Prayer
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this simple yet powerful prayer from 1 Samuel 3:10:
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Amen.
Reading
This interchange between the disciples and Jesus is worthy of much reflection.
The disciples clearly understood how high a view of marriage Jesus had. They seem to be saying here that if the marriage relationship is so sacred and demands such an absolute, lifelong commitment as Jesus had just suggested, then it is probably better not to get married.
On the one hand, Jesus’ response indicates that there are those for whom this may be true, but this is a very limited pool of people. To understand His meaning, we have to remember that a key component of God’s design for marriage is self-giving sexual intimacy. God has designed sexual intimacy to establish, express and deepen the “one flesh” union of the married couple. Marriage is also the only God-given context for sexual intimacy. So the pool of people who can accept the disciples’ saying (i.e. that it is better not to get married) is limited to those who are either incapable of sexual intimacy (i.e. “eunuchs who were born that way”, or those who have “been made a eunuch by others”), or those who have chosen to renounce it in order to give themselves more completely to the pursuit of God’s Kingdom.
On the other hand, and at a deeper level, this saying by Jesus also reinforces the sacredness of marriage even more. That is the approach Eugene Petersen takes in his paraphrase (The Message). He renders these verses like this:
10 Jesus’ disciples objected, “If those are the terms of marriage, we haven’t got a chance. Why get married?”
11-12 But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.”
This perspective on Jesus’ saying reminds us that, as impossible as it may seem, the two godly paths for the disciple are either a life of set-apart celibacy, or a life of set-apart marriage. Either we live in such a way that the effort we would have put into marriage is poured into the Kingdom of God instead; or, we enter a set-apart marriage, where we treat our marriage as a holy outpost of the Kingdom of God and pour ourselves into loving our spouse with the faithful, sacrificial love of Christ, until death parts us.
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn one or more of these declarations over and over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, either:
- I will see my singleness as a means to serve the Kingdom with every fibre of my being, or
- I will honour and cherish my marriage as a sacred gift from God and see it as a means to serve the Kingdom with every fibre of my being.
Heavenly Father, please give me grace to live out Your Kingdom in every relationship, Amen.
Dave's Diary 
Leave a comment