Becoming One

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

BECOMING ONE

Mark 10:1-12

10:1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. 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."  10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." 

NIV

This is not about the testing of the Pharisees, to trap Jesus, although it might have that element in this narrative, first when would have to know all that Jesus was teaching, and Mark leaves all that out. The real issue is marriage and divorce which Jesus does deal with both with the Pharisees and later alone with his disciples. Here is where we get into the idea of whether the culture has influenced the church, or the church is influencing the culture. Because there are divorce and remarriage within the church or the body of Christ, certainly not as raging as it is in the world, it would seem the world’s culture has invaded the culture of the church. The very first question that we must ask is when two people marry, are they joined together by God and become one? That is to say, does a civil marriage constitute God joining two and making the one? We would have to think it should, but then when man decides who should be married, it may not be what God has determined, but like the Israelites under the law of Moses, their hearts are hard, they do not or have not accepted Christ into their hearts and therefore have hard hearts. So then in the culture of the world, filled with hard hearts, divorce and remarriage are permitted without any stigma attached to that practice. However, for those of us whose hearts have been softened by Jesus, who live, not by the traditions of men, but by the word of God, we should be living differently. Here, we have been married in the sight of God, we are asking the blessing of God upon our joining of two people and we have to believe then that we two have become one. Jesus makes sure to tell them that it was God’s plan from the start, from creation, that when he created woman from man, He intended them to still be one. Of course, in our culture of individualism, including this recent, “Me too” movement along with all the gay, lesbian, transgender, anti-gender, and who knows what ideologies, the culture has adapted, there is no concept of two becoming one. Yet, here we are, members of the body of Christ and we are to believe that when God is blessing our marriage, he has made the two of us one, and then the question remains. How can someone divide one and get two? How can man divide the one God created? Do we simply ignore God when, as believers, we divorce? Some have said, because of what Jesus said to his disciples in private that divorce and remarriage have to be the unforgivable sin. But then what we have to come back to is whether when we marry, are we doing so in the flesh only, or are we joining together in the sight of God and becoming one. We think, we have to believe, that when we are joined together by God we are one. We also have to believe the world’s culture has invaded the church and we believers have accepted this practice of divorce perhaps all too often. That is not a judgment against anyone that finds themselves in a divorce, for no one knows all the circumstances of another. What we know for sure is we two are one and will remain one, until death do us part, we believe God has joined us two and we have become one.