In Matthew 19 some religious leaders came to Jesus asking him to interpret Moses' law on divorce. Jesus cut right through the Gordian Knot of legal technicalities, and went right back to a time before the law, to the original intent. There are many questions that we could ask today that are really answered by the same principle.
Are multiple marriages okay? Is same sex marriage okay? Is premarital sex okay? Is having a mistress okay? Is polygamy okay? Rather than give a legalistic answer to such questions, perhaps if Jesus were here today, he would answer in the same way, by going back to first principles. "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female...for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" (Matthew 19:4-5 NASB)
Perhaps we could expand the discussion beyond marriage to dozens of other topics. What about alcohol, anointing the sick, baptism, church government, communion, dancing, ethics, infallibility, Mary, nuns, prayer, sacraments, tongues, versions of the Bible, worship, xmas, etc. Perhaps a good place to start is not with Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, or Billy Graham. Pehaps a good place to start is in the beginning, and ask the question, "What was the original intent?"
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