A Theology of Marriage / Mark 10:1-12; Ephesians 5:31-32
Shaking Off the Rust
Well, church, it is good to see you. It has been a little while! I realized just now that it’s been about eight weeks since I’ve been up here, so I’m going to have to shake a little rust off. Bear with me. If I haven’t met you, my name is Shay Summerlin, and I’m one of the pastors here at The Well.
If you’re just joining us, we’ve been trekking through a series for the past six weeks on the Song of Solomon. We’ve been learning a lot about God’s design for relationships—how it plays out in attraction, dating, courtship, marriage, conflict, and deepening. It’s been powerful to sit under that teaching and be challenged by it. Last week, Brad closed out the text of Song of Solomon, but we wanted to extend this series for another two weeks to deal with some specific issues regarding biblical relationships.
Next week, Brad is going to land the plane by digging into some very practical, ground-level issues we face in everyday life. But this week, I want to pull our sights upward. I want us to climb high above this entire series and try to cast a vision—a theology of marriage. We need to ask the question: Why does marriage exist?
I think this is vital. As Brad mentioned last week, the issue of marriage and relationships in our culture has become incredibly confusing. We see it snowballing. Our own Supreme Court had to weigh in because we couldn’t figure out a definition, eventually changing the historical definition of marriage. But long before that, people were already struggling. What is marriage for? Why should I even be married? Why not just live together and avoid the pain? When you see that nearly 3,000 marriages a day in the United States end in divorce, you start to understand why people want to stay away from it. Even though divorce rates are technically decreasing, it’s only because fewer people are getting married in the first place.
With that in mind, we need to cast a solid, compelling biblical theology of why God created marriage. I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10.
A Test of Law and Heart
In Mark 10, Jesus enters a town and encounters the Pharisees—the religious scholars of the day. They are having a heated discussion about divorce, specifically about what constitutes permissible biblical grounds for it. They use this as an opportunity to trap Jesus, hoping he’ll pick a side and lose followers.
Mark 10:1-4 (NASB)
Getting up, He went from there to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan; crowds gathered around Him again, and, according to His custom, He once more [began] to teach them. [Some] Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and [began] to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. And He answered and said to them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses permitted [a man] TO WRITE A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND [her] AWAY.’
The Pharisees are wrestling with a text from Deuteronomy 24, where Moses says a man could divorce his wife if he finds some “indecency” in her, provided he issues a certificate of divorce. For a thousand years, rabbis had been squabbling over what “indecency” meant.
By the first century, this debate had evolved into two major camps. There was the conservative camp led by Rabbi Shammai, who believed the only reason for divorce was adultery. Then there was the liberal camp led by Rabbi Hillel. Hillel viewed “indecency” as almost anything. I’m not joking—Hillel taught that a man could send his wife packing if she burned a meal or if her eyebrows were too bushy. Lord help us, because we’ve got some salad-burning, unibrow couples in our church right now whose marriages would be in jeopardy if that were the standard!
So they ask Jesus, “Who do you land with? Shammai or Hillel?” But notice Jesus’ response.
Mark 10:5 (NASB)
But Jesus said to them, ’Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.
Jesus tells them they are missing the point. He says, “You’re focusing on one tree and missing the entire forest.” Moses didn’t write Deuteronomy 24 to give people a license to get a divorce; he granted a concession because their hearts were stubborn, unforgiving, and unrepentant. In a patriarchal culture, if a man sent his wife away without protection, she was a dead woman walking. Moses issued a concession to slow down the process and ensure she was protected.
It’s like learning to fly a plane simply for the inevitability that it’s going to crash. Planes weren’t invented to crash; they were created to fly. God didn’t create marriage so it would end in divorce; He created it for a covenant with a greater purpose.
Returning to the Beginning
Jesus shifts the conversation from a debate about divorce to a theology of why God made marriage in the first place.
Mark 10:6-9 (NASB)
’But from the beginning of creation, [God] MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. ’FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.’
Jesus points us back to three huge things. First, he reminds us of the biblical definition of marriage: a God-ordained institution between one male and one female, meant to be a permanent, enduring, binding covenant for life.
Second, in this covenant, God is the one taking two individuals and making them an altogether new creation—one flesh, one identity. Jesus’ point is a direct contrast to the Pharisees. They thought man controlled marriage—that man decides when it begins and when it ends. Jesus says, “No, it was never that way.” God is the one who joins them. It’s not man’s business to end what God has joined. Before you consult an irritated husband or wife, or look for justification from a rabbi or a court, you have to go back to the beginning and ask God why He made it.
The Great Mystery: Marriage and the Gospel
There is a third piece to this theology that the Apostle Paul explains in Ephesians 5. Paul walks through the roles of husbands and wives—the sacrificial leadership of the husband and the respectful partnership of the wife—and then he quotes the same Genesis passage Jesus used.
Ephesians 5:31-32 (NASB)
FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
Paul drops a theological bomb here. He pulls back a curtain on a truth that was previously hidden. He says that marriage exists for something bigger than you have ever imagined. It’s bigger than finding a best friend, bigger than having someone to cuddle with, bigger than companionship, sex, procreation, or a tax break.
Paul says that the reason God made marriage was to tell a story. It’s a story about Christ and the Church. It’s the story of the Gospel. We were the ones who, because of our sin and rebellion, were divorced from God. We stood under His just condemnation. Yet, when He had every right to cast us off, God pursued us. He sent His Son, Jesus, to die in our place so that we could be reconciled and brought back into a covenant that can never be taken away.
In our human marriages—as imperfect as they are—we have the unspeakable privilege of displaying that story. At a wedding, the groom represents Christ, laying down his interests for his bride. The bride represents the Church, clothed in righteousness, serving her groom. They make a promise that only death will part them, because that is how God loves us.
Unfortunately, we often cheapen this covenant. We run at the first sign of disappointment. When we do that, we distort the picture of the Gospel. God says, “That’s not what my love is like. I will never leave you. I will never abandon you.”
We see this in the story of Hosea. God told Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer. She cheated on him over and over, but God told Hosea to keep pursuing her. Why? Because it was a picture of God and Israel. We are Gomer. We have cheated on God a thousand times, but He pursues us through Jesus Christ. Marriage is meant to be a picture of that unending grace. And that is why God speaks so strongly about the breaking of that covenant.
Malachi 2:16 (NASB)
‘For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘and him who covers his garment with wrong,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.’
The Ultimate Shadow and Substance
Marriage is so glorious, but it’s also temporary. Jesus tells us there is no marriage in heaven.
Matthew 22:30 (NASB)
’For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
This might be hard for some of us to hear, but there’s a reason for it. Our marriages, with all their pleasure, partnership, and even the painful sanctification they provide, are just a shadow. They are intended to give way to the ultimate substance: the consummation of love between our souls and our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
Revelation 19:6-9 (NASB)
Then I heard [something] like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, ’Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. ‘Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.’ It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright [and] clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, ’Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’
One day, we will sit at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Marriage on earth is the training ground for that eternal union.
Grace for the Broken and the Hopeful
Jesus eventually does answer the disciples’ questions about the specifics of divorce.
Mark 10:11-12 (NASB)
And He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.’
In Matthew’s account, Jesus adds an exception for immorality or unfaithfulness.
Matthew 19:9 (NASB)
‘And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’
Paul later adds the possibility of abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. But outside of these specific instances, the Bible does not recognize “falling out of love” or “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for ending a covenant. This is a hard word, but it’s because the Gospel is a serious deal. Even in cases of adultery or abuse, God’s first intention is always to mend and redeem. He is a God who heals brokenness. Divorce only happens because of a hardness of heart.
I want to speak to a few groups of people as we close.
First, to those who have gone through a divorce: you know the sting. Whether it was on biblical grounds or not, the pain is real. If you initiated an unbiblical divorce and the Holy Spirit is pricking your heart today, hear this: there is no sin Jesus cannot forgive. His grace is sufficient. You don’t have to wear a scarlet letter here. But you do need to acknowledge sin as sin.
Psalms 51:4 (NASB)
Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.
Like David, start by confessing to God. Then, move that confession horizontally to those you’ve wounded. If you need a safe place to process this, come to our Regeneration groups on Monday nights. It’s a place to deal with the shrapnel of brokenness through the lens of the Gospel.
To those struggling in marriage right now: do not lose hope. We have a God who makes old things new. You might feel too far gone, but no one is out of reach of His grace. A hardened heart is the only thing that prevents healing, and the Gospel is the only thing that can soften a hardened heart. If you are getting marriage counsel that doesn’t take you to the Cross, punt it. You don’t just need behavior modification; you and your spouse need new hearts.
Finally, to the singles: cultivate a robust biblical theology of marriage now. Don’t settle for what the culture tells you. Don’t rush into marriage just because you’re lonely—it’s better to be single wishing you were married than married wishing you were single. And don’t run from marriage out of fear. Cultivate a heart of self-giving love now, so that if that day comes, you’ll be ready in the strength the Lord provides.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank You for a vision of marriage that is greater than anything the world portrays. Lord, our culture is loud, our flesh is loud, and our fears are loud. Remind us that the One who created marriage is the One who has the power to sustain it. May we see a supernatural work in this church—broken marriages healed and wounds bound up. May our marriages project the picture of Your love for the Church, leading us to worship our true Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. We long for the day when the shadows are put aside and we enjoy everlasting covenant with You. For Your glory and our good, we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.