“The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him.’” Gen 3:18
“And God saw that it was good…” God uses this phrase over and over during creation. Light was good. Land among the water was good. Plants and vegetation were good. Sun, moon, and stars were good. Life and animals in and on the water, air, and land were good. (Gen 2:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 24) But here toward the end of the account God stops and says “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Gen 3:18). God causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep and performs the first surgery. He removes one of Adam’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then He made a woman from the rib he had taken from Man. Then He stopped and admired creation and this He called very good. (Gen 1:31).
So the question is, “Why did God say it was not good for man to be alone?”1 It was not good because man was created in God’s image (Gen 1:26). God is Spirit (John 4:14) and is invisible (Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17; Heb 11:27) so being created in the image of God probably had little to do with the physical likeness of man.2 The personal nature of God found in His designing, planning, communicating, feeling and acting on His will are some of the things we mean when we say we are created in His image. We see more evidence of being created in His image in His personality comprising intellect, emotion, and will.2 Man has the ethical image of God in his conscience, his sense of right and wrong, that is so say in being a ethical agent. 2 Lastly, Man is made in God’s image in the sense of a social capacity. Man was created to love and be loved. He has a capacity and driving need to be social. 2 I think that this social capacity is the reason why God said it is not good for man to be alone. Dr Tackett points out with one there is aloneness, with two there is relationship and intimacy, with three there is community and fellowship. “Within the Triune nature of God we have everything, intimacy, union, communion, fellowship, love, community.”1 And Man was created with a capacity, desire, and need for all of these things.
How incredible that God would custom make a helper suitable for man and with man’s own bone. “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” Adam said of the woman God had created for him (Gen 2:23). Then in the next verse God has recorded, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Here God is allowing a basic physical need for love, companionship, reproduction to be meaningfully met in a social structure which an entire society can be built upon without destroying itself and the self-worth of its members. This is a sacred union which we do not enter or exit lightly. Jesus warned us, “what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matt 19:6) and, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery” (v. 8-9).
God created the first social institution upon which all of society is built. Without a loving set of parents, one man and one woman joined together by God, a child is missing the context in which God meant for him or her to be raised and there are a host of problems that accompany this scenario. Parenting is best done in relationship of mother and father, both submitted to Christ, to balance each other and help each other to see when they are in error in raising the children. If there is only one parent raising the child, blind spots in parenting are not easily noticeable and even harder to compensate for once known. God in His infinite wisdom put this social structure in place to ensure a loving, disciplined, ethical, spiritual environment for the raising of children. What an incredible design!
This love, this fidelity, this relationship is to model for the child what our relationship to God should be like. Paul compares the husband-wife relationship to Christ being the head of the church (Eph 5:22-33). And he says this is a profound mystery the union of Christ and the church. As Christ is head of the church, so the husband is head of the wife. As the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands. As Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, so husbands in the same way should love their wives and lay down their lives for them. And preceding all this Ephesians 5:21 says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Just as inside the Trinity the members all honor, love, and submit to one another and bring glory to each other (Jn 5:19, 30; 14:10, 13, 16; 15:26; 16:15; 17:5, 10), so also in the family all members should honor, love and submit to one another, thus bringing glory to each other and so please God.
Heavenly Father, help us to see the glorious place you have given the family to mirror Your Son and His Bride. Help us submit to one another, love each other, honor each other as better than ourselves. Help us to serve each other with your love and concern for their welfare. Help us to understand submission as You do inside the Trinity, to honor each other above ourselves and to find joy in doing so. Help us to understand and fight for the prominent place you have given the family in society. We thank you for your excellent design. May you be glorified in our relationships and lives. Amen!
Footnotes
1 Dr. Tackett poses and addresses this in The Truth Project. Dell Tackett, The Truth Project. (Colorado Springs , CO
2 Duffield, Guy P., and Nathaniel M. Cleave. Foundations of Pentecostal Theology. Los Angeles, Calif.: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983. 121-123. Print.
Refereneces
Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 2003
