Love and Respect: Rediscovering the Beauty of Biblical Marriage and Gender
“Therefore a 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 am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
-Ephesians 5:31-33, ESV
Recently, I observed how the American Church like the Jews of Malachi’s day has lost the fear of God and therefore has a cheapened view of Scripture that has led many American churches to deny what Scripture teaches about who God is, who we are, and how that impacts cultural issues. One area where this is especially evident is with marriage and gender. This obviously includes topics like homosexuality and transgenderism, but it also includes a cheapening of marriage in general through an acceptance of our culture’s understanding of no-fault divorce and casual approach to relationships. But even many churches that do not compromise in these areas struggle with how to interpret the Bible’s teachings on marriage and gender roles. Generations of feminism have made any view of distinct gender roles ugly to many American Christians, causing them to reject any interpretation of Scripture that would perpetuate what they see as negative historical norms. If these roles are a result of the Fall, we should seek to leave them behind as we labor to build the Kingdom of God. But if these roles are part of God’s good Creation before the Fall, we must not abandon them as ugly remnants of sinful patriarchal oppression but instead embrace them as part of God’s beautiful design of who we are that reflects who He is.
But first, I need to address the objection that I as a single man am in no position to write about the topic of marriage. It is true that I lack any experiential qualifications, but that matters little. Saying that only members of a certain demographic are qualified to speak about issues unique to that demographic is a form of ad hominem attack that has no place in healthy debate. In actuality, demographics have little to do with qualifications, and qualifications do not determine the validity of an argument. More importantly, I am writing about what Scripture clearly teaches, not my own opinions. It doesn’t matter what I say but what God says. With that, lets see what God has to say about marriage and gender, starting from the beginning.
Begin at the Beginning
Since the crucial question is whether or not the distinction between genders predated the Fall, we need to go back to the beginning. We know that all God made was very good (Genesis 1:31), so if we find evidence of the distinction between male and female there, then those distinctions must be very good too. Here is what we find in Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ”
-Genesis 1:26-27, ESV
From this passage, we see that God created mankind as male and female in His own image (verses 26 and 27). This means that the unity yet distinctness of the persons of the Trinity is reflected by the unity yet distinctness of men and women (more on that here). Reflecting the ontological equality within the Trinity, men and women are equal in dignity and value.[1] This is the basis for the high value of women in Christian cultures, and conversely the reason why non-Christian cultures often devalue and mistreat women.[2] But men and women are also fundamentally different reflecting the economic distinction with the Trinity. This passage also teaches us that God created mankind as male and female to accomplish a purpose: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it (verse 28), which is known as the Cultural Mandate. Just as the persons of the Trinity fulfill different roles, men and women image (reflect and represent) God by fulfilling their distinct roles in the Cultural Mandate. These differences do not change the equality of men and women in value and dignity.[3] But this equality is not substitutionary: you cannot substitute one for the other and get the same result. As I already covered when refuting transgenderism, since there are only three persons in the Trinity and they cannot become one another, there are only two genders: men and women, who cannot become one another. After the Fall, the distinctions between male and female are sometimes less obvious, but they are still there. So both the equality in value and distinction in roles of men and women are part of what God made as very good.
Which distinctions predated the Fall? For this, Genesis 2, gives more detail about how mankind was created on Day 6. This starts with God forming the man from the dust and breathing life into him (Genesis 2:7) before placing him in the Garden of Eden “to work and keep it” (verse 15), commanding him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (verse 16). It is at that point that God declares (before sin) that something is not good: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). The man cannot keep the Garden or fulfill the Cultural Mandate without help, so God begins the process of creating a helper suitable for the man. As a quick but important side note, the term “helper” is often used of God (e.g. Exodus 18:4, Deuteronomy 33:26,29, Psalm 33:20, 115:9-10, Hosea 13:9), so it is not denigrating in the slightest.[4] God brings the animals to the man to name (Genesis 2:19-20a), both to show his authority over them and to prove to him that no animal existed that could provide the help he needed (Genesis 2:20b).[5] God then created the woman from the man’s rib (verses 21 and 22) and brought her to the man, thus instituting marriage as the lifelong union between one man and one woman (verse 24). Upon seeing the woman for the first time, the man immediately recognizes her as the perfect partner for him and joyously declares: “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” (Genesis 2:23). From this, we can see that the man was created first and given both a mission and the authority to accomplish that mission. The woman was then created to help him in that mission, so gender roles are not some distortion of God’s very good creation but part of it.
The Distortion of the Fall
God’s very good design was greatly tarnished by the Fall in Genesis 3. I cover the Fall more generally elsewhere, but for now recall that the first sin goes far beyond a poor diet choice. Satan usurped the created order by addressing Eve rather than Adam (Genesis 3:1). As head of his family, Adam then failed to both reinforce right doctrine to Eve and protect her from spiritual assault, instead standing by passively as Eve was tempted (verse 6b). As far as we can tell, she engaged with Satan and then ate the fruit without looking to him for spiritual leadership (verses 2 to 6a). But Adam’s passivity indicates that he too was rebelling against God in his heart and waiting to see if any harm came to her before he ate. Therefore, he abandoned his calling to protect and provide for his wife, instead risking her well-being for his own pleasure. As a result, they both sinned and then both immediately realized that their ideal world had been shattered (verse 7) [6]. God then calls out to Adam, showing that He still holds him responsible as head of his family. Adam tries to blame Eve (even blaming God in the process), and Eve then tries to blame Satan (verses 9 to 13). After cursing the Serpent by promising that Jesus Christ would one day be wounded but crush his head (verse 15), God pronounces curses on the woman then the man. The curse on the woman includes pain in the part of the Cultural Mandate that only she could do (childbearing) and a fracturing of the relationship between husband and wife, with the wife trying to usurp her husband rather than submitting to his leadership and the husband leading harshly rather than lovingly (verse 16).[7] God then similarly curses Adam’s part of the Cultural Mandate by adding pain and futility to his work of subduing the earth (verses 17 to 19).[8] This curse was because Adam listened to the voice of his wife (verse 17)—as opposed to lovingly leading her away from temptation and sin. Therefore, a key component of Adam and Eve’s sin was abandoning their God-given roles.
This distortion of gender roles continued throughout the Old Testament. As the seventh from Cain and thus the representation of total wickedness, the self-righteous murderer Lamech instituted polygamy (Genesis 4:19-24), which became both a sign of wickedness and a stumbling block for righteous men.[9] This ultimately led to many other sinful distortions of God’s good creation for marriage and gender, including homosexuality, bestiality, adultery, prostitution, abuse, rape, incest, and sexual slavery. Many marriages in the Old Testament were also marked by strife as husbands were either harsh or passive. Wives in turn usurped their husbands or passively followed them into sin. Therefore, the lifelong union between man and woman that God created as good became so distorted that it was sometimes appropriate to dissolve that union through divorce.
As I discussed when dealing with the Law, God takes marriage very seriously—even as grossly distorted as it is after the Fall. Therefore, some of these distortions He outlawed entirely (homosexuality, bestiality, adultery, prostitution, abuse, rape, and incest) with others (namely slavery, polygamy, and divorce) He put up with but heavily regulated in the Mosaic Law. All the while, God still held husbands accountable as the heads of their families to protect and provide for them, thereby indicating that the pre-Fall created order remained even as people rebelled against it. But now that Jesus Christ has come and begun to reverse the curse of the Fall, He calls us to leave these distortions and strive to return to the pre-Fall created order. Along with Jesus’ teachings on divorce that I covered recently, this is seen in His teachings that any sexual sin is adultery (Matthew 5:27-29) along with remarriage after divorce for any reason other than infidelity (Matthew 5:31-32). It is also seen in some of the New Testament commandsthat can make us uncomfortable. While we are tempted to use the “cultural cop-out” to interpret these commands as no longer relevant, their context rules out that interpretation. Paul’s prohibition against women having authority over men in the church based on the created order and the Fall (1 Timothy 2:12-14).[10] He also teaches that the husband’s headship is grounded in the created order and reflects headship in the Trinity (1 Corinthians 11:2-16).[11] These links exclude the possibility of writing off these teachings as specific to the First Century, so we have to apply them to our own context somehow or we will be disobeying God.
Perpetuating the Patriarchy—or Replacing It?
To our modern ears, this sounds very oppressive and patriarchal—the opposite of restoration. Under the Law, God temporarily put up with practices like polygamy and sexual slavery that devalued women, but so far it is difficult to see how Paul’s commands are any different. Therefore, many American Christians see this view of gender roles as ugly and regressive. Instead, they adopt the more appealing egalitarian view that sees no inherent distinction between roles. It is as if our only options are modern egalitarian liberation or traditional misogynistic oppression. But the New Testament teaches a very different standard that is neither egalitarian nor oppressive.
The distortion of marriage from the Fall and its resulting curse can be summarized as husbands either oppressively ruling over their wives or passively abdicating all leadership and its associated burden to their wives, and wives seeking to usurp their husbands or passively following them into sin. Essentially, husbands and wives are seeking their own good rather than the good of the spouse. Therefore, reversing the curse of the Fall means reversing this distortion so that husbands and wives will both seek the good of the other above their own, calling husbands out of both harshness and passivity and wives out of both usurpation and passivity.[12]
This is exactly what we see in the New Testament. Paul prefaces his teaching on marriage in Ephesians by saying that Christians should submit to each other out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21). In my leadership paper, I define submission (based on Philippians 2:3-4) as “choosing to live sacrificially by putting the needs of others and their ultimate good ahead of ourselves motivated by a healthy fear of God and following the example of Christ”. In other words, submission can be likened to the sacrificial love found throughout the New Testament, so submitting to one another is a form of loving one another. It is important to note that this type of submission is active, voluntary, selective, and in no way denigrating.[13] Paul calls wives to this type of submission, not blind obedience (Ephesians 5:22-24). Since one of the distortions of the Fall is for wives to passively follow their husbands into sin or enable their sin, a wife’s godly submission includes lovingly and respectfully confronting her husband’s sin when required. Failing to confront sin is actually hate (Leviticus 19:17). Remember, submission seeks the other person’s ultimate good above our own, which means a godly wife’s submission must include lovingly influencing her husband away from sin (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Paul then gives a command that would have been very radical at the time: he commands husbands to love their wives sacrificially (Ephesians 5:25-32). Like submission, this type of love puts the other person’s ultimate good first. It is patient, kind, not envious or boastful, not proud or rude, not self-seeking, not irritable or resentful, long-suffering, trusting, hopeful, and enduring (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). There is no room here for a husband to selfishly seek his own good at the expense of his wife. Therefore, any husband who is either passive or oppressive is not loving and is therefore sinning. More importantly, in these commands Paul gives husbands and wives a new vision for marriage:
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, 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 ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a 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 am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
-Ephesians 5:22-33, ESV
Here, Paul makes very clear that every marriage is to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church. God has appointed the husband as head just as Christ is head of the Church (verse 23, Ephesians 1:22). So God holds the husband responsible for his wife’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, calling him to constantly give of himself in cultivating her progression in knowledge and righteousness. The example that husbands are commanded to emulate is that of Jesus Christ, who for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2) humbly gave Himself entirely to pursue, cleanse, sanctify, care for, sustain, nurture, and cherish His Bride in order to present us to Himself as a radiant beauty in pure and spotless splendor (Philippians 2:5-7). Paul reveals that this was why marriage was created in the first place, quoting Genesis 1:28 and saying that it refers to Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32). Therefore, the measure of a good marriage is how well husband and wife reflect Christ and the Church. The submission the wife is called to is expected to be within this context of love that the husband is called to. And since Paul spends the lion’s share of this section emphasizing the husband’s duties and responsibilities, we should likewise focus more on calling husbands to Christlike and dutiful sacrificial headship than on calling wives to Church-like submission. In attempting to restore a biblical teaching on the wife’s submission, some churches err by neglecting to emphasize the importance of the husband’s responsibilities. Instead, a proper complementarian view puts the burden where God has put it from the beginning: on the husband. Conversely, the egalitarian view of marriage resulting from feminism has put more of the burden on the wife, laying on her the responsibility of both caring for the home and pouring herself into her career, making it just as oppressive to women—if not more oppressive—than the misogynistic view of marriage feminists have rightly fought against.[14] Therefore, the vision of marriage as reflecting Christ and the Church calls us out of the Fall’s oppressive and subversive distortion of marriage, not back into it.
As a result, the biblical view of marriage is not oppressive, but antithetical to oppression (Colossians 3:19). It is also not ugly. During a conversation on marriage with a Hindu friend in college, I read the husband portion of Ephesians 5 to him. He responded with one word: “Beautiful”. He was absolutely right. If the Gospel is beautiful, it is only natural that the thing God created to most clearly reflect it will also be beautiful. So if my unbelieving friend could see the beauty of the biblical view of marriage, why do so many Christians and churches see it as ugly? We have forgotten that the New Testament commands regarding marriage are not only a call to duty but also a call into a beautiful dance. In ballroom dancing like in marriage, one person must lead and the other must follow, otherwise the couple would be tripping over each other and the result would not be beautiful. Instead, the focus is on the teamwork that produces a beautiful result.
Conclusion: Complementarianism is Very Good
All of this means that if you are a man it is very good to be a man, and if you are a woman it is very good to be a woman. And since God created marriage as very good, both a husband’s calling to loving and sacrificial headship and a wife’s calling to support and submit to that headship are also very good. This is not ugly but beautiful, reflecting the beauty of the Gospel. In a culture that has lost its way on marriage and gender, one of the best ways we can display the Gospel is by embracing what Scripture teaches about them and living lives that display their beauty to the world. Christians need to take their cues from Scripture and perform the marriage and gender dance that God designed and prescribes so that the world will see the beauty of God’s design. The particular moves of this dance are the topic of numerous books, but not all of those books are good, so always go back to Scripture as the foundation for every move in this dance. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is a great place to start in helping build that foundation. In future posts, I will examine these roles more specifically as well as the underlying mission that gives them their foundation and meaning. Here are a few other books (mainly from the ACBC Reading List), but the key is to get dancing so the world can see the beauty of marriage and gender that reflects God’s glory and the Gospel.
Michael Foster & Dominic Bronn Tennant, It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity
Andreas Köstenberger, God, Marriage, and Family
Rebekah Merkle, Eve in Exile
Martha Peace, The Excellent Wife
John Piper, The Momentary Marriage
David Powlison, Making All Things New
Stuart Scott, The Exemplary Husband
Alexander Strauch, Men and Women: Equal Yet Different
Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage
NOTES
[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan: 1994: 456-458; Raymond C. Ortland, Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1-3” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 119.
[2] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 260-261.
[3] Vern Sheridan Pythress, “The Church as Family: Why Male Leadership in the Family Requires Male Leadership in the Church” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 2021: 316-317; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan: 1994: 461.
[4] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 322.
[5] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 117.
[6] Raymond C. Ortland, Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1-3” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 133-135; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan: 1994: 464.
[7] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 366-371.
[8] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 372-375.
[9] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 432-433, 437-439.
[10] Douglas Moo, “What Does it Mean Not to Teach or Have Authority Over Men: 1 Timothy 2:11-15” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 2021: 233-252.
[11] Thomas R. Schreiner, “Head Coverings, Prophecies, and the Trinity: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 2021: 157-178.
[12] George W. Knight, III, “Husbands and Wives as Analogues of Christ and the Church: Ephesians 5:21-33 and Colossians 3:18-19” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 224-229; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan: 1994: 467.
[13] George W. Knight III, “Husbands and Wives as Analogues of Christ and the Church: Ephesians 5:21-33 and Colossians 3:18-19” in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 217.
[14] Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 2005: 31-32.
