God says in the Bible: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24).

Wives must submit to their husbands because God is the husband of Jesus, and Jesus submits to God. Wives must submit to their husbands because Jesus is the husband of the believer, and the believer must submit to Jesus as the bride of Christ. These spiritual relationships provide the templates for the relationship between wives and husbands.

Marriage is not man-made; neither is it subject to human design. God is the author of marriage. Marriage was made in heaven. The greatest marriage of all is that between God the Father and Jesus the Son. Theirs is the supreme love story; one that is eternal and everlasting.

The relationship between God and Christ is like the relationship between husband and wife. God is two persons (the Father and the Son) united in their love and marriage.

Creation of Marriage

Since the godhead is a marriage between God the Father and God the Son, God created man also as a marriage of two people, male and female. Accordingly, the Bible records that the Father says to His beloved Jesus: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27).

Thereby, when God created man in His own image, He created marriage. He also created a family relationship. Like God who is two in One, Father and Son, Adam was created as a human hermaphrodite. Adam was two-in-one. He was male and female combined.

As a result, Adam and Eve were married at creation. Eve was in Adam and Adam was in Eve: “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘man.’” (Genesis 5:1).

“God created them male and female; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” (Genesis 5:2).

He called their name Adam means Adam and Eve were called Adam. They were two people in one body, married to God.

From Good to Bad

Six times at the beginning of creation, God surveyed His works and declared it was good. After God created man, His positive assessment went up another notch: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31).

But soon thereafter came a seeming contradiction: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” (Genesis 2:18). 

How did something God said was “very good” become “not good?” Did God suddenly realise as an afterthought that it is not good for man to be alone? Did God only discover belatedly that Adam needed a wife?

The truth is that Adam was not supposed to have a wife. God was with Adam, so he was not alone. Adam was supposed to be single but married to God. All the companionship Adam required was supposed to come from God, the intended “husband” of Adam: “For your maker is your husband; the LORD of hosts is His name.” (Isaiah 54:5). 

Failure of Adam

God is man’s first love. But Adam was carnal and not spiritually minded. Adam did not understand that he who has God is never alone. God is the friend that sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24). The everlasting promise of God to man is: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Joshua 1:5). Jesus repeats this. He says to His disciples on His resurrection: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20).

Thus, Pope John Paul 2 said: “When God-Yahweh speaks the words about solitude, it is in reference to the solitude of “man” as such, and not just to that of the male.” Adam’s solitude or loneliness was not caused by the lack of woman. It was caused by his carnality. Like Israel who rejected God and insisted on having a king, Adam sought companionship in flesh and not in spirit. He desired someone that is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. (Genesis 2:23).

God’s answer to Adam’s loneliness was to bring different animals to Adam: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.” (Genesis 2:19-20).

Finally, God separated Eve from Adam, literally pulling her out of his ribs. This satisfied Adam, who declared ecstatically: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23).

Human marriage is therefore an attempt to unite Adam and Eve back together through the sexual congress. But even after such partial reunion, both husband and wife together must be re-married to God.

Adam’s Blunder

God gave specific instructions to Adam about life in the Garden of Eden: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17). 

But instead of listening to God, Adam listened to Eve, his wife, and ate the forbidden fruit. In effect, Adam forgot that God is his first love. He preferred Eve to God. This preference proved to be disastrous, and it led Adam astray. 

Once Adam allowed another relationship to take pre-eminence over his relationship with God, leading him to disobey God, his intimacy with God was lost. Once he ate the forbidden fruit, he sinned and became a sinner by nature. As such he died. He died spiritually immediately, and he began to die physically. Because of Adam’s sin, death entered the human race. 

Like begets like. Adam was a son of God. But since he became a sinner before Eve conceived a child, every human being descended from Adam became sons of men instead of sons of God. Thus, Adam was created in the image and likeness of God. But Adam’s offspring was born in the image and likeness of Adam:

“When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man.” When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.” (Genesis 5:1-3). CONTINUED.

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