We are going to start our observation from Genesis chapter 2 verses 23 to 25. When God observed that there was a need for Adam to have a help mate, when God realized that there was no help suitable for Adam, God carried out an operation and after the operation, God introduced the help to Adam and this was the reaction of Adam:
23 And Adam said: “This is now bones of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2: 23- 25 (NKJV)
Now Adam said, ‘this is’, Adam recognized the woman, he recognized the one that God has brought to him and said ‘this is now’, ‘from this moment, this is the bone of my bone, the flesh of my flesh, and I call her woman because she was taken out of man’. And the Bible says, for this reason, because of this pronouncement, because of what happened in verse 23, ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh’.
I want you to have that memory of Genesis 2:23-25 as we go to Ephesians 5 verse 22 to 33.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-33 (NKJV)
In Genesis 2:23-25, Adam said concerning Eve, ‘this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’. Those two statements are very defining. What does it mean to be a bone of one's bone and flesh of one's flesh? When something is "of" something? We are going to do a little bit of English here and I want you to pay close attention. How many of us are familiar with mathematics; set and subsets. When you say A is a Union of B in a set, what does it mean? That means, everything that is in A, all the elements in set A is in set B. When you say a particular set A is a Union of another set that means everything I find in set A, I will find it in set B, that's why they are Union. The same way when Adam said ‘this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’, what he is trying to say is that Eve is a set I have union with. Let's use the first letter of their names. I am set A, and Eve is set E. So, everything you find in me, you find in her. Everything you see in me, you see in her. When you say something is of you, you share the same identity and that's what Adam established in that place. Adam said ‘now she is the bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ that means, we share the same identity. So, in marriage there is a sharing of identity. If you want to go into marriage, you are going into a shared identity.
Why do you we call a married couple Mr. and Mrs. so so and so? Why do we use the word ‘and’ not ‘or’? It’s because they are joined. When you use the word ‘and’ in English, you are referring to two things that you are joining together in a sentence. You will say, John and James are going to the market. That means the destination of john and James is the same. So when you say Mr. and Mrs. so so and so, you are saying they share the same identity and they share the same destiny.
So, in marriage we must start with that foundation that the man and his wife share the same identity. That's why the Bible says in verse 24 of Genesis chapter 2, ‘for this reason’, because there is now a shared identity, there is now a joint identity, there is a joint purpose and there is a joint destiny. ‘For this reason’, because of this, ‘a man will leave his father and mother’. When a young boy is born, his identity and that of his parents are joined and that’s why you will see that the boy is called for example, James Fashola. Fashola is the father’s name, James is his own name, but because he is born by that father and mother, he bears an identity with them. So, he becomes James Fashola. So that particular boy starts his journey with a joint identity with his parents, that is, his father and his mother but there comes a time when that boy becomes a man that he would have to leave that identity, he would have to leave that relationship and move forward. That's why the Bible says in verse 24 that ‘for this reason’, because that man has found someone he now has joint identity with, he will leave his father and mother, leave his old alliance, his old relationship, his old joining and become one flesh with her.
Listen to Podcast: How To Be Correctly Married: Wisdom For The Married Spiritual Leaders
I want us to see Genesis 2 verse 24 again. It says ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ He will now be "of". Before he was James of Fashola, now he is going to be James of something else. Not like he is going to forsake his father's name; because the tradition that we operate in the world today, a man carries his father’s name but a woman drops her own right, it is part of shared identity. But what the bible is saying here is that at this point, when he lives his father and mother, he is not just leaving them in terms of physical separation, it’s a total separation of identity. When God said to Abraham ‘leave your father's house’, what was God saying? Did God say ‘leave your father's house but sometimes go for summer?’ No! Leaving means leaving, he left the identity of that house, he left his joining, his emotional attachment to that house.
So, as a man, when you make a statement like Adam made here that ‘this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’, you must have made up your mind to leave your old alliance, your emotional attachment to your father's house, your emotional attachment to your father’s identity purpose and destiny. When Abram left his father's house, he left everything behind, he started a new life.
So, the marriage journey is a new journey entirely, and when Apostle Paul was saying this, he was also talking about the foundation, we have in Christ Jesus. When we identified with Christ, we said to Jesus at the point of salvation that ‘Jesus, you are now the bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, I have abandoned my old alliance, my old identity and I am now joined with you in a new identity, new destiny and a new purpose.’ So, when the bible makes us to understand that we are married to Christ, we must understand it from the marriage that God instituted that Christ is now bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. We are now joined with Him, in identity and destiny. So, the destiny of Christ is your destiny, the identity of Christ is your identity. I found a very interesting scripture in Hosea 2. I want us to see it.
“I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In loving kindness and mercy; 20 I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the Lord. 21 “It shall come to pass in that day That I will answer,” says the Lord; “I will answer the heavens, And they shall answer the earth. 22 The earth shall answer With grain, With new wine, And with oil; They shall answer Jezreel. 23 Then I will sow her for myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’ ”
Hosea 2:19-23 (NKJV)
Does it look like a man talking there? Or it is God talking? He said ‘I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice’. When you use the word ‘betroth’, what does it mean? It means I am giving you over in marriage, but I am not giving you over to any other person, I am giving you over to myself. The verse also says ‘I will sow her for myself in the earth’ I don't want us to forget this scriptures, they are so meaningful and powerful. Does this not look like the scripture in John 3:17, it says ‘people that had not obtained mercy have now obtained mercy, people that were not God’s people, are now God’s people.’ It’s the same thing the Bible is saying in John 3:17 and also in Hosea 2.
‘I will betroth you to me forever’. That's God speaking to you. ‘I will give you out in marriage to myself. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice. Yes, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord’. That's what Jesus has come to do. So, it's not wrong for us to say we are the bride of Christ because we are actually at salvation betrothed, married to Christ. And at that marriage relationship, we became one with Him and that's why He kept saying ‘I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness’. And it says in Hosea 2 verse 21, ‘And it shall come to pass, I will answer the heavens’, how did He answer the heavens? by dying on the cross of Calvary. It says, ‘I will answer the heavens and they will answer the earth’. They will answer the earth by speaking. The heavens declared concerning Jesus, ‘worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive’. The heavens answering the earth say ‘this people have become one identified with Christ and they share the same destiny with Him because they have been betrothed to Him’.
So, our identity in Christ Jesus does not come on the altar of wishes, it is because we are betrothed to him in marriage, we have been married with Christ. We have been joined with him and for you to correctly understand what Christ did and the essence of this marriage, you must know that there was an identity you were born with. Every man was born in the flesh, every man was born in death, every man was born in sin, that was our identity, our destiny was death, but when Jesus came and we became married to him at salvation and we received him as our Lord and savior, what did we receive,? We received His identity, we received His Love, and that's why when Apostle Paul was writing Ephesians 5 he said ‘husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for her’. That's how Christ demonstrated his love for the church, by giving himself for her. When you leave your father's house, and your mother's house, and you are joined with your wife, what is supposed to be the results? If you are truly joined with your wife, what will be the results of it? Verse 25 of Genesis chapter 2 says it, ‘they shall become one flesh the man and his wife shall become one flesh’. Just like you and I have become one in Christ.
And in verse 25 of Genesis chapter 2, it also talks about the experience that comes in this marriage. It says ‘and they were both naked’, open, nobody was hiding anything from anybody. There was openness and transparency, righteousness and justice, faithfulness. Do we remember the scripture in Hosea that we read? It says ‘I have betrothed you to me in righteousness and justice, and in faithfulness’, that talks about nakedness, righteousness, faithfulness, justice. All these must be exhibited in any marriage that is correct. Any correct marriage must have righteousness, justice and faithfulness in it. That's when you are naked and unashamed. The same way we are in Christ, in Christ we must be naked, no secret sin, we are not hiding anything from Him we are open in righteousness, justice and faithfulness. We are faithful to our marriage vow, faithful to our salvation commitment, walking out our salvation with fear and trembling.
‘There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus’. No condemnation for us because we are naked, we are naked before our maker, we are naked before our bridegroom Jesus. The same way every wife and husband should deal in marriage. No secrecy. The foundation of your marriage must be righteousness, justice and faithfulness. The Bible says ‘marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled’, nothing must defile the bed of marriage, no lies, no sin because ‘the both of them were naked and unashamed’.
So, when we talk about the marriage relationship, it is deep, it’s very deep. And that's why before you go into marriage, you are sure this is what the Lord wants you to do. Just like the woman was created as the help for the man is the same way the church is to Christ. The bible says ‘Christ is the head and the church is the body’. The way the body supports the head but the head gives identity to the body, that's the same way our marriage is supposed to be. The husband brings identity to the marriage, he brings focus, he brings purpose, he brings direction and the woman supplies support for that vision. Why is it that the eyes are on the head and not the body? It’s because of the vision. A man must be visionary just like we have a vision in Christ. When you come into Christ, you don't come in with your vision, you come into the vision of Christ or is there anyone of us that came into Christ with our vision? Like ‘I came into Christ with a vision for Christ to fulfill it’, no! We all came into Christ to fulfill the vision of Christ, the grand plan of God. So the church supports the vision of Christ, executes the vision of Christ, helps the vision of Christ, and I love what the bible says in that Hosea 2 it says ‘I have betrothed you in the earth’. As a church, our relevance is so powerful in the earth, that's why we share the same identity with Christ, He said ‘I am the light of the world’, He said ‘you are the light of the world’, we have shared identity. He said ‘you are the salt of the earth’, and then He said ‘as I am so are you in this world’. It’s a shared identity, shared purpose.
He said to the Apostles ‘go and be my witnesses’, witness me all over. As a body of Christ, we support that vision, the same way wives are called to submission, submission to the vision of her husband, submission to the direction of her husband, submission to the leadership of her husband. Can your leg be moving and your head wants to remain in one place, is it possible? That's an abnormal person, that's why we have abnormal marriages, incorrect marriages. A correct marriage is according to this principle, according to this light. Apostle Paul said ‘husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her’. Christ nourishes us, He showers His glory on us that's the same way husbands, you should shower your glory on your wife and as the church respects Christ as the head, the same way the wives have to respect their husbands as the head.
So, to be correctly married is to be correctly aligned and positioned with what God has institutionalized. There are so many things going on everywhere, so many definitions but this is what God has instituted. That's why I did not say how to be married, that's not the title, how to be correctly married according to scriptures. So, as a man if you are still tied emotionally to your father's house, you are not correctly married because you can't be emotionally tied to your father's house and be correctly tied with your wife. If you have not identified that woman as bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, you are not correctly married, because you must share the same identity. That means, if you are Mr. wise, your wife must be Mrs. wise, if you are Mr. foolish, your wife will be Mrs. foolish because you share the same identity and you share the same destiny, same way we share the same identity and destiny with Christ as the church. I pray the Lord will help us in the name of Jesus. Amen.
