A Wedding at the Center of Creation
Marriage and the Mystery A written sermon on Genesis 2–3 and Ephesians 5
Marriage is beautiful, but it is not easy. It is a bit like learning to speak another language, or living in another culture: beautiful, but hard work – sometimes embarrassing when we make mistakes, and surprising in the way that it teaches us and changes us. Because it is beautiful, and because it is worth so much, we need something more than tips on how to live. We need perspective, vision, and help: what marriage is, what it is for, and how we can ever manage it.
Ephesians 5, one of the places in the New Testament that speaks so plainly about marriage, is not a detailed manual either. Paul’s argument is that living in Christ transforms every relationship, and marriage is one place where that transformation becomes visible. That is why the passage says so much about Christ and so little about techniques.
And a wedding is never only for the couple. In a sense it preaches to everyone watching, better than any sermon could.
The First Wedding
What we celebrate at weddings was first celebrated at the dawn of creation. In fact, it stands at the center of the creation story.
God planted a garden, a home made ready and beautiful. He made the man and placed him in that garden home to serve there. He was given everything he needed, provision and purpose. He was placed there like a kingly priest, bearing the very image of God, so that he might lead all creation in knowing and worshiping God.
The story tells us that all God made was good. Light, good. Land and sea, good. Plants and animals, good. They fit into God’s plan and design and functioned beautifully. And then the story surprises us. God looks at something and says it is not good – something in the design is not as it should be. The man has a beautiful home, with work and a calling, but he is alone, and the calling God gave humanity was never meant to be carried alone.
“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:18)
He needs someone fit for him – someone both like him, and yet different. And he needs a helper or partner, someone with the important role of walking alongside him, so that together they can fulfill God’s purposes. In the Old Testament the word for helper is used most often of God himself: “My help comes from the LORD” (Psalm 121:2).
But to our surprise, God does not create in the same way as before. He causes the man to fall into a deep sleep, takes from his side, and forms the woman. Matthew Henry put it beautifully: the woman was “not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”
Then God himself brings her to the man. Picture the very first wedding. There is no rented hall and no flowers from the market. The venue is the garden of God, decorated with trees and flowers he made grow, and the one walking the bride down the aisle is the Creator himself.
Then comes the famous first look. Adam turns to see his wife, and we are given the first recorded human words in the Bible. They are a love poem:
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Genesis 2:23)
You can hear the joy. At last! He has found his person, someone to share the purpose and the calling with.
Then, abruptly, the author stops the story and steps in. He tells us to pay attention. Something significant is happening, something with lasting consequences. It is a new creation: not just Adam and Eve, but something new altogether, made of the two.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)
These words are something like the very first wedding vows: a covenant and a promise to leave the old family home and be committed forever to a newly created “us.” From now on, the two will be known together. When we hear the name Adam, we think of Eve.
“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25)
In this new, good creation, there is no shame and no competition. They are fully known and fully loved, with nothing to hide, and that is the deepest human need.
Creation and the fall, Genesis 2 and 3, are told as one story: first God’s good intention, then the problem. The wedding is the high point of the first half and the hinge into the second. “Naked and not ashamed” (2:25) is followed at once by the “crafty” serpent (3:1), and in Hebrew the two words sound almost the same. The way the story is told places a wedding at its center, and that placement invites a theological question.
Of everything that could stand at the center of the creation story, why a wedding? What does a wedding have to do with creation, and with what it means to be human? It does not mean that you need to be married to be fully human. Jesus Christ, the most fully human person who ever lived, never married. But it does mean that marriage has a place in God’s plan, and that plan is something every one of us has a part in. Hold on to that question.
The Garden Lost
The story continues. The couple stops listening to God and decides to define good and evil for themselves. It is not enough for them to bear God’s image; they want to be like God himself. And that choice has consequences.
The moment they turn away from God and stop living in submission to him, one of the first consequences is that their unity with each other breaks, because it had always rested on their unity with God. And now their nakedness becomes shame. Where there was openness and unity, now there is hiding. God’s blessing of purpose and provision is turned upside down.
Adam had been standing right there the whole time (Genesis 3:6), silent, neither protecting nor helping her. When God asks what happened, he blames her: “The woman whom you gave to be with me” (3:12). The same man who sang “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” now points at her with blaming fingers. From “she is part of me” to “she is your problem,” in a few short verses.
In this fallen world, they use their strength and influence to protect themselves instead of their unity. Then they are sent out of the garden, out of the home they shared with God, into an endless struggle over who will be on top: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (3:16). This was the devastating consequence God warned of, never his design for them.
This is the way of humanity outside of God. We are ashamed, and deep down we know we are not living the life we were made for. And in our shame and vulnerability, we naturally look out for ourselves. We blame, and we try to get ahead of others, regardless of who gets hurt. This continues today, and it is one of the things that makes marriage so hard. Marriage is created for unity, but we are terrible at it.
And yet, even in this darkest moment, God gives a hint that it will not stay this way. He promises that one day a descendant of the woman will crush the serpent’s head (3:15). He will be wounded in the fight, but he will win. God, through him, will make a way back home and restore the peace we were created for.
The Mystery Revealed
God was faithful to his promise. He sent his Son. Jesus lived among us in perfect obedience to God and in great love for people.
He loved us so much that he took on himself our shame, our guilt, and the punishment we deserved for turning away from God. He died in our place, and then he rose again, defeating our real enemies, sin, shame, and death. Because of him, we are washed clean and made holy, so that we can live with God. Today he reigns. On the throne of the cosmos and history sits the perfect human being who loves us completely, and he keeps changing us into who God created us to be: to be like him.
This good news changes everything. We are welcomed into a new relationship with God and given a new identity, so we can live with hope, peace, joy, and love. We are not defined by our shame and guilt, but by our unity with Christ. And the gospel changes all our relationships.
That is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 5. Because of what God has done, we are to walk in a new way, unlike our ancestors outside the garden, empowered by the Spirit of Jesus in a new way of love and of “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). The instructions for the household grow out of mutual submission.
This was a countercultural picture of the household. The household rules of the Greco-Roman world told the husband how to rule. Paul speaks to wives directly, as people responsible before God, and he never tells husbands to rule. He tells them to love: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). Genesis 3 left us with a struggle over who is on top. Ephesians 5 answers it with submission and sacrificial love.
Paul pictures husband and wife living in complete unity, as if one body, each helping the other become what God created them to be. He keeps the language of “head” and “body”: the husband is head of the wife “even as Christ is the head of the church, his body” (5:23), and what Christ the head does is give himself up for her. Whatever distinct callings a husband and wife have, they serve their unity.
And then Paul says something startling. He quotes Genesis 2:24, and then adds:
“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:32)
In Ephesians, a “mystery” means God’s great plan, hidden for a long time and now revealed, “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:9–10). It is the gospel! God is uniting a people to himself, one body in Christ under his good rule. And in Ephesians 5 Paul names the mystery specifically: Christ and his bride, the church, united as one. A wedding, it turns out, is that gospel in miniature. I love mysteries, and this is the most beautiful one ever written.
So here is the answer to our question. A wedding stood at the center of creation because, from the very beginning, marriage was meant to be a picture of Christ’s love for his church, and of God’s deepest desire for all humanity. God knew we needed a reminder and a vision of this, so he put it into one of the most important days of our lives. Tim Keller points to “two of the most basic teachings by the Bible on marriage—that it has been instituted by God and that marriage was designed to be a reflection of the saving love of God for us in Jesus Christ. That is why the gospel helps us to understand marriage and marriage helps us to understand the gospel.”
The True Bridegroom
With that mystery in mind, go back to the garden. The first wedding looks fuller now. Seen through Christ, through whom and for whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16), it was telling us about God’s creation, but it was also pointing forward to what God would do in Christ.
Remember the man who was put into a deep sleep, and his side that was opened so that a bride could be formed? Jesus fell into the sleep of death. “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear” (John 19:34). And from his death a new people was born: his bride, the church, all who belong to him, love him, and follow him. Paul doesn’t make this connection himself, but the church has long seen it. Augustine put it this way: “Adam sleeps, that Eve may be formed; Christ dies, that the Church may be formed.”
Remember the groom’s love poem, “This at last is bone of my bones”? In a sense, this is what Christ says of his people. He looks at us with joy and says: “At last! You are mine. I am not ashamed of you. I have shown you my love: I died for you.” Isaiah saw it long before: “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:5).
Remember the vows, “leave and hold fast”? Jesus has made a covenant with us too: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). He chose us, redeemed us, and made us ready for himself. In this covenant he became one with us – he became human so that we could know him and be united to him. United to him, we leave our old ties and identities behind, and we belong to him. We are a new creation.
Remember “naked and not ashamed”? In Christ we can be fully known and fully loved again. Christ doesn’t look at his bride and keep a record of her past. He doesn’t say, “Clean yourself up, and then I’ll love you.” He loves her first, and his love is what makes her clean. He has cleansed her, he keeps transforming her, and one day he will present her “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27).
But it gets even better. Remember Adam, standing silent, then blaming, saying the
whole reason it all went wrong was the woman? Jesus is the reverse.
He didn’t stand by; he stepped in to protect. He didn’t blame; he took the blame.
He defeated evil instead of giving in to it. And as the head, he gives himself as a servant, and he welcomes everyone who wants to be united to him.
Christ is the true and better Bridegroom.
He is the one who truly holds fast. He is faithful, and he keeps his promise even when his bride fails. Our unity with him rests on his choice and his love, not on our goodness.
What a great mystery, and it changes everything. The way of Jesus is to serve and sacrifice, to seek the good of the other above our own advantage, to protect the other, and to help each other become who we were meant to be: glorious, shining, clean images of God. This is what Christ is inviting us into.
Listen again to how Paul ends: “Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (5:33). These are distinct emphases, but they rest on what Paul has already asked of every believer: to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (5:2), and to “submit to one another” (5:21). For the husband, a love that gives itself away, like Christ. For the wife, respect, which is not silence or passivity, and not a lack of influence. It echoes the helper of Genesis 2: an active partner, bringing her gifts and strength to the calling they share.
This is a high calling. It is not easy. But it is beautiful.
Perspective, Vision, and Help
What does this mean for those who are married, and for anyone preparing for marriage?
Perspective: what marriage is. Marriage is a coming together and becoming a new creation of God, marked by love, submission, and unity. It is bigger and more beautiful than we ever imagined. And because it is so important, it is not easy.
It is a covenant, not a contract. A contract says, “I’ll keep my part as long as you keep yours.” A covenant says, “I bind myself to you, whatever comes.” A contract protects me; a covenant gives me away. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a wedding sermon he wrote from prison, said that “love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God,” and so “it is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”
From your wedding day on, you are no longer “you” and “me,” but “we.” Keep this perspective before you. Remember, it is not about you. Choose to live it, every day.
Vision: what marriage is for. Its purpose is not the way of the world, which asks, “How will this help me? What can I get from this?” Marriage is not expecting the other person to fulfill all your hopes. It is not “you complete me.” A couple is united to help one another live out the image of God more fully in the world, to grow as disciples, and to fulfill the unique mission God has for them.
My wife helps me with this every day. When I lose perspective or become self-focused, she is the first to help me look to Jesus. And we have noticed something over the years: on the days I feel hopeless, she is encouraged, and when she loses hope, I often have a word to keep her going. God has been kind in not letting us both fall into despair at the same time.
Marriage is a school, where you learn every day to become more like Christ: to love, to serve, to show grace, and to depend on God, with his love as both the pattern and the source.
Help: how marriage is lived. The only way to live this is by looking together to the true Bridegroom, the head. As a couple looks to him together, he helps them love and serve one another.
My own marriage is not perfect, and I often see the way of Adam poking its head out. In our arguments I tend to go silent. I go into self-protection mode and distance myself. If I stay there long, I lose perspective, and I can start to blame. My wife shows great love here. She knows this about me, so she gives me some space, but she doesn’t let me stay away for long. She starts the conversation when I don’t know what to say, and she helps me know I am welcome to talk. In those moments she loves me as God loves us: she doesn’t leave me in my hiding, and she makes it safe to come out. This is not from her own strength and it is not easy, but hidden in Christ and formed by Christ, she is able to love and serve me.
When you see in yourselves the way of Adam and of this world, the message is not “try harder.” The message is: come to the faithful one. You are united to him, the true head, and he is the one who changes us. Effort still matters, but the source is elsewhere. Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God led to disunity with each other. The reverse is also true, though never automatically. United with God, looking to how perfectly he loves us, and making him the source of everything instead of expecting the other person to meet every need, we can live in him, with radical unity and sacrifice for each other.
This is what a couple needs most, and it is what the world needs from them: two people looking to Jesus, knowing his love, so that they can truly love and serve one another.
For Everyone
There is a message here for everyone, not only for those getting married.
None of this means that everyone needs to marry, or that a good marriage will be free of struggle and failure. Paul’s point is bigger. The love, submission, and unity he describes are for every follower of Jesus, married or not (5:2, 21). They are hard for all of us, and the only way any of us can live them is the way Paul never tires of repeating: “in him.”
Paul’s other point is that every marriage is a story pointing to the story. When we see two people become one, we are being given a hint of what God is doing in history: uniting a people to his Son in love. Perhaps that is why we love these stories so much. Deep down, we know we belong to a bigger story, and that it ends with a wedding.
Every wedding is a picture, for all of us, of what God intends: that every one of us would know the love of Christ and be united to him.
If this is something you know and love, may every wedding be a true celebration for you, and a reminder of God’s love and grace. If it is something you have never heard before, ask someone who follows Jesus why they do. A wedding day can be a day of joy, and of salvation, because that is the mystery God planted in it from the very beginning.
The Garden Restored
We began in a garden, with a wedding that showed us a mystery. And the whole story the Bible tells ends back in a garden, with a great wedding celebration:
“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 19:7)
The Bible opens and closes with a wedding and a garden (21:2; 22:1–2). Adam failed his bride in the first garden. The true and better Bridegroom never fails his, and in the last garden he and his Bride are finally together, in perfect and unending unity. Truly a new creation. What was lost in the garden will be restored: fully known and fully loved, and never ashamed again.
Every wedding we celebrate today is only a rehearsal for the real thing: the day when we will live in unity, unashamed, and fully loved.
FOR REFLECTION
1. What in this story stirs questions, excitement, or hope for you? How can you live
with hope for what God will do in his Son?
2. Where do you see the “way of Adam” (staying silent, blaming, protecting yourself)
in your own relationships?
3. Christ loves his bride first, and his love is what makes her clean. How does that
change the way you come to him with your failures?
4. Whether you are married or single, what would it look like this week to live “in
him” instead of simply trying harder?
