Step 30

Mark 10:1-12 Marriage and Divorce

About Mark: Included in Mark's cluster of teaching about how the disciples should relate to one another, we find the teaching of Jesus about divorce. Typically, the subject is raised in the crowd (1), but is concluded in discussion with the disciples (10).
 
Mark says the question was raised as a test (2). Perhaps they wanted Jesus to comment on that most notorious of public cases, Herodias and her marriage to Herod Antipas explained by Mark at 6:17-29. Verse 12 here deals with a woman deserting (as some early credible texts say) her husband, as Herodias deserted Philip to become the wife of Antipas. Thus Jesus supports the view of John the Baptist, and condemns what Antipas and Herodias have done. He confirms the standard of loyalty in marriage that Christians should aspire to, though the discussion about divorce shows that Jesus is also a realist.

Bible: Mark 10:1-12, Teaching about Divorce
1 He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them. 

2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they 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 dismissal and to divorce her." 5 But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." 10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 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."

Comment: MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
THE MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP can have its problems for Christian disciples as it has for others. 

Jesus reviews the provision for divorce in the law of Moses. He notes that the provision there was to accommodate their "hardness of heart" (2-5); the reality of living in an imperfect world. But to establish the intentions of God in marriage, Jesus goes to the creation narratives in Genesis (Genesis means origins); the seed-bed of all theology. It is clear there that God created men and women to be different to each other, but to unite as one in marriage, equal and complementary. And what God has done in establishing marriage as the means of union must not be hastily set aside by human whim.  

But unique in Jesus' comment to the disciples is his view that divorce is an offence against the wife (11). To the ordinary Jew, a wife was but a chattel, that could be disposed of at will. Here Jesus portrays the wife with the dignity of an equal, against whom adultery is committed if she is divorced by her husband. And verse 12 presents the opposite case of a woman divorcing her husband.  

Jesus clearly affirms the ideal, but also recognises that divorce happens. The law of Moses had provided for the realities of human failure. So does Jesus, and so should we!

Discipleship Today: Failure in marriage is prevalent in modern society, from football heroes to presidents. Jesus wants us to know four things here.  

Firstly, he wishes us to be clear about the ideal experience of marriage intended by God. Human happiness can only be assured in living out the ideal, as so many have found.
 
Secondly, failure happens. Sin must not be premeditated. Divorce is usually a way of resolving earlier failures that had irretrievably broken the ideal of the marriage relationship. Divorce is not usually the sin here; sin is the earlier irremedial failures that led to divorce. But in God's sight no sin is final, if it is recognised as failure.
 
Thirdly, Jesus redeems. Every act of Jesus was designed to restore, renew, redeem. He forever took people out of crippling bondage, setting them freefrom a failed past by putting them on new paths of godliness.
 
Fourthly, a Christian is committed to doing the will of God. That means aspiring to God's ideal for us. In marriage, a Christian commits to the ideal of a life-long partnership. Even if there have been past failures, we must be presently committed to God's ideal of marriage; a man and a woman committed to an equal and complementary union for life.