Perhaps you read about our wedding night in the previous blog. If not, you can read all about it here. Adam and Eve’s wedding night wasn’t anything like ours. In the beginning, the Garden of Eden was full of beauty, trust, vulnerability, and confidence not only in God but in each other. Fear, shame and self-hatred hadn’t even entered into Adam and Eve’s vocabulary much less their marriage! As lovers, they were naked and unashamed and felt perfectly free to enjoy the Lord and each other as He had designed.
A Journey Back to Eden
You might already know the story of how Adam and Eve were created, but we’d like to retell it briefly here. Adam was created first. He walked and talked with God every day, yet something seemed to be missing. God identified what it was when he acknowledged that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone:
“God said it’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion (someone suitable for him-NASB). So God formed from the dirt of the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he would name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals; but he didn’t find a suitable companion. (Gen 2:18-25, The Message).
What a fascinating journey Adam embarked on, starting with loneliness and moving through searching and into curiosity and ending with longing. Adam’s needs and desires were not satisfied immediately. He looked, but the right companion for him was nowhere to be found.
Adam Has Curiosity and Longing
Can you imagine Adam looking down at his penis before Eve was created and wondering what he was supposed to do with it? We’re sure he figured it out after watching the animal’s mate and create new life (and his own urges must have clued him in as well), but where was his mate? Where was the one who was like him but different too? The persons of the Trinity complement one another and they’re all God and exist at the same level, but they’re different too. Even the animals complemented one another through their same species. Likewise, Adam longed for a companion who wasn’t above or beneath him but next to him, someone he could love and partner with through lovemaking and bring forth new life.
Adam wasn’t sinful or perverted because he had these desires. In fact, God walked and talked with Adam every day with deep intimacy, and yet God still told him that it wasn’t good for him to be alone. God was the one who placed those desires in Adam. More importantly, God had a plan to satisfy those desires:
“God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. The Man said, ‘Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man. Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.’ The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame” (Gen 2:18-25, The Message).
The First Marriage
Imagine the joy in Adam’s heart (and body!) when he woke up and saw his beautiful gift, Eve! Besides being overwhelmed with her beauty, perhaps it crossed his mind that he could now join with God in creating a new life that he could love and protect. Adam stepped close to Eve and touched her soft skin, noticing immediately that she was like him, but oh so deliciously different at the same time!
How Eve must have enjoyed Adam’s fascination with her body as she experienced powerful new sensations at his slightest touch. She followed her own urge to trace his unfamiliar shape with her lips and hands. Their touches grew more intimate. Most likely, they made love right there in front of the “Author of love” with His complete blessing. They became “one flesh:” knowing and becoming fully known in the process. The first marriage!
Fig Leaves Off, Sex Without Shame
Adam never wondered if he was “over-sexualized” just because of his needs and desires. He didn’t worry about the size of his penis or its functioning. He never felt rejected because his performance wasn’t “perfect” (Eve certainly wasn’t comparing him to other guys or complaining!)
And Eve pranced around the garden naked in all her glory and never worried about her weight or beauty. She never entertained the horrible thought that Adam might abandon her or have a fling with a hotter, younger woman. She wasn’t anxious about whether or not she would achieve orgasm the next time they had sex.
They were flawless, their lovemaking ecstatic every single time. Who needed fig leaves? There was no reason to hide. They celebrated their ongoing discovery, delight, and trust in each other and in God.
Wow! This virgin sex is really powerful stuff. No wonder it’s so feared and opposed!
Your Sexuality Has an Enemy
Then one perfectly gorgeous day, trouble slithered into the Garden. Satan, targeted the innocent intimacy that disgusted him so much that it made his skin crawl, and right then and there he decided to tempt Eve into illicit knowledge, and Adam into idolatry and blame. Satan began his wicked attack by lying to Eve. At Satan’s prompting, she stopped trusting God’s loving heart toward her and started believing He was withholding something good from her.
Scripture tells us that Adam stood right there next to her and never said a word to dissuade her or defend God. He didn’t speak up or protect his wife, but instead, at that moment when he was supposed to move in with fierce protectiveness, he became silent and apathetic and made Eve an idol of worship. Of course, we don’t know this for sure, but drawing conclusions based on the struggles of every man since Eden, we believe Adam was silent because he had begun to idolize sex, pleasure and the female form. He chose Eve over God.
Truly, as sin entered Eden, we begin to see the changes immediately as Adam and Eve go hunting for fig leaves. And what did they do with them? They hid their genitals that represented their sexuality and their sexual identity as male and female that were created in the image of God.
Afraid, Naked or Exposed, So I Hid!
In the cool of the evening when they’d take their walks God calls for Adam, but Adam is hiding. When God asks why, Adam says, “I was afraid because I was naked (or exposed), and so I hid.” And that, my friends, has been the core of our problems ever since! We’re afraid of being exposed so we find ways of coping apart from God to protect ourselves. It might be looking at pornography, it might be control, it might be playing the victim, but they are all strategies to protect ourselves apart from God.
Next Adam blames God for giving him that wretched woman, and then Eve to try to shift the blame away from him. Yes, Adam became a weak man in that very moment! We immediately see that the innocent intimacy they once shared (virgin sex) was gone. Satan had accomplished his goal.
The First Blood Sacrifice
Right then and there the first blood sacrifice for sin took place. Animals were killed, and their skins given to Adam and Eve to cover their shame (which, by the way, foreshadows Jesus coming to earth to give Himself up as a living sacrifice for our sins). How traumatic this bloodshed must have been for Adam and Eve!
We’ve often wondered if, in the Garden, the animals talked on a regular basis to Adam and Eve. After all, the serpent spoke to Eve as if it were completely natural! There was also no animosity. The lion wasn’t ferocious and the lamb lay peacefully next to him. Adam and Eve must have felt such grief that the animals they once talked with and enjoyed were killed, sacrificing their lives and their skins so that the shame of Adam and Eve could be covered. Their new wardrobe was a daily reminder to the grief-stricken couple of what had been lost to them forever.
I Want the Lord to Redeem My Sexuality
Perhaps you are longing to have the Lord redeem your sexuality? If so, read about our online video courses “Divine Desire-Engaged or Married Edition” here.
You can also read more about the following topics on our upcoming blogs:
- Why’d the Trinity Create sex in the First Place
- The redemptive power of the Shekinah Glory
- Have Sex Like a Virgin-Defining “virgin sex”: true intimacy that reclaims the purity Adam and Eve experienced through Christ’s finished work on the cross
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