One Cannot Be Separated

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

ONE CANNOT BE SEPARATED

Mark 10:2-9

2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" 3 "What did Moses command you?" he replied. 4 They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." 5 "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'   7'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,   8 and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." 

NIV

Surely the Pharisees were not men, who divorced their wives, but they were the ones who administered the Law of Moses to all the people and therefore according to the law men were able to write a certificate of divorce. If a wife disappointed her husband in any way at all he could simply put her away, write the certificate and be done with her. It is a good thing men today do not do the same thing. It is good that we at least most go thing the legal channels, pay some fine in order to put our wives away, and be done with them. Except today the wives also may put their husbands away as well, but the husbands still have to pay the fine. It also is a good thing that we do not live by the Law of Moses, that we have been freed from that law and now live by the words of Christ or under the principles of the New Testament. But even though Jesus responded with the fact that God allowed divorce then because their hearts were hard, but that what God has joined together we have no right to separate, we still seem to abide by the Law of Moses rather than what Jesus said. This is difficult teaching as it seems we have grown to accept divorce in the body of Christ as a normal way of life, just like the world lives. We have friends who have traveled the road of divorce for one reason or another and it is difficult to judge their behavior, as all of us have some form of sin and we all seek the forgiveness of God for what we have done. Yet it is also difficult to enough this plan and simple truth, Jesus is telling them the reason it was permitted is hard hearts, but that is not the intent of God. He desires a man and women to be one, not two people living life in a partnership that can be broken, but as one. One cannot be divided, unless it becomes less than a whole, a fraction of what it was. Why do we want to be fractional? It is far better to be one, for one cannot be separated. Now perhaps God never actually joined some men and woman, they joined themselves and therefore leaving one another might well be acceptable. We simply should make sure that if God has joined us, that we try our very best to be one, because one cannot be separated.