Cedarville Magazine, Spring/Summer 2016

God’s Design for Man and Woman in Marriage WeBelieve in responsibilities. As noted in Cedarville’s doctrinal position, “Human life, sexual identity, and roles are aspects of God’s creative design.” Likewise, in the Fall, there are similarities and differences as both Adam and Eve become sinners. Both of them break God’s law, they both eat the forbidden fruit, and they both are guilty before God. The eyes of both of themwere opened, they both were aware of their nakedness, and they both covered themselves with fig leaves. The structure and responsibilities of human beings did not change after the Fall. God’s human creatures are still to rule the earth and to reproduce. But now it will be with difficulty that men and women carry out God’s original creation purposes. Adamwill continue to till the ground to provide for his family, and Eve will give birth to their offspring. But these tasks will now be painful and burdensome. Both the man and the woman are judged as God addresses each one individually. Here we see differences as their punishment is specific to their gender. The woman’s punishment is tailored to her role (childbirth) while the man’s punishment is tailored to his role (provider). PROBLEM DEFINED Our problem is not the way God has made us. He made all things good. The problem is that now both t h e ma n a n d the woman are s i nne r s . Ou r problem is not that some of us were put in the wrong bodies. Psalm 139 clearly notes that God crafted each person in his or her mother’s womb exactly as He intended, and He set the number of days for each of our lives (Ps. 139:15–16). Sin is a moral issue. God didn’t get it “wrong” when He made us male or female, and our sexual attraction does not define us. In the resurrection, we will still be male or female, but we will not be tempted by sexual attraction. Allowing sexual orientation to define a person is focusing on the temporal and not the eternal. All have sinful temptation in this life, but this life is not the end. We have a future hope when Jesus will make all things new. We are not to reconstruct our gender identity but be reconciled to our Creator. We are guilty of violating God’s law and rebelling against His authority. Our sin is not our sexuality; it is our disobedience to the commandment of God. REDEMPTION EXPLAINED The redemption provided in the work of Christ relates to sin and judgment, not to our sexuality and gender. For those who cite the Bible to argue for sameness of roles and functions, God’s message is about equal need of salvation. When Paul asserts in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ “there is neither male nor female,” he is saying that sexual differences are irrelevant to becoming a Christian, not to howmen and women were to function together. The issue is faith, not gender. EQUALITY DISTORTED The Western democratic value of “equality” today is applied to society in such a way as to polarize Americans by race, sex, class, and in almost every other way imaginable. Such an understanding of equality is divisive and conflicting, the opposite of what would be represented in the terms “oneness” and “unity.” The current use of the concept of equality assumes two separate entities to be compared and contrasted as disconnected from one another, not as enhancing and complementing one another. In that sense, equality is something that emerges after the Fall when the couple and the genders are separated in sin and death. As soon as equality is incorporated into a discussion of marriage, the two genders are set up to compete with one another rather than complement each other and complete one other. Oneness of the genders in biblical marriage does not put the husband and wife at odds with one another. 18 | Cedarville Magazine