Week 36 Mark
A group of legal specialists came to the Lord and asked about Moses’ divorce law – which basically ok-ed divorce.
The Lord told them that Moses’ law was a kind of Plan B law that was legislated because people have hard hearts. A Law-For-the-Hard-Hearted.
But there was an earlier law, a Plan A that was in place long before Moses was born: from the beginning of creation. It was the original soft-and-malleable-heart rule that said a man and woman come together and have sexual intercourse. At that point things have changed: they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
So what I take from this is:
The OT divorce law was an inferior add-on necessitated by a lot of people having granite-hearts.
The original pre-Moses plan was: when I get married I stay married.
The original pre-Moses plan had in mind that sexual intercourse has a kind of transformative stickiness that changes two people into one – physically in the moment, permanently in some extra-physical way.
The original pre-Moses plan included two things: the obvious guy-inside-the-girl part, and the not-so-obvious part that involved a divine permanentizing.
I know the Lord didn’t actually say this part – I’m saying it – but one of my take-aways – since I think he’s implying it – is that if I think sexual intercourse is just sexual intercourse then I need to think again.
Note: quote from Mark 10:6, 8-9 (NASB). See also Deuteronomy 24:1-3.