What Happened? Male/Female Relationships

Posted on February 13, 2013 Updated on January 9, 2015

Brief Article: “The Liar Affected God’s Perfect Design for Male/Female Relationships”

Ministry can be displayed through marital, familial and friendship-relationships by the way couples and families demonstrate God’s love, grace, forgiveness, favor, giving, sharing, sacrifice, suffering, unselfish acts, counsel, and more. The heart of God can be mimicked through the male/female relationship.

God’s original untainted design of marriage is a covenant and a holy institution originated by God, and a spiritual/natural commitment and covenant between two individuals in a marriage (A Man and a Woman). The Holy Scriptures says, “It is not good for the ‘man’ to be alone. I will make a helper (Suitable) for him…….Then the Lord God made a ‘woman’ from the rib he had taken out of the ‘man’ and be brought ‘Her’ to the ‘Man’……For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and ‘they’ will become one flesh. The ‘Man’ (Male) and His Wife (female) were both naked and they felt no shame,” Genesis Chapter 2:19-25 New International Version (NIV).[1] See, before the fall, there was no shame because Adam and Eve knew no sin as Jesus (second Adam) knew no sin and was perfect. Adam and Eve lived as other mammals. Their skin and hair were their covering and protection.

Consequences of the fall of Satan (fallen angel who got besides himself-deceiver/disobedience) threw a sledge hammer in God’s perfect plan for man and women to live in harmony to co-create, replenish the earth and multiply (increase, build, expand, prosper). Genesis chapter three explains the fall and consequence. This means that Adam and Eve were on one accord-like minded before they encountered the tempter and liar. Once Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from tree of the knowledge of good and evil, iniquity and sin entered into them. They then were no longer like-minded. Just as Satan deceived other angels (one third) in Heaven with him and they too fell, thus his plan to cause humanity to fall as well. Now everything was corrupted by the enemy including relationships between man and woman and families. Even the act of sexual intimacy became perverted.

Perversion of sexual intimacy is another problem that is not often discussed publicly. There are countless debates about what “The bed being undefiled” means but truth is, humanity is influenced by their own cultural norms and traditions. These cultural sexual practices often adopted from paganistic societies that are obsessed with nudity and sexual perversion and ungodly sacrifices, and many couples have brought these practices into their bedroom unaware. But that’s another article. These ‘norms’ and traditions sometimes come with demonic or lustful ungodly desires thus, perverting even God’s perfect plan of sexual intimacy between husbands and wives. Both partners in a marital relationship come with some sought of a past, and some of that past may include warped thinking based on twisted teaching and examples (who themselves were also affected-generational patterns going back to the fall), perverse imaginations and thoughts, and worldly ideas instead of Christian worldviews. This is what Moses witnessed after he came down from Mount Sinai (cliffs) and being in the presence of the Lord thy God (after 3 months-Feast of weeks/Shavuot) with the Ten Commandments, and found God’s people (Children of Israel) engaging in every imaginable sin. See Genesis chapter 19. Bottom line, We all need a savior/redeemer!

After the fall, both men and women were negatively impacted and men and women became engaged in unclean and sinful lifestyles. Both sexes are bombarded with images of lust: porn, polyamory (several sexual intimate partners), swinging (recreational sex with multiple partners), incest, polysexuality (attraction to multiple genders), homosexuality and more. It is a no brainer why many marriages are torn over God’s original design for sexual intimacy. Everyone have different ideas of what intimacy and sexual intimacy entails. Each individual in a couple, have his/her own experiences that influence their cognitive processes and behavior. So our mental content is affected and conditioned by these experiences. Couples need to understand their own “hot topics”- (“knowing what pushes their buttons”).[2] Understanding each other’s emotional triggers can help a couple work on reducing any toxicity and unfairness in a quarrel.[3] This is why couples need to operate having the mind of Christ and understand that marriage represents the bride of Christ/the Lamb’s wife (preparing for His return) found in Revelation 21:9. Because of this knowledge, couples need to create a nurturing, safe place, and a positive, trusting environment of acceptance where each could be vulnerable and honest.

Both partners may bring some form of baggage to the premarital and marital relationship and this is why grace and mercy is needed from both partners. When we look at the story of the building of the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 11, and how the men were on one accord but became prideful and desired to build a city with the biggest tower in the world with the intent of become internationally famous. Surely this idea grieved God who then decided to shut the construction down and divided their languages so they could no longer speak the same language thus, different languages made it difficult for them to agree and work together and so they became scattered across the earth. As a result, an increase in various cultures, and their traditions emerged.

As we look at matters that influence and impact marriages as a whole, to a degree, we need to understand the root cause and origin of why certain issues and battles exist in the first place, and what couples can do to renew, restore, transform and make corrections in order to create healthy relationships by first approaching each other with grace, godly wisdom and unconditional love.

Humanity needs grace. It is apparent how the father of lies, the son of perdition and this disobedient one (Satan) interjects in the affairs of men and women. Because he was disobedient and is the originator of sin, man became disobedient and needed grace, mercy and forgiveness which is embodied through Christ Jesus, the only begotten of the father.

Footnotes and where to purchase my new book:

[1]Unless otherwise indicated all Bible references in this paper are to The New International Version Bible (NIV) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), and The Holy Bible: The New King James Version (NKJV) (Nashville Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1982).

[2] Les Parrott, and Leslie Parrott, “Saving your marriage before it starts: Seven questions to ask before–and after–you marry,” (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006): 119.

[3] Ibid.

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