§ 6. The Sermon on the Mount (According to Matthew)

Adultery does not happen by accident. A person desires another in the heart first, and then acts upon those desires.

James 1:14–15

Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Jesus's teaching here is consistent with the rules set forth in the reading, "On the Law and the Prophets." The intent of the Law's commandment was not that we are clear to do anything and everything up to the point of actually committing the act of adultery. Rather, the Law intended for us to learn what leads to adultery and avoid that, too. Jesus does not annul the Law but rather strengthens it.

Jesus does not here advise us to maim ourselves—as if removing a hand could stop someone from committing adultery.

Rather, Jesus wants us to understand: the seriousness of sin and its eternal consequence warrant considering even extreme measures to avoid it. If we find a daily temptation to commit a sin in our lives, we need to take decisive action to change that situation, remove the temptation, or remove ourselves from it.

In the context of adultery, perhaps a plain and direct conversation with the other person about our faith and refusal to do such a thing would help. Perhaps we would consider changing where we work or where we live to remove ourselves from that situation. Any of these measures—and others—would be appropriate to consider, given the severity of Jesus's illustration: we must stay away from sin!

We have a clear example in Joseph, whose master's wife wanted him to commit adultery with her; he successfully avoided sinning by running away from her when she caught hold of him!

Genesis 39:7, 10–12

And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, "Lie with me."
And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment, saying, "Lie with me." But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house.

The Law imposed effectively the same principles for divorce as the teaching of Jesus in the gospels. Although the Pharisees in Matthew 19:3 seem to think Deuteronomy 24:1–4 may allow divorce for any of a number of reasons, the text plainly—and only—specifies sexual immorality as the reason.

Deuteronomy 24:1

When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house….

The word here translated "indecency" (עֶרְוָה) appears several times in the Old Testament, where it is typically understood as "sexual immorality." It is not clear why the translators chose "indecency" here instead; their choice obscures divorce's direct connection to sexual immorality.

Genesis 9:22–24

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him….

Leviticus 18:6–18

None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD….
[There are many specific examples not listed here.]

1 Samuel 20:30

Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?"

Ezekiel 23:18

When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister.

Again, Jesus is not destroying the Law with His teaching; the Law already allows divorce only "on the ground of sexual immorality." Jesus is teaching about the unintended consequences of divorce.

The first unintended consequence of a divorce is that the wife is left defenseless and with no lawful way to fulfill her desire. Knowing this will be her predicament ought to provoke the husband's soul within him not to go through with the divorce. (Compare "…because of your hardness of heart," Matthew 19:8.) And the husband has some share of the responsibility for any sexual immorality she goes on to commit as a result of the divorce.

The other unintended consequence of a divorce is the problem it makes for later marriages. A divorced person is not eligible to marry (except the innocent spouse in the case of a divorce on the ground of sexual immorality, Matthew 19:9). Perhaps more surprising, though, is the fact an otherwise innocent person who marries a divorced person is no longer innocent, but has instead become sexually immoral by entering into the marriage.

The reference is to the final verse of Isaiah, making the warning permanent and eternal.

Isaiah 66:15–16, 24

For behold, the LORD will come in fire,
and his chariots like the whirlwind,
to render his anger in fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire.
For by fire will the LORD enter into judgment,
and by his sword, with all flesh;
and those slain by the LORD shall be many.

And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.

This passage also presents a good opportunity to address textual variations. Most translations today skip verses 44 and 46. Why do they do this? Does it mean our text is unreliable?

The reason most moderns elect to omit these verses is they have decided to follow more closely a set of ancient Greek manuscripts that omit them. The translators of the King James version, on the other hand, were following a different set of manuscripts, which is why the King James Bible features these verses.

It's true: no two ancient manuscripts of the Bible are identical word-for-word! Also true: we do not have the "original" manuscripts in the handwriting of the apostles. And this is actually a good thing. Imagine the superstition, the wars, the censorship, the intrigue that would result from the existence of a genuine copy of the Bible from the hand of Paul himself! Maybe it would even have traces of his DNA!!

2 Corinthians 4:7

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

Reading Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:7 we can confidently assert God intended for us to have slight variations that do not affect the meaning of His word in any way so that we would focus on its content rather than the messengers.

These variations do not need to shake our confidence in God or His word. The manuscripts overwhelmingly agree—99 out of 100 times—and the few differences we may find:

1. Do not affect the meaning of the text;
2. Have many reasonable explanations for how they came about.

This passage is an excellent example of a variation not affecting the sense. Does it really matter how many times Jesus said the phrase, "their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched"? Whether this phrase appears only once at the end or is repeated with every sentence, the point is the same, the consequence is the same, eternity in hell is the same. The fact some copies omit verses 44 and 46 does not change the fact the same copies—and all known manuscripts—contain verse 48.

Other reasonable causes of variation include:

• spelling changes or alternate spellings, like "color" vs. "colour"
• swapping one word for another that looks or sounds like it (and also makes sense in the sentence), like "lose" vs. "loose"
• accidentally skipping a line during copying since copying was done by hand laboriously over many hours or days,
• variations in phrasing, like "If that doesn't beat all!" vs. "Doesn't that beat all?"

Probably the most infamous variation is the omission of Mark 16:9-20, the supposed "longer ending of Mark." There is precisely one manuscript in all existence that omits these verses, and it starts Luke 1:1 on the next page—after a blank space large enough to contain Mark 16:9-20! It doesn't take a detective to see what happened: the person who was copying Mark onto this manuscript did not finish copying it. That is definitely not a good reason to claim the passage is not original.

In summary, variations are good and intentional, preventing us from worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. God's word stands as firm as ever.

Luke's version shows the Lord is not concerned about who divorced whom but rather the reason for the divorce in the first place.