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Jesus doesn’t answer the Pharisee’s question on their level. He didn’t approve of their legalistic approach to moral issues, and he wasn’t about to get caught up in fruitless arguments.
A man and a woman don’t become one flesh on their own, Christ says—God unites them. Marriage is not a mere social institution. It is a holy union instituted by God.
Masculinity and femininity can only be defined in relation to each other.
This covenant emphasizes man’s subjectivity. Man isn’t an impersonal object, but a subject capable of rational thought and communion with God. Man has free will—he can freely choose to keep the covenant, or break it.
Here is the first clue to man’s identity: he cannot identify completely with the physical world. The philosopher Aristotle defined man as a “rational animal.” He is an animal, yes, but he is distinguished from the other animals by his rationality. Only man possesses language and a moral sense—and these things cannot be explained in terms of the physical world alone.
Genesis 1 says that man was created in the image of God. In Genesis 2, he becomes the subject of a covenant with God. A person is meant to be a partner of God. He must discern and choose between right and wrong, life and death. Among all living creatures of the visible world, man alone has been chosen for communion with God. Every human person has a unique, exclusive, unrepeatable relationship with God himself.
The body reveals the person. This phrase tells us all there is to know about the body. Science can examine our flesh in minute detail, down to our cells and even our DNA. But no amount of scientific exploration can replace the truth that our bodies reveal us, giving form to our innermost being and unique personality. Our bodies are sacramental—they make the invisible visible.
Original solitude, as we saw, is irrespective of sex. But original unity arises from the union of masculinity and femininity. Male and female are two different incarnations of man. They are two complementary ways of “being a body” created in God’s image.
Femininity is found in relation to masculinity, and masculinity is confirmed by femininity. They depend on each other.
The male and female bodies, though different, share the same humanity.
In the Bible, the word “bones” expresses a very important aspect of the person. Since the Jews made no distinction between body and soul, the “bones” referred to the very core of one’s being.
To the extent that they live together in love, man and woman become a picture of the inner life of God. This might be the most amazing thing that we can say about marriage. From the beginning, the male and female bodies were created to form a deep unity.
This change directly involves the way we experience the meaning of bodies. After their eyes are “opened,” Adam and Eve first cover their bodies from each other’s sight; then they try to hide from God.
Shame is a fundamental human experience.
When does the body cease to be a gift? When we turn it into an object, using it for self-gratification. This denial of the gift marks the end of innocence and the beginning of shame.
In the mystery of creation, the woman is brought to man as a gift. Thanks to original innocence, she is accepted by him as a person good in and of herself, not as an object.
From the beginning, the woman was a gift for the man. She was entrusted to his eyes, his sensitivity, his heart. To complete the exchange of the gift, he must give himself to her in return. This mutual self-giving creates the communion of persons, enriching both the man and the woman. Love begets love.
People are still asking tough questions about divorce, and Jesus is still answering them. His words are just as fresh today as the day they were first uttered.
Christian marriage is far more than a contract or a social arrangement. It is a vocation, a path to holiness and salvation. And a solid, biblical understanding of the body, male and female, is crucial to this vocation.
Adultery is an offense against the unity of marriage. Husband and wife are “one flesh.” Adultery is committed outwardly when a wife or husband attempts to unite with another. Inwardly, adultery is committed “in the heart” when a wife or husband desires to unite with another.
Sin obscures the true meaning of the body as a sign of the human person, made in the image of God.
Shame is not directly linked to the body. Neither is lust. Shame and lust arise from the heart; they are results of sin, not nakedness in and of itself. Like all forms of evil, lust is not a positive thing in itself; it is a lack. Lust is not food, but hunger; not fullness, but emptiness.
Self-control is essential to the moral integrity of human beings. Lust attacks the person at his core by throwing body and spirit out of balance.
Though lust has ruptured the unity of spirit and body, it hasn’t entirely won the day. Shame reveals that the memory of our innocence is still alive.
Sexual shame causes us to doubt whether the body is still capable of forming the true, self-giving communion that God intended.
The Apostle John lists three forms of lust: “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16).
A true communion of persons must be a full, selfless union of body and spirit—two persons giving themselves freely to each other.
Lust creates a different kind of relationship, characterized by domination. Lust shifts the goal of union from communion to possession—obtaining the object of your desire.
All of Christian sexual morality hinges on whether the union of bodies is a truthful sign of God’s love. Adultery fails this test.
Adultery in the heart is not limited to the legal boundaries that define adultery committed in the body. Instead, it is defined by the presence of lust.
In all times and places, the dignity and balance of human life depends on who men and women will be for each other. Men and women can only live together truthfully when they are free from the lies and limitations of lust.
Adultery in the heart devalues God’s creation. Christ speaks to the heart, calling for a rediscovery of human dignity—particularly female dignity. The call to conquer lust springs from this dignity. Anyone who reads a negative view of the body and sexuality into Christ’s teaching makes a fundamental error.
Sexual self-control is not simply about abstinence. It is not an emptiness, but a fullness. When we allow Christ to transform our desires, the true meaning of the body and the person is respected.
When Paul says, “If you live by the flesh, you will die,” he doesn’t refer to the death of the body alone, but also to the spirit. Even while the body still lives, sin can kill the spirit, deadening it to God’s grace.
Christ sets us free—not so that we might fall under the control of sin again, but that we might learn purity of heart.
Following Jesus, Paul says that purity and impurity are matters of the heart—not of anything external, such as dietary taboos and ritual washings.
In modern times, science has taught us a great deal about the workings of the body. But it cannot tell us anything about the body as a manifestation of the human spirit, a sign of the person. By ignoring the spirit, or denying its existence, science treats the body as an object to be manipulated.
Today, the Church continues to speak out against divorce, polygamy, lust, and the mistreatment of women. In doing so, the Church echoes Christ’s teachings on the sanctity of marriage and purity of heart, calling all to faithfulness.
As we have seen, many moral problems arise from reducing the body to an object, instead of reverencing it as a sign of the person.
When the boundary of shame is crossed, nakedness becomes an insult. In the Nazi concentration camps, forced nakedness was used to depersonalize victims and strip them of their dignity. An analogous assault on the person occurs in pornography. In art, as in life, the right to privacy must be respected in order to preserve the gift-giving meaning of the body.
When the gift-giving meaning of the body is obscured, distorted, or misrepresented, art becomes a lie. This is what happens in pornography. The body—which was created to be a free gift from one person to another—is depersonalized and reduced to an object for lust.
While the resurrection does not mean disembodiment, Christ reveals that it does involve a “spiritualization” of the body. The Psalmist said that man was created “a little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:5). In the resurrection, God will raise man higher— “they will be like the angels.” The body will not be lost; it will be wholly unified with the spirit in a new way, even beyond what Adam and Eve experienced in the beginning.
“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:13–14).
Rejecting the notion that the body is earthly and the soul is spiritual, Paul insists that both body and soul are capable of being spiritual.
The resurrection, however, should not be understood as a return to the state of original innocence, apart from the knowledge of good and evil. Instead, the resurrection will constitute a new fullness of humanity that presupposes the whole drama of our creation and subsequent Fall.
“At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Mt. 22:30).
By sidestepping the disciples’ challenge, Christ refuses to put celibacy at odds with marriage. The call to celibacy does not arise from a negative view of marriage.
Christ’s words mark a turning point. This is why, when speaking to his disciples about celibacy for the first time, he makes a clear distinction between those who are eunuchs by nature or accident and those who remain celibate by choice. The disciples would have never considered that a person might choose virginity as a way of life and as a witness to the coming of God’s kingdom.
Christ does not encourage celibacy out of the supposed inferiority of marriage or a disdain for sexual union, but only for furthering the kingdom of heaven. Sexual abstinence is not an end in itself, but a means of fully devoting one’s self to God.
Marriage and celibacy rest on a single foundation: selfless love. Both vocations are conjugal in nature because both are perfected by mutual faithfulness and self-giving.
