Is Jesus trying to tell us that
we shouldn’t get married?
I don’t think so. In the same passage while referring to marriage He says “let no one split apart what God has joined together” If God has joined us together, then He isn’t saying we shouldn’t get married. However, I think He is validating the idea that we don’t HAVE to be married. For some folks it is better not to be married. I have been married my whole adult life, (and part of my teenage years, it seems) so I can’t imagine what unmarried life would be like. But there are some men and women who are just fine without being married, and Jesus agrees with that.
Once we have taken our marriage vow, it can’t be “undone” in a spiritual sense (except in cases of unfaithfulness). Think of it like this: when you mix together yellow and green paint, you get blue. You can’t undo the process. When you mix two different colors of sand together, they blend and you can’t separate them again. This is marriage. What you were has passed, and you are now something else. What used to be two separate people are now one person. I think that we have no closer picture of the trinity than a godly husband and wife. God, man and woman….both the man and woman could say “I belong completely to God, and to my spouse.”
So Jesus is telling us YES to marriage, and NO to divorce. That being the case, we should really do some serious contemplating and soul searching before we say “I do”. Premarital counseling is very important also. I am finding that more and more people are coming to me to be married that have been living together for years. In fact, I can only think of one wedding I have done in several years where the couple wasn’t already living together. By the way, this isn’t what God intended either. It short circuits the process and empties the vow of some of it’s significance. Culturally it seems that we are moving away from marriage and chastity, but the Bible hasn’t budged on the subject.
I saw a website recently that said if you made more the 50k a year, your chances of getting a divorce were 30% less. The same site said that if you were religious your chances of divorce were 14% less. That’s terrible news. People are confusing Christianity and religion. A serious Christian has a much smaller chance of getting divorced, because to divorce is sin, and no serious minded Christian wants to do that. I don’t know the percentage, but being Christian increases your chance of staying married by much more than 14%. I think this number is skewed because it included anyone who said they are religious. And that’s a whole different story. At the same time, you would think that money somehow equals marital fidelity and happiness, since it makes the likelihood of divorce smaller. If having money decreases your chances of divorce, your priorities are wrong. Money doesn’t have one thing to do with a healthy marriage. If being wealthy keeps you married then you are married for money, not the relationship with your spouse. Are we saying that people with less money are somehow less devoted to their spouse? Are they less devoted to God? This is ridiculous, and anyone who believes it is deluded as well. We’ve all heard the old saying “money can’t buy happiness” and it can’t truly reinforce a marriage either.
Well, enough ranting for today. I hope this finds all of you happy in your marriage, and in all your relationships. And if not, then I can tell you that money isn’t the solution, and Jesus most certainly is. Give Him a try.
Loving Jesus,
PR