The role of men and women in the Church – and how they should relate to one another – is a sensitive and confusing topic for many believers. In too many groups, the truth expressed in Scripture has been successfully contaminated by the enemy. Human tradition has effectively replaced divine revelation. The outcome is disunity within marriages, within families, and within churches.
This series of posts is dedicated to searching the Scripture, discovering God’s design and intentions for each sex. We will also critically examine a number of well-known church doctrines on the role of men, the role of women, and what a Christian marriage should look like. The goal is to shed the light of God’s Truth in these areas, dispelling the bondage inherent in darkness.
Understanding God’s perfect purpose for men and women requires we begin at the Beginning. God created male and female and established their relationship to one another. Jesus Himself referred back to this event when He was challenged by the Pharisees on the acceptability of divorce (Matt. 19:8). By doing this, Jesus clearly identifies the Beginning as displaying God’s perfect will for husbands, wives, and marriage.
Genesis chapters 1 and 2 record God’s creation of everything, including humankind. When God said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18), the Hebrew word here for “man” is not necessarily referring to only males or even just the first man. This word can be used to indicate all of mankind, or humans as a species in general, depending on context. It is also sometimes transliterated, or pronounced in English, as a name – “Adam” – for this is what God called the first created human being – “the man”.
The Hebrew “be alone” refers to a separation or to be apart. God said this condition was not good, the only “not good” in the entire creation account. Now, it is a low view of God to assume that only now, after the fact, is He figuring out He didn’t get it quite right the first time. That He forgot something when He created Adam. That He made a mistake or failed to take some detail into account. Did He just not think about it that He was creating only one human being and it would necessarily be alone? Of course not. God neither forgets nor makes mistakes. God knows the end from the beginning and was following His original plan all along.
Of all Lord’s possible purposes for choosing to create male and female as He did, we will look at two. The first is that the creation of woman was prophetic. Just as the first Adam was put to sleep and his bride taken out of his side, so the Second Adam would someday go to “sleep.” His side would also be pierced, producing a mixture of blood and water, and in this process His Bride, the Church, would be birthed. And just as the first bride was brought to the first Adam after he awoke and God joined them, so the second Bride is now One with the resurrected Christ. She can only be one with Him because She comes out of Him. You cannot make two living, independent beings into one. That is why patients with transplanted organs tend to battle transplant rejection. God’s goal was always that the two become one, for both the first Adam and the Second Adam. To accomplish this, they have to start as one. This oneness is the very core of God’s design. This is what Jesus emphasized to the legalistic Pharisees thousands of years later when asked about divorce.
A second reason for this order of creation is to cement equality. Equality of the two sexes is self-evident because they actually started out as one. God understood what the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually come to realize when delivering the verdict on school segregation in 1954 – separate cannot ever truly be equal. So, God did not create men and women as something separate. Instead, they originate from the same form.
Prior to creating the woman, God brought all the living land creatures by Adam. God showed Adam that his equal was not found among them. Rather, the man was over them; he was given authority to name them (Genesis 2:19, 20). When God finally formed the woman, Adam declared her, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). The Hebrew word here for “bone” connotes essence; it is sometimes translated as “selfsame”. It expresses the concept of the same eternal spirit. The woman is a spiritual being just as the man is and from the same Source. The “flesh” expresses that they both share the same source body, the same physical makeup. English speakers refer to those they are closely connected to as their “flesh and blood,” but in the Hebrew mind it is “flesh and bone,” an expression used throughout the Old Testament. The man described her with the word “woman” or “wife” because of how she came out of him, the “male” or “husband,” and was now a separate person. This language expresses their connection. However, the man did not name her as he had named the animals he was placed over. She was his equal and not his to name. Together they were known simply as the Adam, the male and his female.
When God declared that it was not good for the man to be alone, He explained what He meant by going on to describe the purpose of the woman. The King James version translates God’s original words recorded in Hebrew into, “I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). Now, man was technically not completely alone before woman was created. Later in the Genesis account we see the Lord coming into the Garden in the cool of the day to visit (Genesis 3:8). This was likely a habit. God had created mankind for Himself to fellowship with, after all. However, the man was the only one of his own kind prior to woman. Interestingly, God did not just say, “I will make him another human, another one of his kind to be his friend.” Instead, God assigned a specific purpose to this companion He was going to create. She would be his Help. Her creation was God’s solution to the “alone” problem and gives insight into God’s intention for her role.
One of the great doctrinal crimes committed by certain modern theologians is the abuse of the language in Genesis 2:18. God did not say, “I will make a helpmeet for him.” It is neither written that way in the original Hebrew nor in the KJV English translation. Rather, God said He was making “an help [space] meet for him.” The Hebrew word translated as “help” here is ezer (pronounced ay’-zer). This word is used 21 times in the Old Testament. Of those 21 times, 2 of them are here in the Genesis account and refer to the woman. In 3 instances the word is used to describe human military allies, such as the ill-fated alliance Israel made with the Pharaoh of Egypt in Isaiah chapter 30. But the majority of examples – the remaining 17 occurrences – are used in reference to God Himself.
Ezer is quite a strong word. It is to surround, to protect, to succor, or shield. This is a fitting word to describe God’s aide to His people. In many places it has rescue or deliverance connotations to it, thus its military usage. Some of the passages where ezer is used include:
“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, Who rides the heavens to help you, and in His excellency on the clouds.” (Deut. 33:26)
“Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD? He is the shield that protects you, the sword in which you boast. Your enemies will cower before you, and you shall trample their high places.” (Deut. 33:29)
“O Israel, trust in the LORD! He is your helper and your shield. O priests, descendants of Aaron, trust the LORD! He is your helper and your shield. All you who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD! He is your helper and your shield.” (Psalm 115:9-11).
“We put our hope in the LORD, He is our help and our shield.” (Psalm 33:20)
And probably the most recognizable passage to use this word comes from David:
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; He that keepeth thee will not slumber.” (Psalm 121:1-3)
Ezer does not describe the traditional “assistant” role that too many churches assign to wives in marriage. God has never been Israel’s “assistant.” He was not David’s “assistant.” And the Holy Spirit today is certainly not our “assistant”– He is our Helper! An assistant is one who only functions under the direction and supervision of a superiorly ranked person. An assistant follows orders. An assistant is as a mere extension of the person they are assisting, even when they act on that person’s behalf. A Biblical ezer, on the other hand, is a covenanted ally who steps in and supplies whatever it is that one lacks in a challenging situation. An ezer comes to your rescue when needed. An ezer has your back.
Given the boldness of this word choice, God specified the ezer would be created “meet for him.” At the time the King James version was being translated, a common definition of “meet” was “suitable” or “appropriate.” This meaning is not as common in modern usage. Most subsequent English translations have therefore chosen other, more recognizable, words to convey the “comparableness” intended in this passage. In Hebrew, the entire concept is expressed by only a single word, kenegdow. God’s literal words are, “I will make him an ezer kenegdow.” This exact form of this Hebrew phrase is only used once, here in the Genesis account referring to woman. Without other Scriptural contexts to cross-reference, the precise meaning is a bit more challenging for translators to define. However, kenegdow is linguistically connected to the more common Hebrew word neged.
Neged means in front of, before, or standing opposite to. As one rabbi described it, the picture here in the Genesis account is of husband and wife as the two mirrored halves of a single arch. An arch structure can support a tremendous amount of weight because the load actually pushes the two halves together, reinforcing them against one another. As long as the halves are perfectly equal and remain in balance to one another, they can withstand relatively huge pressures for their size. The man and the woman stand opposite one another, each providing perfectly matched resistance to the other. Together they can carry a far greater load than either could individually.
Another illustration is that of a single coin. The female is the opposite face of the coin to the male. While you can argue there are two faces, it is still only one coin. Because you cannot see the two faces at the same time, they are separate. Yet neither face is “half” a coin – they are both simply the coin. This illustration highlights God’s emphasis on oneness and the inherent equality in marriage.
God’s declaration that He was creating an ezer poses an interesting question – Why? What does a human being living in a paradise need with an ezer? Why create an ally if there are no threats? Yes, God did already know the Fall was coming, and He planned accordingly, but why did Adam specifically need an ezer instead of a companion, a friend, or even just a useful assistant? Only one potential threat existed in the Garden – the serpent.
Both the man and the woman failed equally in the Fall. They each disobeyed God. However, some details of their disobedience were individual. The woman failed to act as the ezer she was created to be. She failed to be what God called her; the serpent deceived her and neutralized her. She looked to her own understanding; she fell into the trap of relying on her abilities, her own intuition, to determine what was safe and what was true, instead of keeping God alone as her source of truth.
She was enticed by the serpent when she was blinded by her own desire for something. She made that desire her idol when she went after it instead of God
In deceiving the woman, the serpent not only neutralized her as a threat to himself but then also leveraged her to get the man. The serpent needed them both and no doubt put a great deal of thought and planning into his approach. Adam pointed this out to God, essentially saying, “Look, this ezer you made malfunctioned! It didn’t do its job! This isn’t my fault!” God did not excuse him, however, because Adam had also chosen idolatry. He disregarded God’s command in favor of a different voice. Adam was never enticed or deceived by the serpent; rather, Adam failed in his test of pure obedience. He did not keep God first. God charges Adam with choosing the voice of his mate over the voice of his God (Genesis 3:17).
God’s curse on each of the parties in the Fall was tragically ironic. Lucifer was the most beautiful of angelic beings in the day of his creation (Ezekiel 28:17). He is still a being filled with pride and the ego of his former glory, that hasn’t changed. Whatever the serpent looked like prior to the Fall, he was likely beautiful. But now, God told the serpent, “You will no longer have any beauty or dignity. Instead, you will crawl around on your belly and eat dust. And because you deceived the woman, because you tricked her over to your side to go against the man, against herself, I am putting personal hostility between you and her. And the final outcome? One day your seed will finally be destroyed by her Seed.”
The man was created to govern the world, to work the Garden, cultivating and creating a legacy, expanding with life like God does. This nature would still drive him. This was what he was created for; he could not escape it. But now, God told him, “You will still do the work you were created for, but it will now fight you. What came so easily and naturally before will now be hard and frustrating. The creation you are to manage and enhance will resist you every step of the way, even as you are still compelled to spend your life trying to conquer it. And in the end? In the end you will have nothing lasting to show for your effort. You and everything you work for will simply go back to dust.”
To the woman, who was created with the man to fill the earth and be his ally, God said, “You will still multiply as I commanded, but now your sufferings in wife and motherhood I will also greatly multiply. What should have been pure joy will now always be tainted with pain. Your created nature and purpose are also unchanged. You will still long to be truly one with your mate, crave to be his ezer. But now, your husband in his fallen nature will abuse these feelings and instead rule over you, opposing this desire and frustrating your efforts” (Genesis 3:14-19).
It was incredibly sad for all involved.
Then, Jesus came.
