Male And Female Created He Them

And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. Genesis 1:28

In courtship it is fairly normal for couples to assume they are pretty much alike and will always be happy together. They assume if they should happen to differ, their love for each other will enable them to overlook differences, and they will easily have a happy marriage.

Most couples look back at the feelings they had in dating and in courtship with a sense of wistful nostalgia, wishing their life could return to the blissful romance they once enjoyed. After marriage, couples soon realize they are about as opposite as can be. For individuals with a passive personality or with strong training in self-denial the realization of difference may be minimized. But for others, the reality of living together may bring adjustment, even disillusionment or questions of whether or not they are in the Lord’s will to even be married.

Even before the Fall, and especially afterwards, married life brings tremendous adjustments. Man and woman are created for different responsibilities and with different gifts.

But it could be worse. Before the woman was created God said, “...Not good...” Then He created someone meet for Adam to be his help in every way and pronounced, “very good.” Adam was helped by Eve’s strengths, and he was helped by Eve’s weaknesses.

Every married person needs to come to that place in his life; the place where he or she realizes that God has created their spouse especially for each other. This will give them the vision to fill his or her place in the marriage relationship. In the first marriage, the Sacred record is careful to note, “And God blessed them...” There was a Divine Being who superintended Adam and Eve’s marriage. There is a Divine Being who superintends our marriages today as well. We are not alone needing to grope for answers. We have a God who made us, led us together and blesses us for His glory even when we do not fully understand what we are going through.

God created mankind as male and female.

All celestial beings are asexual; they are neither male nor female. In the natural realm, every species of creation of higher animals on the sixth day was created male and female. When God created Adam on Friday, after all the other animals were created, He paused. He brought Adam into full consciousness of who he was, then had him consider the entire family of animals. According to Wikipedia, there are over 5,000 species of mammals alone. The total number of all animal species with backbones is close to 70,000.

We don’t know which of the animal kingdom Adam saw, but we do know that among the spectrum, there was none found suitable to be Adam’s soul mate or his physical companion.

And so we have the Biblical record of God creating woman. God pronounced that woman as a help that is suitable for man. After God created the pair, He told them to “be fruitful and multiply.” God who is the author of life, also intended that the human family grow through procreation.

The differences in gender are intentional and not to be compromised.

God created man to take dominion over the animal world and to dress and keep the garden. He created woman to build the nest, or the home. He gave her the taste and sensitivities for the nurturing of little ones.

These created differences between man and woman set them very much apart from each other. When man and woman blend their gifts as a couple, they produce a strength that far surpasses what either of them would have had alone. Even if a man or woman could live twice as many years they could never do alone what the two can do in marriage.

When in a marriage man and woman turn on each other, demand that the other understand them, or try to remake each other, there will be great loss. A disagreeing couple has potential to destroy each other. In the larger picture, we observe patterns emerge in declining civilizations. Womankind becomes discontented with the subordinate role of homemaking. Men rebel against the calling to wrestle wealth from nature by the sweat of their brow and instead seek soft and easy lifestyles. The role of genders is blurred. Homosexuality often becomes accepted. Romans 1 describes this spiral of degeneracy with the subsequent eternal judgment of God.

These changes are always contrary to the will of the Creator. Perhaps a youth will find he cannot entirely relate to the role of his gender, but he dare not in any way fantasize venturing into a homosexual role or relationship. This is just as wrong as for the unmarried to fantasize about fornication or for the married to idealize adultery.

God kept man in the dark while He created the one with whom He intended to bless his life.

Adam could not take credit for Eve coming into his life. All he could do was acknowledge his need for a companion. There was nothing he could do except commit the entire matter into the hands of God and rest in peace that God would take care of the problem for him. When God gave him his wife, his duty was to appreciate the gift and dwell with her in humble gratitude.

This is a powerful example and pattern for mankind today. Each marriage needs to be put together by God. As a Christian youth develops into adulthood, there will be a gathering sense of incompleteness. The incompleteness develops into a desire for companionship. God does not reveal beforehand who He will join with whom.

When God does open the door for marriage, then Christians will recognize the leading for what it is; God is joining them together. Even as Adam had no other options, after marriage each Christian should soon consider that he too had no other options. His only option is to grow in his maturity and contribution to what God has created.

Even if a couple marries while in a state of rebellion against God, or if they had practices that were unclean when they were dating or when they were in in their courtship, they should accept their calling as being from God. If the marriage is lawful, it is God-joined.

The Fall brought character deficiencies that complicate man and woman living together in harmony.

Even before God pronounced the curse, we witness changes in how Adam and Eve related to each other. Along with their sense of nakedness came a self awareness. They knew they were vulnerable. They went into patterns of hiding themselves and their character. Blaming each other also became a part of the pattern. When God asked Adam about what happened, he blamed Eve. Of course Eve blamed the serpent.

In the curse, even more fissures developed. The woman was burdened with increased fertility, and childbirth became more troublesome. Her craving to find completeness in her relationship with her husband became part of her package, along with the knowledge that he would rule over her. For Adam, he became much more preoccupied with his work; not only was it more difficult, his own life was more taken up with toil.

When a husband understands his wife’s inherent challenges, he can compensate to bring out her best contribution to their relationship and to their marriage.

Even though a Christian husband will wonder at times why he finds it difficult to understand his wife, he has a basic understanding of their differences. He knows she was created for a different role than he: to be a nester. She will care about the house, the home and the family. He understands that she will be concerned with childbearing and the emotional development of the children. He knows she will have a passion to know his heart, his thoughts and why he feels the way he does.

Knowing these things gives him advantage. He realizes he will not meet her needs by scolding or mocking her for her quirks or worrisomeness but by tenderly drawing her out and speaking comforting words to her heart.

He knows that when he invests into the home, the family, the care of the children, he invests into her life and world. When he shows his wife that her instincts are important to him, then she knows she is important to him.

A man will never meet his wife’s needs by withdrawing from her or by becoming more aloof. That would only contribute to her emotional vulnerability. He will keep winning her heart by caring about her world.

When a Christian wife considers her husband’s inbuilt vulnerabilities and makes up for them, her strengths can be his crown and glory.

A Christian wife on the other hand knows her husband wants to be a success. He wants to be able to provide for his family, to be able to conquer and subdue the obstacles that he faces in everyday life.

If she sees his efforts as pathetic, and becomes emotionally involved in his failures, she will signal that she despises him in thousands of little ways. When a man senses he is a failure in the eyes of his wife, he naturally endeavors to become a success somewhere. If others respect or even adore him, he becomes vulnerable to their attentions.

When the Christian wife minimizes her husband’s weaknesses and communicates her genuine respect for him, she opens the door for an ever deepening relationship between them. When she pledges her allegiance to him, she gives him the greatest gift a wife can give her husband.

A godly couple will realize there is no disagreement worth being divided over and bringing the end result of family ruin.

Little things can pile up into deep divisions between husband and wife. Couples in the world may allow those things to go unresolved until the family fragments. Godly couples will understand there is no personal preference worth pursuing to bring the family circle to ultimate destruction.

The greatest satisfaction a created being can ever find is to worship his Creator and be in harmony with the purposes for which he was created. Since the Fall has complicated man’s emotions, we will never feel entirely fulfilled here in this life. But God has invested so much fulfillment in the marriage relationship, we should praise Him in humble gratitude for the gift He has given us in making us male and female.