The First Man, The First Woman, The First Marriage

THE FIRST MAN, THE FIRST WOMAN, THE FIRST MARRIAGE

An Exposition of Genesis 1:26-31

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: February 27, 2022

Series: The Book of Genesis

Note: Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard   Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

I want to invite you to turn to Genesis 2. Before I read this passage, I just want to say something in terms of the context of our message this morning. We just sang about blessing and favor and goodness. You can open your newsfeed any week and particularly in the last few days, and it's evident that we are a long way from the blessedness and the goodness – the very goodness – of Genesis 1. Man taking up arms against his fellow man and bringing about destruction and bloodshed and separation of families and the destruction of wealth – all of that is the polar opposite of the goodness that is set forth in Genesis 1. We look forward to that day when God's redeemed children are in the celestial city and there is no more curse, no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain. Nations will not learn war anymore, but all will be well and at peace in God's new creation.

The question is: how did we get here? How did we get from the exceeding goodness of Genesis 1 to the exceeding wickedness of human history. And this question begins to get answered for us in Genesis 2:4 through Genesis 4:26. Before I read today’s passage, I want to mention one important teaching point so that you understand how this passage and the entire Book of Genesis is put together.

So, look at Genesis 2:4, which says: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” Genesis 1:1-2:3 is the introduction – the prologue, the first word, the foundational word – to the Book of Genesis. Now, beginning in Genesis 2:4, we encounter the first of eleven sections that are all introduced in a very similar way: “These are the generations of…”

Now get ready to flip pages in your Bible:

Genesis 5:1 begins, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

Genesis 6:9 begins, “These are the generations of Noah.”

Genesis 10:1 begins, “These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.”

Genesis 11:10 begins, “These are the generations of Shem.”

Genesis 11:27 begins, “Now these are the generations of Terah.” This is a very long section, by the way – it’s about Abraham and it runs all the way into Genesis 25.

Genesis 25:12 begins, “These are the generations of Ishmael…”

Genesis 25:19 begins, “These are the generations of Isaac…” This is another long section and it is about Jacob.

Genesis 36:1 begins, “These are the generations of Esau…”

Genesis 36:9 begins, “These are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites…”

Genesis 37:2 begins, “These are the generations of Jacob.”

That is how the Book of Genesis is put together. Each of these eleven units carries the storyline forward.

Now it is important to ask: What does the phrase “These are the generations of” mean?

Jonathan Safarti explains that phrase in terms of “What followed from”.[1] Arnold Fruchtenbaum very similarly describes it in terms of “this is what became of”.[2] A perfect example is “these are the generations of Terah” (Genesis 11:27). This is long section spanning around thirteen chapters, but it's not really about Terah. Instead, the section is about what followed from or what became of Terah – and so the focus is understandably on Terah’s son Abraham. What followed from or became of Terah is bound up with the fact that he had a son who proved to be consequential in the unfolding of God’s plan. So, the big section introduced as “the generations of Terah” is really all about Abraham.

So, what's going on in Genesis 2:4, which begins, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created”? Genesis 2:4 is introducing the section that tells us what happened after the world was made, what followed from God's creation of the heavens and the earth, what became of the wonderful world that God made. This is the idea and it runs from Genesis 2:4 all the way to Genesis 4:26.

But before the author jumps into the bad news, which is where he's headed in Chapters 3 and 4 – before he jumps into the bad news, he first of all wants to give us more detail about the creation of mankind. Genesis 1:26-30 told us about the creation of man and woman in God’s image. But now, Genesis 2:5-25 gives us additional and very important information about the creation of man and woman.

When I was in college, I had a Bible professor – Dr. Boyd Luter – who explained the difference between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. What he said has stuck with me for over twenty years. He said something like this: Genesis 1 is a telescopic overview of God's entire work of creation, and Genesis 2 (specifically verses 5-25) is a microscopic blow-up of the high point of creation. You see, Genesis 2:5-25 reaches back into Day 6 at the end of Chapter 1 and unpacks it for us in detail.

So, I hope that all this is helpful to you in terms of understanding this new section of Genesis that we are entering and also in terms of how the whole book is put together. And with that said, let me read Genesis 2:4-25.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

Holy Scripture says:

⁴ These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵ When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷ then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.²¹ 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. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.²³ Then the man said,

“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.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:4-25)

This is the word of God, and it is for our good. Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would make clear to us your design for the world, your design for our lives. Where there is failure and frustration and sin in which we all share, I pray that there would be a strong sense of grace coming in to pardon us and to purify us and to transform us by the power of your Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

OUTLINE OF THE PASSAGE

I have already discussed the basic meaning of verse 4. Now let me give you a quick outline of verses 5-25, then we'll walk through it:

1) There is no man. (v. 5-6)

2) God makes a man. (v. 7)

3) God gives the man a home and a set of responsibilities. (v. 8-17)

4) The man is alone. There is no woman. (v. 18-20)

5) God makes a woman and brings her to the man. (v. 21-23)

6) The man and his wife are together in their home and life is good. (v. 25)

Now in this outline I skipped over verse 24. We will get to verse 24, which is a word of instruction that is based on God's activity in the verses that come before verse 24. So, let's walk through this outline.

THERE IS NO MAN (v. 5-6)

First, there is no man. Keep in mind that the focus of Genesis 2:4-25 is not the whole earth, but Eden and the garden that God is going to plant there. God planned to plant a beautiful and fruitful garden somewhere in the east, but there were two issues that required attention.

Keep in mind that it was not God's intention to sustain the world directly without intermediary influences. If God wanted to make the light shine without the sun, and for plants to grow without water, and for gardens to flourish without human cultivators, that's easy enough for God to do. But that isn't the kind of world that God had in mind. Instead, God envisioned a world full of diverse creatures in interdependent relationships with one another. Thus bushes, plants, and trees need water; and gardens and orchards and vineyards need cultivators. And then in due course, man himself – the gardener – needs what the garden produces. The vision here is of ultimate dependence on the Lord, but interdependence among creatures.

The garden will need a water supply. And in verse 6, the water supply came in the form of a mist. And, in verse 10, the water supply comes in the form of a river. But “there was no man to work the ground” (v. 5) – no man to cultivate and manage the growth of the garden.

GOD MAKES A MAN (v. 7)

And so that brings us to the second point: God makes a man. Notice how personal God's creative activity is depicted here in verse 7. God takes the dust of the ground into his hands and, like a master potter, goes to work – creating and forming a man.

There are a number of interesting things here that we have to pay attention to. In Genesis 1:1-2:3, God’s personal name “Yahweh” does not occur. In our English Bibles, “Yahweh” is translated “LORD” (that is, with a capital L, capital O, capital R, and capital D). Yahweh's name does not occur in Genesis 1:1-2:3. But the name Yahweh (LORD) does appear and occurs several times in the section that we are reading today (Genesis 2:4-25). Why is that? Well, the Bible doesn't specifically say why that is. But I think it's very fitting because Yahweh is God's covenant name that he reveals to his people. And so it makes sense, when things are going to be focused in intimate detail on the creation of man and woman and on God's relationship with them, that God’s covenant name “Yahweh” is used for the first time.

Another thing to realize is that the man's name “Adam” is closely related to the physical stuff from which he is made. The dust of the ground is, in the Hebrew, adamah. Adam’s name comes, as it were, from the ground.  

And so, God takes this dust of the ground – this clay – into his hands and sculpts it into a man, and then he breathes life into the man.

What you can see there is both the humility and the glory of man. The humility of man is that we're made from the physical stuff of the ground. I mean, do you realize what your physical body is composed of? About 99.85% of your physical body is composed of eleven essential elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. If you could break down your physical body to those 11 constituent parts, and put them all in separate containers, it wouldn’t be worth much. In that sense, you ain’t worth much, and neither am I. But the thing is that God takes all of that stuff and weaves together intricate bodily systems, complex systems, networks within the body that all work together. It's remarkable. You and I are incapable of that kind of creative work. So there is this humility to man.

But on the other hand, there is also glory because we are God's handiwork. He gives us his special attention. He personally breathed into Adam “the breath of life” (v. 7). And of course, we learn from Chapter 1 that man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27).

And so, here we encounter both our littleness and our glory.

GOD GIVES THE MAN A HOME AND A SET OF RESPONSIBILIITES (v. 8-17)

With the man thus made, we now come to the third section in verses 8-17, which I said is this: God gives the man a home and a set of responsibilities.

Now I realize that sin really complicates our lives – and that's an understatement. Sin complicates our lives big time. But you have to grasp the pattern, because the pattern is instructive. And this instruction is especially a word for you young men. Young men, this is a really good time to tune in (not that you should have been tuned out but).

Young men, listen: before the Lord gives the man a wife, he gives the man a home, a productive homestead, a means of provision, and an assignment. Those things come first, then the marriage. Don't put the cart of marriage before the horse of responsible manhood. Don’t rush to relational intimacy without having your head on straight. And having your head on straight means that you understand and respect God's design for how life works and how life gets sustained. So, learn from this pattern.

The first thing that God does after he created the man is to plant a garden (v. 8). This garden is going to become man's home and also his workplace. Now, God had already filled the wider earth with all kinds of vegetation, both plants and trees. He did that on day three, as we learned in Genesis 1:11-13. But now on Day 6, after creating the man and before creating the woman, he plants a garden. Perhaps he added some new species into the mix that hadn't shown up on Day 3. But, in any case, he plants a garden with numerous trees (v. 9) and perhaps also bushes and small plants (could be implied from v. 5), and this productive homestead was to become man's home. It was a productive and well-watered garden. Every beautiful tree with nutritious fruit was there, as well as the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which I'll come back to in just a moment.

In verse 10, we learn that this garden is well-watered. There is this impressive river that flows out of Eden into the garden, and then it becomes four headwaters to four other rivers. And I will say this: I would not encourage you to get bogged down in the geography of verses 10-14 because this is pre-flood geography. It's tempting to think that the passage is talking about the Middle East and about Mesopotamia, right? And that might be right. But it's hard to say, because the structure of the earth was very different before the flood destroyed the original creation and reworked things big time.[3] So, we don't really know where Eden was and exactly what its geography was like. But it was a well-watered land rich in natural resources. But I wouldn't get bogged down in the actual geography.

Next comes the responsibilities in verse 15: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Work and keep, cultivate and protect, develop and preserve. It's difficult to know exactly what his work would have consisted of because there were no weeds, no thorns, no thistles, no pests, no drought, no ecological challenges. It was a very good, perfectly ordered world. Nevertheless, God did not create the man to take leisurely river walks all day long and just go bird-watching and take naps. That’s not what's going on here, is it? No. God created the man to work, to have a sense of responsibility to manage and oversee and exercise dominion. So that was the first responsibility that he gave the man.

Now, here's the second responsibility (I'm generalizing the instruction from verses 16-17): Adam was invited to live joyfully and freely within the boundaries that God had established. One author describes verses 16-17 this way: “One No in a World of Yes.”[4] And the very sad thing is that so many people have this conception of God that he is the God of a thousand prohibitions and a few reluctant permissions (but be careful not to have too much fun!). A lot of people conceive of God that way, as the cosmic killjoy. But this is not what we see here. This is a wide open invitation to enjoy the good things that God had made – a world of yes, a world of invitation, a world to enjoy the bounty of God's goodness and to eat freely from any tree, to eat to your heart's content.

But there was one restriction, right? One restriction. There was a restriction placed on one tree. I assume it was an ordinary tree to which God attached special significance: “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (v. 17).

The question that God presented to Adam is essentially this: Will you trust me? Will you love me? Will you obey me? Will you live in the wide-open expansiveness of God's will? Or will you chase after the one thing that he said not to do? Life and death hang in the balance.

THE MAN IS ALONE (v. 18-20)

So now you've got a man with a home and a job to do, but there's something incomplete about it all. And so this takes us to the fourth point: the man is alone (v. 18-20). Specifically, the man is alone with respect to his own kind. Of course, the man has fellowship with God – and this is foundational and essential. The man can interact with the animals, but the animals are not made in God's image and so the depth of such interaction is quite limited. And God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (v. 18). Think about that. When we read through Chapter 1, we saw the recurring pattern that God made this and he saw that it was good, God made something else and he saw that it was good, God made another thing and he saw that it was good. But now we see something that is not good. Commentators rightly point out that the point of verse 18 isn't that the man’s aloneness is evil, but rather than the man’s aloneness is incomplete. God's creative design is not yet complete, and God calls attention to that detail by basically saying, ‘Something is missing here.’ And he says that for our benefit, because he knows what he's going to do. He says it for our benefit, and then he tells us what he is going to do about it: “I will make him a helper fit for him” (v. 18). “I will make him a helper fit for him” – a helper corresponding to or suitable to him, one who is equal to the man and comes alongside of the man to help him. This concept of helping is in no way a demeaning term. In fact, over and over again, the Old Testament refers to God as our help, the one who helps his people. As for Adam, God designed Adam to need a human helper. Adam needs a helpmate.

So God says “[it] is not good that the man should be alone” in verse 18, and then what seems to be happening in verses 19-20 is that God wants to bring the man to his own awareness of the fact that there is no suitable counterpart for him anywhere else. In verses 19-20, God is bringing the man to a sense of his own aloneness, before God meets the need. And so it happens that God, who had made all of the animals, marches many of those animals before Adam. And, in an exercise of the dominion that God gave to mankind in Chapter 1. Remember, God gave mankind dominion over the birds of the sky and over the land animals and over the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26, 28). And right here in Genesis 2, Adam is exercising that dominion and assigning names to many of the birds and the land animals. And then it says at the end of verse 20: “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” This didn’t surprise God, but now Adam realizes that he does not have a suitable partner.

GOD MAKES A WOMAN FOR THE MAN (v. 21-23)

So fifth, moving into verses 21-23, God makes a woman for the man. God performs the first surgery in the history of the world. He causes a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and then he takes a rib from the man’s side – from the man's very own flesh and blood.

Notice that it's not enough to say that man and woman are made of the same stuff. If God had made the man from the dust of the earth and had independently made the woman from the dust of the earth, then you could say they were made from the same stuff. It's not enough to say that they were made from the same stuff. Instead, the woman was made from the man. This shows the essential unity of mankind and the essential unity of marriage.

Woman is created from the man, for the man, and is brought to the man. And then the man receives her as part of himself and rejoices in her. The man is full of joy in verse 23: “This at last is” – not a bear, not an eagle, not a hawk, not a horse – “This at last is” someone like me:

“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)

There is a play on words here in the Hebrew language: “she shall be called Ishah, because she was taken out of Ish.”

Husbands, where does your wife belong? What do we learn here from Genesis 2? She belongs at your side, right over your heart.

Paul unpacks this in wonderful detail in Ephesians 5, where he talks about how this union between the man and his wife is so profound that they are one flesh: “He who loves his wife loves himself.” (Ephesians 5:28) Here’s the alternative: the man who troubles his wife, troubles himself. You flourish together or you languish together.

Now at this point in Genesis 2, there is a break in the narrative of what happened with the first man and the first woman. And now God the Holy Spirit inspires the human author of Scripture to write a word of instruction for us – for everyone who would read Scripture or who would hear Scripture read:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (v. 24)

Genesis 2:18-23 is the divinely ordained pattern that human marriages must follow. In terms of the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual unity that is unique to divinely instituted marriage, notice that it is not man and beast; it is not man and man; it is not man and porn; it is not man and multiple wives, concubines and mistresses; it is not man and a one-night stand; it is not man seeking the benefits without the covenantal commitment. What is holy marriage? It is man and woman joined together and becoming one flesh. Only woman is God's answer to man's social aloneness and to man's incompleteness. Therefore, a man shall live in accordance with God's design. His father and mother ought to model it and teach it and prepare him for it. And when the time is right, he shall leave his father and his mother – he shall leave them in terms of the primary emotional attachment – and he shall hold fast to his wife. Arnold Fruchtenbaum talks about how this phrase hold fast means “to stick like glue”.[5] Man shall leave his father and mother and stick like glue to his wife. Holding fast and sticking like glue is what covenantal commitment and faithfulness are all about. And thus, with the man sticking like glue to his wife, the two “shall become one flesh.”

And so, having given us that instruction in verse 24, the chapter ends by telling us that the first man and his wife are together in their home, and life is good: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (v. 25) Isn't verse 25 beautiful? There is nothing to hide. There is no physical blemish. There is no moral blemish. There is nothing of which to be ashamed, whether concerning oneself or the other. Verse 25 describes unselfconscious transparent unity. The man and his wife are in a perfectly good and well-ordered creation.

Maybe you read about the Ukrainian couple this past week. They were supposed to get married in May, but the future is bleak (in light of the unfolding Russia-Ukraine military conflict), so they tied the knot on Thursday. After they got married, they went out to get weaponry in order to defend their nation. That's commendable, but what I want you to see is how different that is from the harmony and bliss and transparency and safety of Adam and Eve in their first home at the end of Genesis 2.

APPLICATIONS OF GENESIS 2:4-25

Let me make a few applications for us from this chapter. The first application is very simple: work is good.  Work is not a function of the fall. Now, as we're going to learn in Genesis 3, work is made exceedingly more difficult and very frustrating because of the fall. But the problem isn't the work itself. The work itself – cultivating, developing, growing, guarding, managing, exercising dominion – these things are good. You and I are created to work.

The second application I want to make is that marriage is the basic building block of society. And I say that very deliberately. I did not say that the individual is the basic building block of society. I did not say that. I said that marriage, by which I mean God-ordained marriage, is the basic building block of society. Marriage is the blessed life and it is the way to fulfill the great dominion mandate (Genesis 1:28). I realize – as I said last week – that God does gift certain individuals, even now in this context where the human population is quite large and there is human community to be found all over, God does give certain individuals the ability to live sanctified, contented, and fruitful lives without marriage. But the normative pattern in the Old Testament and in the New Testament is to live in the blessed state of marriage. Marriage is the basic building block of society.

Think about this: Adam lived maybe twelve hours without a wife. And then he got married on the first day of his life. Don't miss the lesson. The woman lived maybe five minutes before she was brought to the man. She got married in the first hour of her life. For both the man and his wife, they were married on the very first day of their lives.

Sin complicates everything, like I said before, but if God's grace is actively at work in your life and in your family's life – I want you to hear this – I would not counsel you to leave father and mother, and venture out on some prolonged individualistic journey to find yourself. God did not create Adam to discover himself, but to discover his wife right off the bat. Marriage should be held in high regard among believers (Hebrews 13:4).

I also have some counsel for young men and young women.

Young men: put away childish thoughts and grow up. Stand before your God, and receive your marching orders from him, and obey those marching orders. Get your head on straight in terms of how life works, in terms of actually being involved in productive labor and economic sustenance, and start cultivating and protecting the things that God has put before you. And then, with your parent’s blessing, when the time is right, leave them and be joined to the bride that God provides. Welcome her as your perfectly fitted partner, and lead her into the life that God has set before you. It was Adam’s privilege to introduce Eve to the garden, and to the animals that he had named before she came on the scene.

Young women: walk with God and let God bring you to a man who knows who God is, who knows where God has put him, and who knows what God has called him to do and is already taking steps to do it. Let God lead you to a man who will celebrate your arrival and who understands that your partnership is indispensable to fulfilling God's call upon his life. And then once God has brought you to that man, follow your husband's lead. This is the pattern – the normative pattern – for human marriage.

GENESIS 2:4-25 PROCLAIMS THE GOSPEL

Now, I haven't told you until now that this entire message that I've been preaching is actually about the gospel. And what you have to do is take Genesis 2 and, like a good musician, you have to transpose it into the key of our fallen world. And when you do that, you realize that Genesis 2 has been teaching us the gospel of redemption all along.

Behold the truth of the gospel: the Father has a Son. The Father made all things for his Son and appointed his Son to be the heir of all things (Colossians 1, Hebrews 1). The Father planned that his Son should have a radiant bride with whom to share unhindered fellowship in the glory of God's creation. That was God's plan all along. And when the time was right, the Son left his Father above. As we sang: “He left His Father's throne above”[6] to win a bride and right the world.

The Son became a man; the Word became flesh (John 1:14). He grew up in the home of Joseph and Mary, his legal father and biological mother. And then, as an adult, he left to do the work that the Father had appointed him to do. The Father put him, not in a garden paradise, but in a wilderness for forty days to test him. The Son always lived contentedly and gladly within the Father's boundaries, and he always did the Father's will.

The bride, however, was not so radiant. She was blemished, guilty, full of shame. But that did not deter the Lord, for he had come to do a gracious work of re-creation. In the paradise of Eden, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and created the bride from the man’s side. In the brokenness of our sinful world, God had a more profound and indeed painful work for his Son to do. He led his dear Son up Calvary's mountain, and he put the bride's sin and guilt and shame upon his beloved Son. Thus the Father caused judgment and death to fall upon his Son, and from the wounded side of the Crucified One, the Father brought forth a radiant bride. As we will sing: “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, / Let me hide myself in Thee; / Let the water and the blood, / From Thy riven side which flowed, / Be of sin the double cure, / Cleanse me from its guilt and power.”[7]

Now to what end did Jesus redeem his bride? The answer is right here in Genesis 2: that we would become the cherished bride and body of Christ; that we would be unified with our Lord, as the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 28:

“husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:28-32)

The church is one with Christ, to the end that we would be clothed and without shame, standing before the Father and our dear Savior on the last day. Ephesians 5 also says:

“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.” (Ephesians 5:25-27)

No more shame!

Eve could rightly look out upon her life at the end of Genesis 2 and say, ‘I owe everything to you, Father. And under you, Father, I owe everything to Adam because I was made from him and for him.’ And the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of redemption, looks up and says, ‘We owe everything to you, Father. And under you, Father, we owe everything to your Son Jesus, because we came forth from him and for him. That's the gospel from Genesis 2.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would keep us from treating these things lightly. Keep us from acting like we can play with this stuff and manipulate it and adjust it. I pray that you would conform us to your pattern and your design and the character of your Son and the purpose that you have established for our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.

ENDNOTES

[1] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Powder Springs: Creation Book Publishers, 2015: p. 7.

[2] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis. Fourth Edition. San Antonio: Ariel Ministries, 2020: p. 5.

[3] See Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Powder Springs: Creation Book Publishers, 2015: p. 312-313.

[4] This is the title of the Chapter 4 in Douglas Wilson, Why Children Matter, published by Canon Press.

[5] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis. Fourth Edition. San Antonio: Ariel Ministries, 2020: p. 80.

[6] From the hymn “And Can It Be?” by Charles Wesley.

[7] From the hymn “Rock of Ages” by Augustus Toplady.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis. Fourth Edition. San Antonio: Ariel Ministries, 2020. 

Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Powder Springs: Creation Book Publishers, 2015.

Andrew E. Steinmann, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Volume I). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.