The Visit to Philadelphia

167:5.1On the way to Judea Je­sus was fol­lowed by a com­pany of al­most fifty of his friends and en­e­mies. At their noon lunchtime, on Wednes­day, he talked to his apos­tles and this group of fol­low­ers on the “Terms of Sal­va­tion,” and at the end of this les­son told the para­ble of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can (a tax col­lec­tor). Said Je­sus: “You see, then, that the Fa­ther gives sal­va­tion to the chil­dren of men, and this sal­va­tion is a free gift to all who have the faith to re­ceive son­ship in the di­vine fam­ily. There is noth­ing man can do to earn this sal­va­tion. Works of self-righ­teous­ness can­not buy the fa­vor of God, and much pray­ing in pub­lic will not atone for lack of liv­ing faith in the heart. Men you may de­ceive by your out­ward ser­vice, but God looks into your souls. What I am telling you is well il­lus­trated by two men who went into the tem­ple to pray, the one a Phar­isee and the other a pub­li­can. The Phar­isee stood and prayed to him­self: ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, ex­tor­tion­ers, un­learned, un­just, adul­ter­ers, or even like this pub­li­can. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the pub­li­can, stand­ing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven but smote his breast, say­ing, ‘God be mer­ci­ful to me a sin­ner.’ I tell you that the pub­li­can went home with God’s ap­proval rather than the Phar­isee, for ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, but he who hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted.”

167:5.2That night, in Jeri­cho, the un­friendly Phar­isees sought to en­trap the Mas­ter by in­duc­ing him to dis­cuss mar­riage and di­vorce, as did their fel­lows one time in Gal­i­lee, but Je­sus art­fully avoided their ef­forts to bring him into con­flict with their laws con­cern­ing di­vorce. As the pub­li­can and the Phar­isee il­lus­trated good and bad re­li­gion, their di­vorce prac­tices served to con­trast the bet­ter mar­riage laws of the Jew­ish code with the dis­grace­ful lax­ity of the Phar­i­saic in­ter­pre­ta­tions of these Mo­saic di­vorce statutes. The Phar­isee judged him­self by the low­est stan­dard; the pub­li­can squared him­self by the high­est ideal. De­vo­tion, to the Phar­isee, was a means of in­duc­ing self-righ­teous in­ac­tiv­ity and the as­sur­ance of false spir­i­tual se­cu­rity; de­vo­tion, to the pub­li­can, was a means of stir­ring up his soul to the re­al­iza­tion of the need for re­pen­tance, con­fes­sion, and the ac­cep­tance, by faith, of mer­ci­ful for­give­ness. The Phar­isee sought jus­tice; the pub­li­can sought mercy. The law of the uni­verse is: Ask and you shall re­ceive; seek and you shall find.

167:5.3Though Je­sus re­fused to be drawn into a con­tro­versy with the Phar­isees con­cern­ing di­vorce, he did pro­claim a pos­i­tive teach­ing of the high­est ide­als re­gard­ing mar­riage. He ex­alted mar­riage as the most ideal and high­est of all hu­man re­la­tion­ships. Like­wise, he in­ti­mated strong dis­ap­proval of the lax and un­fair di­vorce prac­tices of the Je­ru­sa­lem Jews, who at that time per­mit­ted a man to di­vorce his wife for the most tri­fling of rea­sons, such as be­ing a poor cook, a faulty house­keeper, or for no bet­ter rea­son than that he had be­come en­am­ored of a bet­ter-look­ing woman.

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

167:5.5Al­though Je­sus did not of­fer new man­dates gov­ern­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, he did urge the Jews to live up to their own laws and higher teach­ings. He con­stantly ap­pealed to the writ­ten Scrip­tures in his ef­fort to im­prove their prac­tices along these so­cial lines. While thus up­hold­ing the high and ideal con­cepts of mar­riage, Je­sus skill­fully avoided clash­ing with his ques­tion­ers about the so­cial prac­tices rep­re­sented by ei­ther their writ­ten laws or their much-cher­ished di­vorce priv­i­leges.

167:5.6It was very dif­fi­cult for the apos­tles to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s re­luc­tance to make pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ments rel­a­tive to sci­en­tific, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems. They did not fully re­al­ize that his earth mis­sion was ex­clu­sively con­cerned with rev­e­la­tions of spir­i­tual and re­li­gious truths.

167:5.7Af­ter Je­sus had talked about mar­riage and di­vorce, later on that evening his apos­tles pri­vately asked many ad­di­tional ques­tions, and his an­swers to these in­quiries re­lieved their minds of many mis­con­cep­tions. At the con­clu­sion of this con­fer­ence Je­sus said: “Mar­riage is hon­or­able and is to be de­sired by all men. The fact that the Son of Man pur­sues his earth mis­sion alone is in no way a re­flec­tion on the de­sir­abil­ity of mar­riage. That I should so work is the Fa­ther’s will, but this same Fa­ther has di­rected the cre­ation of male and fe­male, and it is the di­vine will that men and women should find their high­est ser­vice and con­se­quent joy in the es­tab­lish­ment of homes for the re­cep­tion and train­ing of chil­dren, in the cre­ation of whom these par­ents be­come co­part­ners with the Mak­ers of heaven and earth. And for this cause shall a man leave his fa­ther and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be­come as one.”

167:5.8And in this way Je­sus re­lieved the minds of the apos­tles of many wor­ries about mar­riage and cleared up many mis­un­der­stand­ings re­gard­ing di­vorce; at the same time he did much to ex­alt their ide­als of so­cial union and to aug­ment their re­spect for women and chil­dren and for the home.