2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:2-12
There are several places in God’s Word where divorce is addressed, but here is one of the places where Jesus elevates the standard of marriage above the mosaic concessions. Jesus instead points to God’s original intent by pointing to the “two shall become one” and “let no man separate what God has joined together”. Jesus is berating the Pharisees for using scripture to justify divorce, showing them that their hearts were far away from God’s purpose.
Breaking the marital covenant is a serious thing. It is a shame that today, divorce is used to correct an oopsie or ‘unreconcilable differences’. All throughout God’s Word, Love is an action…a state of heart and mind toward another. God emphasizes that spiritual gifts, knowledge, generosity, and even faith are meaningless without love. –> 1 Corinthians 13 tells us all about this. When we bring all of the aspects of Love into even a broken marriage joined by repentance and the goal of glorifying God, anything is possible.
APPLICATION:
I am so grateful for Marianne. We have had some rocky areas in our marriage but our desire to honor and glorify God above all else, has always positioned our hearts in the right orientation toward each other in light of the Gospel. The order is so important, and this order I must embrace every day –> God is my head and I am the head of my wife and family. When I am seeking the Lord with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength, (and applying to my life all the Lord is teaching me) everything else falls into place.