NOTES for Mar 10:2-12

At first glance, Jesus' words about marriage may seem too severe: He sets the standard very high, one might even say infinitely high, in everything, including marriage and relations between spouses. Divorce comes from hardness of heart; the Torah permits divorce as a concession to human weakness. But Jesus reminds His interlocutors of God's original design for the human being and for the marital relationship that unites two people. Of course, those human beings who were free from sin and therefore did not in principle know such a concept as marital unfaithfulness probably could not even imagine that the relationship binding them might be broken, still less at the initiative of one of them. But what are we, fallen people living in a fallen world, to do? Here we see what is characteristic of all the Savior's parables, teachings, and counsels: they were given not for our world, which is being transformed but is not yet transformed, but for the Kingdom. It is impossible to follow them in our world; only those who live in the Kingdom can do so. The standard has indeed been set as high as possible. Yet the entire meaning of Jesus' preaching essentially comes down to one thing: the Kingdom has drawn near; it has already entered our world and is transforming it, and the only way to be saved is to live in the Kingdom according to its laws. Jesus explains to us what life in the Kingdom requires. He offers us no alternatives for living in the untransformed world according to that untransformed world's laws. This is not because He is unwilling to make allowance for our weaknesses, but because in the age in which we happen to live, there is no such alternative.