Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Mark 10:5 - 10:9

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Mark 10:5 - 10:9


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The answer of Jesus:

v. 5. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.

v. 6. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.

v. 7. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;

v. 8. and they twain shall be one flesh; so, then, they are no more twain, but one flesh.

v. 9. What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.

Jesus was well acquainted with this bit of Mosaic legislation, and He also knew the reasons for the adoption of this precept in the Jewish law. The form of government in the Jewish nation during the first centuries of its national existence was that of a theocracy, of a direct legislating by God. The order to which they referred was given by Moses in his capacity as Jewish lawgiver, in order to prevent worse injury and injustice. The government will sometimes find it a wise policy to leave some wrong go unpunished, lest a great many innocent people suffer with the guilty. But this dispensation of Moses, which was given on account of the hardness of their hearts, did not in any way invalidate the institution of marriage and the holiness of the tie of wedlock. That institution and the words of institution are a part of the Moral Law of the universe; there, in the beginning, God plainly stated His will and intention with regard to the obligations of man and woman in the state of wedlock. He did not create a single sex, but He made two sexes, male and female, Gen_1:28. And these two sexes, represented in one man and one woman, were to be united in marriage. Therefore the second passage from Gen_2:14, indicates the normal, the usual state of affairs. A man, having reached marriageable age, and having observed the other preliminary steps enjoined by God, will leave his father and his mother, will sever the relationship of childhood and youth, and will be joined to his wife, will enter into a new relationship which will make him and his wife one flesh. It is, then, no longer a question of their own whim and choice, but of God's ordinance, so that they are no longer two, but only one body and one flesh. It is the most intimate union which is possible in the external, temporal world. This fact should be stated and reiterated in our own midst without ceasing, lest the sanctity of the marriage-bond be disregarded more and more. Young people in many cases do not seek the institution of Christ in the sense in which Christ made the ordinance; they have other motives: the pursuit of voluptuousness and luxury. The inviolability of the marriage contract before God has become a blasphemous jest and mockery. But Christ here says: What God hath joined together, where two people have agreed to become yoke-fellows, to bow their necks under the same yoke, to draw the wagon of life together, to share, under God's rule and blessing, all joys and sorrows alike, there this yoke shall not be broken; no man, not the young people or their parents, not relatives or so-called good friends, no court in the world, shall and can separate them. Even if the courts declare the marriage bond dissolved, it still holds in the sight of God.