ON YOUR MARK: WEEK 9 DAY 5

Mark 10:1-12

Teaching About Divorce

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.

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.”

One of my children likes to ask, “but what if…”, looking for gray areas around rules. The problem with this is that it misses the heart of the rule. Here the teachers of the Law are playing the same game, not because they wonder about the Law, but because they were hoping to trip Jesus up.

We need to understand that many of the Laws of Moses were written mindful of the broken humans they were instructing. Laws in society don’t necessarily represent God’s ideals, as much as they put boundaries on sin. Jesus is much more concerned about the heart of the matter. He quickly explains the concession of Moses, and returns the listeners back to God’s intentions in marriage. This is how we must deal with hard questions as well. We should not be asking, “Can I get away with this?” We should be asking, “What does God’s heart desire?” This is what it means to abide in Christ. Keep connected to Him as your source of life, love, and wisdom.