Genesis 1-3 | “Men and Women: Equal, Different, and Fallen”

This week we are pausing our study of Ephesians in order to think about how God created men and women.  We’re doing this because the next section of Ephesians (5:22-33) is about wives and husbands.  This is one of the most beautiful, most misunderstood, and even most disliked portions of Scripture.  It teaches that husbands are the servant leaders of their wives and that wives should respectfully submit to their husbands.  This kind of teaching cuts against the grain of what the prevailing culture says about women.  Theologian Bruce Ware wrote in the year 2000, “Today the primary areas in which Christianity is pressured by the culture to conform are on issues of gender and sexuality…It is precisely here that Christianity is most vulnerable.”

Many people who believe in Jesus, or who want to believe in Jesus, struggle to do so because of what they hear the Bible says about women.  They hear that the Bible denigrates women and is the cause of much of their oppression.  The result is a complete flattening of the reality of gender.  The thinking goes like this: the Bible teaches that men and women have different roles.  That way of thinking leads to abuse and oppression.  Therefore, all role distinctions must be removed and men and women must be thought of as equal in every way with no regard to any God-given differences. 

Dr. John Piper, in his little book What’s the Difference?, explains why this way of thinking is damaging our society.  He says, “The tendency today is to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness.  But this depreciation of male and female personhood is a great loss.  It is taking a tremendous toll on generations of young men and women who do not know what it means to be a man or a woman.  Confusion over the meaning of sexual personhood today is epidemic.  The consequence of this confusion is not a free and happy harmony among gender-free persons relating on the basis of abstract competencies.  The consequence rather is more divorce, more homosexuality, more sexual abuse, more promiscuity, more social awkwardness, and more emotional distress and suicide that come with the loss of God-given identity…We are adrift in a sea of confusion over sexual roles.  And life is not the better for it.”  This was written in 1990.

One more summary of the current situation.  In 2014, Drs. Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger noted that terms “such as ‘transgender,’ ‘gender-fluid,’ or ‘gender-variant’…made their way into the English language, and the past decades have witnessed an increasing trend toward an erosion of marital roles and male-female identity.  Today, many see marriage as little more than a convention, a social contract to be entered largely out of convenience.  No longer is marriage viewed as a necessary and healthy relational context for conceiving children, and many women and men are indifferent toward what used to be standard societal expectations.  Divorce is rampant, and the sins of fathers and mothers are visited upon their children.  Comparatively few are concerned about the biblical teaching on the matter, even in the church.”  Why, as one writer asks, are Christians turning to “the uninspired books of men ahead of the inspired Book of God”?  John MacArthur is right, “The church eventually catches the world’s diseases and adopts the spirit of the age.”

The Bible Is the Best Treatment Plan

The best treatment plan for Christians who’ve caught the “world’s disease” regarding manhood and womanhood is a heavy dose of Bible.  The Bible helps and heals our thinking on everything.  Our thinking on this subject is too important to neglect to drink deeply from the Bible’s medicine.  As the Kostenberger’s say, “What we believe about our identity as a man or woman…will determine the way in which we act as wife or husband, as parents, as church members, and in the culture.”

So are we to believe that gender is merely a social phenomenon as many insist?  Or is there a beautiful and supernatural reality behind our identity as men and women?  What does the Bible say about God’s design of men and women? 

We must go back to the very beginning to find the answers to these questions.  The opening chapters of Genesis lay the foundation for how we should think about gender.  The fact that this teaching is found at the beginning of the Bible shows us just how important it is to everything else the Bible says about who we are. 

Equal

In Genesis 1-3, we learn that men and women are equal, different, and fallen.  Let’s take these one at a time.  First, Genesis 1 teaches that men and women are equal.  Verse 27 is the key verse.  This is the crowning act of God’s creative work.  Chapter one starts with a dark and formless world (v. 2) and explains how God sovereignly created and ordered the world through a series of divisions.  He separated light from darkness (vv. 3-5).  Then he separated the sky from the surrounding waters (vv. 6-8).  And then he separated the land from the seas (vv. 9-10). 

God then filled the places that he created.  First, plants and trees fill the earth (vv. 11-13).  Then God fills the sky with the sun and moon and stars (vv. 14-19).  And then God fills the sky and land with living creatures (vv. 20-25). 

Then, at the end of the sixth day, he creates man and woman (vv. 26-27).  The thing that makes man and woman different from everything else God created is that God created them in his image.  This means at least two things.  First, it means that they represent his authority on the earth.  Verse 26, “Let them have dominion over…”  Verse 28, “Fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion…”  Man and woman are in charge of God’s creation.  They rule the world on God’s behalf.

The second thing “the image of God” means is that man and woman reflect the relational nature of God.  Verse 26, “Let us make man in our image.”  The Spirit is present in verse 2 hovering over the waters.  The apostle John tells us that through Jesus, the Word, “all things were made…and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Jn. 1:3).  The three-personed God made man and woman to represent him and to relate to him and to one another.

Notice the three lines of verse 27.  The emphasis is the word “created.”  This is the main point.  But each line adds something.  God created mankind “in his image,” and the mankind that he created consists of “male and female.”  God is yet again, as he has on every other day of creation, making divisions and distinctions.  Mankind is divided between male and female.  It’s as “male and female” that we reflect the image of the God who created us.  We reflect the image of a relational God by relating to him and to one another as we rule over his creation together.  The rest of the Bible unpacks what this rule looks like, as men and women work together to create and sustain life in families, and ultimately in the church family.        

The biggest takeaway from Genesis 1 is that humanity rules God’s world because they’re made in God’s image and that they do this as two distinct sexes: male and female.  The distinction between the sexes is a good gift from God our Creator.  God created men and women to reflect his rule and goodness and glory to the world he made, and he created us to do it together.  As Kathleen Nielson says in Women and God, “Nowhere else will a person find a greater dignity than in being created in the image of our Creator God.  This is our human starting point, and we must never get over the wonder and truth of it.”  There’s no greater basis for gender equality than this.  Men and women are equal before God because together they bear the image of God.

There’s more to be said, but we must get this picture firmly fixed in our minds: man and woman standing before God, made in his image, receiving his blessing, and hearing his voice together.  They’re equally blessed and equally valuable.  None of the distinctions between them that follow contradict this picture of the equal value and glory that they share.   

Different

Second, Genesis 2 teaches that men and women are different.  Genesis 1 gives us the cosmic overview of creation.  Genesis 2 zooms in and gives us the close-up version.  It brings the main characters of man and woman to the front and center.  We might expect to see Adam and Eve living together from the start.  But chapter two tells us that there was a gap of time between the creation of man and woman. 

The main question for us to answer here is: Why did God create Adam first and Eve second?  There are at least two reasons.  First, God wanted to reveal man’s great need and his great gift to meet that need.  All through chapter 1, we heard God say, “And it was good, good, good, and very good.”  Then in 2:18, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone.”

This doesn’t surprise God.  He could’ve made Eve simultaneously with Adam.  But he chose not to in order to show the man his great need.  He wanted Adam to sense his problem so that he could savor God’s solution to it.  God’s solution is found at the end of verse 18, “I will make him a helper fit (or “suitable”) for him.”  Literally, “a help corresponding to him.”

But Adam must first name all the animals in order to discover that there’s no helper suitable for him among them (vv. 19-20).  We don’t know how much Adam understood about his aloneness.  The focus of the text isn’t on Adam’s feelings.  It doesn’t say he felt alone.   It says that God judged that his aloneness was “not good.”  God is the one driving this story.  The point of the story is God’s care for his creatures.  The point is that God is out for our good.  God is showing man his great need and his great provision to meet that need.  God sees his aloneness and acts to solve his aloneness.  The Scriptures will later tell us how God has acted to solve humanity’s greatest need and remove our eternal aloneness through his Son Jesus Christ.

Verses 21-22 tell us what God did to provide the helper suitable for the man.  Adam can’t hold back his joy.  Verse 23 has the first recorded words of man, and it’s a poem about the woman.  He was one, now they are two, perfectly matched, no separations, no shame.  Adam’s need has been met by God’s provision of a suitable helper, a wife.

Many women chafe at the idea of being a “helper” to a man (v. 18).  Even though chapter one clearly teaches the equality of man and woman, many think that the word “helper” implies that the woman is a second-class citizen.  We’re prone to think this way because we use the word “helper” to refer to someone who has a lesser importance or responsibility.  I call the boys “Mommy’s helpers” all the time.  This could be taken to mean that they’re less important than mommy.

But the word “helper” refers to someone who simply brings someone help.  To bring help doesn’t demean the helper.  A helper is actually praised and prized as someone who can do things we can’t do.  If you’ve been overseas and had to use a translator, you understand how helpless you feel to communicate.  The translators who help are heroes.  Their expertise in maneuvering from one language to another is amazing.  We’re the ones lacking, not them!

God is even referred to as a “helper.”  Psalm 118:7, “The Lord is on my side as my helper.”  The Holy Spirit is called the “Helper” in John 14.  The woman as a “helper” is an extension of God’s strength and help for the man.  She is his way of turning “not good” into “very good.”  As Nielson says, “The helper is the high point, the climatic completion of God’s creation story.  The helper role of woman is a high calling: one through which she reflects the image of God her Creator.”  Being man’s helper is an honor, a sign of strength, an admission that man needs help, a God-given role for the woman.

The first reason why God created Adam first, then Eve, was because he wanted to reveal man’s great need and his great gift to meet that need.  The second reason is that he wanted to establish order in humanity.  This isn’t surprising given what we saw in Genesis 1.  In all that God created, he sovereignly made divisions and distinctions, handed out responsibilities, and delegated dominion.  The sun and moon are to rule over the day and the night, a division set in stone and roles that aren’t interchangeable.  Man and woman are to rule over all the creatures. 

It shouldn’t surprise us then to find some order and distinctions between man and woman.  The man was created first, so he first received God’s word, therefore he bears the responsibility to keep it and pass it on.  God places man in the Garden first to care for it, making him the first steward of creation.  God explains to the man the freedom to eat from any tree and the command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the result of disobeying that command.  The man is given the responsibility of naming all the animals, exercising dominion over them as he displays the image of God.  Later it says that man is the one who initiates the leaving of father and mother to be united to his wife. 

To summarize, the man is the one given instructions and put to work.  The woman is then given to join the man as his helper.  Adam was not made to be Eve’s helper, Eve is made to be Adam’s.  Adam therefore bears the responsibility of leading Eve in all that he’s been told to know and do before she arrived.  Eve cannot bear that responsibility because she wasn’t there before.  Her responsibility is to hear and follow all Adam tells her about what he’s heard from God.  Chapter one teaches that they both received God’s blessing, and that they together rule his creation.  They are partners, but chapter two makes it clear that Adam is the partner who leads.  This is God’s order for his image bearers.

I know that this part of God’s design is hard to understand and accept, especially in our cultural climate.  Let me read some words from Kathleen Nielson, one of the finest Bible teachers out there.  She says, “If you’re like me, you might instinctively chafe against this order.  You may accept it as true, because the Bible teaches it – but how can you or I celebrate it as good?”  Her answer is that we wrongly associate difference in role with difference in value.  As soon as we say that man is the leader and woman is the helper, assumptions begin to fly.  We assume that the leader must be more important and the helper must be less important. 

Why do we make this assumption?  Genesis 3 will help us understand, but just think logically for a moment.  Does anyone really equate role with value?  Does anyone here think that the CEO of a big company is more valuable than a disabled person out of work?  Or that a forward is more valuable than the goalie in soccer?  Or that the President is more valuable than an illegal immigrant?  Or that a mother is more valuable than her daughter?  Or that a pastor is more valuable than a church member? 

We may be tempted to think this way, but deep down we know better.  Deep down we long for our value to not come from roles we play or positions we hold, but to come from something beyond those things.  This longing is met in the truth of Genesis 1-2 – in the revelation that God made us in his image and therefore as inherently valuable.  Only in his eyes is ultimate value measured.  Though counter-cultural, this teaching is a good gift that helps us get our eyes off what we do or what role we have and onto the God who made us and sees us.  Only in him do we ultimately find the value and affirmation that we’re looking for everywhere else.   

Fallen

We’ve seen in Genesis 1 that God made men and women equal and in Genesis 2 that God made men and women different.  Finally, in Genesis 3, we learn that both men and women are fallen in sin.  The chapter begins with Satan entering the Garden as a serpent and speaking to Eve (vv. 1-5).  Eve falls for it.  The end of verse 6 is shocking: Adam was there and did nothing!  He didn’t step in to defend God’s word, which he heard with his own ears.  He just watched Eve eat and then ate some too. 

The sin leaves them in shame.  In contrast to the “no shame” of 2:25, they’re eyes are now opened and they realize their nakedness and try to cover themselves (v. 7).  Satan invaded God’s Garden and broke apart the order of God’s creation.

Why did Satan target Eve and not Adam?  The Bible gives no indication that it was because of her lack of intelligence or proneness to evil.  Remember that the serpent was “crafty” (v. 1).  He knew that if he could circumvent the roles that God gave to the man and woman, that he might have a chance to bring them down.  And he was right.

He targeted Eve, the helper, instead of Adam, the leader.  He calculated right that Eve would be vulnerable if Adam failed to lead her well.  And failed he did, miserably.  Adam’s lack of leadership is what opened the door for sin to come into the world.  Remember that it was he to whom God originally gave the command to not eat from that tree.  So why didn’t he jump into that conversation immediately, declare God’s word, and rescue his bride?  Because, like many of us men, he was a coward and unwilling to do what was right.

Adam’s sin doesn’t cancel out Eve’s, but it was no less wrong.  Both were wrong and both were vulnerable to temptation and sin.  Eve is not more evil than Adam.  They both fell for the lies of the Evil One, one after the other. 

In verse 9, God comes calling for Adam because Adam bore the primary responsibility for what happened.  Eve sinned first, but Adam was created first.  He received God’s word first, so he had the responsibility to obey and lead his wife to obey those words.  Both ate the fruit.  Both were guilty.  But Adam was responsible.  Adam knew exactly what the voice of God had said, yet he chose to follow the voice of his wife and disobey God.  As one writer says, “The woman may have opened the door to sin, but Adam could and should have closed it.”   

The fallout from the fall is described in verses 8-19.  Adam blames his wife and blames God for making her (v. 12).  At the point of her greatest need, Eve’s husband wasn’t there for her, and now in the presence of God, he says it’s her fault.  Then Eve blames the serpent (v. 13).  Everybody is blaming others and everyone is guilty. 

Verse 16 says that the Lord’s judgment on the woman is pain in childbearing.  Men can never understand this pain.  Verses 17-19 describe the Lord’s judgement on the man.  He’ll provide for his family through pain and toil, a burden of responsibility that many women don’t fully understand. 

The last part of the judgment on the woman lets us know why men and women continue to experience conflict in every generation (v. 16b).  What does this mean?  4:7 helps us to know.  “Desire” means “desire for control.”  Because of sin, the loving harmony that existed before the fall is replaced with a pattern of struggle where the woman will seek to control her husband and the husband will respond by exerting his authority.  The man will now fail to exercise his God-given leadership.  He’ll either become passive, like Adam as Eve was tempted, or he’ll harshly dominate his wife.  Either way, the male-female relationship is cursed with never-ending battles for control. 

The Seed of Hope

The Bible teaches that all of us have inherited these family traits from our first mother and father.  The selfishness of sin plagues all of our hearts.  The cure to this plague is hinted at in one of the verses we skipped.  Verse 15 contains a promise about a seed of hope.  One of the woman’s offspring will crush the Serpent while being wounded in the process.  The serpent will be destroyed and the seed will be injured.  This is the first glimpse of the gospel of Jesus Christ – the seed of hope for all of humanity.

Adam brought death, Christ brings life.  Jesus was born into this sinful world but lived a sinless life and died on the cross to bear our sins.  He was struck in the heel by the serpent Satan.  But when he rose from the dead, he dealt the deathblow to that ancient serpent’s head, so that all who place their faith in Christ receive eternal life in place of the eternal death we had in Adam. 

Our merciful Creator didn’t let the story end in Genesis 3.  In Scripture, we learn what God has provided to meet our greatest need.  He sent the great Helper, Jesus Christ, to bring us back to God, take away our sin, and clothe our nakedness with his righteousness. 

God created men and women equal, yet different.  And despite our fall into sin, God’s promise is that everyone who repents of their sin and trusts in the Satan-crushing seed Jesus Christ, will have the curse of sin lifted and be filled with the Holy Spirit who’ll help them live as the men and women God designed them to be.