The law or love: Jesus chose one, not the other (Part 2 of 3)
Last week in the first of this three-part blog series, I mentioned my parents’ marriage. Far from perfect yet equally far from disastrous, they were what we all are—and that’s human. Jesus speaks to our human nature in the Holy text I brought to this column last week and will continue into next week.
In Mark 10:11-12, Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery.”
At the end of last week’s blog, I asked you to think about God’s intention with marriage. I believe God, who is love, intends marriage to be an extension of His love for us because God genuinely wants good things for us. God earnestly desires to bless us, His children.
How will we achieve these good things? How will we access these blessings?
God gifts us with people to love in our lives. It is our responsibility to love; God really can’t do this for us, though He shows us love through His Son. Let me say it this way. Suppose you get a great toy on your eighth birthday. I mean this toy is a winner. No one can make you enjoy it, however. The enjoyment—the love—of this toy is on you.
So it is with the people in your life. Enjoy them. Love them. Hold them. Praise them. Do goofy, cool, fun, sweet, tender things for and with them. Ideally, your people (including your spouse) will love you back because, like you, they are modeling Jesus’ love.
It’s a win/win.
For most of us, it is hard to imagine Jesus calling someone an adulterer. In fact, Jesus is known not for branding us for our sins; He does the opposite: He releases us from sins. In the case of the woman at the well, for example, He doesn’t send her away as an adulterer; He helps her see exactly what she’s been doing in sin, and, realigned and reidentified, this woman is willingly released from her past and goes on to live a radically different and blessed life since her Jesus encounter (John 4:1-40).
Still, adultery. These words do not make me question Jesus; instead, they help me understand yet again how big and how serious the sanctity of marriage is to our Savior. “Don’t mess this up,” He is telling us. “To enable love, I will equip you in how to love.”
Divorces happen. Some divorces should happen. Would Jesus want you and your spouse to be in a long-suffering relationship? The answer is no because only after some things break, wholeness, wellness and love can come again.
We can learn a lot about love from the absence of it.
To be clear, Jesus is not giving a greenlight to bail on a marriage. That is what we are to remember here. Marriage is not easy. It was never intended to be easy. Get back to the eight-year-old with the amazing toy. If you are married, God gave you the gift of someone to love. This gift of marriage is intended for you to love selflessly.
When you love selflessly, Jesus’ selfless sacrifice on the cross means even more to you because, as you love your spouse and others faithfully, you realize how Jesus has loved you through all of your own faithlessness, flaws and flubs.
I mentioned a win/win. We’ll talk about how—and where—to gain in the next blog. Until then, consider the gift of marriage as just that, a gift. Think about who ultimately gave you the gift of love, and how that love should ideally be modeled.
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