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Question 1

David argues that to recover early Christian belief you must “apply [New Testament] passages very literally and very seriously,” using what he calls a “title lawyer approach”; as a group, what parts of Jesus’ divorce sayings become harder to evade when you refuse to assume what He “must have meant,” and what assumptions do you notice yourself wanting to import anyway?

Another way to ask: If we take Jesus’ words on divorce very literally, what parts get hardest to explain away? What extra ideas do you catch yourself adding about what Jesus “must have meant”?

Direct Answer When you read Jesus “for exactly what it says” and refuse to import assumptions, the plain statements about divorce leading to adultery—and especially the lack of remarriage permission—become very hard to explain away. The assumptions David warns against are the ones that quietly expand exceptions, make the commands gender-symmetrical, or treat later remarriage as automatically legitimate.

Support from Transcript:

David asks listeners to read like a title lawyer: “read each sentence for exactly what it says… don’t make any assumptions at all.”
Jesus’ wording in Matthew 5 is blunt: divorce “for any reason except sexual immorality… causes her to commit adultery,” and “whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.”
David notes people “change them to say” a wife can divorce similarly; he says Jesus “didn’t say that,” and his Jewish hearers would not have heard an expansion.
He emphasizes the “no exception whatsoever” in the statement about marrying a divorced woman.
He warns against “thrown out verses we don’t like… but we can’t” change God’s plan.

Discussion Follow-ups What phrases in these passages do you most want to soften? Where do you feel pressure to make Jesus’ words match modern church practice?

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