Keeping the Marriage Covenant: While we often decry the lax state of marital commitment in our era, if anything, the spiritual leaders of Jesus' day had an even worse record than our culture does today. Many of the spiritual leaders of Jesus' day viewed the marriage vows as something that could easily be set aside with no consequence. In this section of Matthew 19, Jesus corrects their faulty understanding of marital commitments, and helps us understand why marriage is a covenant that is intended to be a lifelong covenant.