What Happened to Us in Eden? - Psychology of the FallSample

ONE FLESH

Adam was no longer alone. His situation had improved drastically. Once both were created—and we know this from the first account—God declared that it was “very good.”

The next step was a shift: from being a woman (in that moment, the woman, since she was the only one) to becoming his wife, in the first clear reference to marriage, with Adam as her husband.

That union needed to be well defined. At that point, there were no parents to leave, but there would be in future generations. The purpose of this union was to set them apart from everyone else, as one single unit. That is, what they truly were:

• one flesh,
• made of the same “stuff,”
• functioning together as one,
• but expressed in two forms—one masculine, bearing the image and likeness of God, and one feminine, also bearing His image and likeness. Brilliant.

It is surely a mystery, but that doesn’t make it less real. It only makes it harder for us to grasp—just like their relationship with one another.

At this point in the story, the two of them, naked as they were, felt no shame. Nothing had yet distorted the atmosphere of Eden. We see something of that recreated in the joy of the lovers in Song of Songs: an environment of scents and fruit, colors and textures, intimacy and commitment, desire and companionship. Far more than cheap eroticism. What was present in Eden was God’s design through and through. And this is not just relevant to married couples. It was very good because it overflowed with the abundance of the Creator, whose character we glimpse through His paradise and creation.

So exalted is this experience that Scripture uses it as a picture of the joy to come in Christ’s union with His bride, the church—whom He cares for and protects by giving Himself up for her. And He calls her not to go her own way, not to repeat what happened in Eden, because that’s where everything broke.

The woman’s problem was not only stepping away from her husband, with whom she formed one single team. Their failure, as we will see, was choosing the wrong voice and turning away from the One without whom we can do nothing.