For a second straight week, we draw from the exact same portion of the Genesis account (2:18-25); but now we move from the vocational need of Adam to the relational need. They are inseparable, but they can still be distinguished.

• Marriage by God

• Marriage from Creation

• Marriage for Maturity

• Marriage without Shame

Doctrine. God from the beginning and Christ in the gospel are the First and Final Cause of marriage.

Marriage by God

Consider that there is a wedding at the beginning of the Bible and a wedding at the end. One in Eden and the other when John is told, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” which was “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev. 21:9, 10). In both it is God, as a Father, who prepared the bride and presents her—as if walking down the aisle with her—to his son. The first Adam and the last Adam are the recipients: Eve and then the Church are the two brides. So it is here, that, ‘he made [the] woman and brought her to the man’ (v. 22b). It’s a good thing that Eden was a sacred sanctuary, the perfect wedding venue.

One of the two crucial New Testament passages I want to bring in, because they both explicitly refer to this Genesis passage, is Paul’s statement to the Ephesians about husbands and wives. First, the Apostle quotes Genesis directly, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” And then he adds,

“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).

What specifically refers to Christ and the church? Answer: Marriage. How do we know that this is the “mystery” Paul had in mind? Simply read the whole of Ephesians 5:22-33 and you will see the analogy Paul draws between the husband-wife relationship and the Christ-church relationship. In short, marriage is made by God as a gospel-drama.

Objection: “But the unbeliever can’t tell the gospel and would have no interest in it! Even as a Christian, I may have an interest in it, but my sin makes a mockery of a gospel-telling marriage.” Answer: YES. That’s all true—and yet, it is still true that earthly marriage is designed by God as an image of the eternal marriage.

In drawing out Paul’s words, Doug Wilson once wrote,

“In this passage of Ephesians, Paul tells us that husbands, in their role as head, provide a picture of Christ and the church. Because of sin and rebellion, many of these pictures are slanderous lies concerning Christ. But a husband can never stop talking about Christ and church. If he is obedient to God, he is preaching the truth; if he does not love his wife, he is speaking apostasy and lies – but he is always talking.”1

Here we see that in marriage—just as in dominion and all of the social spheres that the image of God acts within—we do what we do because of what it says about God, not because of what it says about any lesser thing. So marriage is by God to talk about God.

Marriage from Creation

Let us take a look at the big picture here. Where in the Bible does this institution show up? Right here in Genesis. It is not only at the beginning of the redemption story; it is the beginning of the whole story. In other words, marriage is a creational ordinance and therefore it is not subject to renovation by human law. It is also not a sacrament of the church (contrary to Rome’s teaching). It can’t be either one because God made it this over everyone. To say that it is a creation ordinance is to to say that this is what marriage is for everyone born to the race of Adam—the whole human race.

The other crucial New Testament passage comes from Jesus Himself, and it covers a lot of ground in the whole biblical doctrines of the design of the sexes as well as the institution of marriage.

“He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’” (Mat. 19:4-6).

The first observation about this text goes with our first point—that marriage is by God. Jesus says here: “HE who created them” for this purpose, and “What GOD has joined together.” So, yes, every marriage BY GOD.

But God is not only the One who thought of it. He designed the souls and bodies of male and female for this purpose and not a contrary purpose. That’s why Jesus was bringing it up. His words were aimed specifically at the perversions of divorce and polygamy in that culture; but the logic of it clearly applies to any deviation from the design: one MALE and one FEMALE God made them for this alone. At the center of the description of Eve’s making is the perfectly literal divine surgery:

“So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (vv. 21-22).

This is drawn out not as myth, but neither does it fail to communicate a clear symbolism that is broad enough to correct the errors of every age. That’s what overarching designs do. You don’t ask: “Where does the Bible specifically say that I can’t identify as a cat or marry all twelve of my cousins?” You do realize that you can invent an infinite amount of distortions of a design and say the same. We are “inventors of evil” (Rom. 1:30) Paul says. But here’s the key: It is not the burden of proof for the Designer to put warning labels on every last molecule because you have gone insane. The design is clearly marked.

I know that our culture reached a point of exhaustion with sayings that seemed too “simple” such as that “God made Adam and Eve—not Adam and Steve.” But here’s the thing—He did. Some things just are that simple; so that all of nature testifies and every child knows it, so that it takes the perversion of rebel so-called adults to twist them and turn them aside from their innocence. Even in the church, we hear one such twisting of the simple truth, namely, that Jesus brings a new order and that the New Testament did not teach that homosexuality or transgenderism were wrong. False. The New Testament is explicit that this runs contrary to nature, to God’s very creation of things.

“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Rom. 1:26-27).

“just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7).

“Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral … nor effeminate, nor homosexuals … will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9, 10).2

Marriage for Maturity

We said last time that Adam named the animals before God blessed him with Eve. Why? Because he had to come to realize his need. So there was a maturing process already. But now it comes to the surface in something of a song.

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (v. 23).

Men are suspicious creatures. We want to protect our own weaknesses, seal up all potential vulnerabilities. We certainly don’t want a part of us taken out. Martin Luther called his wife Catherine, or Katy, by the affectionate nickname “my rib.” He did so because he came to realize that just as much as God called him to get the German church off the ground, God uniquely blessed her to make his house run so well that he had far less vulnerabilities with her.

So there is a relational symbolism in the rib. These bones protect the most vital organs. A man’s maturity means taking up the mantle of protector, not only from outside forces but even from his own selfishness.

Matthew Henry said of this,

“That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”3

She who is taken from his side stands at his side, and he at hers—no fiercer loyalty, no deeper companionship.

The naming of Eve by Adam is that same act of dominion-by-definition. Here it is the general name ‘Woman’ (v. 23). Whereas later we catch the proper name, “Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (3:20); and we will see why it was more fitting for us to know that in that place.

Marriage without Shame

Why is it significant that the last scene in the Garden of Eden before literally all hell breaks loose—that the last thing we see is the man and the woman at pure rest, holy and happy? We think of it wrong if we are suspicious. If our answer is: “Well, Adam has his guard down.” Or “They are too complacent.” Or, as some in the early church, under the spell of Gnosticism, would have it, “Bodily pleasure itself is the problem.” None of these are correct, and in fact, all of these run contrary to the text. It says, ‘And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed’ (v. 25). Not ashamed means what it says—NO SHAME. They had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing in Eve that had allured Adam was evil, and nothing in Adam’s joy in her was second-rate.

No—the picture fades away not as a natural twilight to paradise, but as a picture of perfect rest, the day’s work done, where the sanctuary that we think of as church and the sanctuary of a man’s castle come together.

This is what the work is for; this is what the guard is kept for. To quote Chesterton again, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”4

PRACTICAL

Use 1. Instruction. If we bring together that vocational need from last week and the relational need from this week, we can better appreciate what men and women were uniquely designed to need relationally from each other. When Paul tells husbands, “Husbands, love your wives” (Eph. 5:25) and then for “the young women to love their husbands and children” (Titus 2:4), the Greek word used for love of the husband toward his wife is agapaó, while the word used for the love of the wife toward her husband is that adjective form of phileo. Let me explain that, partly because the different Greek words for love are sometimes inflated and given rigidly fixed meanings. But in this case, there is a clear context. And it all follows from those two places that the men and women are taken from.

Agape is that love of deepest devotion. That implies an attention and affection paid. It is what women most need to receive and what men most struggle to give. Hence the command. Women don’t need phileo love5 from their husbands so much as agape love.6 Phileo love is “brotherly” or friendship love. It is the camaraderie of soldiers, or explorers charting out a new territory—not just the aid given by the cut man in a boxer’s corner, but the very legs under him to keep fighting. It is what men most need to receive and what women most struggle to give. Hence the command. Men don’t need agape love from their wives so much as phileo love.

One popular book series from a generation ago now put this in terms of “love and respect.” And, as much as I do not care for contemporary practical Christian books, this one actually did at least a good job of drawing this from Paul’s words in Ephesians. What I am suggesting is that Paul’s words make so much more sense rooted in Genesis 2. Please do not misunderstand. The point is not that men don’t need anything like affection, or that women don’t need anything like respect. Of course both do. But in the main, men do not need or want to be loved like women need to be loved, and women do not need or want to be loved like men need. Why? Because God designed each to love and be loved in harmony with their gender-specific task, and we process all of reality in those lanes.

Use 2. Consolation. To look back into the Garden of Eden is like getting a closer look into the heart of God’s law—its reason for being—and yet forgetting that apart from Christ, the law is a fire, and so the design in Genesis is its blazing center. What may begin in wonder or curiosity or inspiration quickly overtakes us with all of the ways in which we are not as we were made to be. Or, we may simply misapply that which is general (and in Genesis 1-2 we cannot help but stare into the “DNA of God’s design” from the surface, so that we forget that it is giving us the general principle level)—and we hammer ourselves for a perceived failure as if those generals were specifics. Think about it—the single person, the barren womb, the injured and unemployed man, the empty nester looking back, the slave, the mentally incapacitated, or simply the broken in soul and body, who has thrown away all of this and then, by God’s grace, come to repent and try to return, but every day is a struggle to see how. If that’s you, I just want to say as simply as I can—Don’t look back into Eden apart from Christ. But do look back through Him.

The question to start with is: Do you love the design? Because if you love the God whose design it is, then you must love the design. And that design was always aimed at what it says specifically about Christ’s love for His bride.

Very much unlike Adam did. Very much unlike what we have done.

“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).

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1. Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1995), 25.

2. The NASB 1995 is the lone contemporary English translation that correctly parses both of the Greek words used here into “effeminate” and “homosexuals.”

3. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 10.

4. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, Jan. 14, 1911.

5. ἀγαπάω — I love, wish well to, take pleasure in, long for; denotes the love of reason, esteem.

6. φίλος —friendly; subst: a friend, an associate.