GENESIS 2:23-24

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

TO PONDER

I wonder if you have ever actually pondered about this? I don't usually get to deeply theological in these devotions but I hope you'll indulge me today. I'll return to my more personal approach tomorrow. So here it goes.

Historically this passage and the 'becoming one flesh' phrase has been understood to mean a sexual union - and there is certainly a validity to that interpretation. But I think there is something even deeper to this 'oneness' that get's talked about here.

Jesus prays, in John 17, a prayer asking that we "his followers" would be one just as He and the Father were one. And in Ephesians 5, Paul quotes these same verses from Genesis in his discourse about husbands and wives. Jesus and Paul seem to be implying that there is something within humanity that is capable of the same kind of unity or oneness that exists between himself and God the Father. Just earlier in Genesis chapter 1 we hear how God created them, male and female he created them, in his own image. God created male and female to complement and work with one another, not unlike the way our limited theological reasoning has understood the triune God to work together.

The Nicene creed goes to great lengths to articulate the idea that God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are 'of the same substance' and working together. Those of you who know your church creeds really well might have even read the Athanasian Creed, which really takes this idea of the 'oneness' of the trinity to a whole new level. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of the same substance, seperate but also one. Man and woman were the same, made from the same stuff, woman made from the same stuff as man. Perhaps in a perfect creation, before sin entered the world, men and women were capable of a similar 'oneness' with each other as what is experienced between our trinitarian Godhead.

Is it too incredible to ponder that God instituted and gave us marriage as a placed where we might experience something of the love that exists within himself, the God who is love? I don't think so...

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, Thank you that I have been created in your image and that through Jesus you have invited me into unity or 'oneness' with you. Amen

Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle