A Deeper Teaching by Pastor Kenton Cheek
Humanity is the crowning glory of God’s creative work in our world. He made us to reflect His image, be wise stewards of the Earth, share the light of His truth and goodness with one another and so bring glory to Him. God is spirit who transcends gender but His masculine and feminine attributes are beautifully reflected in men and women.
Genesis 1:26-28 says, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” He made human beings and called them “very good” and wanted them to build fruitful lives together. Every individual is special to God, but we more fully reflect His glory when husband and wife, male and female come together in a healthy covenant of marriage.
God made Eve to be a helper for Adam, but in today’s modern understanding we often think of a helper as inferior or subservient to the one being helped. The Hebrew word used here translated as helper is azar and means to aid and to rescue. Here it is used with kenegedo which means “corresponding to him” implying a complementary partnership where she has equal value and is able to provide what the man lacks. Together they are whole.
“The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”[1] There is no part of God that is inferior in any way and so if male and female are made in His glorious image, then neither the man nor the woman is inferior to the other. Sexism does not make theological sense in light of God’s creation and intention for humanity. Husband and wife are to work together to make a positive difference in the world around them as they build a life that honors God by honoring one another.[2]
Sin brought strife, stress, shame, sickness, death and every negative experience into the world.[3] Chauvinism and any form of marital conflict is a result of the fall, not God’s original design.[4] Jesus Christ took all the sins of the world from throughout all time upon Himself, paid the penalty, and made it possible by grace through faith in Him for humanity to be restored to the kind of uninhibited relationship with the Father that Adam and Eve had enjoyed in the Garden. It is the ultimate expression and experience of true, divine love. Growing together in a marital relationship as long as that relationship is a healthy and godly one helps both husband and wife become more like Jesus. As they do so, they become a powerful symbol of the relationship that Christ has with His Church, His Bride.
Just as a husband and wife unite together in holy matrimony and become one flesh, so to the Church will one day be in perfect harmony and glorious unity with God Himself. Paul wrote extensively about this mystical union in Ephesians 5, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for herto 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.”[5]
At death the nature of a marriage covenant between two born again followers of Jesus deepens and strengthens but does not continue into eternity in the same way as in our current reality. Jesus made this plain in Matthew 22,
“That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”
Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.” A husband and wife who continue in the faith will be together forever if they endure to the end, but they will enjoy perfect unity and harmony with everyone in the eternal family of God, not just their earthly Christian spouses. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”[6]
The culmination of our communal process of become more and more like Jesus will be reached when we are all together at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb after the Second Coming of our Bridegroom.[7] God’s dream of being with His people without interruption or interference[8] will finally come true and we will live together as His eternal family forever in the New Heaven and the New Earth.[9]
[1] Genesis 2:23-25 NIV
[2] John 13:35
[3] Genesis 3:14-19, Romans 5:12-21
[4] Genesis 3:16
[5] Ephesians 5:25-33
[6] I Corinthians 13:12 KJV
[7] Revelation 19:7-9
[8] Revelation 21:3
[9] Psalm 68:6, Ephesians 3:15, John 1:12, Galatians 6:10
Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God 
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