husband and instructed him to do the same. Sensing that Eve had gotten away with it, Adam complied.
In a tragic role reversal, Eve led, Adam followed, and the world fell. Spiritual death, not a better life, immediately descended on Eden, and humanity's relationship with God was severed.
Along with this separation from God, gender wounds were also unleashed on Adam and Eve and on their posterity. Authentic manhood became mangled. The negligent and selfish passivity Adam displayed in the Garden now becomes the passivity of all men. Everywhere you look today, you see men take charge in sports, business, and politics. They are aggressive warriors when it comes to their personal pursuits.
But when it comes to social and spiritual responsibilities, passively standing there like the original Adam becomes more their norm. The wife waits for her man to lead at home, but after a while she falls into prodding him: “Let's go to church. Let's do something with the kids. What about our relationship? Where are we going in life?” His response is the same as Adam's was to Eve: “You decide. You lead. You take the responsibility. I'll watch.” It never fails that when I say things like these to a male audience, the men hang their heads because they know it's true. In the substantive things of life, social and spiritual, men are naturally passive. It's our inheritance from Adam.
Authentic womanhood also took a major hit in the Garden. Eve lost her feminine nobility when she fell into Satan's deception. And precisely as Adam's passivity still lives in men today, Eve's vulnerability to deception still carries on in all her daughters. In every generation women are enticed with the same forbidden fruit: to neglect, compromise, or abandon altogetherGod's core callings for what the world convincingly promises is better. If anything, the deceptive fruits of a modern world are more plentiful than ever before, and as a woman, you are naturally prone through Eve to take and eat. This is the inheritance Genesis says Eve leaves you—the tendency to believe that there is something better out there for you to pursue than what God has already prescribed. But it's all a painful lie.
The fall also created a new reality of woundedness between men and women. Life between the sexes is cursed and infected with personal agendas and power plays. Look at God's words to Eve in Genesis 3:16: “In pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (emphasis added).
You will miss the significance of this divine pronouncement if you don't stay with this verse word by word. Pay special attention to the two words I highlighted in italics. The “desire” God said Eve will now feel for her husband and the “rule” Adam will now exercise over her are both desperate and tragic. They are corruptions of God's original design of Adam as a caring head and Eve as a supportive helper. Because the first couple chose to abandon God's design for them, every future man-woman relationship will be undermined with difficulty. That includes yours and mine. These corruptions are at ground zero of the struggle we often refer to as the battle of the sexes.
For us to fully grasp what the “desire” of woman is, we need to look at Genesis 4:7, where this puzzling word is used again in a more revealing context. How it's used here helps us unlock its meaning in Genesis 3:16. Notice in chapter 4 that God was speaking to Cain, Adam and Eve's firstborn son, after the young man had developed a murderous attitude toward his younger brother, Abel. At this point God said in verse 7, “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well,sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (emphasis added).
Did you catch that? Here “desire” is clearly associated with the idea of control. God told Cain that sin sought to control him. That was its aim. And this
In a tragic role reversal, Eve led, Adam followed, and the world fell. Spiritual death, not a better life, immediately descended on Eden, and humanity's relationship with God was severed.
Along with this separation from God, gender wounds were also unleashed on Adam and Eve and on their posterity. Authentic manhood became mangled. The negligent and selfish passivity Adam displayed in the Garden now becomes the passivity of all men. Everywhere you look today, you see men take charge in sports, business, and politics. They are aggressive warriors when it comes to their personal pursuits.
But when it comes to social and spiritual responsibilities, passively standing there like the original Adam becomes more their norm. The wife waits for her man to lead at home, but after a while she falls into prodding him: “Let's go to church. Let's do something with the kids. What about our relationship? Where are we going in life?” His response is the same as Adam's was to Eve: “You decide. You lead. You take the responsibility. I'll watch.” It never fails that when I say things like these to a male audience, the men hang their heads because they know it's true. In the substantive things of life, social and spiritual, men are naturally passive. It's our inheritance from Adam.
Authentic womanhood also took a major hit in the Garden. Eve lost her feminine nobility when she fell into Satan's deception. And precisely as Adam's passivity still lives in men today, Eve's vulnerability to deception still carries on in all her daughters. In every generation women are enticed with the same forbidden fruit: to neglect, compromise, or abandon altogetherGod's core callings for what the world convincingly promises is better. If anything, the deceptive fruits of a modern world are more plentiful than ever before, and as a woman, you are naturally prone through Eve to take and eat. This is the inheritance Genesis says Eve leaves you—the tendency to believe that there is something better out there for you to pursue than what God has already prescribed. But it's all a painful lie.
The fall also created a new reality of woundedness between men and women. Life between the sexes is cursed and infected with personal agendas and power plays. Look at God's words to Eve in Genesis 3:16: “In pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (emphasis added).
You will miss the significance of this divine pronouncement if you don't stay with this verse word by word. Pay special attention to the two words I highlighted in italics. The “desire” God said Eve will now feel for her husband and the “rule” Adam will now exercise over her are both desperate and tragic. They are corruptions of God's original design of Adam as a caring head and Eve as a supportive helper. Because the first couple chose to abandon God's design for them, every future man-woman relationship will be undermined with difficulty. That includes yours and mine. These corruptions are at ground zero of the struggle we often refer to as the battle of the sexes.
For us to fully grasp what the “desire” of woman is, we need to look at Genesis 4:7, where this puzzling word is used again in a more revealing context. How it's used here helps us unlock its meaning in Genesis 3:16. Notice in chapter 4 that God was speaking to Cain, Adam and Eve's firstborn son, after the young man had developed a murderous attitude toward his younger brother, Abel. At this point God said in verse 7, “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well,sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (emphasis added).
Did you catch that? Here “desire” is clearly associated with the idea of control. God told Cain that sin sought to control him. That was its aim. And this
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