Jesus has left Galilee and goes to Judea across the Jordan river. This may be the last time leaving Galilee before Passover.
Pharisees come to test him. They ask is if it is legal for man to divorce his wife for any and every reason. The answer under Mosaic law is actually yes.
Jesus does not challenge it all, but rather discusses that it was God's plan all along that people should be united as one flesh in marriage.
The Pharisees then specifically ask about the no-fault divorce certificates allowed under the Mosaic law.
Jesus then responds that it was because of the hardness of their hearts that God allowed this, but this was not the way from the beginning. Jesus later tells the disciples that divorce and remarriage is adultery unless the divorce was for marital unfaithfulness.
The disciples have an interesting response - it is better not to marry. This last statement is in the account in Matthew, but not Mark.
Let's unpack this:
Jesus makes a very interesting point - the Mosaic law about divorce was a concession from God. In other words, it would have been worse for those under the law to have gotten a law that more reflected God's standard. God essentially lowered the standard because of the hardness of their hearts.
This raises all kinds of questions and issues:
1. What else in the Mosaic law was a concession from God? Was it limited to divorce? A reasonable possibility is slavery. But this a pandora's box that is opening.
2. What was so hard about their hearts to begin? Well, polygamy was rampant among the ancient Israelites. This might be one possibility.
3. God lowered the standard for a certain people at a certain time to reflect the real condition. This reflects amazing grace and patience.
4. How would we apply marital "unfaithfulness" today, especially in light of the fact Jesus said that the standards of divorce have social context. Is it limited to adultery? What about addiction to porn, drugs, gambling, or something else that could destroy the home?
At the very least, I think our society accepts spousal physical abuse on par with the destructive and terrible effect of adultery, if not more so.
5. Here is my controversial soapbox - and I will keep this short and limited...
I think this idea that the law is flexible due to hardness of the heart has a lot of import to modern society. At some level, the Christian viewpoint must intersect and interact with other traditions, secular, legal, or other religions.
America, like many Western countries, has a legal system that guarantees freedom of conscience - people have the right to have as much hardness in their heart to Christ as they want.
I personally know some gay Atheists and they have a lot of hardness in their hearts to Christ. They can be just as annoying and argumentative as the Christians who the Atheists claim annoy them. If they have all this hardness, I must ask whether it makes any sense to oppose gay marriage in greater society when the only real purpose of Christian opposition is because it aligns with the moral code of the Bible.
It seems to me that if God allowed the Mosaic code to have no-fault divorce because of the hardness of their hearts, and the hearts of gay Atheists are extremely hard, I see no reason to forbid the same allowance for them in the modern setting.
Now, I must clarify that I am only referring to civil ceremonies within the secular legal community. For instance, I see no point in an amendment to the US Constitution about this.
I am not referring to religious marriages within churches. If a Christian church does not want to conduct a religious ceremony involving gay marriage within its own doors, that is a very different issue.
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