Marriage, Divorce, for paper Feb 25

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something has gone badly wrong in our society with regard to family and marriage. Why, as a result of gay marriage, are we having a lively debate about the definition of marriage? Why do so many younger (and older!) people choose to live together rather than to make a commitment and seek God’s blessing in marriage? Why is pornography one of the biggest industries in the world? Why do we treat children in the womb as either “a person” or “not a person” depending on whether or not the mom wishes to bring the child to term? How have we reached the point where casual sexual relations have become widely regarded as a recreational activity to be enjoyed whenever and wherever you can find two (or more) willing and consenting adults? Why this huge escalation in divorce? And why do so many, even in our own churches, give tacit approval to some or all of this under a satanic twisting of our Lord’s words “Judge not”? What is going on?

The Pharisees came to Jesus seeking to trap him by drawing on the mess God’s own people had made of marriage. ‘“Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied”’ Mark 10:2–5  

So Jesus regards even these words of Moses in Deuteronomy that permitted divorce under certain circumstances to be merely a concession to the hardness of the human heart. Jesus continues his response: “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

First here God ‘made them male and female.’ Not the array of sexual identities found in the LGBTQ ++ ideology. And then Jesus here is echoing the words of Malachi “I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel, Malachi 2: 16a

The disciples struggled with Jesus’ adamant insistence that divorce is not the will of God, that it undoes what God himself has done in uniting together the man and the woman. They asked the Lord, in effect, if he really meant it. His responding words are uncompromising. ‘He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”’ Mark 10: 11, 12

Divorce and remarriage is simply adultery and contrary to the will of God expressed in the Sixth Commandment – “you shall not commit adultery”. He allows no wiggle room. Why? Jesus doesn’t think about marriage the same way we tend to. Most people know situations where, if they are honest, they’d say that divorce simply made sense. It’s the reasonable thing to do. Why doesn’t our Lord get that?  Because your God doesn’t “get” giving up on relationships. That would be contrary to his nature. Paul tells us “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”  2 Timothy 2: 13

To understand how that relates to our discussion of divorce remember that at the end of the age there is a wedding feast, The Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Jesus Christ is the Lamb, and we, all the true Christians are the bride. We become one with Christ at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

And that Bridegroom, your Jesus, is faithful to you, for his heart is not hard. He is faithful even when you have been faithless to him. That text from Timothy said “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful”. He doesn’t “get” divorce. It makes no sense to him, because in his heart is a divine love that simply is unwilling to let you go, unwilling to lose you, no matter what.

Christ’s love for us is a divine love that simply doesn’t give up, doesn’t “get” giving up, and will tolerate no barrier between you and him. And in the same way God doesn’t get us giving up on each other through divorce.

God hates divorce because the root cause of all divorce is men and women yielding to the sinful inclinations of their sinful natures. All of this, I hope you can see, is a picture of the way God—not we, not Adam, not our society—long ago designed the institution of marriage and the family. God established marriage and family to be an image of his own unfailing commitment to you, to us, his people. We will be the bride of Christ, and God’s faithfulness allows no other outcome, despite our sinful natures and all it leads us to do.

Therefore, if there is anything in this sad world that can bring hope and a future to counter the mess we’ve made of trying to do marriage and family on our own terms because of the hardness of our hearts, thinking we know better than God, it is the open heart of Jesus. His open heart mirrors for us the Father and reveals the unfailing love of God, his “patience and loving-kindness toward us” that “have no end”

Blessings,