Mark 10: Divorce Is Not An Option

Whenever you want to trip someone up, try introducing a controversial topic.  That's what the Pharisees were hoping to do by "testing" Jesus with a question about the nettlesome issue of divorce.  "Is it lawful," they asked, "for a man to divorce his wife?"

As Jesus is so often wont to do, he answers their question with a question: "What did Moses say?"

"Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her."  (If that practice sounds a little cold, that's because it was.  Unlike today, women in biblical times had few rights.  And a husband could come up with virtually any excuse to divorce his wife.)

Having established the precedent, Jesus does not endorse it but challenges it.  Moses, he says, did not give this command to present a valid alternative to marriage; rather, he allowed it as a concession.

Jesus then goes back to Creation to explore God's intent and design in marriage in the first place.  Marriage isn't meant to be taken lightly.  It isn't meant to be something easily reversible.  Instead, God had a high view of marriage in mind when He created us male and female for each other, with the end goal being a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman, a union both physical and spiritual.

Divorce is a reality in life, but it was never meant to serve as a viable alternative to remaining married.  Those who have endured the trauma of divorce are among those most likely to agree that a marital break-up is a painful, difficult, less-than-God's-best experience.  The fact that it may be preferable to the disaster that an individual marriage has become is not an endorsement of divorce, but a recognition of our fallenness apart from God's grace.

More than an opportunity to beat divorced people up about their marital failures, Jesus uses this question as a teachable moment, instructing His followers about the high view of human marriage that God has had in mind ever since Creation.  Christians are not free to take the relationship of marriage lightly, even if the world around us does.