The Greater Marriage Truth, Part Two

When questioned by the Pharisees on whether divorce was allowable for any reason, Jesus replied that their question indicated their lack of biblical knowledge. He asked, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made the male and female” (Matthew 19:4). This is the very heart of the issue of marriage: God created His image-bearers as two distinct but complementary genders (Genesis 1:27). Each possesses very different characteristics; yet these differences harmonize to further the purpose of God in marriage.

Satan’s plan is to destroy God’s kingdom and replace it with his own. The very first human society ordained by God is the family created through marriage to fulfill the divine mandate. Here is where the devil concentrates his effort to undermine the divine directive. Destroy marriage and God’s plan is successfully disrupted.

In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s effort started, tempting Eve to disobey God and destroying her relationship to Adam. In her sin, the order that God instituted was also damaged. Eve was created from Adam as a complementary help. This order of authority did not put Eve in an inferior position but in a submissive one. In her sin, she reversed the role and disobeyed the will of God.

When God entered the scene to pass judgment on the sin, He did not confront Eve but Adam, who stood by and passively received the forbidden fruit at Eve’s hand (Genesis 3:6). When confronted, Adam blamed Eve, who subsequently blamed the serpent (vv. 12, 13). In passing judgment, the Lord reversed the order: serpent, woman, and then Adam.

It is very significant that the serpent’s judgment involved Eve’s offspring. The very thing that the devil sought to destroy is what God would to use to defeat the devil (v. 15). To the woman God declared that her tendency would now be to resist submission to Adam’s rightful place in the order of things (v. 16). The divine “permission” of Deuteronomy 24:1 must be understood in light of this and not seen as the blessing of God on divorce, which was what the Pharisees thought. Moses’s instruction merely governed the actions of people who are sinful and defiant of God’s will in marriage.

One issue is the term translated indecency, which technically refers to nakedness. This points back to the garden and the sinful pair being aware that they were naked. They sought to hide this shame by covering themselves (Genesis 3:7). In a sense, divorce is a carnal effort to hide the shame of the failed marriage. Jesus’ reference to sexual immorality refers primarily to betrothal, which was the first stage of the marriage.

The simple fact is that if God’s means of defeating the serpent involves the offspring of the woman, then divorce is one of Satan’s varied efforts to prevent that offspring from being born. The one who was to crush the serpent’s head is the seed of a woman; the assumption is that there must also be a man who contributes the seed. Is it not interesting that Joseph, upon discovering Mary’s pregnancy, was of a mind to divorce her privately, unwilling to put her to shame (Matthew 1:19)?