Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
GENESIS 2:24 | 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
MATTHEW 19:3-6 | 3 Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 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’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Adam and Eve become one, forming a permanent and exclusive relationship. Jesus reinforces this in our passage today from Matthew 19. Now this exclusively is a clear and severe restriction, for it eliminates other intimate relationships “until death do us part.”
Yet, this restriction makes possible a range of things impossible without it. Without the stability of lifelong commitment there is no platform for the generational task of rearing children. Without exclusivity there is not the basis for real trust or genuine intimacy. The possibilities of deeper and fuller connection rest on the restriction.
Marriage, in God’s plan, involves clear restrictions that create amazing opportunities.
Do you embrace holy and life-giving restrictions?
