Mark 10:1-12--Teaching About Divorce

Mark 10:1-12
English Standard Version

Teaching About Divorce
10 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.”

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Jesus went back to the southern kingdom of Judah and to the region where John the Baptist frequented (the area near to and across the Jordan).  As was His custom, Jesus taught the people whenever a crowd gathered.  He didn't miss an opportunity to be their Teacher.

Since He was so close to Jerusalem (maybe even down that way for a Jewish holiday), the Pharisees came up to test Him.  They wanted to derail Jesus' teaching by asking Him a question not related to His subject matter, but instead by asking what they thought was a tricky question.  Why was it that Moses wrote in the Law that a man could divorce his wife by writing her a certificate of divorce?  In this culture the man was allowed to divorce his wife for any reason (essentially "no fault divorce" for the husband, but the same did not apply to the wife--she was usually stuck being married to the man unless he did something that was worthy of death).

Jesus replies to them that God has always hated divorce and it was because of the hardness of the hearts of that generation (and this generation as Jesus says, "your hearts,") that the LORD permitted divorce.  Jesus goes all the way back to Genesis 1 and 2 to answer the Pharisee's objection by showing God's original intent from Scripture---one man, one woman, one marriage--forever.  Jesus adds the words to the Scripture which we hear in so many wedding ceremonies now (He was the Living Word, so He can do this), that "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."

Well, that seems to be a really good answer--not only did Jesus not get stumped by their tricky question, but He turned the tables on them and made them look bad by telling them it was because of their hardness of their hearts that God allowed this through Moses--Jesus lumped the Pharisees together with that wicked generation that died in the wilderness, and said that they weren't really any different.

Even with this answer that seems pretty clear, the disciples wanted to ask Jesus about this again when they were in private.  Jesus is clear that any man who divorces his wife so he can marry another woman is committing adultery.  Likewise, any woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.  The Church today loves to try and sound more loving and compassionate than Jesus and try to change this teaching.  The only reason that Jesus gave in His teachings that said that divorce was acceptable was sexual sin (it's a much larger word than how it is usually translated in English, but it is the Greek word pornia).  That word involved any kind of sexual act that was outside of the one man, one woman, one marriage for one lifetime type union that Jesus is talking about here.  We used to call all these behaviors "sexually deviant," but now it is hard for culture to figure out what in the "norm" and what is "deviant."  That's okay though, because God is unchanging, and His Word stands forever and ever.  We can look to that standard and know what He calls sin and what He calls righteous.

It's not recorded here, but the disciples come back after hearing this and say, "Then it is better for a man to never marry."  Their idea of marriage had been so marred by the world that they couldn't conceive of a relationship where a man made an eternal covenant with a woman--they wouldn't make those vows if they couldn't easily get out of them any time they wanted to.  However, marriage is supposed to be a picture of God's love and commitment to those of us that we would now call the Church (this includes all of Israel that believes in Jesus for salvation, I'm not excluding them, and I know that really it is more correct to speak of the one true vine as the true Israel and that the Church is grafted into this vine as "wild branches").  Paul will come back and use the image of marriage to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church in his epistles to the churches, especially to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians.  I'll let you read up on that topic more, but I'll say that it makes more sense why God cares about this when this image is meant to convey gospel truth to the world about who God is, who we are and what it means to say that God loves us and has made an eternal covenant with us.