The Nature of Marriage
Notes
Transcript
The Two Become One Flesh
The Two Become One Flesh
And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Christ and His Church
Christ and His Church
And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Under the Law
Under the Law
And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Mark 8:27–16:20 The Old Testament Background for First Century AD/Second Temple Judaism
Two other passages in Deuteronomy also deal with these topics specifically, namely, Deut 22:13–21 and Deut 22:28–29. The first concerns a husband accusing his new wife of not being a virgin and decrees that if she, in fact, is discovered to be a virgin, he must pay a hundred shekels to the woman’s father and retain her as his wife with no possibility of divorce (Deut 22:13–19). The second concerns a man defiling a virgin who is not betrothed and declares that he must pay fifty shekels to the woman’s father and take her as his wife, again, with no possibility of divorce (Deut 22:28–29). These strictures seem much more narrow than those in the more general command of Deut 24:1–4.
Mark 8:27–16:20 2. Pertaining to the Man
2. Pertaining to the Man
The woman is, however, able to get herself separated from her husband under the following main circumstances:
• If her husband has “the greater defects,” which comprise physical or occupational characteristics that make him repulsive, e.g., being afflicted with boils or polyps or being a collector of dog excrement or a coppersmith or a tanner (Ketuboth 7:9–10). See also Str-B 2:23–24 for access to more examples.
Why is Jesus so insistent on this point? First, because God’s fundamental concern always has been, is, and will continue to be with relationships not regulations (see further the commentary on 10:11–12). That is seen, to be sure, in chapter 2, in the discussion of man and the created order (2:27) and in chapter 7, in the discussion of man and his fellow human beings (7:21–22).
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.