Be Whole
From wholeness of our emotions and body, Jesus now invites his disciples to experience wholeness of spirit. Specifically he talks about divorce and making oaths. On the surface these may not seem like deeply spiritual things. However, our view of marriage and making promises reveals our understanding of God. Here’s what Jesus says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:31-32). Once again, Jesus is reframing righteousness around the heart.
Religious habits around marriage—like with murder and adultery—followed the letter of the law. Men were told to present their wives with a certificate of divorce to make the divorce legal (see Deuteronomy 24:1). But when Moses gave this law he was actually trying to protect women from being flippantly cast aside for minor inconveniences or disagreements or simply because their husband was no longer interested. Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 19 that this law was a provision because of their hardness of heart, not because of God’s design of marriage. Jesus responds to a group of religious leaders when they ask about this divorce law, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6). Notice, when they want to know about divorce, Jesus points them to God. Why? Because marriage is about God. Marriage represents two becoming one. God and people. Heaven and earth. Male and Female. Marriage is a living and breathing metaphor of the gospel––like and unlike joining together in wholeness. That means, the question is less about divorce and much more about the meaning of marriage. And though marriage is for us, marriage is not about us. Jesus is saying, this is a spiritual issue.
The same is true with making oaths. He continues, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Matthew 5:33-37). Righteousness is reframed around the heart. What was said was that you shouldn’t swear falsely. Why? He says no matter what you swear by, you’re swearing to God. The heavens are his. The earth is his. Jerusalem is his. John Stott explains, “you cannot avoid some reference to God, for the whole world is God’s world and you cannot eliminate him from any of it” (101). The religious class taught that using God’s name made the vow binding. But now Jesus speaks. He says, don’t make oaths. In other words, people were separating God from parts of their lives and Jesus is saying, you can’t do that. So, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Be people of your word, always.
That’s the last fracture.
In our sin and hurry and pride ... we have a tendency of fracturing God from parts of our lives too. But we were made to be with him and he with us in all thinYet,.we We separate God from our marriages. We separate God from our promises. We separate God from our business dealings. We separate God from non-Christians friendships. We separate God from our our kids’ education journey. We separate God from our medical concerns and housing needs. We separate God from our personal lives and dating lives and sex lives and family dysfunction. You see?
Jesus wants his disciples to be whole. That’s the very reason he came. Jesus closes the gap between humanity and God, not simply by coming to earth but also by dying. Through his death Jesus heals humanity’s fractured relationship with God. Therefore nothing we do is free from considering God. We are with him. He is with us. This is the eternal intimacy, the wholeness Jesus prays for in John 17. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). Sin fractured our union with God. Jesus has made us whole. He makes us spiritually whole.
We all need healing. Many of us perhaps are longing for emotional and physical wholeness. But ultimately our greatest need is spiritual union and intimacy with God. In fact, as we’ve seen, the healing of our hearts and bodies is a direct result of our cosmic healing. Do you need the Lord’s emotional healing today? Do you need to be made whole in the way you see your body or the body of another? Do you need to be made spiritual whole?
Sin has fractured our lives.
Jesus makes us whole.
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This is an adapted excerpt from the sermon, Be Whole. You can hear or read the full sermon.
