A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on April 12, 2026.
The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery (Luke 16:16–18).[1]
One of the key tenets of faithful Bible reading and study is: Context informs interpretation. It is a dangerous thing to extract verses out of context and form opinions in isolation. The result may be as innocent as a momentary misunderstanding or as catastrophic as leading the innocent astray. I am reminded of a man I knew who claimed he could make the Bible say whatever he wanted, plucking verses here and there to support his biases and often his pleasures. Let us not be guilty of the same.
Our passage today is a textbook case in point. Read in isolation and out of context, it sounds like a call to arms followed by a contradictory law. But when read in context, these three verses reveal a targeted confrontation with the self-justifying sins of the Pharisees.
What is the context? It starts with Jesus’s parable of the dishonest manager, teaching us the right use of wealth as stewards of the kingdom of God. From that parable flows Jesus’s teaching on the temptation to treasure and serve God’s gifts rather than God himself: “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Luke 16:13). It is a truth bomb to be sure, but the Pharisees felt it personally, leading them to ridicule Jesus and his ministry. Unphased by their criticism, Jesus says to them directly, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (16:15).
Now, to understand our passage today, we need to know all of this, but especially this last verse, revealing the self-justifying, secret lives of the Pharisees. But we need not leave our passage today in the realm of the first-century Pharisees. As we read these three verses in our passage today, there is a certain tension we sense. On the one hand, we know that Scripture teaches that we are saved by the free, sovereign, and unmerited grace of God. On the other hand, we hear Jesus speak in ways that sound almost severe: of striving, of entering, of obedience, of the unbreakable authority of the law.
Here, in just three verses, our Lord brings together the grace of the kingdom, the authority of the law, and the moral demands of discipleship. At first glance, these words may seem disjointed. But they are not. They form a unified teaching about what we might call irresistible grace—a grace that not only saves but transforms, not only calls but compels, not only forgives but directs the whole of life.
Irresistible Grace
Our Lord begins: “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it” (Luke 16:16). Note carefully these words: “. . . until John; since then . . .” Jesus is describing a turning point in redemptive history. The era of promise—the Law and the Prophets—reached its climax in John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets. With John came the dawn of fulfillment, we hear in the Benedictus, “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79).[2] The kingdom of God so long anticipated was now announced.
What then is the proper response to such a grand announcement? Jesus answers, “everyone forces his way into it.” The verb translated “forces” here connotes violence, but Jesus uses the word figuratively meaning “urgency, eagerness.” The kingdom is not entered casually but seized with holy desperation.
To be clear, Jesus is not teaching that we, by our own natural strength, storm the gates of heaven. Such an inference would contradict the whole tenor of Scripture, not least the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in which he explains, “by works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:16). Rather, Jesus is describing the effect of sovereign grace. When the gospel is preached—when Christ is set before sinners as Savior and King—something happens. The Holy Spirit spiritually opens eyes and awakens hearts. Desires are changed and stirred, wills bent. The result is a new affection, a compelling love for the King of kings and his kingdom.
Saving grace is not merely an offer accepted; it is a power. God never drags unwilling sinners into the kingdom, but he does bring spiritually dead sinners to life, working in their hearts that they come willingly, even eagerly. In this sense, the grace of God is irresistible—not by coercion, but by transformation. And the sinner transformed by the saving grace of God through faith in Christ “forces his way into the kingdom of God,” because he wants nothing more and certainly nothing less.
Grace-enabled Obedience
Now, lest we misunderstand this grace, Jesus immediately adds a second statement: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void” (Luke 16:17). Here is the balance: Grace does not abolish the law. It establishes it. Jesus affirms the enduring authority of the law with minute detail, “one dot of the Law,” the Hebrew equivalent of dotting an “i” or crossing a “t”. It would be easier for every molecule of creation to cease to exist than the tiniest part of God’s law to pass away.
Clearly this is a statement emphasizing the importance of God’s law, but why does Jesus make it here? Because, there is always the danger that grace will be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Some may say, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Or, “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Rom. 6:1, 15). Consider how disconnected this is from the life-giving righteousness and enabling liberty of the gospel. It’s absurd, and Jesus will have none of it. Because God’s grace does not lower the standard; it enables it.
When John the Baptist came announcing Christ’s coming, he was also serving as a sign of the closing of the Old Covenant era, an era defined by the Mosaic Law and all its ceremonial, civil, and moral implications. Prior to Christ’s coming, the Apostle Paul explains, the law served as a guardian. But when Christ came the Mosaic Law, as the defining characteristic of covenant identity, passed away. Paul puts it this way: “the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24); “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). To say that Christ “is end of the law” is not to say that it has been abolished but that it is fulfilled in Christ.[3]
This does not mean, however, that the law becomes obsolete. While the ceremonial aspects of the law pertain only to Old Covenant worship leading up to Christ and the civil aspects of the law pertain to Old Covenant Israel as a nation before Christ, the moral law of God, summarized in the Ten Commandments, continues forever. The law of God, summarized so beautifully in Deuteronomy 6:4–5 and Leviticus 19:18—love for God and love for neighbor—remains the moral will of God for His people. And by God’s grace we desire and are enabled to obey God’s will.
Grace-enabled obedience then is the fruit of our transformation. This is why the grace that draws us into the kingdom also drives us toward holiness. It is irresistible not only in bringing us to Christ, but in conforming us to Christ. In writing to the Galatians, Paul refers to this as putting “on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). To “put on Christ” is to be united to him through faith, to share in his life, and therefore to begin to reflect His character.
Grace-directed Application
To this point, Jesus gives a concrete example: “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). At first, this may seem abrupt—even jarring. Why introduce the subject of divorce here? Did Luke insert this one verse to serve as a summary of Jesus’ teaching on divorce? Why is this here?
First, it is here to teach us that as we put on Christ and are conformed to his character, we need to remember that God’s character does not change. God’s standard of holiness and purity do not change. Therefore, under the Old Covenant and under the New, marriage, for example, is still a sacred covenant, adultery is still adultery, divorce is still divorce.
Second, let us remember the context and Jesus’s condemning words to the Pharisees: “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (16:15). The Pharisees, to whom Jesus is speaking, had developed ways of evading the law while appearing to uphold it, “an abomination in the sight of God” indeed! In the matter of divorce, they had reduced God’s command to a set of legal technicalities. One commentator notes that the Pharisees “allowed divorce to the husbands on various kinds of trifling matters, but violated the right of the wife in such a manner that no right of divorce was granted her if she was unjustly or cruelly treated by her husband.” For example, writings reveal that men were allowed to divorce their wives if they found another more desirable woman or for something as trivial as spoiling dinner.[4] But Jesus cuts through all such evasions. He brings the law back to its moral and spiritual intent. In doing so, He shows us that grace is not vague or abstract. It is intensely practical. It directs our lives in specific, sometimes uncomfortable ways.
If grace is truly at work in us, it will reshape our relationships, our commitments, our integrity, and, yes, our marriages. Why? Because grace restores us to the true meaning of the law: love. As Leviticus 19:18 commands, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And nowhere is that love more tested than in the covenant of marriage. Jesus’s teaching here is not a comprehensive directive on divorce or remarriage. (If you’re looking for that I would commend to you Matthew 19:1-12 and 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.) Nor is Jesus singling out one sin here as uniquely heinous. Rather, he is revealing how the law, rightly understood, penetrates beneath outward conformity to the condition of the heart.
Brothers and sisters, our Lord has not left us with abstractions here but a picture of grace that grips our soul, honors the law, and directs our life. What does this look like for us? First, it directs us to examine our hearts. Have you heard and believed the gospel? Or, have you fallen into the subtle error of the Pharisees, appearing outwardly ordered while inwardly unconverted? Irresistible grace does not produce a performance but transformation; it does not yield indifference but love.
Second, let us submit to the law that grace fulfills. Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? These are not rhetorical questions but diagnostic. And where we fall short—as we all do—we do not excuse ourselves. We return to Christ, who both forgives and renews.
Third, let grace inform our daily lives. Our Lord takes us straight into the realm of relationships—into covenant faithfulness, into integrity, into truth-telling, into the hidden places of life where self-justification so easily hides. In your marriage: Are you faithful not only in action, but in affection, patience, and sacrifice? In your relationships: Are you loving others, or merely managing appearances? In your private life: Are you obeying God when no one sees? This is where grace directs us—not to vague spirituality, but to concrete holiness.
Finally, let us remember that the same grace that calls us keep us. What God begins, he completes. What he commands, he enables. What he requires, he supplies in Christ. Therefore, press into the kingdom, for grace has made it possessable; walk in obedience, for grace has made it possible; pursue holiness, for grace has made it personal.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] The Anglican Church in North America, The Book of Common Prayer (Huntington Beach: Anglican Liturgy Press, 2019), 19-20.
[3] Matt. 5:17
[4] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 190.
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