The New Testament Wiew of Marriage

In the New Testament, monogamy (one man and one woman living with each other and no one else) is taken for granted as the normal relationship between the sexes. It is clear in Jesus' teachings that he thinks of marriage in the highest terms and feels that it has God's blessing. There is no suggestion whatever that he thought that marriage was only "second best" to remaining single. In a very important statement he brings together a number of Old Testament ideas about marriage and makes them his own.

Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one"? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder ( Matt. 19: 4-6; cf. Mark 10: 6-9).

We can get a further indication of Jesus' attitude toward marriage as ordained by God by looking briefly at what he says about divorce. This is the one matter about which he gives minutely specific ethical advice. Although the different Gospels do not agree exactly as to what he said, the import of his comments is clear. What is wrong with divorce is that when God has joined two people together, they cannot be put asunder by men. Thus to divorce one person and marry another is to be guilty of adultery ( Mark 10: 11, 12; compare Luke 16: 18). Matthew represents Jesus as saying that divorce is wrong, "except on the ground of unchastity" ( Matt. 5: 32).

Christians have taken differing attitudes about this statement of Jesus. Some have held that he means "no divorce whatsoever under any circumstances." Others have made use of "the Matthean exception," and have felt that divorce is permissible when one of the partners has been unfaithful. Still others have felt that Jesus did not come to legislate a new legalism on this matter and that sometimes to force two people who are no longer in love to live together may be a worse perversion of God's will than to allow them to separate. It is at least clear that we cannot take a word like "adultery" from Jesus' lips and turn it into a legalistic concept. Jesus has something rather arresting to say about adultery.

You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart ( Matt. 5: 27, 28).

The outward act is wrong, but so is the inner thought! Everyone who is honest with himself must admit that he stands convicted by that statement. Consequently our attitude toward adultery cannot be simply an attitude of self-righteous condemnation of someone who gets "caught." It involves an awareness that all of us stand under condemnation, and that all of us need the forgiveness of God, reaching out to us wherever we are, to touch, heal, and transform us.

It is precisely because he has such a high view of marriage, that Jesus looks with such disfavor on divorce.

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