Jesus Gets the Final Word

On one of my prior TikToks, I got a comment that said something along the lines of "Jesus's words aren't any more important than the rest of the words of the Bible." This is unfortunately a very common idea in modern readings of the Bible.

Many folks are taught the Bible is a flat instruction manual, every verse carrying equal weight, every command equally divine, every word equally authoritative. Biblical inerrancy then creates an entirely unnecessary house of cards where questioning one verse threatens to topple the whole structure.

Except Jesus himself spent a significant portion of his ministry dismantling this very approach.

In Mark 10, the Pharisees approach Jesus with what they think is a gotcha question about divorce. It's a classic trap—quote Moses, corner Jesus, hope to watch him squirm between competing interpretations. They're confident in their biblical ammunition: Deuteronomy clearly permits a man to write a certificate of divorce and send his wife away.

But Jesus doesn't squirm. Instead he reveals why Moses doesn't have the final say.

"Moses wrote this commandment for you because of your unyielding hearts," he says.

So Jesus—who Christians tend to believe is God incarnate—just said that a biblical command existed not because it reflected God's perfect will, but because people were being stubborn jerks. It was a concession. Plan B. Maybe Plan C or D.

This single exchange denies the flat reading approach that treats every scriptural command as equally divine. Jesus is saying that some parts of scripture are accommodations to human hardness rather than expressions of divine perfection.

And before we got our panties twisted about Jesus not caring about his own Jewish' people's Scriptures, the Hebrew prophets understood this idea of divine accommodation long before Jesus walked among them. Jeremiah promised a new covenant that would be written on hearts instead of stone tablets because the old system wasn't working. Jeremiah even went further, saying that the sacrificial system were human creations rather than divine mandates (Jeremiah 7:22)

Even within the Pentateuch—those first five books that form the foundation of Jewish law—you find contradictions, competing perspectives, multiple legal codes arguing with each other across centuries. It's not a manual that dropped from heaven fully formed. It's a library of conversations, debates, evolving understandings of what it means to live faithfully before God.

This messiness isn't a bug in the system. It's a feature.

Because faith isn't meant to be a paint-by-numbers exercise where every theological question has a clear, unchanging answer found in a verse reference. Faith is meant to be dynamic, responsive, alive—shaped by relationship rather than rule books.

For Christians who claim biblical authority, they cannot somehow forget the central claim of their faith: Jesus is supposed to be God.

Not merely a really good teacher. Not merely an enlightened human being. Not even the best interpreter of scripture.

God. In flesh. The divine self, walking among us, speaking, teaching, challenging, correcting.

If that's true—and it tends to the foundational claim of most forms of Christianity—then all prior writings are just people writing _about_ God. And when God shows up in person and says, "Actually, that's not quite right," maybe we should listen.

This isn't about diminishing scripture. It's about recognizing the hierarchy that Christian theology itself demands. Jesus gets to be the primary interpreter of scripture because, according to Christian belief, Jesus _is_ the God that scripture points toward.

About Divorce

In the Mark passage, this principle plays out in practical terms. Jesus isn't just making an abstract theological point about scriptural authority. He's protecting women.

In ancient contexts, divorce meant a man could abandon his wife—often leaving her without resources, support, or social standing. It was a system that prioritized male convenience over female survival. Jesus challenges this by pointing back to God's original intention for covenant relationship, for mutual commitment, for protection of the vulnerable.

Intriguingly, immediately after addressing divorce, Jesus welcomes children that his disciples are trying to push away. The through line is crystal clear: Jesus consistently protects those with the least power.

The same spirit that protects women from abandonment also protects children from being dismissed.

However, contemporary Christians should not wield this passage like a weapon against divorce. While Jesus's teaching protected first-century women from abandonment, modern divorce prohibitions often protect men's control over women. Same words, opposite spirits.

A healthy interpretation that actually follows Jesus's example would celebrate divorce whenever it helps someone escape abuse, neglect, or other toxic situations. It would prioritize the vulnerable person's safety over the institution's appearance. And it should still challenge divorce when it's being used as a tool to control or harm someone.

Because the question isn't "What does this verse say?" but "What spirit are we embodying when we apply it?"

This interpretive approach means we can read scripture without playing theological Jenga, worried that questioning one verse will topple our entire faith. It means we can hold the tension between honoring our sacred texts and recognizing their human origins, their cultural contexts, their evolving understandings.

It means we can trust that God is big enough to handle our questions, our doubts, our need to keep growing in understanding.

Most importantly, it means we can read scripture through the lens of Jesus's priorities: justice, mercy, protection of the vulnerable, love that woos rather than "love" that controls.

The commenter who said Jesus's words aren't more important than the rest of the Bible got it exactly backward. If Jesus is God—the central claim of Christianity—then Jesus's words don't just interpret scripture. They are the standard by which all other interpretations must be measured.