God’s original plan:
Genesis 2:
22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.
23 “At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man.’ ”
24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.
After the fall into sin:
Genesis 3:16
To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Dane Ortland in Gentle and Lowly, p. 31 quotes Jurgen Moltmann, summarizing his thoughts: “We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain and death seem natural”. This is the same with views of men and women, and also roles in marriage. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” is a curse, not an explanation of how God wants things to be in his kingdom between husband and wife. God’s original plan was that man and woman would both be different (woman created differently from man), yet the same (“bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh”). This reality was not put there for any authority, control, submission or rule. This reality explains “why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united as one”.
Do you know how we could live into this kingdom plan, in a counter-cultural way? Godly men could give up their last names (“leave his father and mother”) and take up their godly wife’s last name as they are united into one. What would the world look like if Christians did this?? How would “headship” look if men loved their wives in this way?
Ephesians 5:
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
