Male and Female
The Image of God
In the Image of God
Three? Two? ...One!
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
” Genesis 1:27
It is essential to remember, as we consider who we are as God's people and who we ought to be, that we are made in the image of God. Man is not just any animal placed upon this earth. We—men and women—are actually God's image: the reflection of God.
It should be no surprise then, that the way God instructs us to live is closely tied to the way that God himself chooses to live. The way we live ought to reflect God's character.
In order to look at the questions that we want answered—how should men and women, husbands and wives, relate?—we need to go back to a concept that many people leave in the too abstract, too complex, too-hard-basket: the Trinity.
Three
Trinity is a shortened form of the word “triunity”, which seeks to capture the idea that God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are all distinct people with distinct roles in the Bible, and yet God is fundamentally one, that there is but one God, and that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all inherantly God.
Jesus was God. And yet, he did not come to earth to lord it about—he rejected Satan's offer to rule the world. (Mt 4:1-11, Lk 4:1-13) Rather, he did the very opposite: instead of grasping equality, he made himself nothing. (Phil 2:6) Though he was master, he chose to be servant of all.
What did God the Father do in response? He did not just glorify himself. Rather, he glorified Jesus! He bestowed unimaginable honour upon Jesus—“the name that is about every name”—everyone will worship Jesus. (Phil 2:9-11)
What is it that Jesus will do, when he is lord and ruler of all, unopposed? Why he will deliver the kingdom to God the Father. (1 Cor 15:24-28)
A similar pattern is recorded with the Holy Spirit too. The Holy Spirit, an entity in his own right, is nevertheless not given to his own whims and fancies. Rather, he does what the Father and the Son send him to do. It is the Father who sends the Spirit, it is the Son who also sends the Spirit (Jn 14:16, 16:7). He will not speak his own words, but rather, like Jesus (Jn 14:10), what is given to him to say—which is to glorify the Son. (Jn 16:13-14).
An enlightening study is to read the entire Book of John, record how it is that each of the Trinity relates to the other.
The word which describes all that we see here is
We see here an important tenet for marriage. For a marriage to work, both partners need to be other-person-centred. They need put aside their own selfish inclinations. They need to put their spouse's interests and needs before their own. Love needs to be at the centre of our relationships, love needs to be at the centre the marriage relationship.
What is love?
The clearest picture the Bible paints for us is this:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Cor. 13:4-7
It's not a dictionary definition, it's a picture of love in action.
Two
“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”
1 Cor 11:3
This verse points out a clear parallel: Christ to the Father, as women to men.
Christ submits to the Father. This is not because he is any less God! He is the creator of all creation! (Heb 1:10-12) He is “mighty father, prince of peace”! (Isaiah 9:6) He now reigns over all of creation—all knees will bow at his feet (Phil 2:5-11). Nevertheless, as powerful as he is, the essential nature of the relationship, the nature of fatherhood and sonship is that Jesus submits to God the Father. The Father is head over the Son.
In the same way, the husband is head over the woman. This in no way creates a “second-class citizen”! This doesn't mean that the fairer sex must be the weaker sex, simpering, domesticated and oppressed. The ideal of woman is in Proverbs 31: a strong and noble women, full of initiative and wisdom. It is not a denigration of one's identity, nor chauvinistic oppression for a woman to submit to man.
It does go against everything that modern society says to us. But we need to remember to put the Word of God first in our lives. What we all need to submit to first of all is to God. He is lord and ruler over all, and he is lord and ruler over our lives.
Submission, though, is a difficult concept which is easy to misunderstand. As you continue to read the Bible, keep fixing your eyes upon Christ. As you continue to understand what he has done, his love for us, his work on the cross, his grace in life and death, his submission unto death, we see for us the perfect picture of submission. Be like Christ.
One
“A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Gen 2:24
I love weddings. I love sitting, watching my two close friends filled with love each other, choking up with the pure joy of the moment, and yet solemnly committing themselves to each other for life. It's the moment of magic, I might imagine, when the bell tolls, when the strings start playing, when the congregation sighs as one, and can start breathing again.
At that point, this passage comes to mind. I look at these two people before me and wonder if God now percieves these two as one—united in soul, spirit, heart and mind. Its poetry and beauty, unity in love.
Its also romantic nonsense, of course. For lovers, for dreamers, for talking, banjo-playing green frogs. For Mills and Boon, and doey-eyed schoolgirls. The passage—in its glorious biblical euphemism— must surely be referring to the unrehearsed, much-dreamt-of part of the wedding, held behind closed doors in a penthouse suite far from the world that knows them. The man knows the woman, in the biblical sense. An euphemism for sex.
Or is it?
The Bible continues to speaks of it as being one body:
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Ephesians 5:28
What the metaphor points us in the direction of a greater truth. When two become one, there is now unity: of purpose, of direction, of life. As real as an umbilical cord, your actions and your decisions have immediate impact on someone else.
When you don't clean the dishes, she has to do it. When you snore at night, she stays awake all night (or you sleep in the lounge room). When she's sick, you don't go out to a party, but rather you stay and take care of her. When you're exhausted after a long day, she might stop my from driving and take over. If you're offered a job in Melbourne, you can't simply up-and-go—not if she's committed to her own job in Sydney. If she doesn't like being on the beach, perhaps you wouldn't go to the Gold Coast for a holiday.
In marriage, there are two people, and yet one. A combined unit. 4 hands, 2 heads, 1 life.
The wife, gentle and submissive, loving her husband. The man loving his wife, ready to give up his very life for her.
The image of ...
When we come to marriage, when we look to male-female relationships, when we ask all these questions that need to be answered, we end up face to face with God. The simple realisation that the solution is Christ. To find a perfect example of love, we need to look to Christ. To find a perfect example of submission, we need to look to Christ. Who else to show us how man is to live, but the perfect man himself! The perfect image of God.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Col. 1:15 (ESV)
Comments
Haoran, Thanks so much for this article! Loved the clear concise Biblical evidence used. It certainly is something we often don’t want to bring out, and something which I have had difficulty finding really good articles which are Biblical (which incorporates practical, love, and sincerity). Thanks for this article, I’m going to forward this to some of my friends! =)
on 01 November, 2002 10:44 PM
Thanks for the concise article. I reckon it’s a neat call to sacrificial living in marriage.
A question always bugs me about the model of wifely submission to husbands… What if the couple’s characters are more suited to arranging things the other way around? What if a relationship is working beautifully with a wife who is a good head of the house and a submissive husband? Are we called to go against our own nature(s), even if the relationship is glorifying God, simply because the Apostle Paul thought blokes should have the role of being in charge?
I hear the call to equality phrased in the article; that each should serve the needs of the other, and I think that is a more helpful way to emphasise the point than a structure where heirarchy is defined according to gender.
I know I’m lining up with a more popularist opinion, but I don’t feel that invalidates it.
Blair Cameron on 07 January, 2003 4:50 PM
This is some of the biggest load of tripe I have ever heard in life!
The bloke who said, “well done for backing it up with biblical evidence” needs to be shot!
The bible is no evidence for anything. If the bible could be used as evidence in a court of law I’m going to write on a piece of paper that says “i can fly” and use that as a defence for my insanity!
Myles D on 30 March, 2005 7:03 PM