The Word

Before we turn to the Savior’s words in this connection let us remind ourselves that we are interested in what the Scriptures actually teach in these matters and not what is the consensus of opinion of any group of men, however eminent. If we have preconceived ideas let us try to divest our minds of them and fairly consider the words and the context.

Even a casual reading of the two longer passages in Matthew 19 and Mark 10 will show that the Lord Jesus Christ was setting forth the Divine mind with respect to the institution of marriage.

1. From the very beginning there were only two, one man and one woman.
2. The marriage relation was to supersede the relation of the son to the parents, because a man was enjoined to leave his father and his mother and “cleave” unto his wife.
3. The two are to be “one flesh.” This is twice repeated. They are not any longer reckoned to be two but one (Matthew 19:5-6). It would seem that the Savior could not have been more specific in setting forth the indissoluble nature of the marriage relation after the two have become one. No exception is allowed in the thunderous declaration, “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder”* (Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9)! Being convinced from these words that Christ is setting forth an indisputable union we are disinclined to believe from the outset that He will later introduce an exception that will dissolve the indissoluble or break the unbreakable. To do so would be for Him to contradict Himself, to stultify Himself.

So drastic are His words, so contrary to the looseness of the times in which He lived, so great an advance upon the allowances of the great Lawgiver, that they immediately take issue with Him and demand of Him why Moses made certain concessions and permitted divorce after marriage. He replies that it was on account of the hardness of their hearts.

Bereft of the Holy Spirit as an indwelling presence since Adam’s fall, without the example of the God-man who lived in poverty and self-sacrifice and died in agony and ignominy, the hearts of men, under the law were ignorant, impenitent, hard. “But,” He repeats, “from the beginning it was not so.”* (Matthew 19:8) It was not so in the sinlessly felicitous condition in which the first couple found themselves and it is not to be so when by the impartation of the Spirit at Pentecost men and women are to be made partakers of that beloved Adam the Last—the period of Grace.