Monday, August 11, 2008
A Marriage Made in Eden, Part 11 of 15
Guest: Gay Hubbard
IDEA: God's blueprint for marriage includes becoming one flesh.
PURPOSE: To help listeners think about all that is involved in becoming one flesh.
According to Genesis 2:24 – quoted by Jesus in Matthew 19 and by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5 – God's blueprint for marriage means first that we must LEAVE our families of origin, then we must CLEAVE to one another in a commitment to the permanence of the relationship. You had said that there are three elements to God's blueprint for marriage. What is the third?
Q: The text concludes by saying that the two become one flesh. What does that mean?
A: Most people assume that all it means is sex, but we believe that while it includes sex, it is much more than sex.
But let's be sure we're clear that God considers sex to be absolutely essential in marriage. When the apostle Paul was quizzed about this by the Christians at Corinth, he wrote, "Because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but her husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but his wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, . . . and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control" (1 Corinthians 7:2-5). Paul spells out here why sex is so important in marriage.
But being one flesh can include more than sex, the physical act of intercourse. It means the sharing of life, not just bodies and material possessions, but thoughts and dreams, joys and sufferings, hopes and fears, successes and failures. In short, it's being one soul as well as one body.
In a way this also links to the apostle Paul's description in Ephesians 5 of the way a husband and wife are to relate: "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. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of His flesh and of His bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5:22-32).
Throughout this passage weave several strands of Genesis 2:24 with which Paul ends his comments. The husband/wife relationship is the integral connection of head to body/body to head = one flesh. The husband who loves his wife loves himself, nourishing and cherishing her as he would his own flesh. This is what it means to be one flesh. It's not just about sex.
Dr .Sarah Sumner, commenting on this passage, observed that a doctrine of headship is often established from this passage, which misses Paul's point. Headship is an abstraction implying "authority over" in modern usage. It is not a biblical term. How can two become one? The mystery of marriage is that two (head and body) are "one flesh." Sumner goes on to say: "When head is defined as "leader" and body as "helper," the biblical mystery is lost. What is mysterious about a leader coupled up with his helper? Not very much. Nor is it particularly inspiring. But it is altogether breathtaking to see the biblical picture of body and head joined mysteriously as one. . . . It indicates immediately the organic unity that bonds a husband and wife . . . It's not so disturbing to imagine a leader breaking up with his assistants, but it is utterly disconcerting to imagine a body being amputated physically from its head. A body belongs to its head and a head belongs to hits body. That's why God hates divorce."
