It has been said too, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a letter of divorce.
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In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord turns from the lusts of the heart to the dissolution of the marriage tie. The scribes had drawn from Deuteronomy 24 a loose permission: "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement." Christ, the Lawgiver greater than Moses, restores marriage to its original dignity.
Christ lifts marriage back to God's original estimate
William Kelly unfolds the force of verses 31-32 with unusual plainness, showing that Christ is not softening Moses but bringing marriage into the full light of God's thought:
William KellyThe Lord then denounces the easy dissolution of the tie of marriage: "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" (vers. 31, 32). Thus our Lord shows that though there might be serious difficulties, still this human relationship receives the strong sanction of God's ordinance. Though an earthly relationship, the light of heaven is thrown upon it, the sanctity of marriage held up, and the possibility of allowing anything to interfere with its holiness entirely put down by Christ, save only where there was that which interrupted it in the sight of God, in which case the act of separation would be only a declaration of its being already actually broken.
Kelly's point is striking: the single exception Christ allows is not a fresh ground of release, but an acknowledgment that the bond has already been broken in God's sight by the sin itself. Christ is not opening a door; He is shutting one that the rabbis had prised ajar.
Divorce judged by "a true moral estimate"
J. N. Darby, in his Synopsis, places verse 31 within the wider pattern of the Sermon — the Lord taking up what had been borne with under Israel's weakness and setting it in the full light of God's character:
J. N. DarbyThe Lord then takes up certain things borne with by God in Israel, and ordered according to what they could bear. Thus was now brought into the light of a true moral estimate, divorce — marriage being the divinely given basis of all human relationships — and swearing or vowing, the action of man's will in relationship to God…
For Darby, Moses' permission was forbearance, not God's full mind. Christ, as the One who came from heaven, refuses to let the divine institution be dragged down to the level of human convenience. Darby stresses why this matters so deeply: marriage is "the divinely given basis of all human relationships." To trifle with it is to loosen the foundation of every other bond.
Back to creation, not Moses
G. V. Wigram, in his address on marriage, catches the same instinct of the Lord — that whenever men tried to use Moses' concession to evade God's original design, Christ would simply point back past Moses to Eden:
G. V. WigramThe place it had in the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ is most remarkable. When the people wanted to ensnare Him about divorce, He said, what did God do? Get back to God in creation. What could they say? Creation was older than Moses.
Wigram reminds us that marriage is not a human arrangement that can be dissolved by a piece of paper. It is a cord running from Genesis to Revelation — a figure of Christ and the Church:
cord running from Genesis to RevelationYou have in creation man and wife, and in the end you see the Lord Jesus presenting to Himself His Bride, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. One end of the cord is tied in creation, the other end in the Lord's coming.
That is why a casual "writing of divorcement" is so grave a thing: it tampers with the earthly picture of Christ and His Bride. Wigram even notes the contemporary drift with sorrow:
I don't know anything that marks the low state of things in Christendom more than the levity with which marriage is thought of. Often it is looked upon as not honourable.
Synthesis
Matthew 5:31 is Christ's answer to a culture — ancient and modern — that treats the marriage tie as dissolvable at will. The rabbis pointed to Moses' permission of a writing of divorcement as though it were God's endorsement; the Lord exposes it as forbearance with hardness of heart, and raises marriage back to its creation dignity as the divinely given basis of every human relationship and the very emblem of Christ and the Church. The one exception He allows — fornication — is not a new ground for release but, as Kelly shows, the recognition that the bond has already been broken in the sight of God. Everything else that had passed for a lawful putting-away Christ names plainly for what it is: causing adultery. The believer, then, is called not to seek the widest legal loophole, but to hold marriage with the same sanctity with which his Lord holds it.