In Genesis 2:24 it is written “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This is the commandment God gave, around the time he created Adam and Eve, and He intended it to apply to all men and women.
When God issued this command, it was before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Good and Evil. If they didn’t eat from the Tree, they wouldn’t know evil, the evil being what God deems it to be, they and their offspring wouldn’t know evil. Adam and Eve then, and men and women in successive generations would stick to the partner they were first bonded with, to the exclusion of everyone else in such manner. There would be no divorce.
Alas, they did eat from the Tree, and so successive generations have come to know evil, and in knowing evil have felt it necessary to free themselves from their partners.
And God saw there was much evil in the world, including husbands and wives parting from eachother, and in tempering the evilness, of which there would always be, he made a pact with the Hebrews he freed from bondage in Egypt and gave them the Law to live by.
But Jesus uses Genesis 2:24 as the basis for asserting that God did not intend a man and wife to divorce. The Pharisees came up to Jesus and asked him why then, does Moses, who gave us God’s law, allow for divorce when he says in Deuteronomy 24:1 - “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house?” Jesus responds in Matthew 19:8 that it is because of man’s tendency toward evil, which he might inflict on his wife if he finds no favor in her, that a certain degree of relaxing of the original commandment was needed to prevent strife. God in Genesis tells us to be fruitful and multiply, and strife tends to inhibit such fruitfulness and multiplying, which was more important to God.
So we come upon adultery, which is a form of evil. Adultery in terms of the Bible is an act which breaks up the bond between a man and his wife that God originally commanded. When a man or his wife bonds with another man or his wife, that is adultery in the sense that the time spent with the other person is time away from one’s spouse. Since adultery can produce strife in the household, the Bible sees it as grounds for divorce so that the strife is eliminated when a man and wife leave eachother, hence Moses’ certificate.
But the Bible also says, in Luke 16:18 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.” Well, in a sense that is neither here nor there. Moses allowed for divorce, and this being a part of the Law, Jesus said he did not come to change any part of the Law.
So what can be said about Jesus asserting, based on Genesis 2:24, that there should be no divorce? Presumably, whatever Jesus told us is what God is telling us. Put together, we have it that there should be no divorce, but it is permitted in order that there be no strife in the household.
If two people come to be judged by God, with one person having never divorced and the other one having divorced so the strife in the household can be eliminated, and there is only room for one more person in God’s Kingdom, who would God pick based on our understanding, if that really mattered? That is the question…
