The Christian Ideal
The ideals set out by Jesus concede nothing to the weakness of man. For all the mercy He showed to sinners, He left the sinners themselves in no doubt at all that the sin was reprehensible. His forgiveness carried with it, “Go, and sin no more.” And although He claimed the right to pronounce on the commandments set out in the Old Testament, man would find on examination that what He expected of them was more, and not less, than Moses had done. What Moses pronounced as the penalty for murder, Jesus considered appropriate to hatred; whereas Moses forbade adultery, Jesus made unfulfilled lust as grave a sin. Concessions allowed under the Law because of the hardness of men’s hearts, were withdrawn by Jesus if His disciples sought for perfection, on the ground that “from the beginning it was not so.”1
“Ye shall therefore be perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect,” may well seem to us to be unattainable, but we have no right given by Jesus to be satisfied with anything less. The time to talk about mercy is when we have learned to know how we ought to live, for only then shall we be in a position to repent.2
For this reason we begin by stating the ideal of marriage at its highest, just as Jesus Himself did. From the beginning, He says, God intended marriage to be for life; and the words from which He quotes imply also that creation itself was not complete if it did not take marriage into account. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them,” involve both man and woman in the creative purpose of God, clearly as husband and wife. It was simply not good that m m should dwell alone, and a help “meet” for him was needed before that goodness could be realized. When the woman was formed, then it was right that she and he should be joined together, providing the pattern for generations to come. when a man should “leave his father and his mother, and should cleave unto his wife, and they twain be one flesh.”3
Jesus cites both parts of this record as fundamental. It defeats the object God had in mind in creation, He says, if the union which He established should be interfered with by man: ‘ what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”4
God Himself did not intend to be alone. He wished to fill the earth with His glory, to do which He must find His reflection in a compliant and responsive people. Mankind as a whole was disqualified once Adam and Eve had sinned, but the chosen Israel could be called out from an apostate world, and betrothed as such a people to her God.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One