A Reflection on Marriage

Since we had a vow renewal service recently, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share something I noticed about marriage from the creation story.

The marriage rite refers to how marriage was “established by God in creation.” If you’ll remember correctly, after the different days of creation, God sees that what he made was good. We read over and over again, “And God saw that it was good.” But after creating Adam, for the first time, we read the words, “It is not good.” The Lord God, after creating Adam, says, “It is not good for man to be alone; therefore I will make for him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). In the King James Version, this phrase was translated as, “I will make him an help meet for him.” From this translation, we have gotten the word “helpmeet” to refer to Eve.

But doesn’t this make you wonder what Adam could have needed help with? He was living in paradise; he was literally an inhabitant of the Garden of Eden. He had the fruit of the trees of the garden for his food. He had no job, no bills. So what could Adam have needed a helpmeet for? Well it seems to me that although Adam was created good, he was not yet made perfect, for being alone, he had not yet learned how to love. God created man in his image, but in order to fully image who God is, Adam needed help learning how to love as God loves (for “God is love”).

For this reason, God gave Adam and Eve to each other, and for this reason, he gives spouses to each other today; that they might learn to love as God loves. Now God in Christ loves us in a selfless way, giving himself to us. This is the spousal love to which Christians are called, to embody Christ’s love for the Church by a love which is practiced as self-gift, which is not about getting but about giving—just as our Lord said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

For you who are married, this is my prayer for you, that you would grow more and more in God’s image and in God’s likeness by learning to love as he loves, for to this end, he gives you your spouse as your helper, as with Adam you learn how to truly love. And for you who are widowed or single, it is my prayer that God would be to you a husband to the widows and the Spouse to all believers.