Creation.
The word, the Logos, of God and suddenly there is something from nothing.
Light. Sky. Land. Vegetation. Sun and moon. Animals.
"And He saw that it was good."
Then He kneels in the dirt and from the dust, forms man with His very hands. Forms him in His own image and then breathes into him, the Spirit of life. He is placed in the garden as a steward to work and care for the land.
"And He saw that it was good."
Then here comes the turning point. Suddenly the Lord says, “It is not good..."
"It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
The word for “helper” here in the Hebrew, ezer kenegdo, has been misused and misinterpreted in many contexts over centuries. The real meaning here is simply, “counterpart.” This suggests that the man was not complete in and of himself, but was missing something. From here, the man is placed into a deep sleep and God creates the woman from the very flesh and bone of the man. As Adam awakens and for the first time beholds the beautiful sight of the woman, his immediate response is to sing.
“Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…”
So when God says, “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh,” it was a very literal statement. The uniting of a man and a woman to become “one flesh” in marriage, is returning to the very beginning, when God literally created the woman from the man’s flesh. They were made to be one.
Bashar Echad. אחד בשר
One flesh.
Not only that, but in this little phrase, God was also making a profound statement about their relationship with Him, not just each other. The word, Echad, in Hebrew is also found in the Hebrew Shema, repeated by all young Jewish boys in schooling. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one (Echad).” So, what God was also saying when he declared, “and they shall become one flesh,” was that the man and the woman would become one, just as God is one. That as they grow in holy intimacy with each other, they also grow in intimacy with their creator.
This concept is explored more thoroughly throughout the entirety of the New Testament as Jesus’ love for the church is metaphorically compared to the love between a bride and a bridegroom. In Ephesians, Paul addresses husbands by charging them, “ love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Eph. 5:25-27). As can be assumed by the context, the Greek word for love in this passage is “agape.” This word is all over the New Testament but most often in the context of God’s love for his people. It is a sacrificial, unconditional love. So, the husband is supposed to love his wife, “agape” her, like God “agapes” the world. The husband’s love for his wife is meant to reflect Christ’s love, which sacrificed itself in order to make the church holy, to cleanse her, to wash her with “water through the word.” All of this detailed language gives a visual image of the husband’s “agape” love bringing life, beauty, holiness, even youth to his wife. As the woman submits herself to and respects her husband, affirming him in the man that he is meant to be, his love in a sense causes her to open up like a flower and be the woman she is meant to be. What is more astounding is what can be assumed by these words. The wife submits to and respects the husband’s God-given authority because she knows that in all of his actions, he puts her life ahead of his own.
The man and the woman were created with different roles, but they are the “fullness” of each other, just as the church is the “fullness” of Christ (Eph.1:23).
So much is wrapped up in those two little words. “One flesh.”
The next verse, in Genesis chapter 2 is even more profound. Though it is often overlooked, I believe that it is the key to understanding God’s intended purpose for human sexuality.
“The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (2:25).
I think that this is it—this is what the entirety of mankind is desperately seeking: to stand before someone, completely naked in more than just the physical sense, with all of their flaws and inconsistencies exposed, and feel no shame.
Is this an underlying reason for the change in our culture's view on sexuality? Girls begin to wear less and less in an attempt to reach this desire for complete exposure and no shame. Are the basest most explicitly sexual pieces of our culture a reflection of this God-give desire for the intended relationship? I would argue yes, that a lot of what I see on billboards, in movies, in magazines, is the world crying out for this "one-flesh-naked-with-no-shame" relationship. There is an internal even subconscious recognition of how the relationship between a man and a woman is supposed to be, but at the same time there exists a deep brokenness and understanding in the world that all of this is twisted,
distorted,
fractured.
It is a result of the story which comes next in the Genesis narrative.
No comments:
Post a Comment