In order to fully understand sexuality today, in a culture drowning in lust and confusion, we have to go back to the very beginning, to Adam & Eve, and learn that human sexuality is not about fun, pleasure, love, or even procreation; it's about Jesus. Can we really use Adam & Eve as that kind of universal principle?
Adam & Eve in Worthy Paradise by Peter Paul Rubens (1615).
Genesis PrincipleGenesis 2:24 reads:
"For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
This brief verse following the creation of the first humans is more than just a description of the first act of sex between Adam & Eve, but a principle and standard by which all future human sexuality and marriages should be judged and based on. The future tense of "shall" and the reference to father and mother, of which Adam & Eve had none, shows this is, in fact, talking about future sexual relationships. The previous verse, the reason the "for this reason" is there, adds even more depth. Genesis 2:23 reads,
The man 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."
This is Adam talking, referring to the process by which God actually removed a rib from Adam and fashioned Eve from the bone of the man. Adam was made from the dirt, Eve was made from man. So since Woman is made from Man's flesh, Man ought to leave his parents and find his own Woman, and be reunited to her. What was once one flesh in Adam was made into two fleshes in Adam & Eve. Sex and marriage is the process by which two fleshes are reunited into the one flesh. So, once again, this is not something that only applied to these two individual humans, but is built into how we were intended to operate and interact as human beings of different genders. The two fleshes of the Man and Woman are only made complete by their reunion in sex and marriage. As man and woman are both made in the image of God, but who reflect that image in different ways, that union is also the means by which we fully and completely reflect the image of God. This kind of intimacy would be impossible under any other sexual arrangement.
Now Paul makes clear that our flesh may be incomplete (unmarried) while our soul is totally fulfilled and made whole in Christ. Since the life of Spirit is superior to the life of the flesh, life long abstinence is also a perfectly acceptable use of sexuality as opposed to marriage. But physically fulfillment is never technically possible outside of this design for sexuality laid out in Genesis 2.
Jesus Affirms
Did you know that Jesus actually uses this very verse in this very context? In Mark 10:2-12 and Matthew 19:3-12, when asked a question about divorce, Jesus quotes this verse and uses it as a principle by which to judge and base current marriage, regardless of what the current teaching or culture said about it. It is true, there were rules in the Mosaic Law allowing for divorce, he explains, BUT Jesus replies:
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
It's almost a shame this is used as a meme so frequently. This really is an amazing painting called Sermon on the Mount by Carl Bloch (1888)
Now there's a ton to say here too about gender or the idea of restoration theology or provisional ethical hierarchies, but the point is this: Jesus here shows that Genesis 2 can and should be used as a principle for the original design of human sexuality which we ought to adhere to. For the very mistake that people were making was that they were making excuses and finding loopholes for their sin, instead of looking to the beginning and how God created sexuality and marriage to function. This is what people do when they look for misinterpretations of the Greek, call Genesis poetry that doesn't apply to them, or ignore the Bible altogether in order to justify their sin. Jesus' use of Genesis 2 as a principle for human sexuality means that we can and must do the same in the modern context. (Genesis 2 is further used in the context of 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, which uses it, once again, as a principle by which to understand the errors of sexuality they were committing.)
Paul Explains
In Ephesians 5:21-33, Paul gives this amazing practical instruction for husbands and wives as it relates to the theology of Christ, further expanding on Genesis 2 and explaining the cosmic purpose of sex and marriage in the plan of God. After calling everyone to mutually submit to each other out of reverence to Christ rather than selfishly claiming and grabbing hold of authority, it reads,
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, 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. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.Now, once again, there's a lot here about husband and wives and gender roles. I know the word submit gives a lot of people head aches these days. The one thing I will say is that, when it's talking to husbands about being leaders and loving, he's talking love and leadership so servant-like and so radical, that it is meant to resemble the love of Christ that went to the cross and bore the wrath of God for His bride. Isn't that what every woman wants in her husband?
Calvary by Andrea Mantegna (1459). Sex isn't about us at all, it's about this. Jesus dying for us, His Bride, so we may be intimately united.
Nevertheless, the point is this: marriage and human sexuality is here laid out by Paul as a cosmic, prophetic symbol of Christ and the Church. Once again, he quotes Genesis 2 as a guiding principle for human sexuality. But he takes it a step further. "This is profound mystery," he says, "but I am talking about Christ and the Church." What??? So Genesis 2:24 is talking about Christ and the Church?? A profound mystery indeed. You see, this idea of leaving what you are raised in and what is comfortable, to go lay down your life for a woman and be bound together with her in perfect physical and spiritual intimacy, is exactly what Jesus does for us! The Church! His Bride! Jesus left the comforts of heaven and laid down his life for us on the cross, so that one day we may be intimately reunited with Him in eternity. Hear the words from Revelation 19:6-9 and Revelation 21:10-11 that proclaim:
"Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”
"Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!"
"Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God"Revelation actually describes the end times like a wedding banquet between Jesus, the groom; and His Church, the Bride; with a wedding party in the millennial rule and finally the consummation and happily ever after in the creation of the new heavens and new earth in the eternal order.
So you see, marriage and human sexuality is so much bigger than just a social construct or means for procreation. It is actually, from the very beginning, created as a witness to and prophecy of the eternal plan of God for the redemption of His people. Even children, far from just the result of sex for propagating the species, are an organic result of that intimacy. They are the glory of their parents and, per the fourth commandment, return honor to them. What is the organic result of the unification of Christ and His Bride except Glory and Honor to God the Father!? Amazing. Song of Solomon is a beautifully poetic description of the intimate love of a man and woman, but by it's very nature is also an allegory for Christ and us, the Church. It seems marriage and sex, all the way from Adam & Eve until eternity, is a prophetic allegory and reminder of the sacrificial and intimate love of God for us.
So yes I think that we can use Genesis 2 as a standard and principle for human sexuality. Regardless of what was allowed in the Mosaic Laws like divorce (or by logical extension, polygamy), it was done because people's hearts were hard and they lived in a sinful world in which divorce was better than abuse or murder (See Mark 10 again). But Jesus calls us back to that principle of the originally created design for sexuality which, as we see with Adam & Eve, was for one man and one woman to be unified in the physical and spiritual intimacy of marriage for life as a prophetic symbol of Christ and the Church.
Adam & Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1528). It is worth noting that Genesis 2:24 introduces and institutes sex before the Fall. In it's original form it was good and God ordained. Oh how we have perverted that which was created to be so good.
Our Brokenness and God's Redemption
But as Paul points out, Jesus calls us back to this design not just because God said so or because it is how we were physically made to operate, which is true, but because it is a spiritual prophecy intended to point us to Christ. The minute that sex become purely a physical act, even between a married, God fearing man and woman, it becomes an idol because it's not about Jesus. So I write this not as a reminder to not have sex before you're married, but to change your priorities, to go to Jesus and ask Him to change your heart about sex and marriage. Your flesh is going to desire all sorts of things that are outside of God's intended design, especially as young adults. Our job is yes, to resist, to stand firm, to find accountability, to flee from temptation, and to abstain. This is our daily and lifelong battle against our flesh. But on a deeper level we have to recognize the unconscious roots of our temptations, the lies that we believe or negative experiences in our past that effect our perception and approach to sex, and bring them to Jesus for healing. If we don't do this, it will only ever be a list of don'ts; a battle that seems unfair and that we are likely to lose.
I have struggled with pornography for years, to varying degrees of success in resistance at different times. But it wasn't until recently when deep in prayer that God brought me back to the time when I was 8 years old, stumbling onto scrambled porn for the first time, and my brain was instantly hooked on that mental heroin. It was there that I saw Jesus with me, weeping for the 8 year old little boy who didn't choose porn. He cried for the hurt that this would cause me later in life, and told me it was OK. He reached back into my life, into that profound moment of my past like Nathaniel or the woman at the well, and He saw me. It was then that I finally felt healed. I will never stop battling against my flesh and lust but it was only through that experience that my perception of sexuality, so perverted through my experience and culture, was finally restored to it's original intention, the intention right there in Genesis. Much of what I have written here has come out of that restored perception. Many of us have faced divorce, abuse, rape, or molestation in our younger years. Many more have fallen victim to the lies that our popular culture and media are constantly feeding us from a young. We need that kind of inner healing.
Remember the promise of 1 Corinthians 6:
Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God
A Depiction of Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultry (1888) by Vasily Polenev. Jesus is not about casting stones, but about showing mercy. He does not want to condemn you, but to heal you. "Now go and sin no more."
So I hope that you that you will take all of this in, store it in your heart, and wrestle with it in your mind. What lies do you believe about sexuality? What hurts do you have in your past that affect your current perception of marriage or sex? Only Jesus offers supernatural emotional healing for our hurts. Only He offers a good brain scrubbing, to expose and remove those lies which so firmly plant themselves in our mind. Only Jesus offers what he calls rebirth, a second chance, to start over with a new identity, a new heart, a new mind, with a perception of sexuality (and everything else!) in line with how He created us. He wants to restore us to our original design as humans so we can live as that new creation. Forgiveness is instant and waiting for us no matter how deep or dark our sin ran. Yet this kind of healing takes time; and all we have to do is come to Him with all our junk, give ourselves to Him fully, and trust in Jesus' and what he did for you. Your old self in its sin and brokenness dies with Him on the cross and you are resurrected with Him a new creation. God is faithful to heal and mold you into who you were created to be. It may even take so much time that you don't reach it on this side of eternity. Remember, the battle never goes away. But sexuality was never really about this side of eternity anyway, was it? It's all about Him and it always was. So let us, like Jesus, go back to Genesis 2, and restore sexuality and marriage to what it was created to be.
God bless and contact me if you would like prayer or have questions about these issues or anything else. Feel free to comment below.
Seth
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