The Oneness of Husbands and Wives

Genesis 2 and the Creation of Marriage

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. Today's Old Testament reading is going to be in Genesis 2, verses 18 -25. It's on page 2 in your pew Bible. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him a helper, fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord 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.

The man gave names to all the 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. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

And while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed it up, its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

The Wedding Feast and the Call of the Chosen

New Testament is Matthew 22 verses 1 through 14. And again Jesus spoke to them in parables saying, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.

Again he sent other servants saying, Tell those who are invited, See I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast. But they paid no attention and went off one to his farm, another to his business.

While the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully and killed them. The king was angry and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.

Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find. And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness.

In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen. Please remain standing.

Ephesians 5: Marriage, Christ, and the Church

Good morning. Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5, please. Ephesians chapter 5. Let's read from verses 21 to 33. And we'll go to the Lord in prayer. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 21. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. 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. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, that is, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Therefore, man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, or however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Let us pray. Oh, Father in heaven, what a wonderful text we have before us to see the very end and the meaning that you have for marriage, that it would reflect the relationship with Christ and his bride.

God in heaven, that you have created this marriage institution for that purpose, for us to, as husbands and wives, to reflect this beautiful relationship. God in heaven, help us not to take that reality lightly, or let it not become just a common thing that we hear, but let it strike our hearts.

Let us see our roles as husbands and wives, and let us marvel at the fact that we can display Christ in such a unique way with that. And I pray, God, that you would help us, Father, to be encouraged by Paul's words here, to see that it is something that can be done by the fact that it is just natural to love each other in that way, as we'll see.

And Christ is our example. He makes it possible for us. And so let us look to him now today, this morning together as the church of Christ, as his bride, as we see that our husband truly will and does take care of us and enable us to do all that he commands us to do, including loving our wives, including honoring and respecting our husbands.

Thank you so much for this truth. Thank you for Christ our Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we ended in verse 28 last week, chapter 5, in the same way husbands should love their wives. And if you remember, I kind of settled on that and said I hope any husbands or anyone who reads that, it ought to draw a certain fear in their hearts, a weightiness involved with it, that in the same way that Christ loves the bride, so husbands are to love their bride.

And there should be a weightiness to that. There should be an overwhelming feel of that, as especially for those who have received the love of Christ, the completion of it, the totality of it, that you then take that and you are to love your spouse.

And there's a weightiness involved with that. The more you have understood the love of Christ, the weightier it becomes. And I almost envision if you're a teacher or a parent and you have taught something very heavy to your student or to your child, and sometimes, especially if they've been failing at it, you can see a certain desperation in their eyes, a bewilderment, an overwhelmingness.

And it's at that point as a teacher that you realize that this student or this child or whoever I'm teaching, they need encouragement. And that moment where they're overwhelmed and you can see it in their eyes, at that moment they need to be encouraged in some way.

And I think here, as we have taken this break from last week in verse 28, I think Paul moves on to encourage specifically husbands after he dropped the heavy weight of you are to love your bride as Christ loves his.

And he offers encouragement moving forward all the way to verse 32. And I've already said that. Husbands, you should be encouraged as you have this weight. You should be encouraged that your failures to do what Christ has commanded here is covered as well.

The spots, the wrinkles, the things that he's loved his bride by taking care of, even that is taken care of by Christ. So husbands, as you have this weight on you, I don't love my bride as I should, be encouraged that Christ has died even for those wrinkles and spots, and he encourages you forward.

So that's an encouragement we already talked about. But today we're going to talk about more encouragements because Paul brings them up. For today, we see these sets of verses before us, 28 through really 33, but especially 32.

Paul encourages husbands for the difficult task before them by first, we'll see, pointing to what marriage is. It's a union of two flesh into one. And we'll see why that's encouraging for husbands as they seek to love their wives.

The second thing, we'll see the example of Christ and why that should encourage husbands. And third, we'll see what marriage ultimately points to. And we'll see that that should be encouragement to husbands too as they deal with this weight of truly loving their wives as the scripture points out or commands.

One Flesh and the Natural Shape of Marriage

So let's look at the first point. This is what Paul kind of locates here for the encouragement of husbands for this difficult task. And he points to what marriage actually is of its essence. We see in verse 28, he says, in the same way husbands should love their wives, weight, weightiness, as their own bodies.

And honestly, I think that's an encouragement that we are to love our wives and we love them as if we're loving our own bodies. And really what he's doing there is he's pointing to Genesis at the very beginning of what marriage is of its essence.

And that is a man and a wife, and a man and a woman coming together to form one body. So husbands are simply to love their own body. And let's look at that and let's go back to Genesis 2 because he is referring to that.

He's going to quote that explicitly later on, but he is referring to that when he says, husbands, love your wives like that as if you're loving your own body. He's referring to Genesis 2. We see in verse 24, we see in verse 21, excuse me, Moses writes,.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

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 we see the very beginning of the institution of marriage with the first man and woman comes the institution of marriage.

And we are encouraged by the fact that it came forth from a natural process of taking the woman out of the man, creating the woman, and then bringing the woman back to be one flesh with the man. And so when we talk about man and woman marriage being one flesh, it's a very natural progression because woman came forth from man, and marriage is simply the bringing them back to become one flesh.

It's a natural thing what's happening in marriage for them to become one flesh. It is natural from the beginning of creation of man and woman. They came forth from one flesh, and the marriage is bringing it back to that natural state.

And that's important to remember, right? In your own marriages, especially in the context of husband loving their wives, when you're struggling to be one with her, you must remember that by nature we began, so to speak, to be one.

In Adam and Eve, Eve came forth from Adam. And marriage is simply just returning to that natural order of things to become one flesh. And it can be difficult to believe that when you are at odds with your spouse because of sin, but we know, we see from the beginning of marriage, the very essence of it, it was a returning to be of one flesh as it was at creation.

But I want you to notice something that's said in verse 24 whenever Moses says, And they shall become one flesh. So notice how the most foundational relationship there is is between a man and a woman that makes a marriage relationship.

And what comes forth from that are children that we see is not destined to always stick around but actually go off and become one flesh with another woman. And so what we have is a most foundational reality of one flesh relationship in a marriage.

And then we have children that come forth from that that makes a very natural relationship within the family unit that then they go and make their own oneness with a woman. They go and make their own family.

And the reason why I want to highlight that is because think about in your own experience how natural it is to love a child. Think about how natural it is to love your own child, I should say. One that came forth from your own marriage relationship.

Think about how natural it is to love that child. It is very depraved, in fact, to be serious when someone says, we'll see if we keep this child. It's usually thought of as a joke because it's just so completely ingrained in us that that's such a natural relationship with that child that of course you're going to keep the child.

Of course there's some times where you literally can't take care of the child but you always have that fundamental love with that child. But what's fascinating that we get from the text at the very beginning, the natural creation of marriage is that there is a more natural, foundational relationship that goes beyond children and parents.

And that relationship is the marriage relationship. The fact is that just as natural it should be to love your child it is a more natural thing, so to speak, to love your spouse because you are literally one flesh that remains forever.

Where the child will eventually leave the household and form their own oneness you have a oneness in that relationship with your marriage and so it's more foundational. So as you consider just how natural it is to love that child you should consider that it is just as natural I would even say more natural to love your spouse because it is a one relationship or a one fleshness that has occurred.

And so I think it's an encouragement that Paul is pointing out here when he says husbands love your wives as your own bodies. He's saying it is the most natural relationship with your wife it's literally the spouse that has become one with you that you then love the spouse.

He goes on to kind of build off of this encouragement he says in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies and going back to Ephesians 5, 28 and he goes on to say the implication of that is he says he who loves his wife loves himself.

Now he's not saying that you ought to have an excessive love for yourself but he's saying that when you show love to your wife as you're commanded to do you are simply just loving yourself you're doing what's perfectly natural you think of just how natural it is to take care of your own body he says your wife has been one with your body now you have formed one flesh and so it's the most natural thing to show love to the flesh that has become one with yours.

This is a natural occurrence from the beginning of time when marriage was constituted that they would be one flesh and so when you love your wife you are loving your own flesh it's a natural occurrence.

In fact he goes on to highlight this even more when he says in verse 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes it and, you know, takes care of it. He says nourishes it and cherishes it. So he's highlighting that natural feeling or natural relation that you should have with your spouse.

He's highlighting the very purpose or identity of what marriage is so that you can see, yeah, loving my spouse is actually a very natural thing since what marriage is is a coming together of one flesh.

And he says that it's the most natural thing to take care of your own body and so therefore it should be a most natural thing to take care of your spouse take care of your wife who has become one body with you.

When you are hot husbands, or of course wives or anyone think about it, when you are hot you cool yourself off. When you're cold, you cool yourself off. When you're hungry, you eat. And when you are full, hopefully you stop eating.

When you're sick, you seek treatment. When you're well, you work hard to provide for yourself. These are all natural things that of course you're going to do for yourself. Of course you're going to take care of yourself.

Of course you're going to cherish yourself. And I've never once seen someone burn themselves and not pull away quickly from what's burning them out of affection for their own body. I've never once seen a child burn themselves on the stove and think, yep, I deserve this, I'm going to keep on going.

They're going to quickly go away because they're going to have a natural affection for their body that says, get your hand away. And so what Paul is saying, it is the most natural thing, husbands, to love your wives, to take care of them, as you take care of yourself.

It is a natural thing you should have within you that points to the very nature of marriage itself in the beginning, that your wife is one flesh with you. And so I think what Paul is saying, he laid it down thick.

Husbands, love your wives. Christ loves the church. And he says, by the way, you're doing something that's very, very natural indeed when you're loving your spouse, if you actually understand what marriage is.

By the way, and this is, I don't want to go off on a trail, but all the commandments of God are very natural. All the things that God commands you to do are very natural with the very makeup of who you are as a creature in his image.

Sin is the thing that corrupts it and makes it very complicated. And so this kind of idea that husbands, hey, be encouraged, loving your wife is a very natural thing from the beginning, is no different from all the commandments we are to obey from God.

It is a natural thing to obey. It is very a twisting of nature to disobey God. Nevertheless, marriage is a great example of that. Paul is laying out the very foundational principle of marriage, the coming together into one flesh.

And so as you take care of your wife, you're doing nothing more than as you take care of your own body, which comes naturally to you. And I think he provides encouragement too with the next point. If you look at verse 29, he points to Jesus as the example.

Christ as the Example of Loving His Own Body

We have this great call to love our spouses, love our wives, as Christ loves the church. And he provides Christ as an example for us, which encourages us to do this task that he has called for us to do.

Look what he says. He says, again in verse 29 at the end of it, he says, just as Christ does the church. So he says that you love your own body. No one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it.

And then he provides Christ as the example, just as Christ does the church. Christ does the church. He loves his body. He loves Christ as his body. He says in verse 30, because we are members of his body.

And so he says that Christ is our example in loving our wife as our own bodies and taking care of it in that vein. He says Christ does the same exact thing. Christ takes care of his own church, which is he views it as his own body.

Christ is the example here. And the reason why this should encourage us to love our spouse in this way, the reason why this is an encouragement, is that Christ is our example and God's whole purpose in your life is to make you look like Christ.

So when you see Christ as an example held before you, you should take encouragement in that because the whole purpose of God in your life is to make you look like Christ, who is the example. Of course, our mind should go to Romans 8, 28, 29, when Paul says, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

Everything in your life is working together for good. And he, again, defines that good as conforming you to the image of his son. So whenever you see Christ as the example set before you to do a hard task like loving your wife well, you should see that God's whole purpose in your life is to make you look like that example right there before you.

That should be an encouragement. As you see, I am to do this great task of loving my wife like Christ loves his bride, and then he lays out the example of Christ loving his own body in the same way, and this should encourage you, since the purpose of all creation, the purpose of what God is doing, is to make you look like Christ.

From, again, these verses, just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body, Christ has his own body that he views. Christ views his church as one body with him and loves the church accordingly to that, to that nature of that relationship with the two.

Again, Christ views his church in the same kind of way of marriage relationship as his own body itself, and he loves accordingly to that love. And so we can see there's a connection. We'll kind of look at this more in the following verses, but we see there's a connection here, right?

We see a connection with what happened with Adam and Eve with the beginning of marriage, and we see there's a connection with what happens with Christ and his church and how that becomes his body as well.

Adam and Eve, right? We see that Eve came forth from Adam and then comes back to him in marriage to become one flesh, and we see this is exactly what happened with Christ and his church so that he loves the church as his own body.

There is an intimate connection as we see the example in Christ. We see that Adam slept. In Genesis 2, we read how Adam slept whenever Eve was created coming forth from his body, and we see that Jesus, to receive his bride, Jesus died.

We see that, so again, to receive his bride, Adam slept, and to receive his bride, Jesus died for his bride. To receive his bride, we saw that Adam's side was opened up and a rib was taken out to form Eve, and we see that to receive his bride, Jesus' side and hands and feet were opened up to receive his bride.

And we see, to receive his bride, the father presented his bride as a help for his labors to Adam, and to receive his bride, the father gave Jesus his bride as a reward for his labors. And so Jesus sees his bride as being one with him, and just like we see in Genesis how Adam saw Eve as one flesh with him, it's a picture or an example set before us that Christ so loves his bride as his very body, and that's an example for husbands to so love his bride as his very own body itself too.

When we see this relationship, we see this picture in Scripture, in the New Testament, we think of Acts chapter nine, we think of Acts chapter nine, you remember when Paul, or Saul at that time, is on his way to Damascus, you remember what does Jesus say to Paul whenever he converts him, right?

He sees Jesus up in the clouds, he hears Jesus speaking to him, and Jesus says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting what? He says, me, why are you persecuting me? So Jesus sees that intimate reality that his bride is his very own body.

Or we see in Colossians, a similar book to Ephesians, Colossians one, verse 24, we see the same kind of doctrine play out as well in Colossians one, 24, when Paul says, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, the church, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's affliction for the sake of his body, that is the church.

And so we can see that in some way, Paul is saying that I am suffering affliction for Christ's sake, and so doing, representing Christ as his own affliction for his own body, his own church. We see there's a connection between Christ's affliction for his own body, that is the church, and Paul says, I am representing Christ in that way.

And really, there's a lot more that can be said about that one verse. But it's important to see that Christ sees his relationship with his bride as his very own body. The afflictions that the bride face, he face.

The things that happen to his body, to his bride, he looks at as happening to his very, his own self. And so it's an example for us, for husbands, to love our wives in the same way, to see that everything that happens to my wife is like it's happening to my own body, because again, that's what marriage is, it's a bringing together of one flesh.

If you have ever had a hard time understanding the love that Christ has for you, consider the fact that he sees you as being one with himself. So as sure as the child will flee from the hot stove he just reached up and touched, so will Christ's love settle on you, who is his very body itself.

So husbands, as you consider this teaching, that the bride is the very body of Christ, that Christ loves his body as his very own self, you should consider the fact that you make up part of that body, that you've experienced that love, you've experienced that love of Christ that he's displayed to his body.

And so then as you look to your own wife, you see an example, you see the connection there, you say, and likewise I'm going to treat my wife as the extension of my own body and love her likewise, as Christ has done for me as part of his body.

There's a connection there that should encourage you to love your wife in like manner. But then he goes on to encourage us with what marriage ultimately points to. He identified what marriage is itself, he moves on to show the example of Christ, viewing his own relationship with his bride in the same way.

And then he goes on to point to what marriage ultimately points to. And so we see in verse 31 he quotes Genesis 2, what we just read from. He says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

And then he says about that verse that is a summary statement of what marriage is at the beginning, he says this mystery, in verse 32 of chapter 5 of Ephesians, he says this mystery is profound and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

So it's very fascinating that Paul is identifying the verse that summarizes marriage itself in Genesis 2, the very institution of it. And then he points to the fact that Jesus Christ and his relationship with his bride is everything that marriage was always supposed to be pointing to, to begin with.

That whenever God created and instituted marriage in the beginning, he always had in mind the relationship of Christ with his bride. So it's not like God created marriage in Genesis 2 and then said, you know what, that looks a whole lot like the relationship between Christ and his bride.

But instead what he saw, what he did is he made everything about Christ, everything about that marriage relationship between Christ and his body and then he creates marriage as an institution to point to that very purpose.

And so we see that the very, again, the ultimate point of it, the ultimate goal is to reveal that relationship between Christ and his bride. And so this encourages not just husbands, but this encourages wives too as their role is to honor and submit to their husband.

That I am participating in something and something that is bigger than itself. I am participating in this marriage institution that's always meant to point to something magnificent and beyond itself that is the picture of the relationship of Christ and his bride.

And so this with full meaning and full goal oriented in your vision, it encourages you to do likewise, to do what the goal says to do. That since this is all pointing to this greater purpose, I get to participate in that and how I love my spouse, how I love my bride.

Or again, as a wife, I get to participate in this great goal of marriage, of looking to Christ by honoring my husband. I get to participate in that great goal that's laid out before me. One of the common issues that you'll see when you're trying to counsel someone who's really struggling with something is they are typically, their goals have kind of went awry.

Their goal for, let's say if it's marriage problems, their goal for their marriage has went completely somewhere where it's not really supposed to be. Or whatever it may be, any situation where someone is struggling with sin, struggling with a particular problem, their goals have been messed up.

And one of the first things you do in the first session is you provide a biblical goal for their lives, whatever the situation is. And so in a marriage situation, you ask what's the goal of your marriage?

And if it's not to reflect the picture of Christ and his bride, then the marriage is going to hurt because of it. Because what we see in scripture is that the goal of marriage, the institution was always meant to point to the picture of relationship between Christ and his bride.

And if that goal is not there in the marriage, it is going to hurt it. So an encouragement to perform your role as a husband or wife is to know God has created it, created the marriage for the purpose to display the relationship of Christ with his bride.

So we see these things coming together, don't we? We see these things coming together that, again, the husbands are to love their bride, as Christ loves the church, and we're to see the very institution of marriage was to make one flesh, so when you're doing that with husbands, you are simply loving yourself.

You are simply loving your own flesh. It's a natural thing. And then we look at the example of Christ, how he looks at the same way as his own relationship with his own bride, and that encourages us to do likewise.

And then we see that this marriage and the roles therein were always supposed to, was always pointing to that relationship between Christ and the bride, in which that, as a Christian, as those who are following God, it encourages you, I get to participate in the final goal that marriage was always meant to look to or display.

And then in verse 33, he kind of summarizes it. He summarizes it all by going and looking at Christ, and he returns back to the marriage relationship when he says, however, in verse 33, returning back to what I originally started with, with the marriage relationship between husband and wives, you know, going from Christ now back to this, he says, however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So Paul again returns from pointing to Christ, back to marriage itself with a summary remark, the stuff that he's already laid out, which makes for a good conclusion for us. He says the most beautiful relationship ever created is the relationship between Christ and his bride.

And God created the institution of marriage to most explicitly reflect this most beautiful relationship. So with this truth comes a great challenge, and also a great encouragement. Challenge, husbands, you are to love your wives as your own body, like how Jesus loves his body, the church.

Wives, you are to respect and submit to your husbands like how the church is to submit and respect Jesus the Lord. So this is the weightiness, the challenge of it. But the encouragement is acting in unified oneness, like this, is a natural outcome of how God created man and woman.

It is not something that is out of the natural realm of things. You are not doing something as you are performing your role rightly. You are not doing something unnatural. It's sin that makes it feel unnatural, but it is not unnatural of itself.

It is a very natural occurrence because of the nature of what marriage is. Another encouragement is the perfect example of Jesus' love for his bride has fallen on all of us. We have received that example of that perfect love for his bride, as the bride of Christ, as we are the bride of Christ ourselves.

And so as you are challenged with these roles in the marriage relationship, you must remember that Christ and his love for the bride, you have received that example itself, which not only is the example, but the empowerment for you to fulfill that role.

That Christ, that the marriage relationship is always meant to point to Christ and his bride. And as you receive that love, it encourages you to then fulfill that role itself. So, let us be thankful to Christ our Lord, that he's not one who puts these laws upon us as if it's something that can't be done, but rather he puts these laws upon us so that through grace we can do it by his aid.

That we see that the family unit is always meant to point to this relationship with Christ and his bride, and in him we are able to do so by his grace and love. Let us pray. Oh, Father in Heaven, we thank you for Jesus Christ our Lord.

We're thankful, God, that his example is laid out before us. We're thankful, Lord, that you encourage us with these roles that we are to do, you encourage us that they are doable, that they are something that's to be done just by the very nature of what marriage is itself.

And it's to be done by the example of Christ our Lord, who by his example provides the ability to do so. We see, Lord, that the point of marriage since the beginning was always meant to point to this relationship between Christ and his bride.

And so it encourages us that as we go about our days, as we go about our days as a husband or a wife, it encourages us that we can then show or reveal this great mystery of the relationship between Christ and his bride and the way that we act as a husband or as a wife.

And this encourages us that this is the whole purpose of my life today as a husband or as a wife, to reveal that great picture of the relationship between Christ and his bride. I pray, God, that as we would feel the weightiness, as we feel the weight of the command from Paul to fulfill our roles in this way, because we know that society tells us not to.

We know that the influence of society is not to do that. I pray that we would also be encouraged that it is possible through the aid of Jesus Christ, who has loved his bride, who has loved us, has provided us the strength to be able to fulfill our roles well in the family.

So let us do so, Lord. Let us do so in confidence, not in ourselves, but let us do so for confidence for Christ and his love for us. I pray for those who aren't married, who are anticipating marriage, who are looking to it one day, I pray that they would meditate on what it means to be a husband and wife even today, the roles that you have set out for today, and that they would be seeking your aid to even prepare themselves now for the one-day possibility of being able to perform those functions.