A Suitable Helper

[dave c]

simpletruth #139f revisited 10DEC11 salicart@msn.com

For This Reason—Page Six: A Suitable Helper

by dave carter

Genesis 2:18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found (NIV).

At the conclusion of each of the first five days of Creation, Genesis tells us, And God saw that it was good. On the Sixth Day we are even told: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Ge 1:31; NIV). Then in Genesis 2:18 God says, "It is not good for the man to be alone." Throughout the Bible we are shown that God is Three Persons and that discernment, communica-tion, and a loving relationship are inherent characteristics within the Trinity. The first man/first Adam was incomplete in his sin-gularity—he was unable to fulfill the Divinely commissioned life and work for which he was created.

Regarding all the animals being brought to Adam as some aspect of God "fixing" the man’s solitary circumstance, I have heard and read a number of interesting comments. By encouraging him to view and to name each of the animals, God was demonstrat-ing Adam’s superiority and dominion over them. By viewing each of the animals individually, the man was able to come to the conclusion that what was missing in his life could not be found within the current state of created life. Finally, by seeing how each of the animals was paired as male and female, Adam was able to begin to understand the nature of who and what was ab-sent. While these comments are mostly speculative, we can be reasonably sure that the LORD God’s actions in Genesis 2:18-20 were to prepare the desires of Adam’s flesh, heart, and head for the suitable helper yet to be revealed. I do not believe that God flies by the seat of His pants in reactionary response to situations. I must believe that from the beginning God intended for Adam to have "an help meet" who was uniquely suitable for him—not as a possession, not as a plaything, and not as an afterthought; but as the intentional complement and completing half of his physical, mental, and emotional existence.

Returning to Genesis 1:26-28, we read: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (NIV). It was, and is, God’s plan from the earliest point of our origin to create us as male and female.

There are those who hold the opinion that the LORD God’s original plan for the ages has changed/changes as a reaction to man-kind’s physical, mental, and spiritual actions and attitudes. They teach that the need for a Messiah (a Christ/a Savior) only arose as Adam and Eve failed the test in Genesis Chapter Three—that the need for Jesus to be sacrificed as the perfect atonement for our sins was God’s "Plan B." At best this is a naïve misunderstanding of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, and at worst it is anti-Scriptural apostasy. Just as the LORD God intended from the beginning for Adam and Eve to be child-bearing husband and wife, God the Father intended from the first to send God the Son to Earth to become the crucified and resurrected Second Man/Last Adam, and through the power of God the Holy Spirit to create the Church as His perfected "helpmate."

Listen to the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:22-32: 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church (NIV).

We tend to think that the Bible talks about the Wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:6-9) as symbolic of our human institution of the family, but this is backwards thinking. God created us to be joined together physically, rationally, and spiritually through mar-riage as male and female in order that we would be a type, a foreshadowing, of Christ’s relationship to His Church as His Bride and Body—not the other way around. This is so that we are able to have some understanding of the nature and extent of His very great love for us. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. Amen.