Our Lord now starts on His last journey, leaving Galilee for the borders of Judea, by the other side of the Jordan. When crowds resort to Him, He, as He was wont, again taught. And full of moral value and divine light His teaching is. May our souls weigh it well! We are apt to be one-sided. If we seize the special manifestation of God's grace, we are apt to overlook, neglect, or enfeeble the great and unchanging principles of good and evil; if we keep bold of that which abides from first to last, the danger is that we leave not adequate room for His sovereign action at particular times. In Christ, the truth, this was never so. All the ways of Gad had their place; no one thing was sacrificed to another, yet this too without a leveling sameness; for even in God, while all is perfect and all harmonious, each attribute has not equal place, but there is that which is pre-eminent. Jesus, the Son and Servant of God, maintains on every side the truth of God in the face of sin and confusion.
First, He vindicates, according to the unstained light and tender goodness of God, the marriage relation. It is the most momentous step of human life, and the pillar of the social fabric. How thankful should we be to have the Lord of glory pronouncing on it in His passage through this world! The need was great. For even in the holy land, and among those who stood high for their sanctity, with the law of God before their eyes and its precepts, rightly or wrongly interpreted, continually on their tongues, how low and loose was the theory, how basely selfish the practice! He was here on His errand of love with its eternal issues; yet would He stop in His course and cause the light of heaven to shine even across the path of dark designing men, recalling them to hear how God made man to live, as well as removing the veil which hindered disciples from seeing how He who was God would die.
“And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Ver. 2-9.) It is only the facts recorded by historians or the researches of men of learning into the Rabbinical remains which betray the excessive levity of the Jews as to marriage. The true obligations of the tie were unknown; and a wife's place had no more stability than a servant's, if so much indeed. He asks what Moses commanded; they answer what Moses allowed; whereas our Lord shows how evidently it was in respect of their hardheartedness he so wrote. In truth the law made nothing perfect. Not the gospel only, but the beginning of creation bore its witness to the true thought of God, who made them male and female. How admirably the Lord applies, not only the fact of Gen. 1, but the words of Gen. 2:2424Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)! All other obligations of nature, even the filial, must give place, as their own Pentateuch proved in principle as well as history; and the new relationship from the first was abstractedly indissoluble. They were no longer two, but one flesh, even if not kindred in spirit. This was not merely Adam's language, but God's deed; and if He united, let not man put asunder. Such was the Lord's bright and beautiful unfolding of the law to those who took advantage of what was permitted for a season. Grace and truth ever adorn what the legal spirit perverts to self-righteousness on the one hand, or self-indulgence on the other.
To the disciples (in the house, as Mark only here tells us) the Lord gives the stringent reply that, “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her; and if a woman shall put away her husband and marry another, she committeth adultery.” (Ver. 10-12.) Here is the dark converse of sin in this relationship: no license of man can consecrate the annulling that tie while in the flesh.
The next incident is equally full of moral loveliness and divine grace—full of instruction too, as here we have not Pharisees but disciples in painful collision with the mind of the Master. “And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And be took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them.” (Ver. 13-16.) Our evangelist specially marks the deep displeasure of the Lord. And no wonder. Indeed it was part of His perfectness. For it was not only that they betrayed their own Rabbi-like self-importance, which makes much of ceremony, much also of knowledge, and overlooks the power of grace and the manifestation of divine affections; but besides, they took His place, falsified Him and the God of all grace that sent Him and the essential character of that kingdom which He was about to establish. Suffer not little children, babes, to come to Him! hinder them! Why, not only of such is the kingdom of God, but whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a babe shall not enter therein. Such is the Lord's solemn sentence. To be nothing for Jesus to receive is just the condition of entrance. May we too have faith to put our babes with ourselves before Him and count on His sure blessing!