An Excerpt from “Upholding God-Ordained Marriage Is One of the Greatest Ways to Uphold the Gospel, Part 9” ~ The complete article is available here.
Fourth, Jesus’ use of the phrase “for this reason” is extremely important. Read again the background passages along with Jesus’ response to the Pharisees here. For your convenience, we present once more Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees as recorded in Matthew 19:4-6, with the portions Jesus quoted from the Old Testament underlined.
Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning “made them male and female,” [Gen. 1:27 and 5:2] 5 and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” [Gen. 2:24]? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.
It is entirely fitting for Jesus to place Genesis 1:27 and 5:2 alongside Genesis 2:24, even though the prepositional phrase “For this reason” [which comes from Gen. 2:24] clearly refers to what came before it originally, the statements immediately prior to it in Genesis 2. Here are those statements, along with verses 24 and 25.
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
Adam in the garden of Eden, as depicted at the Creation Museum
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
23 And Adam 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.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:18-25).
Made for Each Other
Essentially, Jesus summarized Genesis 2:18-23 with these words, the bolded portion of which comes from Genesis 1:27 and 5:2: “He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’” (Matt. 19:4). This is exactly what Genesis 2:18-23 tells us!
For what reason, then, shall a man “leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4-5; Mark 10:6-8)? The answer is clear. It first is stated in Genesis and then restated by Jesus in Matthew and Mark: Because God created human beings as male and female! Bible scholar William Hendriksen puts it this way: In Genesis 2:24,
God ordains that for this very reason—that is, because the union between the two was intended to be so intimate and they were designed for each other (see both Gen. 1:27 and 2:23)—a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall do this with a view to a more intimate and more lasting attachment, namely, “and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh”; yes, “no longer two but one flesh,” says Jesus2 [emphasis added].
Why shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh? Because God created human beings as male and female!
A man and a woman are alike in that each is human; yet each is different from the other in both obvious and subtle ways. Significantly, God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him” (Gen. 2:18). Because a man and a woman are different, they are compatible. I don’t mean that any man is compatible with any woman in the same way we think of relational compatibility for a specific couple. I mean generally speaking, the differences between men and women make a man and woman suitable for each other in a marriage relationship.
Male-female differences enhance curiosity, augment relational chemistry, and intensify attraction between two members of the opposite sex. We can sense at least some of these elements in Edmund Leighton’s painting Courtship. Go here to see additional works by Leighton that showcase the healthy tension and even mystery unique to opposite-sex relationships.
Male-female differences also set the stage for a husband and wife to be an effective team, not only in ways that benefit each other, but also in ways that meet the needs of any children born as a result of their union. Yes, these differences can be a source of great frustration as well, but as a couple works through the obstacles together, their bond becomes stronger, deeper, and more intimate. We do not have any of this with same-sex couples.
Copyright © 2017 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.