There is an old saying about love and relationships, “opposites attract”. The reason this saying exists is because it is true. God designed men and women differently and that difference attracts us to each other. Likewise, God designed everyone to have different personalities, traits, styles, and characteristics. Isn’t it interesting how different your spouse is from you? Think back to when you first met your spouse. Wasn’t it an exciting time for the both of you? Now think about what character traits that attracted you to your spouse. More than likely, your spouse had many opposite characteristics than you had.
Your relationship with your spouse may not be that drastically different, but more than likely, there are differences between the two of you. A husband may be a go-getter, that is passionate about everything, and driven to conquer the world. His wife may be a go-with-the-flow, relaxed, and compassionate person who enjoys quality time with her friends and loved ones. Another couple could have personalities where the wife is a very outgoing social butterfly who loves to be the center of attention while talking with everyone she sees. The husband could be an introverted thinker who is deep and thoughtful and feels like a fish out of water at parties.
While God designed you to be an individual, you by yourself are only part of the whole. That whole is God’s original design to be completed in marriage. Biblically, when a man and a woman become one flesh in marriage, they become the complete image of God. To understand this concept, we need to look back at creation in the book of Genesis.
“26Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:26-27 ESV
So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created Him; male and female He created them. When God made man, the Bible shows us that God made one man (Adam) in His image and likeness. When the Bible uses the words “us” and “our” it is referring to all three persons in the Triune God. Not just the image and likeness of God the Father, but also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When the Bible says the “image and likeness” it’s not just talking about how Adam physically looked but also his characteristics, personality, traits, etc.
After the creation of Adam, the Lord saw a problem because Adam was alone. All the animals God created had a mate but Adam did not and was alone. The Lord said that it was not good for man to be alone so the Lord created a helper for him. Now God could have created Eve in any way he wanted. He could have created Eve exactly the same way He created Adam (Genesis 2:7), from the dust of the earth and breathe life into her nostrils making her a living creature. But He didn’t.
God created everything, from the ground that He created. He created every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens from the ground. If God created Adam and everything else from the dust of the ground, one could suppose that God would have made Eve in the same fashion, from the ground. God did not create Eve the way He created the rest of creation. What God did was so intentional and deliberate that we cannot overlook it.
God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and took one of Adams ribs and made Eve from that rib. Other translations have other words for “made”. Made can be translated into: formed, built, or fashioned. This shows intentional design from the Lord in His creation. The fact that He took from Adam’s body to create Eve shows us great insight into why we become one flesh in marriage. Since man is the image of God, and God took a part of that image out of man to create woman, the image of God is now separated into two beings. Adam is now half of the image of God and Eve has become the other half of the image of God.
Since the one being was split in two, half of the characteristics, personality, and traits, are in Adam, and half are in Eve. Here is where we see the deliberate nature of God in marriage. Genesis 2:24 says the man and the woman shall become one flesh being joined together by God. God separated the image of God (Adam) when He created Eve, and now the image of God is brought back together when man and woman are married. Remember Jesus’s words in Mark 10:9 when he says that God joins man and woman together in marriage. So it is God who separated them and then joins them back together in marriage.
This illustrates how marriage between a husband and wife completes the image of God that was separated from the creation of Eve. All those differences that you see between you and your spouse now become more special because your spouse completes you as the image of God. In your marriage, you may begin to see how God brought you and your spouse together to form the complete image of God. Marriage between a husband and wife is the complete and whole image of God. Hopefully this gives you a new appreciation for your spouse and the institution of marriage. No matter who it is that you married, you are now joined together as man and wife and that marriage is the complete image of God. It is a gift that God has blessed you with.