What about the all-important words of Jesus on divorce and remarriage? [I can’t say I agree with Luck in all that he says here.]

William F. Luck’s Divorce and Re-Marriage: Recovering the Biblical View   discusses Jesus’ teachings in two chps, and I’ll give the big conclusions below.

1. Jesus, Luck argues, affirms the OT teaching that covenant breaking is treachery and treachery in the heart is adultery. Thus, the proper grounds for divorce are covenant breaking and the contemporary conditions at Jesus’ time were too lax. (Luck misspells “Pharisaical” throughout these two chps.)

2. The man who illegitimately divorces his wife has committed treachery and “no remarriage need take place for this adultery to occur” (140). This man “adulterizes” his wife in divorcing her.

3. He takes the second saying — who ever marries a divorced woman commits adultery — as she has complied with Roman law with permitted morally groundless divorce and that law does not free her from the Torah’s laws about adultery.

4. The Pharisees, he argues, believed a divorce writ ended moral responsibility. The divorce writ can be a cloak that covers evil.

5. The legal obligations in such cases are over, yes, but the moral responsibility is not; that is, repentance is demanded. 

6. The second husband’s marriage to such a woman — who has treacherously broken covenant — constitutes adultery and he is participating in the woman’s treachery (141).

7. Permission was granted in order to lead the guilty partner to repentance and restoration. That is, Luck is big on saying divorce is primarily a disciplinary action.