Marriage and divorce.
Our Lord Jesus is the great moral Legislator of humanity. His authoritative teaching applies to all classes and to all relationships of mankind. And it is to be noticed that he bases his commands and counsels both upon grounds of natural right and reason, and also upon the revealed Mosaic Law. With regard to the latter, it is observable that he professes not to destroy it, but to fulfill it—to inspire it with a new motive, and to give it a wider range; whilst he allows no authority to mere traditions and usages, but treats them simply upon their own merits.
I. UPON WHAT OUR LORD BASES THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE. It is to be observed that Jesus goes back behind the old Mosaic Law, which was universally accepted among the Jews as the authoritative standard of conduct.
1. There is reference to what we should call natural adaptation. If there is design in any arrangement or provision of nature, there is certainly design in the division of mankind (as, indeed, of other races of living beings)into two corresponding and complementary sexes. Man was made for woman, and woman for man; and the equality in numbers of male and female is evidently a natural reason both for marriage and for monogamy.
2. There is reference to the creative, historical basis of marriage. The record of Genesis is adduced, and Jesus reminds the Pharisees that marriage dated, as a matter of fact, from the beginning of the creation—that our first parents lived together in this relationship from their first introduction to each other until the close of life.
3. Jesus asserts marriage to be a Divine ordinance. "God hath joined together" husband and wife. The Law of Moses came in with its additional provisions and sanctions; but it presumed the existence of the marriage state. God, who orders all things well, had seen that it would not be good for the man to be alone; accordingly he instituted wedded life, and hallowed it.
II. WHAT OUR LORD DEDUCES FROM THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE,
1. A condemnation of the custom of facile divorce. It was a common practice for the Jews, when dissatisfied with their wives, to put them away for very trivial reasons—even because they were not pleased with them, without any offense having been committed. They were wont to appeal to a permissive provision in their law as a warrant for acting thus. In our own times, in many countries even professedly Christian, it is too common for regulations of great laxity to be made regarding divorce. In some countries even incompatibility of temper is a sufficient ground for permanent separation. Such practices are condemned by Jesus as contrary to the Divine intention regarding marriage, and as subversive of all sound morality. As the family is the unit and the basis of all communities, and of all moral unity and welfare, it is of the highest importance that the sacredness of this Divine institution should be upheld, and that all practices and sentiments which undermine it should be discountenanced and opposed. Lax views upon divorce are to be repressed, as inimical to all social welfare as well as to domestic concord.
2. A declaration that such divorce is conducive to adultery. Our Lord does not say that the remarriage of divorced persons is in all cases adulterous; but, speaking of these who are separated for trivial offenses, and for any offense short of the most serious, he declares that for such persons to marry again is nothing less than adultery. They are not really and in God's sight released from one another, and a second union is therefore unlawful. "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
APPLICATION.
1. Learn our Lord's independence as an ethical and spiritual Teacher, and his superiority to traditional and even Mosaic authority.
2. Learn his interest in all our human relationships; he consecrates them by the regard of his grace and by the imposition of his Law.
3. Let Christians discountenance lax opinions and practices upon a question so vital to social and national well-being as the ordinance of marriage.