The instruction of the Lord Jesus about marriage is in line with what is revealed in the Old Testament. In the last book of it — Malachi — the LORD, the God of Israel, says: “Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth. For I hate divorce” (Mal. 2:15-16, NASB). John the Baptist, the very last prophet of the Old Covenant, considered the honour of God’s marriage laws even more important than his own life. He says openly to King Herod: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife” (Mark 6:18)!

The appearance of Jesus connects with this. At the beginning of his public ministry he is the guest at a wedding in Cana and considers it worth the effort to save the party when the wine runs out too early: marriage is worth a good drink (John 2:1-11). Not long after this he makes a Samaritan woman clearly understand how he judges her unfaithful behaviour. She lives with someone and then says that she is not married, to which Jesus answers, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (John. 4:17-18). The Samaritan woman observes that Jesus maintains the marriage laws of Israel’s God.

Letter of Divorce⤒🔗

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declares in so many words, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). This also applies to everything that the law and the prophets say about marriage. The ancients were told at Sinai, “You shall not break up the marriage” and Jesus binds them to it: “Even the first step on the road to adultery — playing with the eyes, the seductive look—is as bad for God in heaven as is complete adultery.” Jesus’ followers are therefore called upon to be strict themselves, for the sake of their eye and hand. Anyone who disregard this is on the road to hell (Matt. 5:27-30). In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus makes God’s marriage law come to its full right.

He even goes a step too far in the eyes of his contemporaries. He teaches the people that  divorce is impermissible. Jesus is not thinking of those cases where the marriage was actually broken by adultery. He is talking about all those cases in which a man, at that time in Israel, would send his wife away because he had something against her. For this practice of separation people appealed to the law of Moses.

In Deuteronomy 24 we read about a divorce certificate that was given to provide a legal framework in case of a divorce . How could Moses have been able to speak of a letter of divorce when the LORD would not allow it? People thought they were in the right to be able to appeal to Moses. And immediately it was thought very strange that Jesus taught differently here. For he says in the Sermon on the Mount: “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:32).

Later on people will try to catch Jesus in regard to this statement. In Judea, Pharisees come to tempt him with the question, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause” (Matt. 19:3). They know that he would like to call this unacceptable, but then he would be caught immediately on a deviation from the law of Moses, in Deuteronomy 24. In his response to this test question, Jesus makes it clear that the error lies with the questioners. Deuteronomy 24 is about a toleration rule: during the time in the desert Israel was so used to the divorce practices of the other peoples that the LORD did not abolish divorce all at once. However, neither does he institute this practice. Israel had known the divorce contract for a long time. What people have to learn again is: the holiness of marriage. A first step in this direction is the ruling of Deuteronomy 24.

This law stipulates that a woman may not return to her first husband after a subsequent marriage. She has become polluted. A strange rule for the world at that time. When everything is correctly arranged with a divorce contract, should she not be free to marry another, and when that man dies, is she not also free for a second marriage with her first husband? Nothing has happened that was not legal? At this point Deuteronomy informs the people and says that something wrong has happened. The entire business of the letter of divorce, however much tolerated, is under the cloak of uncleanness. It may and does happen, but that does not make it right. Anyone who makes a positive use of such a toleration does not understand the element of rejection in it.

Israel should have been moved by Deuteronomy 24 to slowly but surely eradicate the practice of divorce. However, the opposite has been done: what the law tolerated became the right of every Israelite male. Jesus points to this when he says, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8).

Here we see how Jesus makes the connection to the Old Testament: he goes back to the beginning of God’s works. So he also says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his 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” Matt. 19:4-6). The only good “operating instructions” for us human beings can be found with him who made us. Marriage only, as a lifelong bond of faith, suits the man and woman made by God. All the rest came later, and is indicative of decay among the people.

A Great Miracle←⤒🔗

Jesus knows the reality of a series of broken relationships and of a lot of filth and egoism. All of that does not come from God and does not belong to the beginning. These days it comes from the hiding places of a wicked sinner’s heart. Jesus therefore says. “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).

It is a great miracle that Jesus has wanted to live in the midst of a humanity that had strayed far from the Creator. It proves that he does not uphold the law of God to bruise and batter us, but to bring us to repentance, penance and grace. Precisely because of his severe judgment of all divorce and adultery, the Saviour has also turned to sinners and whores. When a woman of ill repute in the city, comes to anoint him, while weeping, the Pharisees look shocked. Jesus must have known who this woman was. He turns out to know all right, and he says, “Her sins are forgiven her, though they were many, for she showed much love” (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus comes to forgive sins also against the marriage command. But how could we learn to ask for forgiveness if we do not first acknowledge that God’s marriage law is holy and good, and that we are guilty of wrongdoing? Jesus cannot bring us back to the gracious Father if we condone divorce and adultery, and if people want to finish the matter among themselves such that the Creator will stay outside of it. Jesus comes to die for sinners and not for people who justify themselves for their deviant behaviour.

This forgiveness of sins also encourages us to be serious about God’s commandments. Thus Jesus speaks to an adulterous woman who was led before him, “Go, and from now on sin no more” (John 7:53-8:11).

Jesus does not teach us this holiness of marriage without taking the cross upon himself to die for our marriage sins. He shows the love of faith that God asks from us. Jesus comes on behalf of God the Father. He does not break the bond with the people, even though people have said farewell to God. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16). Of that love marriage must be a reflection. Jesus’ strict commandments of marriage do not come to us as the impersonal instructions of a cold unfeeling moralist, but as the symbols of his own love and faithfulness for us, right through all sin and sorrow. He who gives his life for the world may ask that men and women would go to great lengths to love each other and to remain faithful to each other. That suits this God.

Reflection←⤒🔗

In the teachings of Christ’s apostles, it all resounds clearly. Now that Jesus Christ has come, Paul sees clearly how a pure and self-denying marriage is nothing less than a reflection of the heavenly love of God’s Son for his people. He writes: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her” (see Eph. 5:25-33). The apostles of Christ also fight against everything that people themselves think of as alternative and egoistic behaviour. Both the sexually immoral and the ones who practise homosexuality are mentioned in 1 Timothy 1:10 as offenders of the gospel.

When Paul in Romans 1 hones in more on homosexual practices, this is not because he would condemn them differently or more than the practices associated with slander, ruthlessness, heartlessness or adultery (Rom. 1:29-32). Of all the sins to which mankind is given over, it applies that God in his anger gives us over to our evil thoughts. In this connection, Paul mentions homosexual and lesbian practices as an illustration of what is happening all across the board: man has been delivered up to himself. He only sees himself, sees only his sexuality. God who gave Eve to Adam as help and consolation delivers man to his sexual equals when he abuses the wife and becomes unfaithful. And the same thing happens to the woman. In a society in which marriage proceeds to further dissolution, many types of decay arise.

Does this now mean that Christ regards the marriage between two people as the height of God’s creation? We prefer to say that marriage is a reflection of an even higher peak. There is in God’s world no duty to marry, but there is a duty to be faithful. Christ himself was not married on earth, while his life reflected only faithfulness to God’s love for sinners. The apostle Paul was probably unmarried. His serious words about marital fidelity in which he echoes Jesus’ teaching (1 Cor. 7:10-16), are in a chapter in which he also speaks positively about the value of being unmarried. It may even appear as if marriage is second choice. And in some sense that it correct. There is something in creation that goes beyond marriage, something God is working towards. Christ speaks about this to the Sadducees when he says, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt. 22:30).

Marriages that are well established are precursors of the marriage that is to come. The wedding at Cana and the good wine that Jesus made, lose their lustre when the light appears that shines even more brightly: the wedding of Christ himself. Only at his return will it only become clear why it was so important to keep the marriage lights burning. It suits the God of the beginning. And it proceeds toward God’s final station: the wedding of the Lamb. Of this the book of Revelation says, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).