THE crowds followed Jesus for their bodily needs. The Pharisees pursued Jesus to oppose him and seek advantage over him. It is a solemn fact that everything about true saving religion the Pharisees opposed. Jesus complains about this in chapter 11:16-19. The Pharisees rejected the ministry of John the Baptist, and then they rejected the ministry of Jesus. Yet these Pharisees were religious people and religious leaders. They were the clergy of the Jewish church. They were the ones in whose hands were the eternal welfare of the people. Here again history finds this awful situation, that those who are appointed to teach and lead the people, and seek the good of souls, in fact are opposed to, and fight against, the true saving faith of Jesus. Like the Pharisees, outwardly they look the real thing. They are religious, hardworking, even devoted, but they neither know the truth that saves, and also do not want to know, but oppose it.

We are told here that some Pharisees came to Jesus to test him. They were seeking to prove that Jesus was not a true teacher and leader. As always they found their sophistry no match for his true wisdom. The question these Pharisees asked is whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason and every reason.

Straightaway we see how the corruption of human nature had perverted the creative will and purpose of God, and how human corruption within had turned the way of God upside down. Two things can be observed here. The first is that divorce had become a very easy thing and so quite common. A man seemed to be able to divorce his wife for the least cause, and simply if he had got tired of her, or wanted to marry another woman. The second is how the creative purpose of God had become corrupted, and how the Old Testament Scripture had been twisted to fit the sinful desires of the flesh.

Jesus takes the Pharisees right back to Genesis and God's purpose in creation of male and female, and his purpose in marriage.

There is no doubt that marriage problems have become very complicated in our society today. Such is the commonness of sexual activity in young people and outside of marriage, and such is the commonness of people living together without the commitment of marriage, and the relative commonness of divorce and remarriage, that to know what is right in marriage problems is very hard indeed. In fact so complicated have people's lives become that it is impossible to follow the exact creative purpose of God, and some compromise becomes the only way forward. However it is important to have the creative purpose of God firmly in our minds and hearts, otherwise what is right will soon be so compromised that it is impossible to even know what is right, let alone to do it. This is what Jesus does here in the terrible lowering of standards that had occurred in the Jewish religion of his time.

God created the sexes. He made us to be male and female and it is in the relationship between the sexes according to the creative purpose of God that true human fulfillment is to be found. There is a profound verse in Genesis. In chapter 5 and verses 1 & 2 we read “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them 'man'”. This is a most startling verse. In God's creative purpose 'man' is made up of male and female, and their union together. True manhood i.e. human-hood is found in male and female together, and so true human experience and satisfaction and joy in the purpose of God is to be found in marriage where male and female are joined together, not just physically, but spiritually as well. Marriage is to be a union where male and female find true completeness in their love one toward the other. How sin has destroyed this perfection which God has purposed.

This is what Jesus is expressing here. The sexes are so constituted that a man will leave his father and mother, and find completeness in the marriage union with his wife, and as this union is nurtured on every level, the best of human experience is found. In this way the image of God is to be found in human experience.

Jesus speaks of this union as the two become one person, so that in marriage man, true humanity, is found in the two, husband and wife, being united in a loving and understanding relationship, where as each brings their life and experience to the other, and the two intermingle, there is the experience of truly being human. It is for this reason that the purpose of God is that marriage should never be broken. God has brought two people together for a permanent union to make one complete human entity. In the light of this divorce is seen as killing the 'one human being' brought about by marriage. It can be said to be a sort of murder. The one flesh, the one person, is rent apart.

When we see this and appreciate this in some measure our whole concept of marriage changes, and we are able to see things more clearly, even in the mayhem of modern marriage disorder, so as to be able to seek the nearest to the ideal as is possible.