No man walks down his wedding aisle expecting his marriage to fail. But many do, and most divorces are instigated by unhappy wives. This episode looks at what we can learn from God’s design of marriage that can help our current or future marriage thrive. As we consider the hardwiring of the masculine heart, we come to the masculine hunger for sex. Author Archibald Hart describes the common male experience.
For many men the sex drive feels like a volcano. Explosive and unpredictable, it continues to burn deep down in the groin, even when there is no reason for it. It may be dormant for a while, only grumbling occasionally. But it awakens sooner or later, and when it erupts it can lay waste to everything in its path including honor, reputation, families, virginity, fidelity, chastity, good intentions, life-long promises, and spiritual commitments (Archibald Hart, The Sexual Man).
It is God who designed into men this urgent, powerful sex drive that dominates the mind and body of every healthy male. Let’s put the intense male hunger for sex in the context of our study of the passions that drive men. The last two weeks, we’ve been studying Genesis 2. God placed Adam in the Garden, to work it and protect it. God builds Adam with a powerful drive to work the garden—to be chemically rewarded with pleasure when he succeeds, when he takes the mountain, when he wins, when he gets the job done, when he achieves. In fact, work success brings not only inherent pleasure but the additional intoxicating rewards of status, respect, and money, rewards that will keep a lot of men working well past quitting time. Now, Genesis 2 continues with God’s design of Adam’s partner, Eve. But God knows something about Adam’s heart—he is going to find great pleasure in his work, in his vocation, in reaching his goals. So, God, says to himself, (this is the Gary Yagel translation) “If I am going to give Adam a partner that he won’t neglect, I better invent some kind of powerful force that is going to keep Adam looking towards her, wanting to stay connected to her.” My wife, Sandy, and I put it this way in a book we wrote:
It seems that God has put enough testosterone into the male body to offset a man’s natural independence. He is biologically driven to his wife for sex every few days. Her inviting response and surrender to his sexual advances, build his self-esteem and make him feel wanted. Sexual union brings back his feelings of love for his sweetheart, helping him to stay more focused on meeting her need for spiritual and emotional intimacy (Intimacy: God’s Design for Marriage).
We men don’t even realize we HAVE emotional needs, much less HOW MUCH our EMOTIONAL needs are met by our wife welcoming our advances, opening herself to us, and surrounding us with her warmth and nurture in lovemaking. ALL WE FEEL is, “I want more of HER.” Yet God designs into us the powerful sexual appetite that drives us into her arms, where the deepest of our emotional needs for human love are met. Her nurture fills our tank, giving us motivation to die to ourselves, protect her, and make the sacrifices needed to love her well. Let’s try to dig out some everyday living insight about God’s fabulous design of this partnership.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a suitable helper. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “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.” Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Gen 2:18-25).
This creation story begins with the problem of Adam’s aloneness and ends with the perfect solution to that aloneness, the pleasure of being fully known—being naked and unashamed.
Observation 1: Adam is inadequate by himself; he NEEDS Eve to complete him. Verse 18 says, I will make a helper fit for him. The word, helper (ezer in Hebrew) means “one who supplies strength in the area that is lacking.” It has no connotation of inferiority, since God, himself, is caller our Ezer numerous times in Scripture. Fit for him means “matching him.” This expression is not the same as “like him.” A wife is not her husband’s clone but complements him.
Application: When my wife’s weaknesses, make my life more difficult, I need the humility to remember how much I need her strengths. God is the one who gave her to me to cover my weaknesses. For example, many husbands whose love language causes them to naturally praise and affirm the half of the glass that is full are given a mate who has great discernment—who sees the half of the glass that is empty, things that aren’t right, which their husbands don’t notice. It is hard to not be loved in your love language—encouragement. But her role is to provide what I lack! Knowing I need her helps me endure the neglect of my encouragement needs and translates into respecting her ideas. One Christian counselor writes,
Respect your wife’s opinion. When she is expressing her opinion, love her by listening. Validate what she says with comments such as:
- “That’s a good idea.”
- “You did a good job in a hard situation.”
- “Tell me more. I need to understand.”
- “I wish I could have thought of that.”
When your wife says things that you may disagree with, before trying to “straighten her out” or “fix her thinking” express your unconditional love by being willing to hear her out and ask questions. That kind of acceptance and understanding will allow her to process her thoughts, unload her anxiety, and respond positively to your response (The Five Love Needs of Men and Women)
Observation 2: (vs 19-20) The process of observing the animals and naming them seems designed to cause Adam to be in a position to APPRECIATE Eve. Adam would have noticed that each male animal had a female mate. Even though we say a dog is a man’s best friend, the process resulted in the recognition for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. The solution to Adam’s aloneness was not a pet, or another man as a buddy. It would be WOMAN. It is striking to me that God took Adam through this process. I think he knew that one of the biggest failures of husbands would be taking their wives for granted. Max Lucado shows how the “The Agent of Familiarity” can cool our passion to love your wife well. He writes,
The Agent of Familiarity’s commission from the black throne room is clear, and fatal: “Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted.” He’s an expert at robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in the humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive. He’ll replace evening gowns with bathrobes, nights on the town with evenings in the recliner, and romance with routine. He’ll scatter the dust of yesterday over the wedding pictures in the hallway until they become a memory of another couple in another time. The poison of the ordinary has deadened your senses to the magic of the moment.
Application. Out of our HEART of appreciation for her will come WORDS that assure her or her value. Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all (Prov 31:29). Here are a few examples of words of appreciation.
- “The way you manage stuff around here is awesome.”
- “Thanks for loving me. I know I am not always easy to love.”
- “I know you feel like you are a mess, but you never look bad to me.”
- “You make that outfit look great. It wouldn’t look as great on anyone else."
- “That combination of jewelry is perfect; it brings out your natural beauty."
- “Those extra pounds don’t make you any less beautiful to me.”
Observation 3 (vs 21-23). The fact that every other creature, including Adam, was made from the dust of the ground but Eve was made from Adam’s rib is loaded with significance. No one has summarized the meaning of this verse better than the Puritan commentator, Matthew Henry: Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him. The Apostle Paul picks up on this striking reality that Eve is made from Adam’s own body in his admonition to husbands: 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 (Eph 5:28-30).
Application: Men pay constant attention to their bodies. When my body aches, I groan. When my body is hungry, I eat. When my body is tired, I rest. When my body craves sexual release, I pursue my woman. When my body is wounded, I care for the wound. When my body is sleepy, I nod off. We are so united to our bodies, that we cannot ignore them for long. They get our continual attention. So, it should be with our wives—we are to pay constant attention to them because they are so much a part of us. When we take care of our bodies it is also to our own benefit. Surely, Paul’s statement that to love our wife is to love ourselves recognizes that our wife’s welfare has a direct impact on us. To pay constant attention to her and be attentive to her needs will lead to a more fulfilled wife and be of enormous benefit to husbands as well.
Observation 4: (vs 23) a) Adam is the one to name Eve, which indicates his headship in the marriage relationship. b) Eve is created FOR Adam not Adam FOR Eve. Paul picks up on these two truths in the NT to explain the role of men as leaders in the home and the church. This leadership design is the result of creation, not a result of the fall. The fall, however, makes it easy to relinquish this leadership responsibility for our homes because leading often results in conflict with our wives. We see this tension predicted in the curse upon Eve in Genesis 3:16. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. There are textual reasons for understanding the word for “desire” to mean the “desire to control.”
The ongoing result of Adam and Eve’s original sin of rebellion against God is 1) Eve will have the sinful “desire” to oppose Adam and to assert leadership over him, reversing God’s plan for Adam’s leadership in the marriage. 2) Adam will abandon his God-given pre-fall role of leading, guarding, and caring for his wife, replacing this with his own sinful, distorted desire to “rule” over Eve. (ESV Study Notes Genesis 3:16).
Application: At times, the sinful nature of even a godly wife will cause her to resist or resent her husband’s authority. Our own selfishness can also sabotage our leadership. But we can’t surrender to the cowardly impulse to relinquish our responsibility as the head of our homes.
Observation 5: Marriage is given as the one safe arena where man and woman can be fully naked, body, soul, and spirit—laid bare and vulnerable to one another, but still be unconditionally loved instead of shamed (vs 24-25) Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The goal of marriage is experiencing this intimacy, which happens through the joining of lives (i.e. our soul--mind, will, and emotions) and the joining of our bodies in sexual union.
However, sin has polluted God’s design for emotional and sexual union. SEXUAL PLEASURE IS SEPARATED FROM ITS DESIGNED CONTEXT--A REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A REAL WOMAN, which provides the emotional, relational, trusting intimacy that grows in the security of the life-long commitment of marriage. Mike Mason reminds us: To be naked with another is a sort of picture or symbolic demonstration of perfect honesty, perfect trust, perfect giving and commitment, and if the heart is not naked along with the body, then the whole action becomes a lie and a mockery. (Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage).
Also, SEXUAL PLEASURE IS SEPARATED FROM ITS DESIGNED CONTEXT--A REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A REAL WOMAN when married men look at porn and masturbate because it takes too much effort to get their wife interested in sex or too much work to meet her emotional need for intimacy, which increases her sexual desire. The self-centeredness of sin causes married partners to focus on their own intimacy needs instead of their mate’s intimacy needs. Here are some enlightening statistics: One study found that 83% of women feel their husbands don’t even know the basic needs of a woman for relational oneness or how to provide emotional intimacy for them. A large majority of female divorcees say that their married years were the loneliest years of their lives. This misunderstanding cuts the other way as well. Another study found that two thirds of married men, complained of insufficient sex because their partner wasn’t ready (interested). When a survey of men were asked, “Do you feel that women understand a man’s sex drive,” 83% answered, “no.” (Gary and Sandy Yagel, Intimacy: God’s Design for Marriage.)
Application: The solution to this frequent intimacy misconnect in marriage is a commitment to both emotional and sexual intimacy, which is exactly what Genesis 2:24-25 tells us marriage is. Leaving father and mother to hold fast to his wife is the joining of lives—oneness of souls. Becoming one flesh is obviously the joining of bodies in sex. Interestingly, the old-fashioned word, intercourse, (which means “interacting with”) used to be used both for conversational interaction and sexual interaction. Let’s dig just a bit deeper into these two parts of intimacy.
1) The emotional intimacy God intends for marriage happens through PURSUING CONVERSTAION which leads to ONENESS of SOULS. Barbara Rosberg writes, The word, “intimacy” comes from a Latin word that means “innermost.” What this translates into for those of us in the marriage relationship is a vulnerable sharing of our inner thoughts, feelings, spirit, and true self. Both men and women need to feel secure in this sharing and confident of their spouse’s support. This support is achieved through listening, empathy, prayer, or reassurance (Ibid).
2) The intimacy God intends for marriage also happens through PURSUING LOVEMAKING which leads to ONENESS OF BODIES. Lovemaking is the most practical, binding, and enriching experience of all married love. There is one person who knows you and wants to know you more, better than anyone but God. And that’s why God gave you sex, to interact at the deepest possible human levels. Your sex life as a married couple will make your self- esteem go up or down (Ann Ortland, Audio: Sex in a Growing Marriage).
- The Biblical Design for LOVING INTIMACY in marriage means actively pursuing both oneness of soul and oneness of body Biblically, the human body is not considered inferior to the soul. Both the soul and the body are redeemed.
- Joining BODIES in SEX without joining LIVES in MARRIAGE is condemned as wrong (1 Thes.4:3). But joining LIVES in MARRIAGE without joining BODIES in SEX is also condemned as wrong (1 Cor. 7:5).
- Lovemaking is similar to celebrating communion. We physically partake of bread and wine, which points to our heart feasting, spiritually, on Christ’s love. Similarly, sexual union is the physical celebration of the couple’s spiritual oneness of heart. It is husband and wife feasting on their mate's unconditional love for them, while celebrating and renewing their commitment to giving themselves fully, body, soul and spirit to the other.
- So, since sex is a physical celebration of emotional and spiritual oneness, if our wife feels emotionally distant from us, why would she want to celebrate, sexually?
- Emotional intimacy with her husband is the biggest need of a wife’s heart. When she walked down the wedding aisle her dream was to dance through life holding hands with her husband and best friend—with one who knows everything going on in her heart but loves her anyway—with a little romance thrown in for good measure, like icing on the cake of friendship. Loving her well means generating conversations that help her safely share her heart with you and it means taking the risk of revealing your heart to her. You probably won't default to doing this with out a plan--a few minutes set aside each day to listen to her heart, and share yours.
About now, I feel like I teach this stuff and I am failing at just about every one of these applications (except pursuing love-making—I like that part) These practical ideas for loving your woman based on God’s design of romance set the bar high. But that’s because Jesus set the bar impossibly high—we are to love our brides with the same level of unconditional, self-giving, sacrificial love he gives to us every day. Honestly, if you are like me, such a high standard can make us despair of even trying. The answer to such despair, however, is not to lower the bar but to say to Jesus, “I can’t love my wife this way without your massive help.” Loving with Jesus’ kind of love only happens through his power. Asking for his help everyday to love her well is exactly where he wants you and me to be. “In your weakness,” says Jesus, “my power is shown the more completely.” Paul’s response was, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Cor 12:8-9).
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- What insight from this Genesis 2:18-25 stood out most to you? Why?
- Which part of the design for romance explained in this text do you think is the most understood?
- Which part of the design for romance seems the hardest to achieve?
