Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The divine principle of marriage

19 ^1-2 When Jesus had finished talking on these matters, he left Galilee and went on to the district of Judea on the far side of the Jordan. Vast crowds followed him, and he cured them.

³ Then the Pharisees arrived with a test-question. “Is it right,” they asked, “for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds whatever?”

^4-6 “Haven’t you read,” he answered, “that the one who created them from the beginning ‘made them male and female’ and said: ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two separate people but one. No man therefore must separate what God has joined together.”

⁷ “Then why,” they retorted, “did Moses command us to give a written divorce-notice and dismiss the woman?”

^8-9 “It was because you knew so little of the meaning of love that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives! But that was not the original principle. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife on any grounds except her unfaithfulness and marries some other woman commits adultery.”

¹⁰ His disciples said to him, “If that is a man’s position with his wife, it is not worth getting married!”

^11-12 “It is not everybody who can live up to this,” replied Jesus, “—only those who have a special gift. For some are incapable of marriage from birth, some are made incapable by the action of men, and some have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let the man who can accept what I have said accept it.”