Don't Miss the Point

We're great at misunderstanding God when it comes to marriage and divorce.

[This message was shared with the people of Zion Lutheran Church in St. Marys, Ohio on October 6, 2024.]

Mark 10:2-16
My wife and I were with a group of people recently when a man told us a joke. Some people chuckled. We smiled. But several hours later I asked my wife if she had gotten the joke. “No,” she said. “What about you?” I said, “I didn’t get it at all.” We had missed the point.

In today’s Gospel lesson, the Pharisees try to test Jesus with a question about divorce. They do so because they miss the point of God’s Law.

According to the Bible, God gave the ten commandments and His moral Law that flows from the commandments because “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) If Adam and Eve hadn’t caused themselves and all their descendants, like you and me, to be born in sin with our inborn desire to “be like God,” God never would have needed to give His commandments. We would all be loving God and loving others and have no need for God to put His Law before us in order to see that we all fall short of God’s design for us. You and I are enslaved to sin, incapable of freeing ourselves. That’s what God’s Law shows us.

But the Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought that the Law was a way human beings made themselves right–righteous–with God. Instead of seeing the Law as the means by which we see what we’re really like, driving us to the God we all now can know in Jesus for forgiveness and mercy, they saw the Law as the means by which human beings could earn their salvation through their perfect obedience of God’s Law.

The Pharisees were disturbed by Jesus. They didn’t like the way He went around forgiving sinners who didn’t perfectly obey God’s Law as they were certain they did.

But, listen, folks. The question of our position with God and our salvation isn’t about our performance–our works, it’s about this: Jesus Christ has given His sinless life to death on a cross, bearing our sins, so that we are justified–declared innocent of our sin despite our sinfulness by the grace–that is, the charity–of God as a free gift through God-given faith in Jesus Christ. More simply, we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. 

Missing this point though, the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” (Mark 10:2) In other words, according to the Law God gave after Adam and Eve fell into sin, is it lawful to divorce?

The Pharisees knew the answer to this question. God had revealed His Law through Moses in Deuteronomy 24, that if a husband found some “indecency” in his wife, he could write a certificate of divorce. If the question is whether, in our fallen world, people can divorce one another over things like infidelity or spiritual abandonment or abuse, the answer is yes. That’s what the Law says.

The Christian life though is not about simply accommodating ourselves to the ends of relationships, be they with marriage partners, children, friends, or fellow members of the Body of Christ. Christian ethics aren’t about asking, “What violations of God’s will can I get away with before I get into trouble with God?”

Marriage is a gift.

Though in a fallen world where divorce may be the only choice left when there have been things like infidelity, cruelty, or spiritual disloyalty, the law God gave on divorce, Jesus says, was given because of human hardness of heart, not because divorce is an intrinsically good thing.

Sometimes, divorce becomes the least bad thing in a fallen world and God graciously allows it to happen.

But God never likes it.

Citing Genesis 1 and 2, which talks about events that happened way before God gave the Law, Jesus says that marriage, like being a parent or a child, or being a member of Christ’s Church is meant to be a permanent thing. “‘God made them male and female,’” Jesus reminds us. “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:6-9)

Later in our lesson, the disciples have their own concerns about Jesus’ words. Jesus responds to them with words that often disturb us. But some believe that we can amplify Jesus’ words to see His true meaning. Let me tell you what I think Jesus is telling us in the words He speaks in verses 11 and 12. “Whoever divorces his wife [in order to marry] another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband [in order to marry] another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:11-12) I don’t believe that this rendering does violence to what Jesus is telling us. Jesus is warning us that if people divorce their spouses just because they’ve found someone else they prefer, they are guilty of sin and need to repent.

But, let’s be clear: Even people like this can repent and be forgiven.

Years ago, a woman who had been divorced for several years approached me at a party. Her ex-husband had violated God’s Law and Jesus’ stern warning in today’s gospel lesson and ended their marriage so that he could marry a woman with whom he’d been having an affair. In the intervening time he had married the other woman and over the course of time, gave every evidence of having begun to wrestle with his sins and the enormous harm he had done. He and his new wife went to a Christian counselor. They acknowledged their sin and expressed repentance to their former spouses and their kids and friends. Understandably, the woman left by her husband felt resentment. He was moving on with his life, seemingly in the grace of God, and she felt stuck, robbed of the marriage she’d counted on, constantly reminded of her ex-husband’s infidelity because they shared custody of their kids. God doesn’t want this to befall anyone! But this woman wanted me to tell her that God could never forgive her ex-husband and his new wife. She wanted me to say they were going to hell and that there was absolutely no other possibility. I didn’t really know the ex-husband or the new wife, but as sacred as marriage is and as horrific as divorce is and can be, I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell her that.

Let’s not miss the point. God doesn’t give us His Law to trip us up and have reason to send us to hell.

God told ancient Israel and He tells us, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’” (Ezekiel 33:11)

And Jesus tells us, “The kingdom of God is at hand [meaning that, in Jesus, the Kingdom has already arrived]; [and then He says]  repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

That call is for us, for you, whether the Law you’ve violated is, “You shall not commit adultery” or “Honor your father and mother,” “You shall have no other gods”or “You shall not bear false witness” or any of the other commandments. 

And so, I believe there are three messages Jesus wants to give to you this morning, friends.

First, marriage and all sacred relationships are precious gifts from God to be nurtured and respected.

Second, because of human hardness of heart–our sin, God allows divorce, not for flippant reasons but only when the marriage has already been destroyed by sin and unrepentance.

Third and finally, Jesus Christ died and rose to set sinners free from the condemnation and death we deserve. Through His Word and the Sacraments, He gives us the gifts of repentance and faith that restore our relationship with God. Jesus takes our sin onto Himself, whatever our sins are, so that we can have life with God forever.

The Word stands forever true then, no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

Amen