An Edenic Institution for a Fallen World

On Marriage and Suffering

God created marriage.

We do not merely hold this truth as an apologetic for “traditional marriage;” we hold it because the creation of marriage stands as an essential act in the drama of Scripture.

The climax of creation is not merely the creation of humanity in God’s image, but the creation of humanity as male and female. While we get the big picture version of God’s creation of marriage in Genesis 1, we get the instant replay in Genesis 2. God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). And that is exactly what the LORD God did. “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25).

As the Bible begins with a marriage, it also ends with a marriage—the marriage of Christ and his people and their entering into their eternal home (Rev 19–22). And just in case we might assume that marriage merely illustrates the relation of Christ and his people, Paul makes clear to us that the relationship is actually the other way around. Human marriage was created as a type of the eternal covenant relationship between God and his people (Eph 5:32).

Everything I have written thus far should be Marriage 101. These are the truths every pastor should be sharing in premarital counseling and at every wedding they preach. However, today, I want to reflect on something I find quite remarkable—the fact that this Edenic institution was uniquely fitted by God for our lives in a fallen world.

Photo by Tao Yuan on Unsplash

Marriage takes us back to Eden

While marriage is not the only gift or calling given to humanity in these last days (1 Cor 7), we should not be ashamed to celebrate the unique beauty and incredible joy this gift and calling from God provides us. While marriage was instituted in Eden and has been marred by human sin, it nevertheless remains characteristically what it is—an Edenic institution.

First, we believe this because we believe that we continue to bear God’s image even in a sinful, fallen world. The image of God in man does not cease in Genesis 3. God reaffirms it to Noah in Genesis 9:6. Humanity continues to bear God’s image, even though that image is marred by sin, and marriage—being created male and female for multiplication—is, according to Genesis 1:27–28, a fundamental expression of our image bearing in this age.

Second, when Moses describes the creation of woman, he makes a universal application that he does not qualify on the basis of fallenness: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). The creation of marriage has ongoing, unqualified significance in our sinful world.

Third, it is within marriage that we continue to experience nakedness without shame. In Eden, the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. While sin immediately tainted even this relationship (Gen 3:7), the truth remains that there is in this fallen world only one relationship where we can be naked without shame—the one between a husband and a wife.

Fourth, the descriptions of marital nakedness in Song of Solomon are intentionally Edenic. Song of Solomon confirms and expands the previous point. In the Song, the bride and groom rejoice rather than feel shame over one another’s nakedness. But more than this, the metaphors and symbols the man and woman use to describe one another’s bodies and even to describe their sexual desire echo Eden. I do not think we are meant to read these metaphors as merely appropriate to an agricultural society. The metaphors present the naked bodies of the book as idealized pleasure gardens, as echoes of Eden.

Yes, marriage is tainted by sin. In a fallen world, wives often seek to dominate rather than submit to their husbands, and husbands often seek to domineer or even abuse rather than lovingly serve and lead their wives (Gen 3:16), and in the end, every marriage ends because we return to the dust (Gen 3:19).

Nevertheless, marriage is still marriage. It is an Edenic institution through which we display the image of God and experience, when a marriage is submitted to God’s commands, the goodness of creation.

Marriage makes life east of Eden bearable

One of the most remarkable things about marriage then is that while God instituted it in paradise, it is uniquely fitted for the demands of a fallen world. If Adam needed “a helper fit for him” in his labors before the fall, how much more was he going to need a helper when the earth started bringing forth thorns and thistles and fighting against him?

To God, of course, the fall of humanity into sin was no surprise. In fact, he had created marriage intentionally to express not only his creative design but his redemptive plan in Christ. Marriage was designed for redemption as much as it was designed for creation.

I think we experience this when we bear the burdens of this fallen world together in marriage. We all re-experience both creation and the fall in our marriages, and we can all find new joy when we experience redemption in our marriages.

Every wedding is a reenactment of Eden. The cynical and jaded will often seek to rain on the occasion with snarky comments about “when the honeymoon is over,” but it is good and right for the starry eyed lovers to look upon each other as flawless and upon their impending lives as a grand, untainted adventure. Some claim that young love is temporary insanity, but I think it is better to think of it as reenactment of the age of innocence. The fall will happen later.

And yes, the fall can happen quite suddenly when we realize the earthliness and even sinfulness of our spouse and also of ourselves. The challenge of marriage is that it requires two sinful and selfish humans to live as one by putting the other sinful and selfish human before themselves.

But even beyond our own sinfulness, there is the circumstances of the fallen world. None of us know what we will face when we stand before family and friends as a new Adam and Eve. The first Adam and Eve journeyed east from Eden where they would encounter the death of one son and their alienation from another, and these are only the sorrows that we read about. How much more suffering did they face in nine centuries?

Then, of course, was the final blow. One of them had to bury the other. The text of Genesis does not speak to this beyond the simple phrase, “And he died” (Gen 5:5). But we should not forget what this truth meant for the glorious marriage we witnessed in Genesis 2. He died, and she died. We do not know which died first, but we do know that one did and the other was then again alone beside the grave of their beloved.

Paul speaks of “this light momentary affliction” (2 Cor 4:17), and the power of that phrase is in the fact that our affliction rarely ever feels light or momentary. Instead, our suffering too often feels unbearable and unending. It is only by comparison to “an eternal weight of glory” that our current suffering appears light and momentary.

While God has given us other gifts to help us bear such affliction faithfully, marriage continues to be one of the most important of these gifts. For those of us who are married, God has given us a partner in the task of shouldering the burdens of sorrow east of Eden. We do not walk in exile alone.

In the wasteland outside the garden, Adam and Eve could look into one another’s eyes and be transported back within the gates of paradise. They could look into one another’s eyes and remember that in spite of everything they had lost, God had still given them one another. Surely their burdens were made lighter by sharing them.

Yes, there are so many marriages, even in our churches today, that themselves add to the burdens of this world, but when we allow our marriages to be redeemed by grace and shaped anew into the pattern of love given at creation, then we too experience Eden in a fallen world.