“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Mark 10:6-9, NIV)
Like you, I’ve heard many a disgruntled golfer threaten to walk away from the game. Nearly all of those threats are idle. Few leave.
Sadly, though, with increasing frequency, men and women, believers and unbelievers, grow “tired” of their spouses, tired of the challenges of marriage, tired of the longevity of commitment, and threaten to walk away. Then they make good on those threats.
Yes, both divorce and the choice not to marry at all but to instead simply live with one’s partner are increasingly common in our time. But these choices are not new.
By the time Jesus appeared on the scene, divorce happened with regularity even among God’s people, those who were Jewish. And it happened with ease. Give your bride a certificate of divorce—for whatever slight reason—and walk away. Go find yourself another. No, sin is not new. Unwillingness to outlast the trials of a relationship has overridden the covenant of marriage for centuries on end.
Not only is marriage far more than sex, it is the earthly representation of the bond between Christ and his bride, the assembly of the saved.And that is where the mistake lies: the failure to see marriage as a covenant, the deepest and most enduring of promises.
When Jesus answered the Pharisees’ “trick question” about divorce, He did so by affirming the design of God at the beginning of time. A man and a woman, made perfectly for one another, leave their parents and move from individuality to unity. They are made one in flesh, a bond we know from Paul’s writing that also unites them under the Spirit if they are in Christ. There’s no shaking this bond, for Paul explained that even the sexual acts a man engages in with a prostitute make him “one flesh” with her, according to the same Scripture (Genesis 2:24) Jesus used to define marriage.
Many men—and men is exactly right here, though women may do the same—simply do not recognize the significance of this bonding. They think it’s “only sex,” and laugh it away with the sitcoms and locker room jokes. But here is the point: not only is marriage far more than sex, it is the earthly representation of the bond between Christ and his bride, the assembly of the saved. To them he has made an enduring promise; he will not waver. We talk adamantly about his call for us to carry our cross. We would never downplay or shirk on that idea. In the same way, we must think firmly of marriage. We must stick with it, this covenant that shows our understanding of the covenant he has made with us. We cannot dare to separate the bond of marriage God has established between us.
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Jeff Hopper
Originally published October 17, 2011
Copyright 2011 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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