A Helpful Reminder

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. – Matthew 19:8

I do not intend this to be a treatise on divorce, as the context of this passage might be well used to address, but rather a reminder of the fact that a lot has changed, and did change, after the fall of man; after sin came into the world. 

The specific question posed to Jesus in the above verse did have to do with divorce, as the Pharisees were testing or tempting Jesus to see how He might weigh in on this issue and the Mosaic Law. In response, Jesus took them to a time before the law. He took them back to God’s original plan. He took them back to creation, before the fall, before sin had entered into the world and tainted God’s original plan for Creation (this is not to negate God’s sovereignty or foreknowledge, or any other theological direction your mind may go, but that would be another topic for another day).

I think we could say, in our human understanding, that God created Adam and Eve to be a forever couple who would love each other, be fruitful and fill up the Earth along with those who came after them. Well, we know the story: sin entered and messed things up. As we know, things continued to spiral out of control until the days of Noah when God decided to start over with His family. I could go on and trace the lineage to Jesus who would ultimately lay down his life as the lamb slain for the foundation of the world to pay for sins of the world, but again that is not the reminder we are looking for.

Back to our verse, the second half of Matthew 19:8 says “from the beginning, it was not so.” I think this is a simple but profound reminder that sin has not only tainted the marriage relationship, but has affected the whole of God’s creation and the character of every human. Because of this continued downward spiral of sin, God gave the law through Moses to spell out sin, and to regulate practices such as divorce to protect the victims. But, don’t forget, Jesus said from the beginning it was not so (see also Romans 5:12).

During this past year, I’ve considered the statement and applied it to many areas of my life. I even heard one speaker use the phrase while addressing apologetic issues such as “why is there suffering in the world?” The thought that “from the beginning, it was not so,” brings comfort to me and that this was not God‘s original plan, and that we are the ones who messed things up. God had, and has, a better plan for me, which He will accomplish even if I have to wait for the day when He makes all things new. Until then, I will continue to be reminded that from the beginning, it was not so.

Has your life had some hard times that maybe you don’t understand? Do you sometimes look around at the world and wonder about the mess some things seem to be in? Take a moment to remember that from the beginning it was not so, and consider the fact that some time in the future, the curse will be removed and all things will be made new. 

For me, there is great comfort in those two thoughts.