26 Jan Sex, Gender, Sexuality, and Marriage in Genesis
Genesis 2:18 – Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.”
When we are kids in school, we are asked to put together our family tree as an assignment to understand who we come from. As we get older, many people choose to go further in their research and learn as much as they can about their ancestors. Something in us wants to know who and where we come from, and all the variables that make us who we are. If we were able to trace our ancestry back to the very beginning, we would all find ourselves as part of the same human family with Adam and Eve as our first mother and father.
Genesis 2:4b-25 further elaborates upon Genesis 1:26-2:4a by giving greater details about the creation of Adam and Eve. There are three vital concepts that we learn from this section of Scripture that have significant implications for issues that rage in our day around sex (our God-given male or female biological status), gender (male and female cultural traits such as dress and conduct), sexuality (allowed only in heterosexual marriage by God), and marriage (only for one man and one woman according to God).
First, we learn that God’s governance has singular headship and plural leadership. The man was made before the woman and appointed as the head, a fact that Paul builds the doctrine of male senior governance in the church upon in 1 Timothy 2:11-13 and serves as the beginning of male headship in the family (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23). Both the husband and wife serve as plural leaders as they are supposed to live as “one” and, in the family, children are repeatedly exhorted to honor and obey both their mother and father, who are both family leaders.
Second, the man and woman were handmade in a personal way by God unlike anything else in creation. This fact stands in stark contrast to atheistic evolution which says there was no intentional or personal Creator of human life.
Third, God breathed life into the man, which made him a living person. Many theologians see this as referencing the human soul made for eternal relationship with our Spirit God. This also explains why we have personhood as it was a gift from the personal God and not the work of impersonal matter working through implausible evolutionary chance.
In addition to the making of the man and the woman, several additional facts are given about the environment God had spent five days preparing. First, a beautiful garden cultivated by God was given as a home to our first parents and the prototype for the man and his descendants to cultivate the rest of creation to resemble through their work. Second, in the garden was the tree of life which sustained Adam and Eve’s existence and may indicate that mankind was not made eternal but rather kept alive as long as they obeyed God and had access to this tree which appears again at the end of Revelation in Heaven. Third, also in the garden was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was in the middle of the garden and forbidden for consumption by God under penalty of death and used by God to test their faith in Him.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at Adam and Eve in light of the first marriage between them.
Do you see signs of singular headship and plural leadership in the world? How about in your church? How can you implement this in your family and areas you have leadership over?
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