Made for Each Other

Few things are as obvious, basic, and fundamental as the differences between a man and a woman. Similarly, few things cause as many fights and hurt feelings. We each deem ourselves experts in the sexes, if for no other reason than that we’re a male or female. Yet for all our “expertise,” ours is a world run amuck of confusion, envy, guilt, pain, and misunderstanding.

There are more extreme forms of disorder in our culture caused by gender misunderstandings, such as cross-dressing, sex-change surgeries, and homosexuality. Just this past week, World Vision announced that they would no longer prohibit their employes from LBGT lifestyles before they reversed their decision a couple days later in light of donor drop-off.

There are also more accepted or “dignified” forms of gender and marriage confusion, from wives leading at home, husbands isolating themselves from or domineering over their wives, feminism, adultery, and divorce. Other conservative abuses of gender distinctions include expecting men and women to do the same things, to have equal authority, and to be trained/educated in all the same ways.

But from the beginning, God made men and women in His image. Their relationships and roles, especially in marriage, are a way to show something about God. Differences are not cause for competition any more than the differences between three Persons of the Trinity. Uniqueness is not a hindrance to unity any more than it is in the Godhead.

There are, of course, dissimilarities between how the marriage relationship between a man and a woman reflect God’s Trinitarian relationships. God is three Persons, not two. God is masculine; He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, always referred to as “He.” God is not sexual. And yet, the emphasis in Genesis 1:27 concerning God’s image is that “male and female He created them.” And the “good” of relationship with someone similar, but not exactly the same, is emphasized in Genesis 2:18-25.

Genesis chapter two, verses 4 through 25 are like the picture in picture, like the pinched out/zoomed in view of the narrative between Genesis 1:26 and 27. God talks about making man (verse 26) and then by verse 27, male and female He made them. The version in chapter two expands the story.

Genesis 2:15-25

Note again in verse 18 when God says, It is not good . After almost every creative act of God the first six days of the universe, God looked at His work and saw that it was “good.”

On the first day, He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good. The next day He gathered the waters together and caused dry land to appear and He saw that it was good. Three more times God created and He saw and declared that His work was good.

Then, partway through day six, God paused and talked with Himself as He readied to create man in His own image (1:26). He formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (2:7). God planted a garden paradise for man and placed man in it to work it and keep it (2:15).

But before man could catch his breath, before man made any personal comments about his condition, the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone . The emphasis wasn’t as if the man was simply missing out on something nice. The emphasis was that there was something definitely wrong. Something was not good.

Not good? What else could man possibly want? Man had a spectacular home, with beauty and variety and resources of every kind at his disposal. Not only that, man was assigned a global enterprise: to exercise dominion and subdue the planet. He had a place to be and a purpose for being. Yet still something was not good: man was alone.

God points it out. The action of the story moves at His direction. God Himself says something wasn’t right, not Adam. God’s first dominion-taking task for Adam included Adam’s naming of animals. Sure, it demonstrates Adam’s brainpower and language skills within his first few hours on the planet. But the emphasis in context is on Adam’s deficiency, not on his competency, as the end of verse 20 makes clear. But for Adam there was not found helper fit for him .

The whole set up is to make Adam aware of his aloneness and to prepare him to appreciate the woman, as well as to acknowledge God who gave her to him. The primary reason was to get Adam to realize that there was no “helper fit for him.”

God was more aware of Adam’s incompleteness than Adam. He knew what Adam needed more than Adam. And He was able to remedy the problem more capably than Adam. Adam not only didn’t comprehend his problem or complain about it, God didn’t seek Adam’s counsel about how to fix it. So God made Eve and presented the planet’s very first wedding and marriage. What was Adam’s response? He celebrated! He immediately recognized their compatibility and closeness. Adam writes the first love song, that she was Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh (verse 23).

Verse 24 summarizes the point: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh . Verse 24 is not a continuation of Adam’s celebration. Instead, it draws truth from the account and intentionally defines all subsequent marriages after the pattern of the first couple.

Here is where we need a junior high boy to ask, Why? Did God look down the corridors of time and see the Precious Moments figurines on top of wedding cakes and think, “Awww…I’ve got to make a man and a woman now.” Why was it not good for the man to be alone?

I can’t overstate how subtlety what I’m about to say will wreck theological and marriage (and disciple-making and parenting and church) paradigms and then rebuild them for the better. I believe that this is what most of us are missing; I certainly was. It’s why we become what we worship and still struggle so much. We don’t know what God is really like and so we don’t know what we’re supposed to be.

The reason it was (and is) not good for man to be alone is not because man needed someone to make him dinner. They were’t cooking in the garden. They had access to all but one of a paradise of fruits and vegetables (if you can image plant food being paradise). Man did not need someone to wash his clothes. They had no need for apparel yet. Man had a home, he had a job/purpose (to tend the garden). What else could he need? What was not good? Why was it a problem for him to be alone?

It was not good for man to be alone because God has never been alone .

Go back to Genesis 1. Something strange happens half-way through day six.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26–28, ESV)

For the first time, God is talking to someone(s). These are conversing words not creating words. He’s not talking to men, He’s talking about making men. He’s also not talking to angels; nowhere else in the Bible does it say that God gets counsel from angels or that men are made in the image of God and angels.

Who is He speaking to? God is speaking to Himself. The Trinity is having a chat. I know that the Trinity is not completely revealed in Genesis 1 but, in light of progressive revelation, there is no doubt that this is the Three Persons of the Trinity. They are talking about their final act, the crown of creation, someones unlike anything else made so far. Here are creatures who will bear His image, His likeness, who will be made imago Dei.

I get that forests have been sacrificed in dissecting what it means for man to be made in God’s image. But the passage seems to answer it.

Before we reveal the imago Dei once and for all, just for a thought experiment: if you were God and You decided to create a universe to reveal Yourself, to communicate Your character, who You were, what would you make? Yes, the heavens declare the glory of God but they do not bear His image. The sun gives light and warmth and enables life, but it does not bear His image. Birds and fish and animals multiply in great beauty and diversity, but they do not bear His image. When God wanted to show who He really is and share what He enjoyed most, He created a man and a woman and joined them in marriage. He wants us, together, to partake of His joy.

It wasn’t the man by himself that bore God’s image, it was both of them together, male and female. They were made for each other. They were made to reflect God’s likeness together. In other words, they bear God’s image in relationship.

I know that the information is somewhat limited, since no one else was there, but we aren’t totally without revelation either. What was God doing in the happily ever before? Was He bored? Was He quizzing Himself, each person learning the multiplication table, or going over the ordo salutis? Was He entertaining Himself? What was He doing all that time? We don’t know every detail, but we know for certain that He was enjoying infinite fellowship among the Persons. He has always been in relationship, which is why He can tell us that God is love.

God created men and women, in particular marriage, so that we could taste the sort of intimate love and joy that He has always known. We are an overflow of who He is. We bear His image.

That’s why the cultural mandate (if you like that term) starts with relationship.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28, ESV)

The first element of bearing His image is relationship. The second part is responsibility. We subdue and take dominion, but even that is together, as family and then as community.

What does God want with us? What does God want for us?

Does He want us to memorize all the facts about Him? Does He want us to learn all of His commands (in Greek)? Does He want for us to be like Him, so He’s prepping us for a great theology test in the sky? No. He didn’t create us to be test-takers. He didn’t create us as truth-tubes. He created persons because He is persons. He created persons for sake of fellowship and that takes at least two. That’s why it wasn’t good for man to be alone.

Is your marriage Trinitarian? If the Trinity got along like you and your spouse, what kind of God would He be?

We are all reflecting God. We are made in His image. It isn’t whether or not we reflect Him, it’s whether or not we’re reflecting Him truly. If God appeared in a vision to your next door neighbor and said, “Watch Mr. and Mrs. Soandso’s marriage, then you will see what sort of God I am,” how would your neighbor describe God? Distant or intimate? Fussy or full of affection? Authoritarian or attentive? Cold or inseparably loyal?

If you have kids, what do they understand about God’s character from watching you and your spouse? What do they think that God thinks is important? Why would our kids want our worship when, to them, based on our reflection, God doesn’t even like the other Persons in the Godhead?

We are made to bear God’s image and the very first place is in marriage. Marriage is both a way we worship and a result of worship. The reason why it is so important for us to understand the facts is so that we can have fellowship. You can know a lot of great facts and still be alone. You can name all of the theological animals and tend the garden of your Bible and it still not be good.

One typical shortcoming of many marriage books is that they focus on technique. But too much focus on technique turns us into worshippers of technique, and technique is an unforgiving master. Technique has no grace to share. Marriage is personal, not an epistle. Marriage is personal, not a sentence. This is because God is always three Persons.

Each one of you are a match made (or modeled) in heaven. You were made for each other.

As I’ve mentioned before related to John 8, the nature of sacrifice comes from the nature of God. He loves and sacrifices for others because of His love. If Adam had represented this truly in Genesis 3, what would have happened?

Adam would not have been the well-behaved Mormon teenager, abstaining from the fruit. He would have looked at Eve, seen her curse, seen her enemy, and gone after that serpent with pure and righteous wrath. He would have then turned to face the pure and righteous wrath of God Himself (that Adam had just imaged), and he would have said something quite simple, something that would be said by another, thousands of years later. “Take me instead.” (N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, 80)

This is exactly what the second Adam did, revealing the nature of God, in loving, sacrificing, giving relationship. The reason it was not good for man to be alone is that he had no one else to lovingly sacrifice for. But God made us to bear His image, and Christ showed us how to do so with one another.

We need to know and fellowship with God in worship so that we can reflect Him. As we reflect him, won’t we enjoy even more of His relational intimacy and gladness? And as we enjoy more God-like gladness, won’t that give Him even more glory? As we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, we aren’t alone because God, the One who made us, is not alone. You and your spouse are made for each other because You are made in the image of the eternal, loving Triune God.