Fellow-Redeemed in Christ,
After God called the universe into existence and formed the Earth, he established marriage and family as the principle relationships for society. God built these earthly blessings literally from the ground up.
We view marriage and family through the lens of God’s revelation in his holy Word. What we see are not man made ordinances. We are not free to tinker with them. What the Holy Spirit shows us through Moses pen are the Essential Building Blocks for Intimate Union. First, man and woman are corresponding allies. Second, together they form God’s unique family unit
A flashlight shines its beam into the darkness to expose someone up to no good. The Word of God shines its truth to expose the lie of man’s evolution from animals. That lie is up to no good. The lie that man is just a higher species of animal gives people the false impression that nothing is sacred; that nothing is essentially right or wrong; that they can use anything and everything by self-determination. Those lies could not be further from the truth when applied to marriage and family.
Before we look at marriage and the family unity, we need to go a step back to the creation of society. Man and women are corresponding allies. God created two genders, male and female. He did not form man and woman in the same way. Nor did God make them identical. He did not create them at the same time. God did not create man and woman for the same roles in society, or in the family.
What makes it difficult to appreciate this is that we see these truths with the eyes of our sinful flesh. At the same time, children of God also look at what God says through the eyes of faith in Christ who paid for our sins so we can follow him and view things differently. The fleshly view of God’s creation of man and woman for his purposes leads us to ponder, “So what?” Our faith eyes focused on Jesus’ cross and empty tomb lead us to confess, “Everything God made is very good, just as it should be.”
God made the man first, out of the dust of the earth. God made man in his image, holy. This is something the woman shared with the man. God created Eve, too, in his image. God created the man as the head of the coming society. After he created the man “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” God would make woman from the man. Man and woman are corresponding allies, the essential building blocks for intimate union.
Not so incidentally, in this account God first uses his name, the LORD, all capital letters. This name is the gospel, the good news of God’s love that not only created man but would also redeem us and sanctify us after Adam and Eve lost their holiness through doubt and disobedience.
One of the first things the caretaker of Eden did was name the animals the LORD brought before him. Adam noticed there was no female for him. “…no suitable helper was found.” God showed the man that things were not “very good” yet since he had no counterpart, no ally, and no companion. Something necessary was missing. Therefore, “The LORD God took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib”
God intended his perfect society to have two genders. They would complement one another. Even after the fall into sin, a society of all men or all women seems strange and unnatural. Even living in this fallen world, men and women work together bringing their particular strengths and qualities to the table in mutual cooperation.
The man and the woman were the first of their genders in the new world; man as the head and woman as his helper, a word that does not in any way mean inferior or lessor. How could that be when the Psalmists confesses of the almighty God in Psalm 46, that God is “a very present help in trouble?” Here is one of those places we must look with the eyes of faith and not the eyes of sin.
God had put into place the essential building blocks for intimate union. He had his corresponding allies. “Then the LORD God…brought her to the man.” The LORD God brought Eve to Adam in the creation of marriage to form the family unit.
Adam had a deep respect for Eve’s creation by God and the dignity she brought as his ally. Adam knew was “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He loved her as God’s creation as he loved his body as God’s creation. Paul speaks of this love as we live in a sinful world, “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.”
Adam speaks of marriage and family in the future. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” .Adam and Eve now were more than corresponding allies. They enjoyed their complementary alliance in the family unit. God intends the family to have a man and woman as husband and wife. He may also give the family the blessing of children along with marriage’s other purposes of companionship and the only place for God pleasing expression of sexual intimacy and union. Our Savior Jesus held this union sacred and declared, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
The LORD God established the family unit as the place to mutually encourage, love, and forgive one another in Christ. Marriage and family is where we teach our children Jesus loves them, the kingdom of God belongs to them, Jesus blesses them, and as the children of God we love one another even our enemies. We know not every family has husband and wife, mother and father for a variety of reasons. It is still a family but a family missing an element God intended for its good.
Eve’s voice is silent. Nevertheless, her actions along with her husband’s tell the story. “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Adam and Even enjoyed the purity and joy of becoming one flesh sexually in their marriage. This act came as a result and evidence of the commitment they made to one another. They recognized each was God’s gift to the other. It is the lack of this commitment as well as the lack of public legal declaration of this commitment that make sexual relationships apart from marriage a sin.
The one flesh of marriage includes the alliance of purpose and interest and goals. Husband and wife remain individuals. In marriage, we willingly give up our individuality, our self-determination and we do everything for the good of the one we are together. Family is sharing and growing in the love of Christ. It is the unity we see in couples who have been married for many, many years so each anticipates the other’s needs, and almost literally become two hearts beating as one. It is the love so deep that when one spouse dies the other senses that a part of their own heart has died.
Marriages and families are blessed in Christ. Jesus’ beating heart is the third beating heart in the relationship. Adam and Eve did not need this yet but soon they would. They like we would have the promise of forgiveness of sins by the sacrifice of Eve’s seed on the cross where he would destroy Satan’s power.
Whether single or married, parents or not parents, it is this promise alone filling the hearts and minds of men and women that enable us to strive to have lives, our marriages, and our families be what the Creator intended. Amen. <SDG>