This article consists of excerpts from my upcoming book titled: Husband is Not Master; Helpmeet is Not Subordinate: Marriage as God Intended It.
Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed -Genesis 2:22-25, NKJV.
The foundation for Christian marriage lies in understanding God’s love for you and your spouse and putting that understanding into everyday practice of your relationship with each other. Wisdom is the application of knowledge that is rightly understood.
God loves you and equally loves your spouse. We are to love our spouse as God loves us. Under this atmosphere of love is a strong marriage built, and the family that subsequently comes out of it thrives.
The first couple did not have a father and mother in the natural sense of the word. What we see here is the establishment of the marriage institution.
God set the pattern for the marriage relationship and institution when He made Adam and Eve husband and wife.
Therefore shall a man leave… and cleave. In the beginning, God instituted marriage to be the union of a (one) man and a (one) woman, joined together as husband and wife. Neither tradition nor modernity has changed the mind of God in that regard.
The moral imperative of monogamy remains sacrosanct and the consequence of its violation throughout human history is evident, cutting across the board.
Even among the Biblical patriarchs and others who were close to God but maintained polygamous marriages as the systems and cultures they lived in permitted, there is hardly any race in human history that has not practised polygamy at one time or the other. Polygamy is a human thing, not a race thing. It is mankind who chose to do things his own way.
Though a husband is a man and the wife a woman, not every man is a husband and not every woman is a wife. Marriage is what confers a man to be a husband and a woman to be a wife.
Therefore, the institution of marriage is the foundation and place for the expression of husbandhood and wifehood. Cohabitation is not marriage by any stretch of the imagination, neither is concubinage.
God made man in His image as male and female and gave them authority to have dominion over all of creation, not over themselves.
In marriage, God delineates responsibilities to the man and the woman, as husband and wife, with distinct capacities marked by their psychology, physiology and anatomy. In this regard, male and female are individually unique.
As I said earlier, the differences between male and female do not indicate that one is superior to the other. On the contrary, one is complementary to the other, as the word helpmeet signifies.
The subjugation of the woman by the man, either within or outside marriage, has never been God’s intent. It was not so in the beginning.
Marriage is also the place husband and wife become parents- ‘creating’ new life, imbued with the image of God, and within the ambience of a family for the raising of children to the glory of God. An unmarried couple living together as husband and wife are discordant with the will and pattern of God.
That procreation is possible outside of marriage is incontrovertible. Some people argue that the original sin was fornication. I do not agree with that. The first record of carnal knowledge between a man and a woman was of the first couple, Adam and his wife.
A man does not and cannot commit fornication with his wife. Sex in marriage is fit and proper. The Bible says it is undefiled (Hebrews 13:4). Adam copulated with his wife, not his girlfriend.
And Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD -Genesis 4:1.
It bears repeating. In the plan of God, marriage is the only institution where children should be conceived, born and nurtured. Otherwise, Cain and Abel would have somehow come before the institution of marriage in Genesis 2:24. Adam and Eve were husband and wife before they became father and mother.
In the beginning, God intended that it would be within the confines of the marriage relationship that a man and a woman become father and mother.
While having children is fundamental in marriage, the purpose of marriage must transcend procreation. Replenishing the earth must mean more than having children.
Let me digress a little. People usually say that children born out of wedlock are illegitimate. No, it is the parents that are illegitimate; they are the ones who perpetrated indiscretion. The child so born never did commit any offence to illegitimize it.
The Elements of One Flesh
But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” -Mark 10:5-9.
From Genesis 2:25, we can deduce six elements of becoming one flesh. They are requirements for building a healthy marriage. They are:
- A (one) Man and his wife, a (one) woman: that is, two people who are male and female.
- Leave
- Cleave
- One flesh
- Naked and not ashamed
- Joined by God
The elements listed above make a marriage, a marriage in the sight of God. Leaving and cleaving indicate deliberate effort, there is work to do in making a marriage become what it ought to be.
Marriage is the commitment of a man and a woman to a lifelong union of absolute exclusivity under God, of which no one may put asunder- not parents, not children, not friends, and not society or tradition and culture.
It was God’s design and intention, in the beginning, that a man and his wife would remain married throughout their lifetime. That is, baring death, a man should be married and have carnal knowledge of only one woman in life. This is the set pattern.
The Bible says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we should eschew sexual immorality. Any sexual pattern that is inconsistent with God’s original design is sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:15-19).
If our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, then our heart is the altar where love for God is the flame that keeps the sacrifice of our worship burning.
It Is Not Good For Man (Male) To Be Alone
After God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him, He took him to name the animals. Through the naming ceremony, if you like, man would observe that practically all animals were in male and female pairs. He would develop a sense that he was missing a partner.
Also, he would observe that none of the animals was suitable for him. None of them complimented him. He would develop a longing so great such that he would exclaim after the woman is brought to him, “At last! This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
God created man as male and female. The male would not fulfil the purpose for his being created without the female and this, definitely, “is not good.” In other words, as far as the creative purpose of God for mankind is concerned, the male cannot accomplish it without the female, hence the male being alone is not good.
It is an aberration when a person is not fulfilling God’s plan and purpose for his life or is hindered from doing so.
The concept “it is not good for man to be alone” is not about singleness or marriage. If it were so it would imply being married is good and being unmarried is not. It would carry a wrong connotation that married people are in the will of God and unmarried people are not. It is more about being in the place and purpose of God.
If mankind must fulfil God’s plan and purpose in creation, then man has to be male and female. Male and female created He them.
Consequently, we cannot interpret the word alone, in this context, to mean being single as opposed to being married. That sentence cannot be made to read, ‘it is not good for man to be unmarried.’ That would put all unmarried men and women, including Jesus, in a precarious position- outside the will of God! Friend, is your life in the will of God?
Thank you, do not forget to keep living, loving and learning.
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