[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 19:1–12. Delivered 9 November 1980, Montreal.]
We come now to Matthew chapter 19. Let me read from verse 1 to verse 12. "Now when Jesus had finished these sayings he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him and he healed them there. And Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?' He answered, '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 flesh"? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.' They said to him, 'Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?' And Jesus said to them, 'For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.' The disciples said to him, 'If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.' But he said to them, 'Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.'"
The question of marriage and divorce I have expounded at length before — in August 1976 on Matthew 5:31–32, and also in the baptismal series and at various wedding occasions. I will not repeat that exposition today. Today I want to look at a different aspect: what is the spiritual significance of the Lord's insistence on forbidding divorce? It is not one of the Ten Commandments; even Moses permitted divorce. So why does the Lord Jesus attach such weight to disallowing it? What is spiritual about whether or not someone divorces? The answer takes us to the very heart of what the church is meant to be.
The Lord explains that the original purpose of marriage was a complete union — two people so amalgamated in God's intention that they become one flesh. Because of man's hardness of heart, that is, his self-centredness and disobedience to God, this purpose has time and again been frustrated to the point where the marriage becomes unworkable. Moses permitted separation in such cases so that people would not have to destroy each other in an impossible situation. And adultery, the one ground the Lord allows for divorce, represents an annulment of the marriage covenant by the very act itself — the covenant established in faithfulness has been destroyed through faithlessness.
But there remains the deeper question: why, even given character incompatibility or an impossible temperament, is divorce still not permitted? Why must the disciples of Christ bear even that? The answer I want to put before you at the outset is this: marriage is meant to be the model for the community of God — for the church. Marriage, as God designed it, portrays the kind of relationship that the members of the church are meant to have with one another. I put this thesis at the beginning, because it takes time to absorb, and we will spend the rest of this message and the next examining the evidence.
Try for a moment to picture a church in which the relationship of each member to every other member is as committed, as close, as affectionate, as deep as a marriage as God intended it to be. Not as marriages often turn out, but as God intended them to be. That is the picture the New Testament puts before us. That is how the kingdom of God will be. And we are a long way from it. Our relationships are polite, formal, at arm's length. We come to church, say "How are you? Fine, nice," sip tea, and go home. That is not a New Testament church. We haven't even arrived in the picture. But the Lord wants us to see what the picture is, so that we know what to aim for.
Now let me put the whole matter in the context of the three basic principles of the gospel which I have been drawing out repeatedly in recent weeks. The first principle is grace: God in the past forgave our sins freely, not on the basis of any works we achieved. We are saved by grace through faith, not of works — Ephesians 2:8–9. That is the most basic point, and it is about the only point the churches generally teach. But the next verse is equally important: "created in Christ Jesus for good works." We are not saved of works, but we are saved for good works. The second principle, which flows directly from the first, is graciousness: since God has dealt with us graciously, we are to deal with others graciously. As Paul says in Ephesians 5:1, we are to be imitators of God — treating others as God has treated us. If he forgave us, we forgive; if he was merciful, we show mercy. This is sanctification, put simply. And the third principle is judgment: at the judgment of God, he will deal with us as we have dealt with others. This is not merely a thank-you ceremony for Christians. Paul says plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:10: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body." Good or evil — not only good. The servant who was called wicked and cast out in the Lord's parables was a servant. God is a God of holiness who will deal with us as we have dealt with others.
These three principles — grace, graciousness, and judgment — form the stable tripod of the gospel. Omit any one of them and the teaching becomes lopsided and cannot stand. The Lord returns in Matthew 19 to the theme of what graciousness actually looks like in practice, specifically in the most intimate human relationship: marriage. And what he has to say speaks directly to the church.
# Marriage: The Concept of the Church — Matthew 19:1–12 (Part B) — One Body; Loving as Yourself; Divorce as the Annulment of Commitment
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 19:1–12, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 9 November 1980, Montreal.]
What the Lord wants to tell us is this: what is your relationship meant to be to the person sitting next to you? What is my relationship meant to be to you? And the answer is that this relationship is meant to be as spiritually close as a husband and wife are meant to be in God's plan — understood spiritually. We are to become a group of people so transformed by God's grace that we truly commit ourselves to one another — open, undefensive, genuine and transparent in relation to each other. Not walking around with a mask so that nobody knows what is behind the smile. How can the world say "these are the disciples of Jesus, look how they love one another" — if when they look at us they find a formal social gathering of people with polite but distant relationships? Anyone who steps into this church and sees the way we conduct ourselves — will they really say, "Now I have seen the love of God before my eyes"? Not yet. But this is the goal.
Let us turn to Ephesians chapter 5, the well-known passage on marriage. Notice as you read it how Paul moves in and out between the marriage relationship and the church relationship, passing from one to the other and back again. Verse 21: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Verses 22–27: wives subject to husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church; husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her and present her to himself without spot or wrinkle. Verse 28: "Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body." Then verse 31: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined 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."
Paul declares marriage to be a profound mystery — and explains that mystery as referring to Christ and the church. The marriage relationship is not an end in itself; it is a picture of a deeper spiritual reality: the relationship of Christ to his people, and the relationship of his people to one another. Let me draw three specific points from this passage.
The first is the phrase "as yourself." We are commanded in Leviticus 19:18, quoted by the Lord in Matthew 22:39, to love our neighbour as ourselves. How is that possible? The thoughtful person has always been puzzled by this. I cannot love him as myself because he is not me. And yet, in Ephesians 5:33, Paul writes: "Let each one of you love his wife as himself." And in the previous verse he gives the reason: because the two have become one body. If husband and wife are one body, then in loving her I am loving myself — she is my body. This is how "love your neighbour as yourself" becomes possible: only when we recognise that the neighbour — the fellow Christian, the member of the same body — is truly united to us, as truly as husband and wife are united. The word "neighbour" in the Hebrew (re'ah) means a friend, a companion, a fellow member of the community — not any random passerby. And in Ephesians 4:25, Paul quotes the command to love your neighbour and immediately adds: "seeing that we are members of one another." The fellow Christian is united to me as a member of the same body. That is the foundation of the command.
The second point is the phrase "one body." In Ephesians 5, husband and wife become one flesh, one body — the Hebrew word basar, usually translated "flesh," primarily means "body," as any Hebrew dictionary will show. And Paul's characteristic term for the church is also one body. The parallel is not accidental; it is the point. We are one body in Christ, as truly as husband and wife are one body in marriage. But do you realise this? Do you feel it? Probably not. Our Christianity is too shallow, our commitment to one another too much a mere courtesy. We have been bought by the blood of Christ and baptised by the Holy Spirit into one body — united to one another as truly as a husband and wife are united. That is what the New Testament is saying, and we have barely begun to grasp it.
The third point is the mutual self-giving. Wives are to be subject to their husbands; husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, to the extent of giving himself up for her. And in Ephesians 5:21, the command is extended to all Christians: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." And in 1 John 3:16, the command to lay down one's life is addressed to all Christians in relation to one another: "We ought to lay down our lives for one another." What a husband would do for his wife is precisely what a Christian should do for a fellow Christian. The same command, the same standard. Now "give the best to the master" — a hymn we have been singing — we can begin to understand what that means. It means giving ourselves to one another. And it is not so easy to do. You look at some people in the church and you think: me, give myself to that person? But if Christ had said that about us — if he had chosen only the ones who seemed worth dying for — where would our salvation be? And at the judgment, God will deal with us as we have dealt with others. Think carefully about that.
Now, how does marriage fit into God's plan for building this kind of community? Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man to be alone." It is not good for you spiritually to be alone. And marriage was designed as the first step toward community — you cannot commit yourself to everyone at once, so you begin with one person. You learn in the deepest possible way what commitment means with that one person. Then Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply." The marriage was never meant to stay as just two people; it was meant to be the beginning of a new community, growing outward until there is a whole people of God. And this is exactly the pattern for the church: begin with one relationship of total commitment, then let it grow to two, to three, to the whole body.
This is why divorce is forbidden: it is the annulment of commitment. Commitment is something deeply spiritual — it is the giving of your whole person to another. And it is precisely here that we are most afraid. In giving myself, I expose myself to the other person. I might be taken advantage of. I might be hurt. And so we refuse the commitment. But if you cannot commit yourself to one person without talking of opting out, you are not yet fit to build the community of God. Learn commitment to that one other person — through thick and thin, through every difficulty, without conditions attached and without the word "divorce" entering your vocabulary. If you can win through there, with a selfish or difficult partner, by God's grace making the thing work — you will be the hope of the church. We need people who do not quit, who will not give up until Zion becomes again a thing of beauty. That is the goal we aim for together.