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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

The Christian Home, Lecture One:

The Beginning of the Family
Selected Scriptures

Introduction
This morning, in order to lay the foundation for all that we’ll cover over the next
thirteen weeks I would like to begin our series on the Christian home at the beginning. Now
when I speak about the beginning with reference to the home or the family, you no doubt
almost immediately think of the creation account in the Genesis narrative at Genesis 1-3.
After all, the Lord Jesus, when he rebukes the Pharisees for the suggestion that Moses
commanded that men divorce their wives for any reason, he says, “Because of your
hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has
not been this way” (Matt 19:8).

And when he says from the beginning, he means to say “from the time of the
creation.” For just a few verses earlier in Matt 19:4-5 he quotes from Genesis in support of
his contention that what God has joined together should not be separated. He says, “And
He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning
MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, “FOR THIS REASON A MAN
SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE,
AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH”’? (Matt 19:4-5).

Now although it is in one sense true that marriage and the family have their origins
in the creation of humanity, the Bible indicates that they have an origin much earlier—
somewhere in the eternal counsel room of the members of the Trinity. Marriage and the
family have existed in the mind of God before time began. Of course, there is a sense in
which we can say that all human relations—indeed, every created relationship in the
universe, from the inanimate to the animate—all of what exists has antecedence in the mind
of God before the beginning of time. It’s not like any of this has been a surprise to him!

But for most of those other relationships we will only be able to draw inferences—
and very general inferences at that. Marriage, on the other hand, requires no such
inferential work. Scripture explicitly asserts that the institution of marriage was intended by
God from before the beginning of time to reflect something very unique. In order to
discover this, let us turn in our Bibles to Eph 5:22-32.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is
the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the
Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to
be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also

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loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to
Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but
that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own
wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever
hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the
church, because we are members of His body. FOR THIS REASON A MAN
SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO
HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is
great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

The Mystery of Marriage

The implications of this text for marriage are legion. For this reason, we will revisit
this site often to mine important truths for family life. For now, I want you to focus your
attention on verse 32: This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ
and the church.

Now, in order to understand this verse we need to back up to verse 31 to find out
what it is that Paul is calling a mystery. Look at that with me: FOR THIS REASON A
MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO
HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.

The NASB places the verse in all caps in order to show that the Apostle Paul is
quoting from the Old Testament. In this case, the passage that he has in mind is Gen 2:24—
the one-flesh relationship of husband and wife in marriage. This, says Paul, is the mystery
that is great.

But what is so mysterious about marriage? Well, before we can answer this question,
we need to go to Genesis 2 and find out what verse 24 means in its context so that we can
see how Paul is applying it in Eph 5:31. Turn with me to Gen 2:18-24.

Now for those of you who are familiar with the opening chapters of Genesis you will
know that the creation of man and woman recorded for us here in Ch 2 is a narrative
expansion of day six of the Creation story, found in 1:26-31.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the
cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Then God
said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all
the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to
every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on
the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so. God
saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and
there was morning, the sixth day.

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Genesis 2:18 picks up just after man has been created, placed into the Garden of
Eden to cultivate and keep it (2:15), and commanded to eat freely from every tree except the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16-17). Now read verse 18: Then the LORD God
said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

This verse should immediately strike you as odd. For so far in the creation narrative
God has said repeatedly that things were good. Genesis 1:4; 1:10; 1:12; 1:18; 1:21; 1:25;
and 1:31—in all these verses we learn that everything that God had made was good, good,
good, good, good, good, and very good.

So when we read here in 2:18 that there is something that is not good, we should
perk up and take notice. And what we notice is that outside of the realm of goodness is the
solitariness of man: It is not good for the man to be alone. The point here is that God
made man to be a sharer. Man has been made by God to be in communion with another.
No man is complete unless he is an instrument of God’s goodness to another. So what we
have here in the first half of verse 18 is God stating a problem: man is alone.

And almost as soon as he proclaims the “not-goodness” of man’s solitude, he offers

the solution: I will make him a helper suitable for him. God will take action and engage
his creative power to provide man with the proper companion, a completer, a helper
suitable for him. So in verses 19-20, as we might expect, God makes the woman. Let’s
read: Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of
the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the
man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle,
and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not
found a helper suitable for him.

Wait a moment. I’m wrong. God doesn’t make the woman right away. Instead we
read that the Lord parades before the man all of the animals that the Lord created. And the
man, in the exercise of his dominion, names every creature. But according to verse 20, for
Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

This verse indicates that the presentation of all the animals before Adam was not in
the first place for the purpose of naming them; instead, it was primarily for the purpose of
finding him a helper suitable for him. And what did Adam learn from this presentation of
the animals? He learned that there was no creature in the entirety of God’s good creation
that could function as a helper suitable for him.

And now that the man knows that an animal simply won’t do, God makes another
human from man’s own flesh and bone that is like him. Read verses 21-23 with me: So the
LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of
his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman
the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

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Notice that at the end of verse 22 the Lord brings the woman to the man. This
should remind you of what just took place in verses 19-20 with the animals. Verse 19 says
that the Lord God brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And here in
verse 22 we read that the Lord God brought her (the woman) to the man. To this man
replies in verse 23 that this is now bone of my bones. In other words, this is the one I’ve
been looking for!

So what we learn here is that man’s need for companionship cannot be met by an
animal; it can only be met by another one of God’s special image-bearers (see Gen 1:27).
As one writer has said, “There is an infinite difference between sharing the northern lights
with your beloved and sharing them with your dog.”1

Now with the context under our belts, we’re in a position to understand verse 24:
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife;
and they shall become one flesh. For this reason, there is marriage; for this reason there is
family: It is not good for man to be alone. For this reason, there is marriage: because for
Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. For this reason, because humanity,
male and female, has been created to function interdependently; for this reason, there is
marriage.

So we can sum up like this: in the beginning God took woman out of man as bone of
his bone and flesh of his flesh, and then God presented her back to the man so that he could
discover in living fellowship what it means to be one flesh. Verse 24 makes the point that
marriage is just that: a man leaving father and mother, because God has given him another;
a man cleaving to this woman alone and no other; and a man discovering the experience of
being one flesh with this woman.

Now we’re ready to move back to Ephesians 5.

So by quoting from Gen 2:24 in Eph 5:31, the very least we can say is that the
Apostle Paul is making a clear connection between the one-flesh relationship between
husband and wife, and the one-body relationship between Christ and his church. Just as
Christ and the church are one, so too are the husband and wife one. In other words, the
oneness of the body of Christ, the way in which the church functions with respect to its
Lord, evokes from Paul under the inspiration of the Spirit, a reflection on the roles of men
and women in marriage. This much seems clear.

Now if you’ll remember I said earlier that the marriage relationship is something that
existed in the mind of God before time began. And I also said that Ephesians 5 was my
biblical rationale for making such a claim. Perhaps you don’t see that here. There does not
seem to be any reference to eternity past. In fact, all Paul seems to be doing is developing
an illustration from human relations, not unlike what he does in 2 Cor 11:2, when he says to

1
John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986, 1996), 179.

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the Corinthians, “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one
husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.”

So then, Paul might be saying something like this: since the marriage relationship is a
lot like the relationship between Christ and the church, we ought to glean as much insight as
we can from the relationship between Christ and the church for our marriages.

This is where verse 32 comes in. Let’s read it again: This mystery is great; but I am
speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Here’s where we learn why marriage is
such a mystery and why I can assert so confidently that the marriage relationship existed in
the mind of God before time began.

Let’s unpack this verse a bit. In order to do so, it is important that you understand to
what the word mystery refers. Now in everyday parlance we use it to refer to things from
the mundane to the extraordinary. “Honey, where are my shoes?” “I haven’t a clue—it is a
mystery where you put them.” Or we talk about the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster; or
the mystery of Area 51 and all of its ostensibly unexplainable aerial phenomena.
Sometimes we use it simply to talk about things that are difficult to grasp: the mystery of the
Trinity, the mystery of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, etc.

Now although I do not at all object to using the word mystery in the ways I’ve
described above, it is important that you do not let those uses of the word in English obscure
for you how the term is used in Scripture. The Greek term behind the translation sounds
just like the English one: musth,rion (mystérion). Some translators believe it is very regrettable
that the word mystery is used. Listen:

There is a serious problem involved in translating musth,rion by a word which

is equivalent to the English expression “mystery,” for this term in English refers to a
secret which people have tried to uncover but which they have failed to understand.
In many instances musth,rion is translated by a phrase meaning “that which was not
known before,” with the implication of its being revealed at least to some persons.2

So when you encounter the English word mystery for musth,rion, especially in Paul,
you need to be sure you invest it with its proper meaning. Musth,rion refers to the content of
that which has not been known before but which has been revealed to an in-group or
otherwise restricted constituency. In other words, a mystery is something that had been
hidden, but is now revealed. It embraces both past obscurity and present clarity.

So then, what Paul is saying is that marriage is a profound example of something

that until the coming of Christ, until the present time, until it had been revealed to the
Apostle its true meaning had been hidden: I am speaking with reference to Christ and the
church. What this all means is that God had always intended that marriage exist to reflect
the relationship between Christ and the church.

2
Entry for musth,rion in the Louw-Nida Lexicon on BibleWorks 5 CD Rom.

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Now I don’t want you to miss the profundity of Paul’s claim—it is mind boggling!
Rather than simply using the relationship between Christ and the church as a helpful tool
for understanding the roles of men and women in marriage, he is saying that the human
relationship of marriage was meant to function as the ultimate exposition and expression of
the reason for marriage that God had always intended.

And so the reason why marriage is a great mystery is that until the constitution of the
church, the true meaning of marriage could not be known. But now that the eternal son of
God has become man and entered and by his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into
union with his people, all that marriage was meant to convey has become clear.

So the reason why Paul calls men to understand their roles in terms of Christ’s
relationship to the church and women to understand theirs in terms of the church’s
relationship to Christ is because you cannot fully understand the relationship of marriage
without a prior understanding of the relationship between Christ and the church.

Paul’s use of union with Christ as an analogy for marriage is not an expression of
Paul’s creativity, of a penchant for using great illustrations. Instead for Paul union with
Christ came first and marriage is the illustration. Paul does not need to search for
illustrations because God designed marriage for the very purpose of vividly imaging forth
the relationship between Christ and the church. God created human marriage on the
pattern of Christ’s relationship to the church.

Locating Marriage in Eternity Past

This, then, is why I say that marriage has its origin in eternity past. If we were to
create an historical timeline tracing marriage and the birth of the church, certainly we would
have marriage coming before the relationship between Christ and the church. Now we need
to add to that what we have learned from Eph 5:32; namely, that God created human
marriage on the pattern of Christ’s relationship to the church, on Christ’s union with
believers. So what that means is that in the mind of God at least, the relationship between
Christ and the church existed before the creation of marriage.

And in case you are thinking I’m arriving at that conclusion purely inferentially, then
you need to read Eph 1:3-6, 10b-12 with me.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in
Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before
Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself,
according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace,
which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

…with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the
summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In
Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His
purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who
were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

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The mystery of Gen 2:24 is that the marriage it describes was pattered after the
relationship between Christ and the church that God had established before time began.
We just read that the Father “chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (1:4).
Therefore in God’s economy the relationship between Christ and the church came before
the creation of marriage.

Married Life or Family Life?

Of course, the question we need to ask at this point is this: what does this mean for
the family? After all, we have spent all our time looking exclusively at marriage. Well,
what you need to see is that if you are thinking that we have not spent any time addressing
the family in this lecture it is because you have made a distinction between marriage and the
family. And this is not unusual. Don’t you often hear people saying, “We’ve been married
for two years now, and we’ve decided we’d like to start a family”? I’m sure you have.

Allow me to suggest to you that the common distinction between marriage and
family is artificial; for a family is complete, fully legitimate, fully formed, and “very good”
when the man and woman cleave to one another and become one flesh. So the Glenn
family, my family began on the day Gayle and I were married. Though children are
certainly desirable and though it is certainly true that God commanded the man and the
woman to be fruitful and multiply, this is not owing to any deficiency in the family. The
creation is complete before there is a single child on the scene.

What you need to see is that a husband and wife are a family even without children,
even if they were for some reason never to have children. In subsequent lectures, we will
explore the implications of this for childrearing, but for now I want you to see that on the
basis of family life beginning with marriage, we can say that the family exists (like everything
else in the universe) to manifest the glory of Christ in the gospel.

Conclusion
So then, this is the beginning of the family: the Father’s intention to glorify Christ in
the church by purchasing him a bride as a love-gift to reflect the glory of his saving work
now and forever. We need to know this; for in order for us to have the proper view of the
family, we need to understand the ultimate reason why it was created in the first place. All
of the other reasons we may derive from Scripture are only penultimate. All of the other
reasons for the family serve the deeper purpose of magnifying God’s redemptive work in
Jesus Christ.

So if our communication is not redemptive, if our parenting is not redemptive, if our

physical and emotional intimacy is not redemptive, if our disciplines and discipline are not
redemptive, if our family life together in all its components is not redemptive—in other
words, if our families do not intentionally express the gospel in all its multifaceted splendor,
it will fail to be a family that honors God. We will be settling for second best. And worse,
we will be living as if Christ never came and joined us to himself as his bride.

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So then, over the next several weeks, I want to unpack for you what it means to live
out family life redemptively, to live out the implications of Eph 5:32 in every way, to live
out family life as God intended.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

Manuscript for The Christian Home, Lecture 1: The Beginning of the Family © 2004 by R W Glenn