Marriage in the Kingdom

This morning, we continue in a section of the Gospel of Mark dealing with the morality of the kingdom. We come to the question of relationships in the kingdom, or, if you want to think of it more broadly, how the kingdom views commitment and covenant. We understand this by looking at the most important commitment outside of our faith in Christ, and that is the covenant of marriage. To see that, let’s read Mark 10:1-12. From this text, see the Accommodation of the Law, the Authentic Meaning of Marriage, and the Adultery of Divorce.

First, from verses 1-5, see the Accommodation of the Law. Mark tells us that Jesus begins his final journey to Jerusalem. As he is traveling, he takes every opportunity to teach, and the Pharisees take every opportunity to challenge him. On one occasion, they decide to challenge him with a roiling theological and political controversy of the day by asking him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” This is intended to be a trap, and it is controversial for two reasons. First, there is the issue of Herod Antipas and his affair with his brother’s wife, Herodias. While Antipas had legally annulled his brother’s marriage, there was great debate over whether it was legitimate. So, if Jesus answers this question, it puts him in political peril. He could end up like John the Baptist: beheaded at the request of Herodias. It is also controversial because of the hot debate among Jewish scholars over the interpretation of one verse in the book of Deuteronomy. So, when Jesus asks them, “What did Moses command you”, they answer with a paraphrase of Deut. 24:1, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce.” But, the issue isn’t as simple as that. Deut. 24:1 actually says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, [he may write a certificate of divorce.]” The hot debate stirred around the phrase “some indecency in her.” In Jesus’s day, two schools had developed around how to interpret this phrase. The school of Hillel took a liberal view of the statement. They taught that an indecency could be anything. They gave examples – she burns a meal, speaks too loudly, or the man even finds another woman more attractive. The other view was known as the school of Shammai, and it took a more conservative approach. They understood “indecency” to mean adultery. So, a man could only obtain this certificate of divorce if he could show some serious sexual immorality on the part of his wife.

Jesus immediately rejects their answer on two grounds. First, in verse 5, he says “Moses gave you this law because of your hardness of heart.” This brings up an important side note about how we should understand much of the OT law. After the declaration of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, much of the OT law is what we might call case law. It was given to address specific cases and to govern the nation of Israel. In other words, much of the OT Law, and particularly Deut. 24:1, were not given to reveal the heart of God but to restrain the heart of men. God knew that men were sinful and unable to obey the moral law he established in the Ten Commandments. So, he gave laws to restrict the bounds of their sinfulness. For example, there are many laws in the OT about slavery, but all of them are intended to restrict its practice, not broaden it. The same is true of this law on divorce. Jesus says that God established this law through Moses because he knew the wicked hearts of men could not meet the righteous design of marriage.

The second ground for Jesus’s stance leads me to my second point: the authentic meaning of marriage. It’s interesting that Jesus corrects Moses with Moses. When he asked, “What did Moses say”, he had a different statement in mind than the Pharisees did. They went immediately to case law, but Jesus went to the original design of marriage by quoting Genesis 1 and 2. In verse 6, he quotes Genesis 1:27,  “So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” Recognize that man does not bear the image of God alone, and neither does woman. God created humanity in his image, and we bear that image together, as man and woman. We are made for each other. Men are not made to be rugged individuals who live off the land with their dogs. Women are not made to be independent, self-reliant queens who don’t need a man. Without woman, man is a brute. Without man, woman is a rudderless ship.

He also quotes Genesis 2:24, where, after the creation of woman, God establishes the covenant of marriage by declaring, “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Recognize in this statement that the marriage relationship is the most basic and important relationship on earth. Your relationship to your parents is not as important as your relationship to your spouse. Your relationship with your children is not even as important as your relationship to your spouse. There is no other relationship we have of which the Bible speaks so highly. When we marry, the Bible says that we become one flesh. Our decisions are no longer our own, but we decide based on the good of another. Our money is no longer our own, but we work for the good of another. Our desires are no longer our own, but we yearn for the good of another. And even our bodies are no longer our own, but (as Paul says in 1 Cor 7), we belong to another.

Jesus ends his argument for marriage with a famous statement, in verse 9: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” In answer to the question of the legality of divorce, here is Jesus’s answer: divorce is not a part of God’s good creation nor his intention for humanity. Marriage is a mystical covenant between two people who are made in the image of God that takes priority over every other earthly relationship. Because it was established by God and not by man, it cannot be broken by man. A judge cannot decree, “Your marriage is dissolved.” Now, certainly, they do that, all the time. But God doesn’t care what they say. The bond of marriage goes far deeper than that piece of paper that a judge signs, and it is not so easily broken. You might obtain a quick, easy, no-fault divorce, split everything 50/50, and work out the perfect “co-parenting” arrangement, but to God, none of that matters because he created that bond to start with, and he’s the one who gets to say when it is over.

There is another element to the fact that together, man and woman bear the image of God. In the OT, God frequently refers to his covenant with Israel as a marriage. The whole book of Hosea is a living allegory of this, as God directs Hosea to go marry a prostitute to show what Israel has done with their relationship to the Lord. In Eph. 5:22-32, Paul uses marriage as an analogy for the relationship between Christ and the church. Wives are to honor their husbands like the church honors Christ, and husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. He ends, in verse 31 by quoting this same verse from Genesis 2, “A man shall leave his family and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Then, he goes on to say, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” So, divorce is not just counter to God’s good design for marriage, but it is also a distortion of God’s covenant with his people. Israel, like a prostitute, was repeatedly unfaithful to the God who delivered them and gave them a promised land. While the Lord chastised them, he never broke his covenant. And Christ is faithful to us, even when we are faithless. Marriage is a picture of that, and when a marriage is broken, it mars the image of God.

Finally, consider the third point: the adultery of divorce. As in our day, divorce was easy and prevalent, especially among the Jews. Because of the Hillel school, many men dismissed their wives over small things. And, worse yet, the man was never at fault. In fact, the law given in Deut. 24:1 was intended to restrict men from arbitrarily abandoning their wives by requiring them to go before an elder and receive a certificate of divorce that he could then give to the woman. The hope was that this would at least cause the man to think through his reasons and maybe even change his mind. It also gave the woman a legal document that showed that she was eligible to marry again. But even after all of that, the man still had no guilt in going on to marry again. Even with the certificate, the woman was ostracized. So, when he is with his disciples, Jesus gets down to brass tacks. In verse 11, he establishes his own law for divorce – if a man divorces his wife and remarries, he is committing adultery against his wife, and the same is true for the woman. Recognize that this is revolutionary because it puts guilt on both the man and woman equally. If a man gets tired of his wife because she can’t cook and goes to the elder for a certificate of divorce, then turns around and marries another woman, he is guilty of adultery, just as much as if the woman had committed adultery.

These statements raise some important questions that I want to address in closing. First, are there ever biblical grounds for divorce? There are two biblical reasons for divorce. In Matthew’s version of this same teaching, from Matthew 19:9, Jesus adds an exception for sexual immorality. The Greek word he uses there is porneia (from which we get the root for our word, “pornography”). Porneia covers a wide range of misbehaviors. It basically covers any type of sexual behavior outside of marriage – from pornography to going to an erotic club to adultery. Sexual immorality is a biblical ground for divorce because it breaks the covenant. The marriage covenant is a “one flesh” union in which man and woman commit their bodies and minds exclusively to each other. This one-flesh union is broken when you bring other flesh into it. In this case, because the covenant has been broken, then the victim of that sin is free to remarry.

Second, 1 Cor. 7:13-15 give us another ground for divorce. There, Paul says that a believing wife should stay with her unbelieving husband as long as he is willing, in hopes that she might lead him to Christ and to keep the children in church. But, he says in verse 15, “If the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved.” Here, Paul means that if a wife or husband has an unbelieving spouse who rejects them because they are a Christian, then they are free to remarry. The cause of the divorce, in this case, is essentially persecution – the unbelieving husband hates Christ, and as a result, hates his wife.

There are many other reasons that people divorce, some understandable, some not. Many will raise an objection, asking, “But what about an abusive spouse?” In that case, I would say a few things. 1) Shame on the church for not standing up for the abused and disciplining the abuser. I think there would be far fewer deadbeats and abusers if the church would deal with it as they are called. 2) As in the case of self-defense, a woman (or man) who is being abused has a first responsibility to protect her own life and physical health. If that means separating and even running to get away from abuse, then that is the right thing to do. 3) Most abusers will always be abusive, even though they apologize repeatedly. If that is the case, then it is understandable to pursue divorce. I will say, though, that the person who does this should remain single. I think this because it is not a biblical justification, even though it is understandable.

Finally, what if I’m in a loveless marriage? Understand that there is a difference between affection and love, and there is a difference between emotional attraction and commitment. Affection will come and go. Emotions wax and wane. Love is an action. Love is something you choose. You choose to be with the person you married. You choose to seek his or her good. You choose to support them for better or worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health. You choose these things because you are committed, not firstly to them, but to Christ. Because you love Christ, you love them. Because you are committed to Christ, you are committed to your marriage. And, you will find, that as you serve your spouse and love them in this way, the affections will grow. There will be days when you can tolerate each other, days when you make memories, days when you are excited to see them. There will also be days when you can’t be in the same room, but you stay committed because you love Christ, and through Christ, you love them.

In closing, I want to tell you the story of my two sets of grandparents – Jackie and Lavaughn Skipper, and Reenee and Ben Kilpatrick. Jackie’s parents didn’t like Lavaughn much, so while her parents chaperoned Jackie’s Junior Prom, the two snuck out the back of the school, got in a car, drove to Mississippi and eloped. They had my dad a year later. My Papa drove a log truck, then a long-haul truck for Poole truck line. He was a small engine mechanic and bounced from job to job until he finally started his own construction business when my dad was 15. They never had much until then. In that time, they had four kids. Life went up and down, but they were married for close around 70 years when my Papa passed away.

Ben and Reenee were also 17 when they married. They eloped in Excel, AL after a few months of courtship, and my Granddaddy dropped out of high school and lied about his age so he could enlist to fight in WWII. He was not there for the birth of his first son, Mike, and when he got back some two years later, he went to work running a chain gang for the DOT. He studied at night and got his GED, then taught himself surveying and passed the state surveying exam. They had three children, and they paid for all three to go to college. Ben and Reenee were married for about 70 years as well, when Grandmamma succumbed to Alzheimer’s.

These two couples were very different in their personalities, careers, and interests, and yet the one unblemished truth that they passed on to me is this – Marriage is not a feeling, it is a beautiful commitment that echoes for generations. If I could convince you of anything besides your need for Jesus it would be this: don’t live for yourself, it will only wreck you. Live for others. If you have the opportunity to marry a good Christian that you find endearing, do it. It doesn’t matter your age, your education, your financial standing, marriage is always good if it is under the Lordship of Christ. This world needs more marriages, not less. It needs more children, not fewer. It needs more solid, Christ-loving husbands and wives who are committed to the Lord and to each other.