{"id":7041,"date":"2015-10-22T00:05:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T07:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7041"},"modified":"2015-10-21T11:10:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T18:10:27","slug":"legalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/10\/22\/legalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Legalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

He set out from there and went to the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Then crowds converged on Him again and, as He usually did, He began teaching them once more. Some Pharisees approached Him to test Him. They asked, \u201cIs it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tHe replied to them, \u201cWhat did Moses command you?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tThey said, \u201cMoses permitted us to write divorce papers and send her away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBut Jesus told them, \u201cHe wrote this commandment for you because of the hardness of your hearts. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. <\/p>\n

\tFor this reason a man will leave
\n\this father and mother
\n\tand be joined to his wife,
\n\tand the two will become one flesh.<\/p>\n

\tSo they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate.\u201d (Mark 10:1-9)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tThe purpose of legalism is to find a way of doing what you want without getting into trouble when you do it. Many of those who were part of the religious establishment only wanted to know all the rules so they could live their lives without getting into trouble. They didn\u2019t love their neighbor. They didn\u2019t love God. <\/p>\n

\tIn Jesus\u2019 day, there were two schools of thought among the Pharisees concerning the issue of divorce. One group believed that divorce could happen for even the most trivial of reasons, such as a wife burning the dinner. The other school of thought believed that divorce was permissible only in the most extreme of circumstances: adultery. The Pharisees wanted to know how they could get out of their marriages.<\/p>\n

\tSo Jesus responded to their question with a question. He hoped to jar them from their waywardness: what did God say about divorce? They responded merely with the relevant passage from the Bible, which in their mind they found inadequate, since God hadn\u2019t bothered to explain why they could get divorced. Jesus gave them another biblical passage, explaining that divorce did not exist because God liked it, but because human beings were flawed and needed a way out of their mistakes.<\/p>\n

\tJust because something is legal, Jesus pointed out, didn\u2019t make it a good thing or the right thing. The Pharisees were missing the whole point of the Bible and were asking the wrong question. It\u2019s easy to get so caught up in our own issues that we entirely miss God\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n

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He set out from there and went to the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Then crowds converged on Him again and, as He usually did, He began teaching them once more. Some Pharisees approached Him to test Him. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7043,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions\/7043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}