Introduction
Are you letting the culture, your pain, or your preferences disciple you about marriage, or are you willing to let Jesus and Scripture reshape what you believe and how you live? The central teaching I want to press into your heart is this: God designed marriage as a holy, lifelong one-flesh covenant, and while divorce exists as a concession to human hardness of heart in grievous covenant-breaking, it was never God’s original intention, so we must pursue God’s design with reverence, wisdom, and practical faithfulness.
As we enter Mark 10, I need you to hear this with tenderness: this isn’t a message only for married people, divorced people, or struggling couples. Every one of us has been touched by someone’s “for better or worse”, a marriage, a divorce, or the fallout from either. This subject can feel deeply personal and painfully heavy. And yet marriage is also one of God’s most glorious gifts, something we can praise Him for, and something He can use for healing as we submit our lives to His Word.
Main Points
Are you letting the culture, your pain, or your preferences disciple you about marriage, or are you willing to let Jesus and Scripture reshape what you believe and how you live? The central teaching I want to press into your heart is this: God designed marriage as a holy, lifelong one-flesh covenant, and while divorce exists as a concession to human hardness of heart in grievous covenant-breaking, it was never God’s original intention, so we must pursue God’s design with reverence, wisdom, and practical faithfulness.
As we enter Mark 10, I need you to hear this with tenderness: this isn’t a message only for married people, divorced people, or struggling couples. Every one of us has been touched by someone’s “for better or worse”, a marriage, a divorce, or the fallout from either. This subject can feel deeply personal and painfully heavy. And yet marriage is also one of God’s most glorious gifts, something we can praise Him for, and something He can use for healing as we submit our lives to His Word.
A Test, Not A Sincere Question
In Mark 10:1–2, Jesus is traveling toward Jerusalem, crowds gather, and He teaches, just as He often does. But then the Pharisees show up with a question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Mark tells us plainly they asked “testing Him.”
I want you to see what’s happening: this isn’t a humble seeker asking for help. It’s a trap, both politically and theologically.
- Political pressure: They are in the region connected with John the Baptist’s ministry near the Jordan. John confronted Herod’s unlawful divorce and remarriage and was killed for it (cf. Mark 6). If Jesus answers the “wrong” way, He could be pushed toward the same danger.
- Theological controversy: In Jesus’ day, rabbis debated what counted as legitimate grounds for divorce. The question “Is it lawful?” is an attempt to drag Jesus into their partisan fight.
When you feel the pressure of modern debates, political, social, even church conflict, notice Jesus’ steadiness. He refuses to be manipulated. He won’t be discipled by the crowd.
Jesus Returns Us To The Word
Jesus responds in Mark 10:3: “What did Moses command you?” That’s His pattern under spiritual testing: He goes to Scripture.
Beloved, this is discipleship for us in the 21st century. Few topics test Christians more than marriage, sex, and divorce. But we don’t begin with trends, trauma, or talking points. We begin with: “What does the Bible say?”
The Pharisees answer from Deuteronomy 24 (Mark 10:4): Moses permitted a certificate of divorce. Their world had two broad schools of thought, one strict, one permissive. Some treated divorce as essentially unthinkable except for serious shame; others expanded it until it could be justified for almost anything (even trivial dissatisfaction). Either way, the certificate functioned to dismiss and then allow remarriage.
Jesus will not be cornered into endorsing either a hard-hearted permissiveness or a self-righteous legalism. He’s going to expose the root issue.
Hard Hearts And Divine Concessions
Jesus answers with piercing clarity in Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.”
Here’s what I need you to understand: Moses’ divorce regulation was an accommodation to sin, not a celebration of God’s design. It was given in a world where hard hearts produce real harm, where people break covenant, exploit one another, and create unsafe, crushing homes. God’s law made provision in a fallen society, not because He loved divorce, but because He cares about protecting people and restraining evil.
This matters because it reframes the whole question. The Pharisees wanted to argue permissions. Jesus diagnoses the disease: hardness of heart.
And I want to say this gently: whenever we approach divorce as a “right,” a convenience, or a quick escape from covenant faithfulness, we are not reasoning from God’s heart. We’re reasoning from hardened ground.
God’s Design From The Beginning
Jesus then does something profound: He doesn’t stay in Deuteronomy. He goes back further, past the concessions, past the damage, back to Genesis.
In Mark 10:6–9, Jesus quotes the creation design:
- “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” (Genesis 1–2)
- “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”
- “The two shall become one flesh.”
- “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
This is the heartbeat: marriage is holy and sacred because it is God’s idea, woven into creation itself. Before the law of Moses was ever written, before any “certificate,” there was marriage. Scripture isn’t inventing marriage; Scripture is describing what God made true from the beginning.
So I disciple you here: don’t build your view of marriage from your upbringing, your wounds, your friends, or your favorite podcast. Build it from the words of Jesus: one man and one woman joined by God in covenant oneness, meant to be lifelong.
Covenant Faithfulness And Real Exceptions
Later, privately, the disciples ask Jesus about this again (Mark 10:10–12). Jesus speaks with sobering seriousness: divorcing and marrying another is adultery. The weight of that should not be minimized. It is meant to warn us: you cannot treat covenant like a disposable contract.
But we also need the full biblical picture that Jesus Himself provides in the parallel account. In Matthew 19:9, Jesus adds an explicit exception: “except for sexual immorality.” In other words, if someone divorces for casual reasons, loss of attraction, incompatibility, dissatisfaction, God does not recognize that as a true dissolving of the covenant. To remarry in that scenario is to commit adultery because the original covenant still stands.
Yet Jesus acknowledges that there are situations where covenant has been violated in a grievous, trust-shattering way, what Matthew calls sexual immorality (often discussed from the Greek porneia). This is not permission for impulsive divorce; it is an escape route for someone deeply violated by sin that destroys the covenant’s integrity.
Then the apostle Paul helps us apply the same heart-level principle in another painful scenario: abandonment. In 1 Corinthians 7:15, Paul says if an unbelieving spouse departs, the believer is not bound in such cases, God has called us to peace. That is, when someone repudiates the covenant and abandons the marriage, the faithful spouse is not meant to live under endless bondage to the other person’s covenant-breaking.
So let me pastor you plainly: applying these realities takes wisdom, prayer, and often wise counsel. Jesus is not trying to create loopholes for convenience, nor is He trying to crush bruised reeds. He is calling us to honor covenant while acknowledging that sin can reach a point of devastating rupture.
One-Flesh Oneness In Daily Life
When Jesus says the two become “one flesh” (Mark 10:8), He means more than a wedding-day slogan. This is a whole-life merging:
- leaving father and mother and forming a new household
- shared mission, shared values, shared resources
- learning unity where two different backgrounds become one family
Even small things reveal how deep this is. Two people can come from different “family cultures” and discover that unity requires humility and adjustment. Oneness doesn’t happen automatically; it’s built through love, patience, repentance, and shared discipleship.
And “one flesh” also includes sexual union, God’s good design for husband and wife. This is not a recreational act detached from covenant; it is a powerful, God-designed bond-maker. Treating sex casually, outside marriage, is not “no big deal.” It carries the power to join hearts and the power to tear them apart. Much of our culture’s heartbreak, anxiety, and emptiness flows from treating something sacred as disposable.
So I urge you: honor God with your body. If you’re unmarried, don’t let the world disciples you into experimenting with oneness outside covenant. If you’re married, don’t neglect the gift God has given for unity, guard it, nurture it, and seek healing where sin has harmed it.
The Damage Of Tearing What God Joined
Jesus’ conclusion in Mark 10:9 is simple and thunderous: “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”
There is a kind of tearing that happens when something glued together is ripped apart, it doesn’t return to its original state. That’s a picture of divorce’s seriousness. Even when divorce is permitted because of grievous covenant-breaking, it is still a rupture, and it leaves real wounds.
This is why we must treat marriage with reverence and why the church must hold two things together at once:
- High holiness: marriage is sacred; we do not separate what God joins.
- Real compassion: people live with real betrayal, real abandonment, and real danger; God cares for the wounded and provides pathways toward peace.
Conclusion
Mark 10 doesn’t invite us to win arguments; it calls us to submit to Jesus. The Pharisees tried to trap Him with legality, but Jesus returned to creation: marriage is God’s holy design, male and female, covenantally joined, made one flesh, not meant to be separated. Divorce exists because of hardened hearts, and Scripture acknowledges grievous covenant-breaking where release may be necessary, but we must never treat divorce as casual or sex as cheap.
So here’s the discipleship invitation I’m placing before you: let Jesus retrain your heart. If you are married, pursue oneness and guard covenant. If you are wounded by divorce, bring your pain to Christ and seek His wisdom and peace. If you are unmarried, honor God’s design now, your future faithfulness is being formed today.
Father in heaven, we submit ourselves to Your Word and to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Soften our hearts where sin has hardened us. Give us reverence for what You call holy, especially the covenant of marriage. Strengthen marriages in our church with humility, forgiveness, and faithful love. Comfort those who have been wounded by betrayal, abandonment, and divorce; grant them wisdom, healing, and peace. Guard the unmarried with purity and courage in a confused culture. Teach us to honor Your design from the beginning, and help us live as Your disciples with truth and compassion together. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclusion
Mark 10 doesn’t invite us to win arguments; it calls us to submit to Jesus. The Pharisees tried to trap Him with legality, but Jesus returned to creation: marriage is God’s holy design, male and female, covenantally joined, made one flesh, not meant to be separated. Divorce exists because of hardened hearts, and Scripture acknowledges grievous covenant-breaking where release may be necessary, but we must never treat divorce as casual or sex as cheap.
So here’s the discipleship invitation I’m placing before you: let Jesus retrain your heart. If you are married, pursue oneness and guard covenant. If you are wounded by divorce, bring your pain to Christ and seek His wisdom and peace. If you are unmarried, honor God’s design now, your future faithfulness is being formed today.
Closing Prayer
Father in heaven, we submit ourselves to Your Word and to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Soften our hearts where sin has hardened us. Give us reverence for what You call holy, especially the covenant of marriage. Strengthen marriages in our church with humility, forgiveness, and faithful love. Comfort those who have been wounded by betrayal, abandonment, and divorce; grant them wisdom, healing, and peace. Guard the unmarried with purity and courage in a confused culture. Teach us to honor Your design from the beginning, and help us live as Your disciples with truth and compassion together. In Jesus’ name, amen.