And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:1-12, ESV)
To be honest, I'm a bit nervous to do this blog, because I'm not married, let alone in a relationship, so to me, marriage is still a bit of a foreign thing. But here's what I know the Word says anyway.
Jesus is getting closer and closer to His death, but He continues His ministry anyway. It's interesting to note that His custom was to teach. Although He had done many miracles and healed plenty of people, His main ministry was in His teaching. Note back to my previous post about people wanting His miracles, but not Him.
So the Pharisees show up, and again, they try to catch Jesus as an opponent to the Mosaic Law, by saying that it is okay to divorce as long as there is a document to it. But Jesus appeals to the creation story to explain that that was not the original idea. Jesus explains that in the beginning, the original setup was that if a man and woman marry, they are considered one flesh. They are united not only physically, but spiritually as well. Therefore, how can mankind allow a mere document separate what God has brought and tied together?
This next part about committing adultery when you re-marry is not a new idea. The only thing that is different here is that in Matthew, Jesus expands with a bit more context, saying that you can divorce if the spouse has already committed adultery. But even then, that was a widely agreed fact. All of this was in the Old Testament as well. There is nothing new here.
What sort of confuses me is that Jesus quotes from the same book that the Pharisees read and studied their whole lives. How is it that they miss that original plan for marriage? Is it because they choose to supersede God's authority with man's laws?
Do not make the same mistake that these Pharisees often made and were ignorant of. Never think for a moment that anything you do can outdo or outweigh God's sovereignty and authority over all of creation, and that includes the gifts that He gives us.
I think the teachings on divorce here are easy enough to understand. If you get married, don't divorce unless it's on the grounds of promiscuity. Fair enough. But what I find so interesting here is that Jesus and the Pharisees read and know the same book. They just look at it through a different lens.
The Pharisees appeal to the laws, where the book is just the Ten Commandments, but much bigger, as if the book was just a road map to morally upright life. Jesus looks at the book with a lens that sees and highlights God's control over all of creation, and His grace towards us despite our vain attempts to maintain a morally upright life.
There is a big difference when we read the Word, expecting things that talk about us and what we do, versus when we read the Word, and seeing that all of this points towards God Himself, and how all things, the Law and the Prophets, only lead to Christ.
Yes, take the teachings of the Bible very seriously, for they lead us to a life of joy and fullness. But never forget that all of that and all that we do points to Jesus and His fulfillment of those teachings.
Even this teaching on divorce, Jesus has fulfilled, despite the fact that He was never physically married. He even takes it to the next step. How?
The Bible often portrays us as the bride of God, like in Hosea and Ephesians 5. Especially in Hosea, we are portrayed as the rebellious and adulteress wife, and YET, God, being rich in love, reaches out to us in humility and betroths us to Him. He brings together an adulterous wife to Himself, a perfect and holy Husband. The bride and the Groom become one flesh forever. This is a marriage that mankind or a legal document cannot separate. In fact, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God, as Romans 8 says.
All of these teachings point back to Christ. We cannot ever let them terminate on us alone. In our obedience to these teachings, we can worship Christ for the joy that He gives us.
So do not ever think that the Bible talks about us and our do's and don'ts. It is about what God has done for us. This is the Word of the Lord, right from Genesis all the way to Revelation. This is nothing new, but it is everything we need.
-simon
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