Was Jesus Really Married?
John 20:14-17
Introduction
Permit me to begin with another quote from Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code:
“The social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible’s gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood.”
The accusation that Jesus was married is nothing new, how many of you remember the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ? I don’t know why it is that some people want to see Jesus shacked up with some woman that everyone seems to think was a former prostitute. Is it because some people feel bad for Jesus that He was single; it is funny that those who are most passionate about Jesus being married or promiscuous are from a culture that frowns on singleness and distorts sex (which by the way happens to be the West).
What I would like to do this morning is divide this message into three questions and then close with a few applicational thoughts. The first question we should ask is…
Who Was Mary Magdalene?
Actually we do not know a whole lot about this woman except for a few scattered references to her and some extra biblical material.
Let’s start with the fact that there was more than one Mary in the New Testament, in fact there are seven: (1) Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:30-31); (2) Mary of Bethany (John 11:1);
(3) Mary, the mother of James (Matt. 27:56); (4) Mary, the wife of Clopas (John 19:25);
(5) Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12); (6) an unidentified Mary (Rom. 16:6); and
(7) Mary Magdalene [the name Magdalene distinguishes Mary being from Magdala] (Luke 8:2). So there are quite a few Mary’s in the New Testament; the status of family was commonly tied to the name of a person. Mary Magdalene is tied to a geographical place because she was single—she had no husband and she had no children—otherwise her name would not have been tied to her geographic location.
So now we know where Mary Magdalene is from, what do we know about her as a person? We know that she was once possessed by seven demons and met Jesus when He cast those demons out of her. There is no indication that Mary was the immoral woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7), nor was she the woman who was caught in the act of an adulterous affair (John 8).
Mary Magdalene was simply a woman who was as good as dead until Jesus showed up. We know that she was very loyal to Jesus and His ministry and was a part of the entourage of women who supported and traveled with Jesus and His disciples.
We also know that when everyone else fled for their lives, Mary was one of the ones stood at the cross along with some of the other woman who ministered and served Jesus and the twelve disciples (Matt. 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; John 19:25). She was one of the women who came back to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus after He was buried, and finally we know that Mary Magdalene was an eye witness of the resurrection of Christ and the first person told to share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection with the rest of the disciples.
An early church father who lived around the third century even called Mary Magdalene an apostle to the apostles. The second question is…
Who was Mary in relation to Jesus?
There is a passage in the Gospel of John that some people use to suggest that Jesus and Mary had a “special” relationship; turn to John 20:11-18 (read).
So, some critics of the Bible look at this passage and conclude several things: (1) Jesus was a Rabbi and being that He was a Rabbi and Rabbi’s were usually married men—Jesus must have been married, and (2) for a woman to cling to Jesus like Mary did was highly unusual behavior unless they were married, therefore since Jesus was a Rabbi and the clinging that Mary did would have been highly unlikely if she were not married to him then Jesus must have been married to Mary Magdalene.
So what do we say to these things? Let me begin by offering six reasons Josh McDowell why Jesus was not married:
1. The Apostle Paul was single (1 Corinthians 7:8) and was an educated Pharisee who was regarded highly by the Jewish community (Philippians 3:4-6). In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul even encouraged others to stay single if they could do so without sinning.
2. Mary Magdalene was named after a geographic location not in connection with a male. If Mary had been married to Jesus, it would have been mentioned in the New Testament since marriage was something that was celebrated, not frowned upon.
3. Paul while remaining single defended the right to be married in 1 Corinthians 9:5, which says, “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” If Jesus was married, why didn’t Paul use Jesus as an example of marriage instead of Peter (Cephas).
4. When Jesus was crucified, why did Jesus ask the apostle John to look after his mother instead of Mary if indeed she really was married to him (see John 1925-27)?
5. Josephus, the first century historian records a religious group who practiced celibacy who “neither marry wives, nor are desirous to keep servants.” There were about four-thousand men who lived in type of community, which proves the attitudes against celibacy was not as harsh as portrayed in The Divinci code.
6. Finally, if Jesus and Mary were married, why didn’t Mary say something other than “teacher” after seeing that He had risen from the dead—such as, “husband” or “my love”?
In fact, Dr. Paul Maier, a historian and expert of ancient history had this to say,
In sober fact, Jesus never wed anyone, but for years sensationalizing scholars and their novelistic popularizes have played the role of doting mother trying to marry off an eligible son. Now, if there were even on spark of evidence from antiquity that Jesus even may have gotten married, then as a historian, I would have to weigh this evidence against the total absence of such information in either Scripture or the early church traditions. But there is no such spark—not a scintilla of evidence—anywhere in historical sources…. There is no reference that Jesus ever got married.
So who was Mary in relation to Jesus? She was a dedicated disciple whose life was turned around by Jesus and nothing more. So what does John 20 show us? John 20 shows us a person who spontaneously welcomed an unexpected, resurrected Christ with an embrace because she was convinced he was dead. If you were in her shoes, what would have you done? Darrell Bock, a respected New Testament scholar had this to say about this passage,
The emotion of the moment caused Mary to grab Jesus out of surprise and joy. There was nothing sexual about what happened, as some have suggested. She simply reacted spontaneously, welcoming His surprising, new existence with an embrace. The reaction is understandable when one appreciates that she thought Jesus was dead and gone and that she had already said her last good-byes to the teacher who had turned her life around.
Finally, let’s look at our final question:
What can we learn from the life of Mary Magdalene?
The first thing we learn is that she was in no way married to Jesus. Some of the other things we learn about Mary is that she was a faithful disciple. Mary is one of the few seen standing at the feet of Jesus at the cross when most of everyone else went into hiding out of fear for their lives.
I can’t tell you how often I have heard critics of the Bible suggest that its message is male-chauvinist. Granted, the Bible was written in a male dominated society, but its message concerning the social status of women was countercultural. The women in Jesus’ life are an illustration of that truth.
If the disciples were really trying to squelch the role Mary had in Jesus’ life, they would not have included the part about how she was the first person to see the resurrected Christ. It wasn’t Peter or John or any of the other disciples that were the first to witness the resurrected Christ; it was a woman!
As we observe the role of women in the early church, what we see is equality as well as diversity. The Apostle Paul picks up on this truth in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” And this is what Jesus modeled in the way he treated both men and women.
The other thing we learn from the story of Mary Magdalene is that Jesus never blurred the genders of both men and women. He always treated women as women and men as men, never discriminating against either gender always demonstrating a clear role distinction between the two.
What you have got to understand that Jesus’ day was not a day for promoting gender equality. It was an age that treated women as second-class citizens. It was an age where polygamy, ritualistic sex in religion, and wife abuse was common. Jesus’ treatment of women was
counter-cultural: He respected women, valued women, treated women as persons, depended on their aid, service, and support.
May I suggest to you that Jesus’ treatment of women is still counter-cultural to our own society today? I don’t think we have learned much regarding the value and dignity of women. Ladies, the world has sold you a bill of goods: it has tried to convince you that freedom as a woman means that you have got to be able to do all that a man can do. God has designed you to be a woman, so celebrated the fact that you are a woman. Men: God has designed you to be men, so celebrate the fact that you are a man.
I would like to read for you a news article and then respond with a few thoughts (Read BBC News Article, German Brothel Welcomes World Cup)…
For some reason people are convinced that a person who is sexually promiscuous is a person who is free.
Do you know what I think really made Dan Brown’s a #1 Best Seller for so long? The suggestion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with a former prostitute, thus creating the illusion that Mary was “really” an important person in the church and deserved to be the one to lead the church, not Peter. That somehow Mary Magdalene was a liberated woman because of her sexual involvement with Jesus. That my brothers and sisters is a lie straight from the pit of hell!
Jesus’ life and ministry within the fellowship of his disciple’s models for us what it means to be truly human. To experience true freedom as a man or woman has everything to do with one’s vertical relationship with God in Jesus Christ and the outflow of that vertical relationship expressed horizontally.
All that we do as human beings ought to be rooted in our worship of God: your relationships with your neighbor, with your children, and with your spouse (including making love with your spouse) are meant to be the outflow of your relationship with God—this is what it means to experience what it means to be truly human.
And by the way… Jesus is planning on tying the knot, but not with the lady some want to see Him with. Jesus is going to tie the knot with another bride, but don’t worry, Mary Magdalene will not be left out, for the bride Jesus is going to marry is the Church and all who have decided to follow Him make up the Bride He will marry in the not so distant future (Revelation 19:6-8):
“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure"- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he said to me, "These are the true words of God."
