A relationship that is genuine and honest will always shape a person’s life. This is a principle that undergirds much of the Bible’s teaching about relationships. If we enter into a friendship and expect the other person to do all of the adjusting, we will find that the relationship is at best shallow and at worst destructive. We learn this truth even in our childhoods. Most of us can remember children we played with who always insisted on making all of the decisions and dominating everything and everyone. (Or maybe we were those children!) Our memories of times with them are rarely very pleasant.

The good news of God’s gospel is that God has chosen to enter into a relationship with people like us. However, in order for that to happen, Jesus, who was and is in very nature God, made adjustments for us. Jesus “did not consider equality with God something he had to hold onto for his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…and became obedient to death” (Phil. 2:5–8). On our side, when we enter into a relationship with Jesus, we place our faith in him and allow him to shape our lives. Jesus, the one through whom the world was made, enters into our lives and changes our lives. He begins reshaping us into those who someday will be, according to Romans 8:29, “conformed to his image.” But note this: Jesus must be the one in control.

With that in mind, today in Mark 10:1–16, we see that God uses human relationships to help transform our lives. For those relationships to be the beautifying life-shapers God created them to be, we must be committed to engaging in our relationships in keeping with God’s ways. And sometimes (actually often), we discover that God’s standards for our relationships are not the same as the world’s.

The relationship Jesus talks about in this text is the one meant to be the most lasting, most intimate, and most life changing of all human relationships, i.e., marriage. It is a relationship that has emotional, spiritual, and physical components. God created this relationship for our good and for the good of the world. Still, when Jesus taught about marriage, his own disciples were shocked. They said to him, “If what you say is true, it’s better not to marry at all!” (Mt. 19:10)! People are still saying today what the disciples said then. As always, we will read his words and have to ask, “Do we trust that Jesus’ ways are better than our own?”

To His Glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor