. Mark and Luke probably could assume such an exception without explicitly stating it (Carson 1984:418). As France puts it (1985:124): To repudiate a wife after she had committed adultery was therefore simply the recognition that the marriage had already been terminated by the creation of a new union. . . . The Matthaean exceptive clause is . . . making explicit what any Jewish reader would have taken for granted when Jesus made the apparently unqualified pronouncements of Mark 10:9-12.

I believe that most other views of porneia in this text fail to treat Matthew's specific cultural setting adequately (taking into account the "charge") beyond their own proposal. Most of these views also give porneia ("immorality," "infidelity") a more restricted meaning than it normally bears unless explicitly qualified, which it is not here (as noted by many commentators, such as Hagner 1993:124). They also miss how such a term (used in its unqualified, general sense) would function in a usual legal context (see above). Most views other than the infidelity view imply that Matthew permits divorce only when the original marriage is not valid, but divorce was unnecessary in the case of invalid marriages; further, such marriages were not common enough to warrant Matthew's mention.

"Except for infidelity" may modify Jesus' statement about divorce rather than remarriage (Heth and Wenham 1984:117; G. Wenham 1984 and 1986; compare against this position Murray 1953:39-43), but if it does, it does so precisely because in Jesus' graphic statement it is the validity of the divorce that is in question. No one permitted remarriage if a divorce was invalid, but a valid divorce by definition included the right to remarry, as is attested by ancient divorce contracts (see, for example, m. Gittin 9:3; CPJ 2:10-12, 144; Carmon 1973:90-91, 200-201) and the very meaning of the term (besides sources in Keener 1991a, see, for example, Jos. Ant. 4.253; Blomberg 1992:111). Jesus' point is at any rate not to break up second and third marriages (even for guilty parties)-as if the hyperbolic element in his graphic statement might be missed-but to underline in no uncertain terms the sanctity of marriage and our solemn responsibility to preserve it when this is at all possible. Thus most conservative Christian writers acknowledge some cases where divorce and remarriage are permitted (for example, Dobson 1986:68; Adams 1980:86-87).

Remaining Single Is Sometimes the Price of Following Jesus (19:10-12)

The disciples are concerned about the danger of marrying without an escape clause, and Jesus responds to their question (Carson 1984:418-19; France 1985:282). Parents arranged marriages, and in Galilee at least prospective spouses could not spend time alone until after the wedding (Safrai 1974-1976b:756-57; Finkelstein 1962:1:45). Then, more so than today, marriage partners could not know in advance how their spouse would turn out. To marry without the possibility of divorce in a painful marriage seemed worse than not marrying at all! Responding to this objection, Jesus replied that some would indeed be better off not marrying; perhaps because of the intensity of their calling, it would be difficult for them to find a compatible spouse who would share their commitment (this is not only an ancient situation).

Jesus' remark about celibacy is graphic and would certainly seize the attention of Jewish listeners; Jewish people did not allow eunuchs into the covenant (Deut 23:1; though compare Is 56:4-5; Tannehill 1975:136-37). Although some sectarians in the wilderness may have preferred celibacy, mainstream Jewish society regarded marriage and childbearing as solemn responsibilities (Keener 1991a:72-78). A metaphor of such shame and sacrifice testifies to the value of the kingdom of God for which anyone would pay such a price (Tannehill 1975:138-40). By embracing both shame and temporary self-control, Joseph to a lesser extent models the nature of this demand (1:25; compare 1 Cor 7).
 

Matthew 19


¹³Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.
¹⁴Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." ¹⁵When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

The Rich Young Man

¹⁶Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"
¹⁷"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."
¹⁸"Which ones?" the man inquired.
¹⁹Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"
²⁰"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"
²¹Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
²²When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Matthew 19:13-22

Explanation:

The Kingdom Belongs to Children (19:13-15)
Jesus here reiterates his teaching in 18:1-6, which his disciples have apparently forgotten (compare again 21:15). Like their culture, they think "children should be seen and not heard." Children were low-status dependents; they had to trust adults and receive what they provided (compare Best 1976:133-34). Disciples did not want their teacher interrupted (2 Kings 4:27; Diog. Laert. 7.7.182), and Jesus' disciples did not want these children, low in status, to deter Jesus from more important matters (Mt 19:13).
Later, lest Jesus be delayed in his mission to Jerusalem, crowds tried to silence blind beggars (20:31). It seems that in both 19:13 and 20:31, as in the parallel passages in Mark, disciples and crowds alike fail to understand what Jesus' kingdom is really about-caring for the weakest, rather than engaging in political or military triumphalism.






The Cost of Discipleship (19:16-22)
If the kingdom belongs to children (19:13-15)-those who receive the kingdom as humble dependents (18:1-6)-then someone accustomed to being powerful and supporting dependents might find it difficult to enter the kingdom (compare 5:20; 7:14; 18:8; 25:46). This is the illustration with which 19:16-24 confronts us: wealth and status make perfect surrender to God's will more difficult, because we think we have more to lose.
Many examples of faith in the Bible are acts of desperation; few are the acts of self-satisfied individuals. Ultimately one who would receive the kingdom must not only obey like a trusting child but also relinquish worldly possessions and cares, acknowledging the absolute authority of our King.

Those Who Want Eternal Life Must Obey God's Commands (19:16-20)

The good thing the man must do is show his fidelity toward God's covenant by obeying his laws. These laws were part of first-century Jewish culture, and the young man is convinced that he has kept them, as many of us have avoided breaking the laws of our society (compare Odeberg 1964:60). But if he is really ready to submit to the yoke of God's kingdom, he must also become a follower of Jesus and submit to Jesus' demands. That he is unwilling to spare all his goods to help the poor will soon bring into question whether he really loves his neighbor as himself (vv. 19-22).

Jesus Summons Disciples to Absolute Commitment (19:21-22)

The commandments listed in verses 18-19 are humanward, summarized in the decree Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18); by adding these words from 22:39, Matthew underlines this point. Yet if God alone is good (19:17), the man is lacking in some way (he himself admits it in v. 20, allowing Jesus to echo in 19:21 the call in 5:48 to "perfect obedience"). Now the man's allegiance to the Godward love commandment (22:37-38) is tested: does he serve God or money (6:24)? Loss of our wealth or fear of how our needs will be met can test us in this way (6:19-34); the needs of the poor can test us in the same way, as here. Love for God demands a true love for neighbors that not only avoids harming them but actively serves them. The young man wants a teacher (19:16); he does not want a Lord who demands sacrifice (20:20-28).

By "going" (19:21; also 8:4; 20:4; compare 10:6; 28:19) and abandoning all else (compare especially 13:44), the man could have "followed" Jesus, that is, become his disciple (compare 4:19; 8:22; 9:9; 16:24). The kingdom demands more than merely keeping many commandments; if we recognize Christ as our King, we must surrender to him everything we have and are (compare L. Johnson 1981:17). Whether he then allows us to use some of what he has given us is his choice. Disciples do not always lose all possessions upon conversion-but they lose all ownership of them, for they themselves belong to a new ruler.

Jesus generally called his own chief disciples (Mt 4:19, 21). Yet on some occasions prospective disciples did approach him (8:19); as here, Jesus sometimes thrust them aside-probably, like some other ancient teachers, to test the would-be student's real willingness to become a learner (as in Diog. Laert. 6.2.21, 36; 7.1.22; compare Sipre Num. 115.5.7). When Jesus turned away prospective disciples with heavy demands, he probably intended the same as some other teachers did: disciples must count the cost, repudiate their prior assets and recognize the incomparable value of his teaching.


Persistent seekers throughout the Gospels display the appropriate response: the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:25-28), the blind men (20:31-34), the Gentile centurion (8:7-13) and Jesus' own mother (Jn 2:3-9). Jesus' sorrow over the unwilling disciple (Mk 10:23-25) indicates that he hoped not to turn inquirers away but rather to make them genuine disciples, which they could become only if they counted the cost and chose the narrow way of following him.

When we tell prospective disciples today, "Just ask Jesus to forgive your sins and you can go to heaven," we are not telling the whole truth of the gospel. Jesus is available for the asking, but accepting Jesus means accepting the reign of God and God's right to determine what we do with our lives. When we invite our Lord to free us from sin, we are inviting him to rule our life; and while we may yet fall short in submission to his will, we must actively acknowledge his right to determine our lives, acting on the knowledge that he has begun to transform us by his Spirit. If we accept Jesus' terms of unconditional surrender to him, however, he promises an unlimited supply of what truly matters (Mt 19:23-30).


The wealthy would-be disciple was not the only person whose attachment to possessions proved a challenge to his commitment to Christ. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred by the Nazis, pointed out, the difference between us and the rich man in the story is that Jesus stood before him and did not allow him to reinterpret the Master's words in a more convenient manner. Bonhoeffer claims that the man's honesty in rejecting Jesus' command was better than disobedience that pretends to be obedience today (1963:88). He compares a boy told by his father to go to bed; the boy has studied theology, however, so he is now intelligent enough to reason, "Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired. I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play." But a child offering such arguments to his father would likely meet with language or an experience he would have to interpret more literally, as would a citizen with her government-or a disciple who reasons away God's demands (Bonhoeffer 1963:90).

Matthew 19


²³Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
²⁵When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?"
²⁶Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
²⁷Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?"
²⁸Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. ²⁹And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. ³⁰But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

Matthew 19:23-30

Explanation:

Sacrifice and Reward (19:23-30)
Jesus had promised a man treasure in heaven if he followed him (v. 21; compare 6:20); the man preferred to keep his treasure on earth (19:22). The well-to-do young man of 19:16-22 was like many "First World" Christians today. We want God to affirm that we are religious enough without costing us anything more than we have already been offering him. We trust only tentatively the value of heaven's kingdom and hence are prepared to sacrifice only little for it; but one who is not sufficiently convinced of the gospel's truth to sacrifice everything (compare 13:44-46) will not prove worthy of it. This is not to say that we are justified by our merit-we must receive the kingdom like a child (19:13-15). But genuine, saving faith is practically shown not by merely reciting a prayer but by living consistently with what we profess.

Jesus promises to more than make up for our sacrifices; do we believe him enough to sacrifice whatever our calling demands? As Craig Blomberg (1992:301) comments: "This entire episode should challenge First-World Christians, virtually all of whom are among the wealthiest people in the history of the world, to radical changes in their personal and institutional spending."

The Powerful Can Scarcely Enter the Kingdom at All (19:23-24)

Jesus apparently employs a common figure of speech when he speaks of a camel passing through a needle's eye (see Abrahams 1924:208; Dalman 1929:230). As much as we want Jesus to have said something else, he said that the rich and powerful could barely enter the kingdom at all. This statement shocked the sensibilities of the disciples even more than verse 10 had; they share the values of Jesus' enemies (Rhoads and Michie 1982:91-92; Mt 16:23). Presumably because many of their contemporaries viewed wealth as a mark of God's blessing (for example, Ep. Arist. 204-5; m. Qiddusin 4:14), the disciples may have assumed that Jesus' standard for people who were not rich was even stricter. If not the rich, who then can be saved? (19:25). Yet because God alone is good (v. 17), salvation by merely human means is impossible for anyone.

Jesus Promises the Kingdom to Whoever Follows Him (19:25-30)

The disciples emphasize that they have forsaken all to follow Jesus, and he does not dispute their claim (vv. 27-28; 4:22). Nevertheless, even once we have committed our lives to him, we must watch and pray to be ready for still other tests. Faced with loss of possessions, the rich young man walked away (19:22); faced with possible death, Jesus' disciples would later abandon him and flee (26:56).

Because families may oppose Christ's call to discipleship, a true disciple must be prepared to abandon not only possessions but also family (19:29; compare 8:21-22; 10:21, 34-37) for Christ's name (compare 5:11; 10:22; 24:9). Jesus himself (12:46-50; 13:55-57) and probably many in Matthew's Jewish Christian audience had suffered rejection by their families, a pain felt much more severely in that culture than in ours.

The modern Christian emphasis on family values is important, but we must beware lest family become idolatry: for instance, parental opposition or concern for our children is not an adequate excuse to reject God's call to the mission field. In response to such sacrifices God multiplies our resources (19:29) precisely because in the kingdom we find a new and larger family than the one we have left behind, and as a family true believers share their resources with one another (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35; Kee 1977:109-10; Tannehill 1975:147-52). This assumes that the church will live like the community of God's kingdom, that his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. While such words may have encouraged early faith missionaries (Trocma) 1975:203; Rhoads and Michie 1982:92), they just as readily address a persecuted church (Heb 10:34).


Specifically to these twelve who forsook their livelihoods to follow Jesus' call, Jesus promises that they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28). That Jesus would reward his loyal followers would not have surprised them; they seem to have expected as much (16:16, 21-22; 20:20-22). Thus when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne (19:28; compare 25:31; for "glory," 24:30) those who have followed him in his humble estate will rule (a common sense of "judge"; compare, for example, Judg 4:4; 10:3; 12:7-14; 15:20; 1 Macc 9:73) Israel's twelve tribes. Indeed, Jesus probably chose exactly twelve disciples with such a connection in mind; see comment on 10:1.

In Matthew's context the lesson extends beyond the Twelve (5:19; 20:23): those who sacrifice now and become least in this age will inherit the place of honor in the coming age (19:30-20:16; 19:30 and 20:16 function as an inclusio, bracketing the enclosed parable). The disciples' reward in the kingdom will be commensurate with their sacrifice.