Genesis 2:18-25: A Blueprint for Human Flourishing (Part 2)

Genesis 2:18-25: A Blueprint for Human Flourishing (Part 2)

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Genesis, and today the next passage we come to is Genesis 2:18-25. It says,

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. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we pray according to Isaiah 55 that as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so would your word be this morning—that it would not return to you empty but would accomplish that which you purpose and succeed in the thing for which you send it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

There are many ways in which our society has changed over the past 50 or 60 years, but perhaps no change has been as significant or as revolutionary as the change in the way our society views marriage. It’s sort of astounding, when you think about it. For pretty much all of history, before the present era, there’s been a virtually universal understanding of marriage as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman. However, in recent years, our society has deviated from that traditional understanding of marriage and now views marriage in a much different way. 

And the reason this change is so significant is because marriage is, in many ways, the foundation of society. The bedrock of any healthy society is a healthy approach to marriage. And our society is no exception. If you want to know why our society is plagued by so many ills right now, I believe a lot of them can be traced back to the breakdown of the traditional understanding of marriage and family. 

But the Bible shows us a better way. And that better way begins with understanding the foundational teachings of our main passage here in Genesis 2. Right after God created the world, including man, we read in verse 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.” And that statement right there represents the beginning of the institution that we now know as marriage.  In this verse, God determines to give the man an incredible gift—the gift of a woman to be his wife. So, from the very outset, we see that marriage is a gift that comes directly from God. We didn’t invent it. We don’t own the patent or the copyright on it. It comes to us as a gift from God himself. 

And, thankfully, God not only gave us the gift of marriage but also an owner’s manual to go along with it. And that owner’s manual is critical for us to have. Like, imagine that someone gave you the gift of a Lamborghini, let’s say. You can’t just treat that Lamborghini the same way you’d treat a Chevy. There are specific procedures that are involved in maintaining a Lamborghini that the vast majority of us who have never owned a car like that aren’t familiar with. Take oil changes, for example. I learned recently that the average cost for an oil change on a Lamborghini is over $1,000 and that the procedure takes over three hours for a qualified technician to perform. So, hopefully your generous friend gave you not only the Lamborghini but also a pile of money to maintain it—because it’s a little more complicated than the Chevy. So, even if you’ve owned and maintained a car before, you still need to read the owner’s manual for that Lamborghini. If you don’t, things probably aren’t gonna go very well for you. 

Similarly, God’s given us not only the gift of marriage but also an owner’s manual to go along with it. And that owner’s manual, of course, is the Bible. And, as we’ll see, our main passage here in Genesis 2 is kind of like the table of contents for that owner’s manual. It gives us a preliminary idea of the general concepts that we need to be aware of in order to approach marriage the way God intends for us to approach it. 

So, in light of that, our main idea this morning is actually the same as our main idea from last week, this week being Part 2 of last week’s message. Changing metaphors slightly from an owner’s manual to a blueprint, we might say that, in Genesis 2:18-25, God lays out a blueprint for human flourishing in his creation of one man and one woman to live together in a lifelong covenant relationship. Again, God lays out a blueprint for human flourishing in his creation of one man and one woman to live together in a lifelong covenant relationship. And, this week, we’ll explore more of what that relationship looks like. How should a husband and wife relate to each other? What does it look like for a marriage to be healthy and functioning as God intends for it to function? 

Our first clue comes in the verse we just read, verse 18. God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” The Hebrew word translated as “helper” refers to someone who supplies strength and assistance in an area that’s lacking in the one being helped. “Helper” isn’t in any way a demeaning term and has no implications that the helper is either stronger or weaker than the one being helped. In fact, God himself is often described as Israel’s “helper,” employing this same Hebrew term, in passages like Exodus 18:4, Deuteronomy 33:7, 1 Samuel 7:12, and Psalm 46:1. So, clearly, a helper isn’t at all inferior but is simply one who provides help and does what the one who’s being helped would find difficult or impossible to do on their own. And that’s the function the woman has for the man. God then goes on to describe this helper as one who’s “fit for him”—that is, one who matches the man and serves not as a clone of the man but as the appropriate counterpart and complement to the man.

So, the critical thing for us to understand from all of this is that the man and woman, as husband and wife, have certain distinct roles in their relationship. And these roles are present even before what’s called “the Fall” of Genesis 3, when humanity rebelled against God and caused everything to be plunged into a state of brokenness and dysfunction. Gender roles predate the Fall and were a part of God’s original good creation.

And in God’s plan for these gender roles, the husband lovingly leads, while the wife affirms, receives, and follows his leadership within biblical parameters. That’s key. The husband lovingly leads, while the wife affirms, receives, and follows his leadership within biblical parameters. One indication of this comes as we move further in our main passage. In Genesis 2:19-20, we see Adam acting as God’s representative and giving names to all of the animals. And in the Old Testament, having the right to name someone implies having authority over them. We can even see this today, with parents naming their children. And then, further down, look what we see happening in verse 22-23: 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.”  So Adam names this marvelous new being that God created, calling her “Woman,” and thereby showing that he has authority over her. 

We can also see the man’s role as leader in the surrounding context of our main passage. In Genesis 2:16-17, to whom does God direct his command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He directs that command to the man, with the assumption that it would also apply to all who were under the man’s leadership. So, God didn’t need to command the woman not to eat from the tree, since his command to the man was sufficient for the woman as well. And then in the next chapter, in Genesis 3:9-11, who does God confront first about the sin that had taken place? Again, he goes straight to the man as the leader of that marital relationship. Also, as we look at the New Testament, the Apostle Paul clearly states that humanity is counted sinful because of the sin of Adam (the man), without even addressing the sin of Eve (the woman). Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:22 that it’s “in Adam” that “all die” and also states in Romans 5:15 that “Many died through one man’s trespass.” Even though Eve sinned first, it was still Adam who was the representative of the human race. 

Now, before we go any further, we need to be clear that both the man and woman of Genesis 2 are equal in value, dignity, and worth. First of all, Genesis 1:27 clearly states that both the man and woman were created “in the image of God.” Both of them bear God’s image to an equal degree. Also, I believe it’s significant that in Genesis 2:21-22, God forms the woman from the rib of the man. The woman wasn’t formed from the man’s head, as if to indicate that she was above him, or formed from his foot, as if to indicate that she was beneath him, but was rather formed from the man’s side, indicating that she was and is his equal. 

However, the Bible’s clear that, although men and women are equal in their worth, God’s design is nevertheless for the husband to be the leader in that relationship. This is even more clearly stated in Ephesians 5:22-24, where Paul writes, 

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Obviously, this isn’t the most politically correct passage in the Bible, but last time I checked, God doesn’t need to run things by the elites of our society in order to do something. He can just do it. And also, if God really is infinitely beyond us in terms of his wisdom, we should expect to have difficultly at times understanding all of the reasons behind his instructions. I know my kids often don’t understand all of the reasons behind me telling them to do certain things, but I’m confident that my reasons are pretty good ones. Similarly, I think gender roles are an area where we just need to trust God that he gives us these instructions for our own good and to promote our welfare. 

And notice the analogy Paul gives in these verses. At the end of verse 22, he explains that wives should submit to their husbands “as to the Lord.” So wives should submit to their husbands in a way that’s similar to the way Christians submit to Jesus—willingly, lovingly, respectfully, and with trust in the husband’s godly leadership. And just as Christ is the head of the church, the husband, Paul says, is the head of his wife. That word “head” implies a position of authority. 

Now, an important caveat here: wives are certainly not required to follow their husbands into sin. Any time a husband leads his wife in a direction that’s plainly unbiblical, it’s not only the wife’s right but also her duty to refuse to follow him. We can see this in Acts 5:29, where the apostles say to the governing authorities who had told them to stop spreading the gospel, “We must obey God rather than men.” But in other situations, where the husband isn’t seeking to lead his wife into sin, the wife should follow his leadership. 

And as we seek to put these two ideas together—that husbands and wives are equal in worth but different in their roles and functions—perhaps it might be helpful to compare it to something a little more concrete, like the differences between dirt bikes and motorcycles. It’s not that dirt bikes are better than motorcycles or that motorcycles are better than dirt bikes but rather that the two of them simply have different functions. They’re designed for two different terrains and function the best when they’re used on the terrain for which each of them is designed. They’re equal in value but different in function. Or, even better, think about the relationship between Jesus and God the Father. Jesus is just as divine and just as important as God the Father and shares all of the Father’s attributes. And yet, functionally, Jesus submits to the Father’s authority and follows the Father’s leading. So, wives are no more inferior to their husbands than Jesus is inferior to the Father. 

Now, because of the Fall recorded in Genesis 3, there are two ways in which husbands and wives often function contrary to God’s design. We might call these “feminism” and “chauvinism.” Feminism, very loosely defined, is when the wife refuses to follow the godly leadership of her husband. And the Bible actually gets very specific about how this tendency has its roots in the Fall. In Genesis 3:16, God pronounces a curse on the Eve because of because of her sin. The text states, To the woman he said, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” When God says there, “your desire shall be contrary to your husband,” he’s talking about a desire to usurp her husband’s authority. That’s feminism. Then, the roots of chauvinism are described in the very next part of the sentence: “he shall rule over you.” That word “rule,” in this context, refers to the husband sinfully seeking to rule over his wife in a domineering and tyrannical way, acting like a king rather than a servant leader. 

So, there we see the roots of both the feminism that characterizes our current era here in America as well as the chauvinism that’s been dominant throughout most, if not all, of the rest of history. But it’s important to note that both feminism and chauvinism fall tragically short of God’s design. God’s design is for something else entirely. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful design that promotes human flourishing exponentially more than any human distortion of that design could ever do. 

This design is for the husband to lovingly lead his wife, provide for his wife, and protect his wife and for the wife to affirm, receive, and follow the godly leadership of her husband. And that model, by the way, leaves plenty of room for the wife to be an active participant in the family’s decision-making process. She absolutely should be. But wives should nevertheless be on their guard against the tendency, tracing its origin back to Genesis 3, to, I guess you could say, “wear the pants” in the relationship and seek to undermine the leadership of their husbands. That includes the wife competing with her husband for control of the family, talking disrespectfully about her husband behind her husband’s back, doing things show knows her husband wouldn’t approve of without his knowledge, and employing various forms of manipulation, usually successfully. These are all tendencies that stem from Genesis 3. 

And, as for husbands, well, they have some pretty challenging instructions as well. Not only should husbands resist the domineering tendencies they inherit from Genesis 3, they also have the responsibility to love their wives in a truly sacrificial and Christlike manner. Looking again at Ephesians 5, let’s read what Paul instructs husbands to do. He’s already instructed wives to submit to their husbands, but he gives husbands an even greater challenge. He says, in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Wow. That’s pretty radical. 

You see, Jesus loved us even when we were in a downright wretched condition. We were rebellious, unlovely, undeserving, and even condemned in our sin. Yet, even when we were in that condition, Jesus “loved” us, this verse says, and “gave himself up” for us. He did that by becoming a human being and voluntarily allowing himself to be crucified on a cross in order to pay for our sin. That’s where we see the true depth of his love. And, in that act, Jesus endured not only the physical agony of crucifixion but even the full measure of the wrath of Almighty God so that we wouldn’t have to face that wrath. Our sin had to be dealt with; justice had to be upheld. But Jesus acted as our substitute on the cross and thereby evened out the scales of divine justice. Then, three days later, he resurrected from the dead, with the result that he now stands ready to save all who put their full trust and confidence in him to do that. 

And just like Jesus demonstrated sacrificial love toward us, he calls husbands to demonstrate sacrificial love toward their wives. That’s a lot different than the chauvinistic way husbands have often treated their wives down through the centuries, isn’t it? That’s a lot different than husbands treating their wives like their own personal property—like their servants to be ordered around and intimidated and casually dismissed. 

And yet, even though this kind of chauvinism undoubtedly still continues today to a degree, I actually think that there’s a different way most husbands today fail to love their wives. Historically, it may have been chauvinism, but I’m convinced today it’s often actually the opposite—what we might call “abdication,” where the husband simply abdicates his role or is passive in the marriage relationship. Maybe he’s selfishly absorbed in his own fun and recreation, much like an overgrown teenager—playing his video games, going out with the guys, and doing other things like that way too much. And when he is interacting with his family, he’s not much of a leader. His wife often finds herself having to act like his mom, cleaning up after him, making sure he makes responsible decisions—kind of like on that sitcom from way back when, “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Now that I think about it, I’m not really sure why everybody on the show did love Raymond, because the guy was a clueless and childish moron who abdicated his responsibilities. 

Yet that’s not the only personality profile of a husband who abdicates his responsibilities. There are also other husbands who don’t act the way Raymond Barone acted. In fact, they’re highly organized, responsible, and driven, but they’re still abdicating their role as husbands because they’re so wrapped up in their work that they’re not emotionally present or engaged with their family. Of course, a good work ethic is very honorable and commendable, but there’s a difference between having a good work ethic and being married to your work. A husband with a good work ethic is doing a very loving thing for his family by providing for them, but a husband who’s married to his work may say he’s just trying to provide, but he’s actually not providing something his family needs just as much as his paycheck. He’s not providing emotional presence and engagement and leadership. 

Men, you’ve gotta put forth effort and intentionality to stay engaged at home. It’s not going to happen accidentally. No husband is going to look back over the past 20 years of his marriage one day and be like, “Wow, I just accidently stumbled into being an amazing husband and father these past two decades.” That’s not gonna happen. It takes deliberate effort to be faithful in that way. But that’s an essential part of what it means to love your wife as Christ loved the church. 

Then, returning to our main passage in Genesis 2, we get a climactic picture of this beautiful union between husband and wife in verse 24. It says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Now, that term “hold fast” is used in numerous other places in the Old Testament for practicing covenant faithfulness. A covenant, by the way, is a sacred agreement between two parties. And in the covenant of marriage, we’re told that the husband needs to “hold fast” to his wife. That’s why, in the main idea, I referred to God’s blueprint for human flourishing involving a “lifelong covenant relationship” between husbands and wives. Divorce shouldn’t even be a word in their vocabulary. 

And not only does this command for the husband to “hold fast to his wife” prohibit divorce, and also prohibits every other form of unfaithfulness to the marital covenant. As I mentioned last week, that includes adultery, fornication, lust, pornography, and all homosexual behavior. If you want more detail about any of those prohibitions, again, go back and listen to my sermon from last week. But the point is that all sexual activity of any kind outside of this lifelong covenant of marriage is sinful and contrary to God’s design. 

And as you’re sitting there listening to this, maybe there are some who are wondering, why is all of this such a big deal? Like, why does God care so much about who we have sex with? Why is he so insistent that we only enjoy the gift of sex within the bounds of monogamous heterosexual marriage? Those are understandable questions, especially considering how radically different these ideas are from the kind of mindset that’s currently pervasive in American society. 

And I’d say, first of all, is that this is what’s best for human flourishing, as we’ve already said. However, there’s an even higher reason as well. And we find that reason by, once again, going back to Ephesians 5. After telling husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church, the Apostle Paul goes even further than that. One might assume that he’s simply using the gospel message of Christ’s love for the church as an illustration for what a healthy marriage looks like, but it’s actually the other way around. The gospel isn’t just a convenient illustration of a healthy marriage. Marriage was actually created by God for the specific purpose of being an illustration of the gospel. 

In Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul references our main passage and writes, 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. So Genesis 2:24 is actually a verse that’s ultimately about the gospel. Paul states that “it refers to Christ and the church.” And that’s why guarding and preserving the covenant of marriage by avoiding sexual immorality is such a big deal. When marriage is marred, that picture of the gospel is marred.

Imagine how you’d feel if you discovered that someone you know had been spreading rumors about you—telling all of your friends and coworkers and fellow church members horrific things about you that weren’t true at all. You’d be pretty upset, right? In fact, you’d probably be livid. How dare that person misrepresent who you are by fabricating those lies? 

Yet, whenever we misuse God’s good gift of sex, we’re misrepresenting him. We’re, in effect, saying that God doesn’t love his people with a love that’s steadfast, sacrificial, committed, and covenantal. Instead, we’re saying that he merely “loves” us when it’s convenient for him to do so or, even worse, that he merely uses us for his own pleasure without truly caring for us. Whether we intend to say that or not, that’s the statement we’re making whenever we engage in sexual immorality. Whenever we treat sex as a cheap, throwaway thing, we’re making the statement that God’s love in the gospel is a cheap, throwaway thing as well. So, in a sense, any form of sexual immorality is actually a form of blasphemy. We’re blaspheming God’s name and treating his name with utter contempt through our immorality. 

However, the reverse is also true. As we embrace God’s design for marriage and sexuality seen in Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5 and so many other places throughout the Bible, we can present this world with a powerful picture of the gospel. And, of course, keeping ourselves from immorality is just the beginning. In order to present this world with a compelling picture of Christ’s love for us in the gospel and of the relationship that he desires to have with his people, we have to pursue marriages that are faithful to God’s design in every way, including the unique roles and responsibilities for husbands and wives that we’ve discussed this morning. 

It’s only within that established pattern of the way husbands and wives should relate to each other that we can show the world what true marital love looks like. Again, that means husbands lovingly leading, protecting, and providing for their wives and their wives affirming, receiving, and following the godly leadership of their husbands. It’s not chauvinism. It’s not feminism. Rather, it’s the breathtakingly beautiful design for marriage that God’s given us in the pages of Scripture. 

Let me conclude by reading to you this description of a man and woman figure skating together in the Olympics a few years ago: “He leads her onto the ice and initiates each part of their routine. She receives that leadership and trusts in his strength. His raw physical strength is more on display than hers; he does all the lifting, twirling and catching. She complements his strength with her own; a more…attractive strength of beauty, grace, speed and balance. His focus as the head or leader is to magnifying her skills. Her focus is on following his lead and signaling her readiness to receive his next move. He takes responsibility for the two of them and she trusts his leadership and delights in it. If he makes a mistake, she pays the larger physical price; he pays the larger emotional price. She falls, but he fails! So he has to learn to initiate and risk. She has to help him understand her moves and to endure his learning curve. They do not fight for equality on the ice; they possess it as a given. They are not jostling about fairness. They are focused on doing their part well. No one yells, “Oppressor!” as he leads her around the arena, lifting her up and catapulting her into a triple spin. No one thinks she is belittled as she takes her lead from him, skating backwards to his forward….They complement each other…becoming one majestic whole. No one, least of all him, minds that the roses and teddy bears, thrown onto the ice when they have collapsed into each other’s arms at the end, are for her. It is his joy….When it’s done well, it’s a welcome sight in which both partners are fulfilled in themselves and delighted in the other.” 

You see, God’s design is a beautiful thing. He designed marriage with infinite wisdom and gives us instructions for it in his infinite goodness. And embracing that design is an essential part of our witness to the world about the relationship between Christ and the church.