Woman

It is interesting that after interacting with the Bible for some time you will realise that many of our long-held traditions and doctrines do not stem from the Bible. This means that following the guidance from the same does not account for obedience in the eyes of God.

Let me give an example or two.

David danced until his clothes fell off. Where is that in the Bible?

Yet we use that statement to argue for vigorous dancing that sometimes ends up being indecent in the pursuit of someone’s clothes falling off like David’s in whatever we call worship.

Yet probably the opposite is desired. Or do you not know that sweat is prohibited in worship? And I intentionally will not give you the verse so that you can search for it.

Moses was prohibited from entering Canaan because he broke the tablets containing the commandments. Again, that is completely untrue, but people still hold on to that error.

Jonah was vomited in Nineveh. How far is that from the Biblical narrative?

Let me get to my main point.

Adam was lonely. Adam was bored. Adam had no real relationship with the created things. Adam had a void that needed to be filled with Eve.

Where in the Bible do we read that?

Adam was complete. Adam was performing his duties just fine. Adam had no problems with nature or God. Adam did not pray to God for a companion.

If there was a void, it was the one that was created when Eve was taken out of him though we are not told even that.

You see, God never gives in measured doses. He gives to overflow.

When the spirit was taken from Moses and shared with the seventy, he did not become deficient. He was still whole, complete. He did not lose anything. He was not drained of the spirit when it was shared out to others.

Or do you not know the verse in proverbs about someone who gives yet increases and the other who withholds and it ends up in poverty?

Adam was not depleted by the creation of Eve.

It is important to know that Eve was created after Adam had completed his assignment of naming the animals and had received the orders concerning the work he was to do and what to eat and not to eat. He was also at peace with God.

It is also important to realise that it is God who said that it is not good for the man to be alone and that He will make a suitable helper for him.  Adam was nowhere near that conversation.

It was as he was put to sleep that God actualized Eve and on waking presented her to him.

What am I saying?

Adam was busy with his life before God stepped in with a wife. He could have gone on forever doing what God had ordered him to do without ever needing anybody.

Why then did God create a wife for him?

Adam was a worker.

And a worker, to be effective, has to be completely immersed in his work. He has no time for other things that may affect his performance.

But God was not creating a machine, or even worker for that matter. He had been complete before He created man. He never asked for Adam’s help when He was creating the world. Why then would He need him to work the world He had created alone?

He was creating someone who was most representative of His Person. He was in a small way replicating Himself in man. And this creation had to have some of His attributes.

Man had to learn grace as he was to learn patience among other things.  And those attributes can never be taught in a classroom.

Eve was therefore created to temper Adam’s preoccupation with work.

Remember the nursery rhyme that all work no play makes Tom a dull boy?

That in a small way is what I mean.

Eve was created to give Adam a completeness that went beyond work. And this because he was completely complete when he was at work. Or has none of you gone for a whole day without sensing the need for food or rest when engaged in some demanding or enjoyable work? Has none of you heard of rich people who starved to death because they could not afford a few minutes for a snack in their very busy lives? I for one have heard of at least three such, two of them people I knew in some way.

I was told by an employee of one of them that he would order food for all his employees and before eating, or after taking a bite or two would remember a crisis that needed his attention. He would then ask the restaurant to keep his food for later and that would be the end of the story as he would never remember to come back.

Another reason (and I will not exhaust the reasons) is that man needed to procreate. And I am sure Adam never knew that he needed that because work has a way of obscuring anything else outside it. In any case he had enough work interacting with the created world to even remotely sense that need.

It is God who said that it was not good for a man to be alone. And this needs to be highlighted enough times for us to realise what God was about.

Where am I heading to? I know someone is wondering.

A woman does not complete a man. A man is as complete single as he is married. And that single factor has the capacity to change the whole infrastructure of marriage as we know it.

It was not Adam’s need that necessitated God’s creation of Eve.

It was God’s design that made Him do it. It was His purpose that made Him do it. And it was the need for man to be as similar (image and likeness) to God as possible that God created Eve.

That is why Paul equates the marital relationship with the relationship between Christ and the church.

God did not create man out of need as we know need. It was out of the overflow of His nature that He created man.

In the same way, woman was created, not so that man can be complete (or had needs) but because God needed man to overflow to nature.

Another reason God created Eve is so that man can take ownership. God created Eve from Adam not because He couldn’t have used other materials like He did with Adam, but because He wanted Adam to have something and someone to call his own.

Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, was Adam’s exclamation on being presented Eve.

Working on something that does not belong to you has its own satisfaction, but it can’t be deep enough because the owner can kick you out at any one time.

Though Adam was kicked out of Eden, Eve left with him because she was all his.

That not only does not add gratification and satisfaction, but it also places a great responsibility on the owner.

You see, if something happens in a place you are managing, you will always call on the owner to do what only the owner can do. When you are sent to negotiate a deal by the owner, you will not sign it before the owner agrees.

But it is different when you are the owner. You will not consult to make a decision but to get the best deal.

Adam was a steward of the world God created. But he was given ownership of the woman who was taken out of him. She was his sole responsibility. He couldn’t go to God to complain if she messed. He couldn’t claim ignorance if he listened to her to act against God’s orders.

That is why God in judging him said, ‘because you listened to your wife …’

That is why she was called a suitable helper as opposed to a fellow worker or coworker.

Her responsibility was completely outside Adam’s responsibility to God. She was actually an addition to Adam’s other responsibilities.

A good wife would augment her husband’s obedience while a bad one would be a hindrance to his obedience. But the buck will always stop at the man.

Another reason God created Eve was for an opportunity for man to exercise his will. Man needed to make choices and not just follow rote, or rules as a worker must do.

She was created so that man is not restricted to a relationship with God since that would not be much different to slavery.

A worker needs rules. A worker follows rules.

A worker therefore has no choices. One is either working or not. One is doing what they have been ordered to do or not. There is no place for opinions or choices. It is not much different from animals who live by instinct however clever they might appear to be. Or who do you take to court if your neighbor’s animals destroy your farm?

God created Eve to make Adam exercise his choice because Eve came around with a whole new relationship, a relationship not much different from his relationship with God, only that this time he was the senior partner in it; meaning he was accountable for how that relationship went.

‘Because you listened to your wife …’ was Adam’s actual sin because by doing so he was trashing God’s order.

Incidentally, God knew that before creating Eve. No wonder He gave Adam the commandment before creating her. Then Adam could not have thought he had not heard God right.

But the choice for Adam was simple. Whose voice is more important to hear? Which responsibility was more important?

His choice is the reason the world is the way it is today.

And that is exactly the same thing that happens to a married man. Those are the same challenges a married man has.

A woman craves attention, far more attention than she needs, because she craves to be the only person in charge of her man and his world. She fights even to dethrone God from managing her man like Eve did.

It is therefore important for a man to know that single fact to be able to effectively function in the roles God created for him.

But it should start much earlier than that.

A boy has to pursue completeness long before thinking about marriage. A man has to realise that completeness outside a relationship with the opposite sex. A man must be completely complete alone to be ready for marriage. A man must be ready to willingly live without a woman to actually qualify to get married to one.

That single error is the reason marriages are failing and divorces are increasing exponentially.

Though it gets to another level altogether, it could be the reason homosexuality is becoming an option to far more rebels than ever because heterosexual relationships have no capacity to satisfy them, thereby sinking into an even worse malaise.

You see, when I must be in a relationship to be complete, it means that a relationship more or less defines who I am and drives me into its pursuit as an essential of my existence.

Even as a believer, you may have realized that we many times spend more time praying about marriage and those partners than about our callings or even vocations that are the defining aspect of our lives. Yet we know that marriage has no capacity of overshadowing those other aspects.

You do not work because you are married just as you do not get married to work. You will work whether you are married or not.

Yet that error in understanding marriage has completely blinded us into thinking that marriage is so pivotal to life that it takes the centre place of our existence.

I am not saying that marriage is useless. I am not saying that marriage is unnecessary. I am not saying that marriage is a block to our functioning in our purposes.

I am simply saying that we are placing marriage in a place God did not intend for us to place it. I am saying that we are repeating the same mistake Adam made.

Man is complete before getting married. He should in fact get married BECAUSE he is complete. Meaning an incomplete man has no capacity of getting married because he will carry that incompleteness into the marriage.

Getting an incomplete man into marriage is like making an unqualified man a manager because it will mess everything he touches.

That is why God completed Adam before creating Eve for him.

Sadly, that has been the running theme of our marriage and ministry preparation.

You need a wife to hear God’s voice. You need a wife to serve God effectively. You need a wife to validate your calling. In short, you need a wife to serve God effectively.

Did Adam need Eve to name the animals? Did Adam need Eve to hear God’s commandments? Did Adam need Eve to validate what God had told him?

No wonder ministry is struggling. No wonder many pastors feel insecure unless their wife is co-pastor. No wonder we are trashing clear guidelines in the Bible concerning women and their roles in church.

Many Bible expositors call Paul anti women because of how he wrote concerning them. Yet few care to look at the rest of the Bible to exegete its teachings on the same.

Adam’s primary responsibility was to God and His requirements. This is what was to override all his other responsibilities, including his relationship with Eve, and especially his relationship with Eve.

And it is the same with all the men God has created.

That is why in the Bible a woman’s sin is charged on her husband.

Why was Ahab judged for killing Naboth when it was his wife who did it, probably without his knowledge? Why was David judged for sleeping with Bathsheba yet it is very possible she snared him into it? And why did God stop speaking to Mary after Joseph took her in? And why do we have Numbers 30 in the Bible?

You can’t charge someone who was incomplete with an error that was brought by his completion. Or can you?

With the creation of Eve came the war between the spirit and the flesh that we see in Galatians 5.

The woman brought about a relationship in the realm of the flesh that had a direct bearing on the spiritual relationship, or the relationship between man and God who is The Spirit. Incidentally, the relationship with God, what I am calling the spiritual relationship, also has a direct relationship with the fleshy one.

This means that there is a continuous pull by the two relationships for the attention of man, making life one precarious balancing act to be relevant or effective. We see that in Romans 7.

Man has thus to clearly decide the relationship in charge of his life.

That is why the error I am addressing is so destructive as it elevates a woman to the position of God. It directly implies that the fleshy relationship is equal to the spiritual one.

You see, if my wife validates or even confirms God’s call on my life, we are shouting from the hilltops (though denying it) that God needs a man’s wife to call the man. Or that He must consult her before calling the man.

Can you imagine God consulting Sarah before asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?

I have not finished writing this because I want you to start thinking about it. I want to challenge you to search the scriptures to get your personal revelation concerning the same. I want you to pray so that God can qualify or disqualify what I have written here.

But please allow God to speak through His word and be content with what He says.

I suppose I will add on this a little later

God bless you