Mark 10: 2-12 ²Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?”

³Jesus answered them with a question: “What did Moses say in the law about divorce?”

⁴“Well, he permitted it,” they replied. “He said a man can give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away.”

⁵But Jesus responded, “He wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts. ⁶But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. ⁷‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, ⁸and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, ⁹let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

¹⁰Later, when he was alone with his disciples in the house, they brought up the subject again. ¹¹He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery against her. ¹²And if a woman divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery.”

Convictions from God

When the Pharisees tried to trap Christ by asking about divorce, they were trying to trip him up with Man’s logic and laws. Jesus dodged their trap by addressing their laws and God’s higher calling of Man in both his response and the follow-up.

Moses’ laws were based on God’s recognition that Man’s sin is more destructive than God’s desire for Man’s holiness. Jesus says that the only reason Moses was allowed to create laws that allowed divorce is because Man was so corrupt that he would cause more damage than good when expected to be holy.

Old Testament law allows for sin because Man by himself can not redeem himself. God allowed additional sin because He was attempting to protect the innocence of Man from the sin and corruption of Man.

This means that in light of Christ’s love and Man’s redemption, which is only the result of Christ’s sacrifice and crucifixion, and God’s grace, that the Old Testament Laws can’t necessarily be guides or justification for Christian Man’s actions. God’s original design again becomes the standard. Man isn’t meant to be the judge, because even in his redemption, he is incomplete and falls short of the righteousness of God, but he is meant to be the best representative of Christ-Come-Again as humanly possible. That means that our convictions will supersede the old laws because our calling to holiness is a higher standard than the worldly laws of even Moses.

Man’s justifications and logic will never match the original intent of God’s creation because sin has handicapped us on every level, but our redemption through Christ calls us to make every effort to attempt to worship God in our original, unblemished form. That means that any use of scripture to justify our actions and sin is wholly and completely out of scope, and pushes us farther from the holiness God intended for us.

We are sinful, and God has provided us with grace to cover our shortcomings, but anytime Man’s actions and failures are justified through scripture, prayer, or man’s own reasoning, we are furthering the gap between God and ourselves to spite grace.

God created us as relational beings to walk with Him, and as a result, our active walk with Him will stir up convictions that surpass and supersede the Old Law because His holiness can do nothing else but drive out our imperfections and sin, regardless of how we justify it.