And God Gave

Let’s travel back to the beginning of marriage. No, I am not talking about your wedding day. For many of us to be truthful, most of that day is kind of a blur. Rather, let’s travel back to when marriage first began. Travel back with me to the beginning of the world. In Genesis One and Two we find the story of God’s act of creation. When looking at these passages I came to ask myself a question: what was the greatest and first gift God gave to man? Within the Second chapter of Genesis there are five gifts from God that I would like to note.

The Gift of Life

Make no mistake about it; we owe our lives to the God of the entire universe. We did not evolve from some lower form of anthropoid. We are not some genetic mutation that happened over billions of years. We live because God designed us, formed our bodies and gave us life. This is vital to note because how we understand ourselves and our relationship to God will drive our choices and priorities. As we will explore in further posts, our relationship to ourselves and to God must be healthy if we are going to build a marriage that honors God and is blessed by Him. He designed you for a reason. He relates to you because you are special to Him. And He will actively guide, protect and bless your life and marital relationships when you understand that you owe life to Him and so must surrender to Him. While the gift of life is certainly vital and to be celebrated, it is not the greatest gift God gave to man; it was but a start to His promises.

The Gift of Substance

Genesis 2:8 tells us that God planted a garden into which He placed the man He had created. This garden has been described as one of the truly special places ever imagined. In this garden there was every tree that was pleasant and good for food. In this garden there was no violence or disease. In this garden there was peace and contentment. Yet, let us remember that the Garden of Eden was not God’s great gift to mankind, it was instead an environment that God gave man out of which man could grow and flourish.

When you look at your marriage and life remember that God will provide for you an environment from which to grow and flourish. Your home can be a Garden of Eden. But why did man lose the Garden of Eden? Basically, man got greedy and selfish. Adam and Eve wanted something more than what God had given them. And when they sinned they lost Eden. A good lesson for our marriages, for when selfishness enters into the marriage we will lose our Eden. No, the Garden was not the greatest gift; it was a place of substance in which man could flourish.

The Gift of Choices - The Trees In The Midst of the Garden

A third noteworthy gift God gave to man was His placing in the middle of the Garden two trees. One was the Tree of Life. In this tree they could find life everlasting. In this tree they could find hope and all the sweetness God had given to them. From this tree of life they could freely eat. The second tree was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this tree the couple could find what it meant to rebel against God. For you see, these trees were not the ultimate gift from God; instead they were a test of man’s free will. Could we be satisfied with the fruit that God has given us? Or, would we feel that we needed more?

The fruit in and of itself was not the opening of their eyes to evil. What brought evil into their midst was when they chose to do what God had told them not to do. When they rejected God’s plan they understood evil and then they lost Eden. In our marriages, when we move out of God’s design and will about how we should relate to one another, we lose the joy God intended for us. Marriage is a tree of life from which we can find God’s fulfillment and blessings. A selfish rejection of God’s intentions for marriage is when we truly gain knowledge of good and evil within our home. The Trees were not the greatest gift God gave to man; they were God’s test.

The Gift of Responsibility

One of the challenges God placed before man was to care for the world in which we live. In the creation narrative we discover that God did not make life all rest and relaxation for man. Even within the Garden of Eden man was intended to work. There was an expectation that man would care for what God had given him. When did work become unpleasant and difficult? Once again, it was when man started to live in a state of rebellion against God’s will.

Now let’s bring this concept into our marriage. Marriage is a gift from God, and God intends for us to work at it, to do our part. The Garden of Eden was a place of life, and at the same time it was a place of responsibility. So often, troubles and hardships arise in marriage because one or both of the partners have stopped following God’s plan, they have stopped working for the success of their marriage. The world in which we live, be it the Earth or our home, is a gift from God, but it is not the greatest gift. Our world, or home, is God’s gift manifested as man’s responsibility.

The Gift of Relationships

 

The greatest gift God gave man in the beginning of time was to be able to experience relationships. When God created man He intended that man would live in relationships. The first of these relationships was with God Himself. We find in Genesis, Chapter Three, a reference to God’s walk in the cool of the evening where He was looking for Adam. Think about that for a second. God literally walked with man in a personal relationship. They had a vertical relationship that was viable and alive. Sadly, that relationship was damaged by man’s rebellion. The second relationship that God gave man was internal in nature. Man found that God had created him to be in God’s image. Now wrap your mind around that concept, we were created to be godlike, holy as He is holy.

In the midst of this life full of relationships God decided that man should not live alone, but rather have a relationship with a helper “comparable” to man. Out of this observation came the new dynamic of the horizontal relationship. With the great gift of the wife, man came to experience the greatest of horizontal relationships, a life shared with another. Once God had given man the relationship of a spouse He created a new kind of relationship, and that was the relationship that this couple would share with their Creator. I have come to call this relationship the ‘triune’ or what could also be referred to as the ‘three-become-one relationship.’  Throughout our journey together in this blog we will be exploring how all four key relationships can be what God designed them to be and thus, more fulfilling for our marriages.