Adam and Eve: April 2016
Table of Contents
Adam and Eve
God’s thoughts and heart begin with His Son. The creation, of which we are a part, came later and was to be a display of the glory of God and of His only begotten Son. And so “Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Tim. 2:13). Christ, the Son, the last Adam, was to have the supreme place in all that was created both in heaven and on earth. The first Adam of Genesis 1 was created to have a role over the earthly part of creation that displayed the place purposed for the last Adam. And God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.” Then Eve was made to be a helpmate, his like, for Adam, as a display of the church, that God would form for His Son, to be His helpmate, His like. It is incredible that God has formed us to be “His like,” His companion in His glory and a bride that He treasures and who satisfies His heart as a man. Read on and enjoy.
Adam and Eve - the Garden of Eden
The full act of creation under God’s hand is detailed in Genesis 1. The work of creation is again given us in chapter 2, but much more succinctly. The narrative then confines itself to Eden, or to the Garden of Eden, because it was the scene of the great action about to be tried. All here is under the hand of the Lord God in a character of covenant relationship to man and the creation. The garden is particularly shown to us; it is described as the place of every desirable production and as the source of those fruitful rivers which were to go over the whole earth. Adam himself is put there “to dress it and to keep it.”
Adam’s Place in the Garden
Now all these provisions were for man’s happiness. He had all desirable things; he saw in his habitation a spring of blessing to the earth, and he himself was made the main one in that garden from which he derived his enjoyments. He was made to give as well as to receive, and all these were but different features of a happy condition to a well-ordered mind such as Adam’s. All this was surely so, but with advantages of so high an order, he needed to be reminded that he was only a creature still and that the divine planter of the garden alone was supreme. Accordingly the voice of a Sovereign was heard in the garden; a commandment went forth, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat” (Gen. 2:17). But this voice was not a discord. It was all unison in the ear of an upright creature, for, act in what way or sphere He may, God must be, and will be, God — filling the chief place, and not giving His glory to another. A creature of a right choice must therefore rejoice in any witness of God’s supremacy as in its own blessing. All this is harmonious and consistent happiness, for in the command there is nothing beyond what is necessary. There is no laying upon Adam any other burden. One command is needed, and only one is given. And this is therefore only another item in the great account of his happiness. There the Lord God, to fill out the scene of this happiness, celebrates for Adam a coronation day and a day of espousals, but here I must linger for a moment or two. The order of the passage is this (Gen. 2:18-22):
1. The Lord God first took counsel with Himself about Adam’s espousals.
2. He then introduced him to his dominions and sovereignty.
3. At last He celebrated his espousals and presented Eve to him.
Coronation and Marriage
This is the order of his coronation and of his marriage, and it is an order which has its meaning. I believe the richest purpose of joy is the first in counsel, but the latest in manifestation; so it is in the substance. The church was in the election and predestination of God before the world began, but other ages and dispensations took their course before that mystery “hid in God” was made known (see Eph. 3).
There is something of peculiar beauty and meaning in the order of this passage. It is not the mere progress of a narrative of independent facts; it is the design of a great Master who knew the end from the beginning. But not only so. It is not only the design of a perfect mind, but the well-known way of love also. The Lord God’s first thought was about Adam’s best blessing. The helpmeet at his side was to be more to him than the subject creatures under him. The day of his espousals was to be dearer to him than the day of his coronation. Accordingly the Lord crowned him; that was done at once, and put out of hand. But that which was to be chief in his enjoyments was the fondest image in the mind of his Lord. His Lord pondered it. He made it familiar to His thoughts — spoke of it to Himself, because it was to be the dearest to Adam. This was the way of love. We understand it to be so. We like to think of the materials of a loved one’s happiness; we turn it over in our thoughts, and thus is the Lord God represented here as engaged for Adam. The manner of forming the plan or taking the counsel was thus beautiful, and the plan itself was wonderful. It took the highest aim: “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.”
Joy for Jesus
Jesus the Son of God has found this to be so. His joy is provided for in the very way in which the Lord God here provided for Adam’s joy. As we read, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son” (Matt. 22:2). How excellent a purpose therefore was this! It was making nothing less than the divine enjoyments the standard and the measure; it was saying to the creature, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” And not only in the plan, but in the execution of the plan, the divine original is copied. Adam slept a deep sleep, and out of his riven side a rib was taken, of which the helpmeet was made — as the Lord’s helpmeet came forth from His toil, His sorrow, and His death — and He felt and valued all this.
Adam saw of the travail of his soul, as it were, and was satisfied. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” said his satisfied heart, surveying the fruit of his weariness and of his mystic death, and this again is divine joy. There is Another, we know, who will thus see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. It is the rest of the laboring man that is sweet. It is the bread eaten through sweat of brow that is pleasant. Adam had not helped in the forming of any beast of the field. They had not been quickened through any sleep of his. But Eve was taken from his riven side. She had been the fruit of his death-like slumber, and he therefore prized her. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen. 2:23). Not only as his helpmeet, his companion, but because he had been so necessary to her did he prize her; she was out of his side as well as for his side. The execution of the plan bound his heart to her as well as the result.
And this was divine joy; this is the joy of Jesus. The joy in His church is His chief joy; she is both for His side and out of His side. Angels are not of the travail of His soul. But that which His toil and sorrow have won for Him and which is prepared for the fellowship of His thoughts and His affections — this will be the dearest. Every redeemed thing in heaven and in earth will surely be to Him the rest of the laboring man and the bread that is eaten through sweat of brow, but it is the church which is destined for His side, like Eve, as well as taken out of it.
J. G. Bellett (adapted)
Adam or Christ
What an immense contrast there is between the “first man” in the third chapter of Genesis and the Lord Jesus Christ in the twentieth chapter of John! He is emphatically called “the last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15. “The first man, Adam, was made a living soul”; the last Adam, “a quickening spirit.” “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” There are only two men — each the head of a race. How simple, yet how great the issue! We cannot belong to both; we must be disconnected with the one in order to be connected with the other.
In Genesis 3 we find the first man involved in and under judgment, as driven out of the presence of God; in John 20 we find the second Man having come out from under judgment, and in resurrection, having abolished death. You cannot conceive of anything greater. We see the man in Genesis bringing in the judgment of God upon his race; in John 20, we see the Son of God, having borne that terrible judgment, rising out of it, and breathing on His disciples as the life-giving Lord!
The Garden of Eden
Adam in the Garden of Eden was put under an interdict. Ought not the creature to be subject to the Creator? It was not a question of its being a great offense or a little offense. Can the righteous God countenance a creature who sets up a will of his own? If Adam only pointed at the tree when God told him not, he would have set up a will of his own, and if God had allowed it, He would have allowed the existence of a will contrary to His own. This was no small offense, and He could not have fixed on a smaller penalty than He has done. If we do not get hold of what God in righteousness requires, we will never know what He has accomplished in His love. The man who understands the terrible nature of the judgment is the man who is practically more distinguished than others in his occupation with Christ.
Death and Life
What is righteousness? It insists upon this — that judgment be executed. How then can we be saved? “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”! The whole thing must go in judgment. The thief on the cross died as a thief, and God’s own Son dying beside him does not take him out of judgment, but life in the last Adam — Christ, the Son of God — is given him. In Adam he died; in Christ he lived. God’s Son comes down from heaven and meets the whole thing in His death on the cross. He has removed every barrier out of the way that God may express His love to a poor prodigal!
The sinner’s judgment has been borne; the old man has been crucified with Christ. Righteousness and peace cannot kiss each other, if righteousness itself is not perfectly satisfied. The element of disturbance is the thing to be judged, but if it is judged, it is gone forever. Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” This is a new order of existence, in which there is “no condemnation”; “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.”
May the Lord lead our souls to remember that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Believers can say, even now, “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory” (Phil. 3:20-21 JND). Can we be occupied with the Adamic existence? Do we belong to Adam or Christ? Either we are under condemnation as connected with one, or we have obtained eternal life by believing in the other.
J. N. Darby (adapted)
Responsibility and Life
In the Garden of Eden were planted two trees — “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9). Looked at separately, they bring before us those two of whom we read in 1 Corinthians 15:47 — “the first man [Adam] is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.”
The Two Trees
From the position in Paradise of the tree of life (for it distinctly states that it grew “in the midst of the garden”) we learn that CHRIST has always been God’s center, although the six days of creation, with Adam as its head, were first developed. But along with the tree of life (and in the same place) is found the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” for Eve says, speaking of this tree, that its place too is “in the midst of the garden” (Gen. 3:3). As to the “tree of life,” it is clear that it could only refer to Christ (Rev. 2:7), and in the fact that both are “in the midst of the garden” we see that both are united in Him. Our responsibility, as of Adam, has been taken up and met in Him and by Him. He is thus God’s center, and life is His by acquired right. Around Him, as the tree of life in the eternal state, God will group (as He did in type in Eden), “every tree that is pleasant to the eye, and good for food.” For Adam (Christ) himself there will be found one (Eve) of himself too (type of the church) to enter into and to share with him in all that he has, as thus set in enjoyment over all things, for it was in the garden, before man fell, that Eve was brought to Adam. The creation in Genesis is God’s picture, in type and shadow, of the purpose of His heart concerning Christ — a purpose hidden in the past ages, but existing there from all eternity, long before the foundation of the world, and now made known to faith (Eph. 1:9-10; 3:9-11). It is to this that God refers when, in view of all that sin, sorrow and death have done in the first creation, we read, “He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). All is based, not on the first man, but on the second.
The Tree of Life
It does not appear that the “tree of life” was forbidden to man before he fell. He was set up in Paradise in life, and with this word: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Adam was responsible to live in that state in which God had created him; that is, he was to know nothing more, neither good nor evil. But this was responsibility, and on this ground all was lost. Sin entered, and the law proved it; it showed how complete the ruin was.
For the first time, then, after the fall, it appears the “tree of life” was forbidden to man, a most gracious provision on the part of God. Man had acquired the knowledge of good (and God was its source), but without power to act upon it or to please Him (Rom. 7:18). He had also acquired the knowledge of evil, and along with that a nature always prone to follow it. Now God speaks, and He says, “The man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). To eat, and by thus eating to live forever in that state of innocence in which God had first created him, would have been simple obedience, but to eat and live forever in the garden, with the knowledge of good and evil (good to which he could never attain and evil to which he was always prone), in misery therefore, God could not allow. “So He drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24). This was grace, not judgment, for the judgment was pronounced before. But life is distinctly refused to a responsible but a fallen race in that condition.
Jesus in Grace
But Jesus, standing in perfect grace in the place of the responsible man at the cross, glorifies God. Tried and tested in every way all through His life, which ended in the cross, all that man should have been for God, He was. It is true that all was over for the first man, and life is refused to everyone on that ground. The “flaming sword” is the sword of judgment to any advancing to take of life. But now only the second Man stands before God, and He who in Himself has met all the claims of justice for the responsible man and who has also, as Man, perfectly met the heart of God has it as His right to take of the “tree of life” in the midst of the garden. Can the partaking of the “tree of life” be withheld from Him who has thus, as Man, perfectly answered all the responsibility of the first man? No, and at the solemn moment of yielding up His life on earth, He thus speaks: “I lay down My life that I might take it again” (John 10:17). We see in this God’s one central thought — to establish everything in heaven and earth upon Christ. God will have Him as the center of all His ways of grace to man throughout eternity. All is for His enjoyment, and He in perfect grace hands these things to us, associating us with Himself, for Eve was co-sharer with Adam in it all.
Eternal Life
Moreover, in Christianity life is first unfolded as “eternal” (Titus 1:2), for it is the life of Christ Himself as the risen One out of death. Life in Eden would have been endless, and therefore “eternal” in that sense, but it would have depended on man’s continuous obedience. Now we have the obedience (His) absolutely perfect at the beginning, tested as He was in every possible way, and life as the result (Rom. 5:19). So it must necessarily be “eternal,” for the value of the work done always abides before God.
The Right to Life
In Psalm 21:2,4, Jesus is also before us as the One who has acquired, as Man, the right to life: “Thou hast given Him His heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the request of His lips. ... He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it Him, even length of days forever and ever.” To this the Apostle refers also in Hebrews 5:7. But being heard (as in Psa. 22) “from the horns of the unicorns,” He associates us in all that blessing into which He then enters as Man. “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee” (Heb. 2:12). This was also fulfilled in John 20:17. In that song grace has given us the privilege to join.
It is a relief to the heart to expand — to turn away from its little self — and to see God working for the glory of His beloved Son, to whom we are necessary, as a part of that glory into which God will bring Him (Eph. 3:21). We see now everything established on an immutable basis; the first man no longer before God, but the second, to whom the name “The Eternal Life” now attaches in a twofold way. We know that, through grace, we are eternally united to Him, since, as John says, “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11). We can look back along the dim vista of the ages to see this His purpose shining brightly in the “garden of delight,” which sin spoiled, and look forward to what it will yet be, when all shall be in divine order around Him who is, to all eternity, to be the center in the midst of the “Paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).
H. C. Anstey (adapted)
Eve
In Genesis 2, we have the first Adam as a figure of Him that was to come. God placed him in paradise, the Garden of Eden. And the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Gen. 2:18). How wonderfully this reveals the thought of God in eternity; His purpose was that the last Adam, now in the paradise of God, should not be alone. We then see how God formed the creatures and brought them unto Adam and how Adam gave them their names. But there was not a helpmeet for him in paradise, not one suited to him, not one like him, not one of the same nature that corresponded to him. The animals were with him in paradise, companions we may say, but there was no real correspondence. No creature was of his nature meet for him, no creature meet to be ONE with Adam.
The Deep Sleep
Note, this was the case until “the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man” (Gen. 2:21-22). It is quite true that we could not have seen this hidden type of Christ and the church, if the Holy Spirit had not revealed it in Ephesians 5:30. Now all is clear.
There was no Eve until Adam had been laid in the figure of death — the deep sleep. Until then he was alone, though in the midst of all creation. The Lord Jesus tells us the very same thing: Speaking of Himself, He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). He was there with His disciples, or in heaven in the midst of angelic hosts, but, as to His nature, He was and must be forever alone, unless He die and be raised from the dead.
Bone of His Bone
The moment Eve saw Adam, she was like him — bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. It will be so with the second Eve, the one bride of Christ: When she shall be presented to Him, she will be glorious. When we see Him, we shall be like Him (Eph. 5:26; 1 John 3:2). There was no Eve until Adam, in figure, died and rose again. Then she corresponded perfectly to Adam and was part of himself. There was only one fit to be so, and the New Testament carries all this out fully as to the church, the bride of Christ. To faith, all is now sure, but the presentation in the perfect likeness of Christ has not yet come. Surely all this should prepare us to find something marvelously new and different when Christ, the last Adam, had died and had risen from the dead. And that something is new; that new creation is the church of God — one with Christ, the Head in heaven. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Thus was Eve meet to be Adam’s companion and a helpmeet in the paradise of Eden. And all this was the work of God, according to His own purpose.
Made Fit for Paradise
And is it so — are all believers, according to the purpose of God, made fit for the paradise of God? Yes, we can all give “thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12). As Adam with Eve is the first figure of the church, it is well to note how all is of God. And this answers to Ephesians 1:3. Just as Eve was one with Adam, blest in and with him with every blessing in the earthly paradise, so now all the saints of God are “blessed ... with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).
All is of God. Did God raise Adam from his deep sleep? Then “what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places ... and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:19-23).
And then the same blessed God has raised us up from the dead. “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:5-6).
Yes, the thought of God in sending His Son into the world was that He might not remain alone, as a Man in the glory of the heavenly paradise, but that He should have a bride, the church, in His own perfect likeness. Sins and sin forever passed away, she should share in His glory, forever with and like Him — having His own sinless perfection, His own very nature. Oh what will it be to be the companion of the last Adam in eternal glory, in every way corresponding to Him, as Eve to Adam! No other creature in the universe is to have or can have this place.
C. Stanley (adapted)
Headship and Marriage
God made Adam head over the creation; then He made a helpmeet for Adam and instituted the relationship of husband and wife. A clear understanding of the order in these two relationships is fundamental for families to live together in happiness. Adam, being made in the image and likeness of God, was placed as head over the lower creation that God made. His relationship with Eve was very different. She was his wife. From a rib in his side, she was uniquely made for him — spirit, soul and body. She was his equal (his likeness), made compatible with him and capable of enjoying and perpetuating life with him. The plain distinctions of these two relationships have been muddled by men who overemphasize one role at the expense of the other. Headship over the creation is distinct from headship in the family. When the role of creational headship is applied to the family, women are treated as if they were of the lower creation. From New Testament teaching, we now know that headship in the home is to be a representation of Christ and His church. This is the pattern to direct the appropriate behavior of husband and wife.
When men give up their role as head in the marital relationship, or when women usurp the role of headship in the marriage, it is a departure from God’s order, resulting in disorder. We hardly need say that these God-ordained roles are perverted in society today. What is accepted or enforced by society as normal lifestyle cannot be the guide for the Christian family. It is far removed from what God instituted and commands. “I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).
Adam and Eve
Eve was the first to eat of the forbidden fruit, but when Adam partook of it he failed in a far greater way; he failed in his role of headship. He improperly represented God who had made him in His image; he fell into sin and dragged the whole creation down with him. Some have suggested that he did it because of his love for his wife, but love “doth not behave itself unseemly ... rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:5-6). True love would not do such a thing. Adam did not need to act in disobedience concerning his role as the head of the creation to show love to Eve as his wife. How often today we confuse these positions! The great contrast is the perfect love of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving His life for His bride, to deliver her from sin and death. As a Man created in God’s image, His perfect obedience unto death glorified God. He gave His life to redeem those that God loved, who were under the sentence of death. “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Rom. 5:18). “Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Eph. 5:25). In His role of headship as Man He was obedient unto death, and in His role of relationship with His people He loved them unto death. What perfection!
Adam and Christ
The reader will notice in this issue that many articles refer both to the relationship of Adam and Eve and of Christ and His bride, the church. These two subjects give us the key to ordering the family. They give us the beginning of God’s plan and His purposed end. They make known what role belongs to each family member, why the roles are set as they are and what the end purpose is — a family structured like Christ, who loved the church and gave Himself for it. In the measure that we walk in obedience according to this order, our enjoyment with one another will help us to appreciate the spiritual relationship of the Lord with His bride. God has given us a wonderful and practical way to know Him in the spiritual relationship through the family relationship. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31-32).
The daily exercise of following God’s order in the marriage relationship involves submission and obedience to His Word, and love and respect for one another. All attempts to remedy problems in a marriage that omit any of these four things will fail. Many good self-help and family guidance books have been written, but ultimately there is no substitute for God’s order. Nor is any book, no matter how helpful, on a par with God’s Word. Our God, who created us with so many different personalities, has written the best manual of harmonious and happy living in the family.
Abraham and Sarah
In meditating on the various personal dialogues in the Scriptures between husbands and wives, we see both positive and negative examples of right family roles. For example, in Genesis 12, Abram said to his wife, “Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee” (vss. 11-13). Under the pretext of saving their lives he requested that they mutually deny their relationship as husband and wife. He received a lot of goods out of the deal, but what of his representation of God in headship? What of his love for his wife?
Later on, Sarai fails in saying to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (Gen. 16:2). Was this a legitimate way to obtain the promise of God? The intimacy in the role of husband and wife is thrown overboard.
Ruth and Boaz
In contrast to this, it is refreshing to consider the story of Ruth and Boaz. While caring for her mother-in-law Naomi, Ruth gleans in the field of Boaz. She thought to glean with the young men, but Naomi wisely says she should go with the maidens (Ruth 2:21-22). She obeyed and is eventually directed to appeal to Boaz for marriage to raise up a seed for the family. His response to her when she made the request is, “Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter: for thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman” (Ruth 3:10-11). She was submissive and obedient, and Boaz honored her request, performing that act of redemption to save the family from being extinguished. He properly represented the headship role of man and of love to Ruth as wife. He gave witness to what would be done later by his seed (the Lord Jesus).
The preservation of the family order is most important, and it is possible to follow it in our day. We trust these few comments will induce an appetite to meditate more on the subject and even consider other conversations between husbands and wives recorded in Scripture. John the Baptist said, “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom.” The Bridegroom in the last chapter of the Bible says, “Surely I come quickly.” May our hearts with every beat be saying, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
D. C. Buchanan
A Helpmeet for Adam
Through His wondrous grace, we find that the Lord God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). How lovely to see that in all that God has provided, it is not complete without a helpmeet for him. So it says in verses 19-20, “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam. ... But for Adam there was not found a helpmeet for him.” Of all the beautiful animals that this world had, nothing corresponded to Adam.
So it is that God forms for the man, from Adam’s side, one who is his helpmeet, his like. How vital this is! Often we hear people say, “Well, the person that he’s marrying is a Christian,” as if that is all that really matters. Yes, it is important that the partner be a child of God; the Word of God is very clear on that: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14). But that is not enough. The Christian home, the home that God intends it to be, will not result simply from two who belong to Christ being joined together. What the man needs is one who will be willing to walk in the same path of faith as he does — one who wants to walk to please God and who has the same exercise of heart and conscience.
Eve’s Failure
In the third chapter we find that God had not idly given instruction to guard the garden. There was an enemy, and the enemy appeared. He sought to introduce into the garden disobedience to God, which would result in the loss of the garden. He first approached Eve with a very subtle kind of attack that, first, questioned what God had said and, second, contradicted what God had said. But what we have shown here in a most striking way is the picture of Eve failing in her responsibility to be a helpmeet. She was to help Adam to go on for God and to fill his function in the garden. Instead, she took over and started doing the talking. She sort of set aside Adam’s place of headship and, stepping out of her place, tried to take Satan on by herself. The result was only chaos, and when a sister steps out of her place in the home, all we can have is chaos. She was to be a helpmeet, but instead of filling the role that God intended, she became just the opposite and acted in such a way as to lead Adam away. He took the fruit from her and he ate.
Adam’s Failure
Adam was the one who was told to guard his garden, and Adam failed in his responsibility. The Lord God came down and what did He say? “Where art thou?” (vs. 9). Did God not know what had happened? Did the Lord not know that Eve was the one who had first taken of the fruit? Of course He did! But He addressed the responsible head, Adam! Adam blamed his wife and said, “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (vs. 12). As far as Adam was concerned, it was either God’s fault or it was Eve’s fault.
As we read on in verses 13-19, we are introduced to a pattern of sorrow that still applies in the world today. But notice: “Unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” The Lord God addressed Adam. Eve must bear the consequences of her act, but the responsibility was Adam’s. He was the one to whom the Lord said, “I commanded thee.” It was Adam’s disobedience.
The Consequences
We cannot avoid the responsibility that God puts upon us. Husbands are to guard the home, to insure that nothing is going to come in that will make it lose that character of a garden that God intends it to have. Eve failed in her responsibility as a helpmeet. Adam failed in his responsibility to guard his garden and to act as the head of his home. God said, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake.” In Romans 5 it says, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (vs. 12). If you or I had written it, we would have written, “By one woman sin entered into the world.” But the Spirit of God didn’t write it that way because Adam had the place of headship and was responsible. It tells us, “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (vs. 14). Why doesn’t it say Eve’s transgression? Because what is being taught is that Adam had a specific, known commandment. The result was that his home was no longer a garden.
J. Brereton
Family Relationships
Family relationships were instituted by God in Eden and confirmed after the fall. Christianity does not change their outward character, but infuses into them new and divine principles. The husband is the responsible head of the house, and the mutual obligation subsisting between him and his wife, his children and his servants is the subject of the portion now before us. The question is not one of rights on either side, but rather of the way in which each, as having the life of Christ, should exhibit this in his conduct toward the other.
The Wife
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:22-24). Part of the curse pronounced on the woman at the fall was, “Thy desire shall be [subject] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gen. 3:16). Christianity confirms this order, but so remodels it that all trace of the curse disappears. The subjection of the believer to the Lord, or of the church to Christ, is no curse or bondage, and these are now the models of wifely subjection, for she is to be subject to her own husband, “as unto the Lord,” and as “the church is subject unto Christ.” How beautiful to see a human relationship, and one too which derives a part of its character from the fall, thus transformed into a type of the mystery in which God displays His “manifold wisdom” unto “the principalities and powers in heavenly places.”
The Husband
The subject is expanded in dealing with the other side. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (vss. 25-27). Here, though natural affection is owned, a far higher order of love is brought in, so that the earthly relationship is re-cast, as it were, in a heavenly mold. The past, present and future love of Christ to the church is all made to bear on the duty of the husband to his wife. And how beautiful the unfolding of this love is! Christ loved the church — not only saints, but the church — and gave Himself for it. It was the “pearl of great price” for which He sold all that He had. Now He watches over it, cleansing it from defilement by the application of His Word. Soon He will present it to Himself in His own beauty, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” the object of His own eternal delight.
The Order of Creation
And here the order of creation is brought in and made to blend, as it were, with that love of Christ of which it furnishes so beautiful a type. “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh” (vss. 28-31).
The peculiar mode of Eve’s creation out of Adam both gives marriage a special sanctity, so that the wife is to be cherished as a part of the husband’s own being, and furnishes an exquisite type of Christ’s relationship with the church. As Adam was not complete without Eve, so Christ, though Head over all, is not complete without the church, “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” As Adam fell into a deep sleep, so Christ went into death. As Eve was formed out of Adam, so the church is quickened with Christ and has His own life. As Adam acknowledged Eve to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, so does Christ acknowledge the church. As Adam was bound to care for and cleave to the woman thus formed out of himself, so Christ delights in nourishing and cherishing the church which is His own body. How wonderfully all that belongs to this divinely instituted relationship is raised by being thus linked up with the tender, watchful love of Christ over the church!
The Order in the New Testament
This, of course, is the grand subject, and therefore the Apostle writes, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Still the relationship of husband and wife is also in his view; so he adds, “Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (vss. 32-33). Though the believer is not promised his portion in this life, yet he is told that “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:8). We have an illustration here. Who cannot see the happiness that would reign in the house where the relationship of husband and wife was formed on the godly model here furnished!
T. B. Baines
Distrust in God
Satan begins by producing distrust in God, and so stirring man’s will into activity in lust and disobedience. Never does the enemy lead one to think of the goodness of God nor of man’s obedience. The woman knew right well that she ought not to eat of the tree and that mischief must be the result; yet she ate and gave to her husband with her, and he did eat (Gen. 3:1-6). Thus sin is the self-will that sprang from the unbelief which doubted God. By this means Satan made a breach; he persuaded Eve that God kept something for Himself, for fear that His creature should be too happy and too blessed. But Eve was wrong in listening to Satan; she ought not for a moment to have attended to the voice which insinuated distrust in God.
J. N. Darby
Christ and We Are One
Though our nature’s fall in Adam
Seemed to shut us out from God,
Thus it was His counsel brought us
Nearer still, through Jesus’ blood;
For in Him we found redemption,
Grace and glory in the Son;
Oh the height and depth of mercy!
Christ and we, through grace, are one.
Abba’s purpose gave us being
When in Christ, in that vast plan,
Abba chose the saints in Jesus
Long before the world began;
Oh what love the Father bore us!
Oh how precious in His sight!
When He gave the church to Jesus!
Jesus, His whole soul’s delight!
Hawker, Little Flock
Hymnbook #104