JESUS THEN LEFT that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan.1 Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.
2Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
3“What did Moses command you?” he replied.
4They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
5“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
10When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
13People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
Original Meaning
DESPITE JESUS’ ATTEMPT to remain incognito (9:30), crowds persist in flocking to him as he travels from Capernaum to Judea. The Pharisees also persist in their futile opposition to him by testing him, which recalls their plot to destroy him (3:6). In this way, they hope, they will be able to derail him.
The Question About Divorce (10:1–12)
THE SPECIFIC QUESTION the Pharisees ask Jesus is about divorce, though they are really interested in something more than Jesus’ legal opinion on this issue. Most Jews took for granted that a man had an inalienable right to divorce his wife. The later rabbis only argued about what were the legitimate grounds for divorce, not whether it was lawful. Malachi’s lone protest against divorce in the Old Testament—“‘I hate divorce,’ says the LORD God of Israel” (Mal. 2:16)—was turned on its head in the Aramaic translation in the Targum Jonathan, which reads, “If you hate her, divorce her.”
Why the Pharisees test him on this specific matter is unclear. They hardly need proof of his different approach to Scripture. Their query may be a tactic designed to expose him as an aberrant teacher who goes against the grain of Scripture and common sense. They may be trying to provoke him to say something about divorce that will arouse the antipathy of the Herodian family. Divorce was a sensitive topic to them, and any disapproving salvos from Jesus could imperil his life as it did John the Baptizer’s, whose denunciation of Herod Antipas’s divorce and remarriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, led to his arrest and violent death (6:17–29). The Pharisees have allied themselves with the Herodians (3:6; 12:13) and may have tried to compromise Jesus in Herod’s jurisdiction of Perea.2 In the Markan context, however, Jesus’ statements about divorce continue a theme begun in 9:33. Jesus sets forth the stringent demands for disciples, and his teaching on divorce dramatizes further the radical claims that God’s reign makes on individuals.
Jesus typically fends off his opponents by going on the counterattack. When the Pharisees ask whether divorce is lawful, he asks them, “What did Moses command you?” This rejoinder recasts the issue from a hypothetical debate about some unspecified husband to a command directed to them. It also exposes a fatal flaw in the Pharisees’ whole approach to the law. They come at the law asking, “What does it allow me to do?” or, to put it more bluntly, “What can I get away with?” This preoccupation with legal subtleties ultimately neglects God’s will, which is primarily concerned with love for the neighbor (12:31). They are interested in their rights, not their responsibilities, and pursue legal exoneration for a behavior no matter how it might affect another person. They ask only about the husband’s right to divorce and pay no attention to the needs of the wife—what it does to her or to children, whether she has any right to object to a divorce. Jesus’ question uncovers their sinful hearts hidden behind the mask of legal rectitude.
The Pharisees respond to Jesus’ counterquestion by citing the Mosaic regulations covering the divorce process: Moses permitted divorce, provided the husband gives his wife a certificate of divorce.3 The instruction in Deuteronomy 24:1–4 leaves the matter of divorce entirely to the husband’s discretion. It does not outline the grounds for divorce, nor does it endorse it. It simply places restrictions on the husband if he should decide to put his wife away. The law impassively dictates that if the wife finds no favor in her husband’s eyes because she is guilty of some indecency, or if he simply dislikes her, he must give her a bill of divorce but may never remarry her after she becomes the wife of another man.
Jesus has set up the Pharisees for his counterstroke. He contends that what Moses commanded was only a compromise situation designed to reduce the fallout from men’s hardness of heart. The legislation on divorce certificates protected wives from brutal abandonment. It freed a wife from the accusation of adultery when she, out of necessity, remarried; and it prevented the first husband from destroying her new marriage by trying to reclaim her. It deterred anything that might look like wife-swapping. The law was therefore intended to keep the social upheaval associated with divorce to a minimum.
Jesus’ line of reasoning becomes clear. If the Mosaic legislation on this issue had its roots in men’s hardness of heart—willful defiance against God—then it cannot reflect God’s will. Moses may have given laws to regulate divorce, but divorce is not God’s will for marriage. One therefore should not construe the stipulations in Deuteronomy 24:1–4 to mean that God condones discarding a wife or that it will not come under God’s judgment if one follows the guidelines to the letter. Divorce is sin in God’s eyes because it originates in human hardness of heart.
The Pharisees need to discover what God commands, not what Moses has permitted. The Pharisees’ approach to the law is wrong; their approach to marriage is also wrong. They begin with the end of the marriage relationship and scrutinize the correct procedures for ending it. The later Mishnaic tractate Gittin (Divorce Certificates), for example, is devoted to outlining the procedures for giving a wife her marital pink slip. By contrast, Jesus addresses the marriage from the perspective of God’s intention at the beginning of creation and also the couple’s intention at the beginning of the marriage relationship. One does not find God’s true intentions for marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4 but earlier, in Genesis 1–2, which is also a “book of Moses.”
Jesus’ opponents have consequently misunderstood both Scripture and God’s will for marriage. God created male and female and joins them into a one-flesh relationship. Since God is the one who joins the two together, he is the Lord of the union. Who are males to make themselves the lords of the marriage by ousting an unwanted wife as they might discard a piece of used goods? God abandons no one; the husband is not to abandon the spouse even if it has legal precedent. The answer to the Pharisees’ question is therefore, “No! It is not lawful for a husband to put away a wife,” if one understands “lawful” in terms of God’s will and not in terms of finding escape clauses in the legal fine print. Jesus directly opposes the view expressed in Sirach 25:26: “If she does not go as you direct, separate her from yourself.” His argument gives dignity and value to the wife; she is not an appendage that the husband can jettison at will.
As has been his custom, Jesus gives his disciples additional instruction when they privately ask him for an explanation (see 4:34; 7:17; 9:28, 33). What he says about divorce and remarriage carries things further and is no less revolutionary than his private explanation of food laws after the Pharisees raised the issue of washing hands (7:17–23). One discovers that Jesus allows what the Pharisees prohibited, eating with defiled hands, and prohibits what they allow, divorce. Not only does he maintain that divorce is wrong, he declares that remarriage after divorce is even more wrong and labels it adultery. Deuteronomy 24:3–4 forbids a husband from remarrying his divorced wife, who has since remarried and been divorced again, and labels it an abomination. Jesus brands remarriage to anyone after a divorce as adultery.4 Divorce stems from hardness of heart, and it can lead to more hardness of heart.
Mark does not record the shocked reaction of the disciples to these words as Matthew does (19:10), but Jesus’ statement could only have created astonishment. The divorce certificate carried with it the right to remarry—“Behold thou art permitted to any man” (m. Git. 9:3)—so that no one could be accused of adultery after divorce. Jesus rejects this provision and insists that the marriage bond must never broken no matter how punctilious one is in following the legal process.5
Blessing the Children (10:13–16)
JESUS’ CONCERN FOR children follows immediately after his statements about divorce. Both women and children could be mistreated and abused because of their lack of power. Jesus’ next words and actions give value to children as he returns to the issue of the little ones (9:42). Both wives and children are to be respected and cherished.
Others have brought the paralyzed and the blind to Jesus; now parents bring children for Jesus to touch (10:13). The disciples act like truculent bouncers. They rebuke these parents and try to block their children’s access to Jesus. Again, they want to throw their weight around and exercise control by keeping at bay others who come from outside their circle. These aspiring leaders want to be the gatekeepers, who determine not only who can use Jesus’ name (9:38), but also who can have admission to his presence. He must indignantly intercede on behalf of the children and inform his disciples that the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
The true disciple must become as a child to receive the kingdom rather than act like an overseer, who drives others away. This childlikeness does not refer to any supposedly inherent qualities that children are said to possess, such as humility, trustfulness, transparency, hopefulness, modesty, or willingness to believe (see comments on 9:36–37). Children can also be demanding, short-tempered, sulky, stubborn, thankless, and selfish. We call it childish behavior (see Jesus’ parable of the squabbling children, Matt. 11:16–19; Luke 7:31–35).
In the ancient world, children had no status. They were easily ignored and barred access because no one would take the trouble to complain and fight for them. These children, who must be brought to Jesus by others, have nothing to commend an audience with him and cannot defend themselves against bullies. Jesus holds them up again as an example. Their littleness contrasts sharply with the overbearing disciples, who want to assert their power and influence. The disciples need to learn not only to minister to the little ones but also to adopt the attitude of littleness. The little ones are easily pushed aside because they are weak, but God works most powerfully in weakness. When one is appropriately little, like a child, or poor in spirit (Matt 5:3), one is more open to receiving the reign of God. Children are also more open to receiving gifts than adults. Adults want to earn what they get, as the next scene with the rich man reveals.
Bridging Contexts
IN OUR CONTEXT, we think of divorce in terms of a judgment decided by a court of law that legally dissolves a marriage. In biblical times, however, divorce was an independent action taken by a husband to cast off his wife (who was regarded as property, Ex. 20:17; Num. 30:10–14; Sir. 23:22–27). Divorce was so accepted as a regular part of life that Isaiah uses it as an image to describe the broken relationship between Israel and God. Even God divorced: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away?’” (Isa. 50:1; see Jer. 3:8).
The legal stipulations in Deuteronomy 24:1–4 took for granted the time-honored practice of putting away a wife and tried only to regulate it. Later teachers of the law argued about the grounds for divorce and differed on how to interpret the phrase “a matter of indecency” (Deut. 24:1; “something indecent,” NIV). Some emphasized the word “matter”—any matter was grounds for divorce; others stressed the word “indecency”—the wife had to be guilty of some misconduct (see m. Git. 9:10). In Jesus’ time, wives had little or no recourse to justice in a law court when their husbands turned them out. A wife could only expect to receive the sum of money (ketuba) the groom pledged before the marriage to give his wife upon his death or if he divorced her.
In the Greco-Roman world in which Mark wrote his Gospel, divorce was even more easy and informal. Either spouse could divorce simply by leaving home with that intention; no justification was needed. The wife might keep her dowry, but the children remained with the father under his authority. The result was that most families were blended with children born from different mothers.
When applying what Jesus says about divorce to our context, there are several things that we need to recognize. (1) Jesus is responding here to hostile questioners, who are bent on trapping him (10:2). We should therefore not expect to find in this passage instructions for the pastoral care of divorced persons. Jesus is not addressing those contemplating divorce and seeking his counsel or those struggling in broken relationships and needing encouragement. He directs his answer to bitter opponents, whom he has already accused of mishandling the Scripture and distorting God’s will (7:6–13). His reply presents God’s will for marriage, which challenges those who want to impose their own will on the marriage relationship.
(2) Jesus proclaims throughout this Gospel that God’s reign is breaking into our world and lives. This has direct implications for how we are to live. We can no longer deal with God based on what Moses may have “permitted” and where the pettifoggers might find loopholes. God’s will, as Jesus reveals it, invades all areas of life, including what is culturally accepted and legally allowed. Divorce happens, but Jesus attributes it to a sclerosis of the heart—deliberate disobedience of God. In this section of Mark, Jesus makes radical demands of his disciples. He has called for them to put themselves last in service to others and to be willing to sacrifice for others. These commands apply also to the marriage relationship even when one may think that there are irreconcilable differences. If disciples obey the great commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself (12:31), that neighbor also includes the spouse. Loving a spouse as oneself rules out the possibility of divorce.
(3) Jesus’ reaction to the Pharisees’ appeal to what Moses allowed in Deuteronomy means that one cannot simply search Scripture and look for proof-text escape clauses. One has to discern the will of God even in Scripture.6 Jesus always interprets Scripture in terms of a higher claim and a more complete obedience. At least three principles come into play in his interpretation. (a) He argues that Moses made a concession in the law about divorce certificates to rein in human sinfulness and prevent greater evil. (b) Jesus finds God’s will in what God intended in creation, an ideal that most couples embarking on marriage for the first time would endorse. (c) Marriage is to be a lifelong union, not a temporary romantic dalliance that a husband (or wife) can undo whenever it becomes inconvenient.
(4) The issue of the legitimate grounds for divorce does not surface in this passage. The Pharisees ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” (10:2), not, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” as in Matthew 19:3. Jesus’ answer to their question in essence is, “No, it is not lawful,” and Mark’s account contains no exception clauses (see Matt. 5:32; 19:9).7 One therefore should eschew any casuistry that tries to argue that what Jesus says about divorce here in Mark does not apply in certain cases. Jesus does not say divorce is permissible if such and such conditions occur. He presents God’s ideal for marriage, which is not debatable.
(5) Jesus’ opponents treated marriage as a contract that a husband could cancel on a whim. Jesus reckons marriage to be indissoluble because of the one-flesh union. His argument implies that a piece of paper does not affect the permanence of this union. This passage is therefore more about the permanence of marriage than about divorce. The sexual union marks a person indelibly as nothing else does (1 Cor. 6:16–18).8 Jesus reinforces his argument that marriage is a permanent union by declaring that remarriage is adultery.
This last statement has caused grief and soul-searching for many who have divorced and remarried. They ask, “Am I living in adultery?” or someone may accuse them of living in adultery. One needs special sensitivity to convey Jesus’ argument. As noted above, the essential words of a bill of divorce were: “Behold, thou art permitted to any man” (m. Git. 9:3). The whole point of the document was to avoid the charge of adultery should anyone ever remarry. The word used in the Greek text for the bill of divorce (apostasion) was used as a technical term for relinquishing property. The husband relinquished his rights to the wife with the certificate of divorce, and one would be surprised at being found guilty simply for getting rid of property and replacing it with something else. Malina argues that Jesus’ audience must have been as startled as we would be if he said to us, “Anyone who sells his car and buys another is guilty of theft.”9 On his part, Jesus makes this statement to argue the permanence of marriage, not to accuse persons of adultery. Legal actions define the limits of relationships, but human legal definitions do not always reflect God’s perspective. The spouse is not a piece of property but bone of one’s bone and flesh of one’s flesh (cf. Gen. 2:23).
Modern social scientists have come to recognize this truth quite independently of Jesus’ teaching. A marriage that can be dissolved in the courts cannot be so easily dissolved in life. Divorce may end the covenant between two partners, but it does not end the relationship. Whitaker writes:
The craziest thing about marriage is that one cannot get divorced. We just do not seem to make it out of intimate relationships. It is obviously possible to divide up property and to decide not to live together any more, but it is impossible to go back to being single. Marriage is like a stew that has reversible and irrevocable characteristics that the parts cannot be rid of. Divorce is leaving a part of the self behind, like the rabbit who escapes the trap by gnawing one leg off.10
Marriage partners are like two plants that have grown together in the same pot for so many years that their roots have become intertwined. It becomes difficult ever to separate the two neatly or completely. Even if one does, the plant has become shaped by the presence of the other that it has lived with. A divorced person might ask, “What do I do with the photo albums for the past twenty years? Do I discard the last twenty years of my life?” Spouses may no longer be spouses but they are kin because they remain the parents of their children. Tannehill comments: “[In] the suffering perhaps more than in the happiness a man and a woman may discover how deeply involved they are. In the poisoning of their marriage a part of them is dying.”11
“What about the children?” is a question frequently asked in divorce cases. Jesus’ concern for the care and acceptance of children immediately follows his statements about marriage and divorce. Helpless children are the ones most affected by divorce, and studies have shown that while they are incredibly resilient, divorce can have a devastating effect on them. They easily get lost in the shuffle as parents seek to work their will on one another.
In bridging the contexts of Jesus’ blessing of the children, Barton cautions that we should not read back our modern fascination and sentimentalization of childhood into the Gospels. The discovery of childhood as an important developmental stage is a modern phenomenon, as is the Sunday school for instruction of children.12 The ancient world did not have a romantic notion of children. Children added nothing to the family’s economy or honor and did not count. In the Greco-Roman world one could literally throw children away by exposing unwanted infants at birth.13 The unscrupulous would collect exposed children and raise them to be gladiators or prostitutes and even disfigure them to enhance their value as beggars. In rabbinic Judaism, one rabbi voices sentiments shared by many: A sage should not bother with children: “Morning sleep and mid-day wine and children’s talk and sitting in the meeting-houses of the ignorant people put a man of the world” (m. ’Abot 3:11).
Jesus goes against the grain and identifies with the powerless, with those who have no rights and whom most regard as insignificant. The new community Jesus founds embraces the powerless little ones rather than dismissing them or banishing them. Since he has special regard for them, so should his disciples. Those who adopt the sense of childlike dependence on God that is captured Charles Wesley’s hymn will be the ones who will fulfill this charge more readily:
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Look upon a little child,
Pity my simplicity.
Suffer me to come to thee.
Some interpreters have used Mark 10:13–16 as a proof-text to justify infant baptism. The verb “to hinder” (koluo, 10:14) appears in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch: “What hinders me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36; NIV, “Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”). But the use of this verb in baptismal contexts (see also Matt. 3:14; Acts 10:47; 11:17) does not make the context baptismal wherever else the verb appears. Mark certainly does not use it this way (cf. Mark 9:38–39). In the present section, people bring their children to Jesus so that he will touch them and bless them. Mark does not connect what Jesus does to anything related to baptism. The text does not argue that parents are allowed to bring their children for baptism but that disciples must not impede or restrain little ones from coming to Jesus.
Contemporary Significance
MARRIED COUPLES SOON learn that marriage is not a fairy tale lived happily ever after in a castle. Romantic emotion, which may have been the only thing that drew the couple together, quickly wears thin within two years of marriage. Human hardness of heart has not softened since the time of Moses. Given the escalating divorce statistics in our country, the issue of divorce is constantly before us. Committed Christians also get divorced. Many suffer from anger, anguish, and guilt. Others take the shattered relationships with a spouse and the impaired relationships with their children in stride. The extraordinarily high divorce rate in our society reflects most people’s belief that marriage is dissoluble at will. As a result, in 1973–74, the number of marriages that ended in divorce exceeded for the first time the number of marriages that were ended by the death of a spouse.14
Many factors contribute to the rising tide of divorce. Couples who try to live on islands of intimacy isolated from others are more easily deluged when hit by the typhoons of trouble. Family members may be too distant to offer support, friends too few. The institution of marriage has changed from a predominantly socioeconomic one to something supposed to meet personal and emotional needs. We expect more from marriage than people did in the past. The vow “to have and to hold … as long as we both shall live” has been updated to “as long as my spouse meets my needs and I feel fulfilled.” Beyond the desire for financial security, companionship, and children, we expect unconditional love, emotional support, personal fulfillment, and ardent romance.
We have these high expectations at a time when there are fewer external forces to hold marriages together. Work and home life were not separated in the past. Now husbands and wives frequently go their separate ways in everyday life, meeting each other occasionally for a family meal and going off together on a two-week vacation. Parents raise children in the automobile as they travel from one activity to another. Under these circumstances, it is not unusual for partners to grow apart. The social stigma once attached to divorce no longer keeps a couple together. The advent of the no-fault divorce laws not only gives legal permission for divorce but makes it easier for partners to break up and go their separate ways.
Many consider the idea of unconditional commitment to one person for life to be unreasonable since so much can change over the years. Cartoonists can get laughs with such lines as, “Are you planning a long marriage?” “Will you be my wife for the next couple of years?” Quipsters jest half-seriously, “Watching sports on TV is just something to do between marriages.” The problem today is that so many enter marriage without any sense of it being a lifelong commitment. In some circles, divorce is almost expected. A guest on a television talk show tells her host: “If you ever get divorced, call me.”
Many other forces in our secular society contrive to wreck marriages. Bruner writes: “Seduction, fornication, and adultery are the erotic engines at the core of the entertainment and advertising industries.”15 These industries also encourage us to be satisfied with nothing but the best and to upgrade to new and improved versions. Our culture encourages us to accept better and forget worse (or even average). When a marriage relationship goes through a rocky patch, many decide that they deserve better and leave in search of it.
Despite the changes in our culture, the church needs to take a stand against the rising tide of easy divorce in our society. Christians are not to be conformed to this world—and this includes its indifference toward the marriage vow. But one has to steer between the Scylla of being too lenient on the sin of divorce and the Charybdis of being too harsh. On the one hand, one must be careful to proclaim God’s intention for marriage to be a permanent covenant relationship. Marriage is not a temporary, romantic alliance that can be terminated whenever one or both wish. Jesus made radical demands of his disciples and believed that God was working in the world so that they could live up to those demands. Many young people today, however, have never heard in a religious context that divorce is wrong. So many divorced persons sit in the congregation that pastors may want to sidestep the issue lest they offend members and rub salt in old wounds. The church needs to infuse in its youth a deep sense of the sanctity of the marriage commitment to counterbalance all the messages they receive from our culture.
On the other hand, one must also be sensitive not to beat people over the head with the Bible when they are already bruised and broken. While the church should proclaim God’s will for marriage and announce God’s judgment on sin, we must also proclaim God’s forgiveness of sin and acceptance of sinners. Divorce is like an atomic bomb that leaves deep emotional craters and strikes all kinds of innocent bystanders with the fallout. It adds to the explosive chaos and alienation in the world that God has sent his Son to defuse. This is why God hates divorce and why the divorced person usually hates divorce. While God hates divorce, the church must always be mindful that God does not hate the divorced person. God hates sin, but God does not hate the sinner. The church must direct sinners to God’s offer of forgiveness and provide a place for them to experience God’s healing. Divorce recovery groups may provide an excellent opportunity to minister to people when they need help the most.
It is perhaps more important to ask what the church should be doing to strengthen marriages and prevent divorce than to ask what we should do after a divorce. The church should be sensitive to the pressures on marriage today and ought to do more than make pronouncements about divorce, whether they be words of condemnation or dispensation. It needs to take action to stem the tide of spouse abuse, child abuse, adultery, and divorce in our society. All too often, the church tries to step in after things have reached crisis proportions, when it is often too late for any change to take place. The church therefore needs to be engaged in preventive medicine that will help young people prepare themselves for marriage and help those already married to strengthen their commitment to one another.
John Gottman has isolated warning signs in marriages that if allowed to go unchecked will inevitably lead to a marriage breakup: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.16 These issues should be dealt with forthrightly in the church’s education program and from the pulpit. People are looking for help in coping with the strains that modern life brings, not only in order to remain married but to have a happy and fulfilling relationship with their spouses. Rather than bemoaning the situation, we must isolate the many causes of divorce and do all in our power to help couples remedy problems and avert pitfalls.
My wife has compared making a marriage to a making a quilt. She thought it would be a fun winter project that would fill a blank kitchen wall that begged for something. Though she had never made a quilt before, she envisioned something beautiful, unlike anything her foremothers had made. How hard was it to cut out simple shapes and sew them together? She plunged into the task by borrowing the children’s colored pencils and sketching out a design that picked up the design of the area rug under the table. As she worked on it, she soon realized that the quilt would depart from the original plan. She mismeasured some middle pieces, and the small mistakes in the middle multiplied as she added layer on layer to the edges. She had to patch in extra pieces and change the design to fit the mistakes. The mistakes and midcourse corrections became part of the design. After eight months and far more work than originally anticipated, the quilt was finished and hanging on the wall. It only remotely resembled the original sketch. It refused to hang flat against the wall, and one side was longer than the other. No one will mistake it for a factory-made quilt. Nevertheless, we like it.
In the process of adding more stitches and hoping to persuade it to hang straight, it dawned on her how the quilt was like a good marriage. We start out with a dream that we can make a better marriage than the imperfect one we may think our parents had. We sketch our plans for the future, far underestimating the work it may take to quilt two lives into one pattern. As we busily shape and stitch our lives day by day, we make mistakes and cause hurts. The marriage quilt becomes flawed since it is quilted by two sinful people. We can get discouraged since the pieces do not all fit together as we thought they would. Compromises and patching up have to take place. The original design must be altered, or we will give up and throw it all away. If we persevere, however, we allow God’s love to work in and through us. The marriage takes on a unique beauty as love and grace turn flaws into redemption. The hurts and wrongs may not be beautiful, but the love that shapes them into the larger design of God’s work can turn them into pictures for the world to see the healing power of God’s love.17
One needs to convey that the sin of divorce can occur in any marriage, whether there is a legal divorce or not. Many marriages may never end up in divorce court, but they are just as cold and loveless and filled with hate and anger. One unhappy spouse observed, “I am not married, just undivorced.” My wife and I concluded previously, “Partners who live in alienation from each other, angry and hurt, and convinced that the other is responsible for the pain in the relationship, are missing the mark as certainly as the couple that legally divorces.”18 Reporters asked a husband celebrating his fiftieth anniversary with his wife if he had ever considered divorce. He replied candidly, “Never divorce. Murder many times, but never divorce.”19
God is more concerned about the harm that our sins inflict on others than the legal niceties involved. The divorce certificate that finalizes the breakup of a marriage is like the death certificate; it certifies that a death has occurred, but it is not the death. It may also be compared to the accident report written long after colliding automobiles have left casualties strewn on the highway. Consequently, married partners need to confess the failures that can regularly occur within marriage and take measures to correct them before the alienation becomes an insuperable obstacle to overcome.
While proclaiming God’s will for marriage, we should recognize that one cannot restore a failed marriage with the prohibition of divorce.20 Jesus teaches that God does not will divorce, but that does not solve the hardness-of-heart issue. The church in the past has applied Jesus’ teaching on the subject of divorce and remarriage with a legalistic rigor that it suspends when it comes to his other sayings.
Jesus here lays down God’s intention for marriage, but specific cases always arise that need addressing, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:10–16. Partners have been yoked together, but what should one do when the marriage becomes a yoke of bondage? If Paul permits divorce in a situation where an unbelieving spouse refuses to continue a marriage with a Christian, can one insist that a spouse subjected to physical abuse, for example, should continue to hold on to a marriage in a vain attempt to fulfill some ideal that already has been violated? Encouraging an abused spouse to continue the relationship has been shown to promote further abuse rather than to confront the sin and correct it. Sometimes divorce is the best medicine for confronting individuals with the reality of their sin. What should one do when the marriage becomes a legal shell, lacking any personal commitment? Should the quality of the marriage relationship figure into the decision? In addressing these issues we should help people decide which is least evil while not pretending that evil is good.21
In treating the issue of divorce, we need to recognize that a broken marriage is no different from any other sin that falls short of God’s will, except that it is so public and affects so many—children, the extended family, the community at large. And after one has experienced a broken marriage, then what? What is God’s word after a couple has failed to fulfill God’s intention for marriage? One cannot turn back the clock, but can the divorced individual have a second chance? Does Jesus’ insistence that marriage is indissoluble mean that once a person is divorced, one should never remarry? For some, the answer is clearly yes. Heth and Wenham argue that a second marriage rejects the authority of Christ and cite Archer with approval:
God has not called us to be happy, but He called us to follow Him, with all integrity and devotion.… Surely this applies to living with the dismal disappointment and frustration of an unhappy marriage.22
In answering this question, however, one should recognize that Jesus was not speaking here to those who had experienced the brokenness of a marriage failure; rather, he was responding to a “test” question of the Pharisees. What he might have said to people in the throes of divorce we can only surmise from what he said to the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) and to the Samaritan woman who had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband (4:4–29).
How should the church help to put broken lives back together? The principle of salvage and redemption governed Jesus’ ministry to people. Peter received more than one chance to start anew after denying his Lord with curses. One may infer that others who commit different kinds of sins also get second chances. The principle that Jesus used regarding Sabbath rules may also apply. If marriage was made for the blessing of humankind, and not humankind for marriage, then it would seem that one who has failed in marriage should have another opportunity to remarry.23 This does not mean that the slate is wiped clean, particularly when children are involved. One cannot dismiss the failure of the past, but it need not rule over us or prevent us from beginning anew in the grace of God.
What should the church do with its members who divorce? Is there Christian life after divorce and remarriage? Should churches allow divorced persons to serve in any capacity? Should they be allowed to attend seminary? Should they be ordained? How is one to be faithful to Scripture and also gracious and not legalistic? All these questions become important in applying the Scripture to real-life situations.
This passage should lead us to ask a more important question, however. Jesus commends children to his disciples. They are to extend loving care for them and not to block them off as insignificant. Our attitude toward the value of children surfaces in how we care for the facilities for children in the church, in how much of the budget is designated for their care and training, in how we integrate them into our worship. Do they appear in worship only as cute performers who sing their song and then are shuttled off out of sight and earshot so that they cannot disturb what we regard as more important—our own quiet worship? Worship leaders face a challenge in trying to mix children into the corporate worship of the church so that they feel that they are an important part of Christ’s mission and work.
The more desperate challenge, the lack of care for children, continues to plague societies. Children continue to be abused, discarded, and discounted. Young children are enslaved to work in the global economy or are forced into prostitution and have less international protection than endangered species. Christians today must not buy products produced from child labor, must speak out against it, and must use all their political might to stamp it out. In our own culture, we allow advertisers to pose children in sexually suggestive ads for clothing across the page from a story about child molestation. We permit the media to glamorize violence, sex, and drugs in programming targeted for children and adolescents. We allow industries to conduct psychological studies on how to entice children to buy products that have been demonstrated to be addictive and harmful to health. Protecting profit margins is apparently more important than protecting children. We allow parents to skip out on the responsibility of providing financial support for children that they brought into the world, so that the child must cope with poverty as well as the absence of a parent. We have been silent about the sexual and physical abuse of children that occurs in poor, middle-class, rich, and even in Christian homes. We cut programs designed to give impoverished children a chance in an increasingly competitive world so that we can save in taxes.
Few churches offer ministries that try to reach out to children whose parents are not members of the church. These children are at risk, and many have never known unconditional love and acceptance from caring adults. Teenagers are left alone to raise themselves, and the resulting rise in teenage pregnancy that only perpetuates the cycle should not surprise. If, as James Garbarino argues, children are like the canaries in the mine shaft, their plight warns us that we and they live in a toxic environment that desperately needs to be cleaned up.24 Jesus commits children to our loving protection, and the church must be in the forefront of helping to care for children and helping parents to care for children. Some today may consider children to be liabilities, but the church recognizes that Christ is revealed to us through the child in our midst.