JOINED BY GOD

Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mt 19:6). The disciples said this is a hard saying because in their time, like in ours, divorce was common. Husband and wife are to “cleave” to one another like glue, through bad times and good times. Their joining together is like two streams of water coming together, being impossible to ever separate again. They in marriage therefore promise to “become one flesh” (Eph 5:31) until death. Man and woman in the beginning were bound together by the command of God (Gen 2:24). From the giving of the Law of Moses in 1500 BC, the children of Israel were bound to that law. They were ‘joined’ to that law until Jesus nailed it to the cross and took it away (Col 2:14). I counted and recorded about 1800 laws in the Old Testament, but we are not bound to any of them unless they are repeated in the New Law, the New Testament (Col 2:16). God joined believing, repenting and baptism as conditions of salvation from sin (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38). If we say salvation is by faith alone, we separate what God has joined together. God joined Christians to one another in love. They are commanded not to miss their meetings together (Heb 10:25). They are not to divide from one another into different sects or denominations (I Cor 1:10-13).

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