of Genesis 3:16 is correct, then we would expect to find in the New
Testament a reversal of this curse, an undoing of the wife’s hostile or
aggressive impulses against her husband and the husband’s response
of harsh rule over his wife. In fact, that is exactly what we find.
Colossians 3:18-19 states, “Wives, be subject to your husbands,as is fitting
in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives,and do not be harsh with them.”
This command is an undoing of the impulse to oppose (Hebrew
teshûqåh) and the harsh rule (Hebrew måshal) that God imposed at the
curse.
In the New Testament God reestablished the beauty of the rela-
tionship between Adam and Eve that existed from the moment they
were created. Eve was subject to Adam as the head of the family. Adam
loved his wife and was not harsh with her in his leadership. That is
the pattern that Paul commands husbands and wives to follow.^24
- The mystery.Marriage from the beginning of creation was a
picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. When the
apostle Paul wishes to speak of the relationship between husband
and wife, he does not look back to any sections of the Old Testament
telling about the situation after sin came into the world. Rather, he
looks all the way back to Genesis 2, prior to the Fall, and uses that
creation order to speak of marriage: “‘For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh’ [quoted from Gen. 2:24]. This mystery is a
profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church”
(Eph. 5:31-32).
A “mystery” in Paul’s writing is something that was understood
only very faintly if at all in the Old Testament but is now made
clearer in the New Testament. Here Paul makes clear the meaning
of the “mystery” of marriage as God created it in the Garden of
Eden. Paul is saying that the “mystery” of Adam and Eve, the mean-
ing that was not previously understood, was that marriage “refers to
Christ and the church.” In other words, although Adam and Eve did
not know it, their relationship represented the relationship between
Christ and the church. They were created to represent that rela-
tionship, and that is what all marriages are supposed to do. In that
The Key Issues in the Manhood-Womanhood Controversy 43