Hey buddy, good to see you’re still on the case.

In reply I’d like to focus on three questions?

First, if Matt 5:31–32 is taken as a “new law” that Jesus is laying down on humans…how is that to be enforced?

Under Jewish law, adultery is a capital crime. If this is expanded to include divorced people, then my own parents, for example, would be killed.

Do you want me dead in order to keep in full compliance with the teachings of Jesus?

Second, while breath persists, I’d like to ask: If Eph 5:31–32 refers to human marriage, why do you get to incarnate Jesus and your wife represents humans? That seems odd. Is she not as ‘Christlike’ as you?

Paul says that Eph 5:31–32 concerns “a profound mystery.” I hate to be the first to suggest it? Your marriage may not be a profound mystery. Are you sure you have the context right?

Third, how does your view of yourself being the ‘husband’ of Eph 5:31–32, or any sexual references you’re taking to apply to your marriage, interact with Gal 3:28, in which there’s ‘no male or female’?

If I could sneak in a fourth question: I’d ask why the 1 John letter, an overview of Christianity for Gentile Christians, doesn’t call for mass carnage to enforce adultery violations, has no discussion indeed of sex or marriage, and speaks endlessly of ‘love’.

My view is . . . Jesus is often speaking as the divine governor of the earth, often speaking about, and perhaps even to, other spirit beings—in a ‘sexual language’ familiar to Jewish prophesy. This elevated discourse doesn’t, by some process of inference we imagine is ‘obvious’, regulate human relationships—in defiance of the actual commandment to humans.

The commandment to humans is: “Love one another.”

Let’s not side-step that? -jon.