Genesis 3:1-19
Everyone loves and romanticises a road trip. The open road, the fun times with a friend, the music and laughter. Road trips are great, until that one song changes the tempo, until you get a bit tired, until the conversation drags; then it jbecomes a drive–the road trip got a bit too long. We are changing lanes this week into a new series, but it’s designed to be more of a sequel series from the Songs to now look at a more practical approach to relationships today. We’re moving past Cinderella’s “happily ever after”, past the bride’s wonderful reuniting with her man to the days after, when the phase of new love has worn off and the road trip of life gets too long.
This is where the crazy cycle begins – the one trap that seems to befall every relationship at one time or another. The crazy cycle looks like this: a husband looks to have needs met from wife, but ends up feeling disrespected for some reason and thus decides disengage and go hide away, which causes the wife feel unloved and abandoned, so she steps into his role because he’s not there. He feels unimportant and she feels unloved and that cycle repeats until these two people who got married with rose glasses all of a sudden find each other the enemy. It seems like with every turn, something leads you right back in that crazy cycle. You are trying to communicate properly to your spouse, but they are not hearing what you are sending. We’ve all been there. All married people have experienced this cycle at some point because we are all broken people who are trying to figure out how to live with a person that is really nothing like you: men and women are not the same!
We, however, both are painfully broken: sin has so distorted us from who we were originally designed to be that we don’t even recognize each other anymore (let alone ourselves)! And therein lies the problem: how am I supposed to break the crazy cycle and live & communicate with a spouse if I am stuck in a broken identity? Only by having a healthy, restored identity does the crazy cycle have any hope of turning into a healthy one. Let’s go back to the original conflict to see what happened and how the crazy cycle can be redeemed.
We Have Abandoned Our Identities
It is hilarious how seemingly all relationships at some point fall victim to the crazy cycle, which is exactly what we see Adam & Eve do here. Adam backed away and Eve stepped in. Adam abdicated his role given by God and became a silent observer, content to watch his wife step into his role and lead down this new path of disobedience. There is no blame to be heaped more on one side than another; that’s not the point. The point is that the very first sin shows something that still exists in all relationships: the temptation for men to abdicate and hide away from their responsibilities and for women to step into roles not designed for them. We have lost who we are; we have, as a species, abandoned our identities and have since been scrambling to find new ways to define ourselves. Consider all the heartache in this world tied to identity: gender and sexuality confusion, marital crises around every corner, and a growing inability to communicate with each other which leads to further isolation, withdrawal, and abandonment. The cycle repeats.
Only in Christ Can Your Identity Be Restored
Thankfully, even as God dealt with this first conflict, He already had the plan and promised the answer that would finally and fully sort out the eternal battle of the sexes: Christ. V15, stuck right in the middle of the punishments God laid out to the three created beings involved in this altercation, is the first promise of the Christ, the rescuer who would defeat the serpent utterly and completely, thus restoring health to the world—and a way out of the crazy cycle. As v15 promises, the snake (sin) would attack and hurt the son of the woman (Jesus). This happened at the cross, but that was ultimately sin’s complete defeat; the victory of forgiveness. The goal here is not to define established roles between men and women, such as mowing vs the dishes – those are certainly not Biblical mandates, but there are some basic differences in our roles. Adam tills the garden to provide security for Eve; she brings others in and towards God through childbirth. This is how the Church works with Jesus—Eph 5:25-30. Jesus sacrificed on the cross lifts us up to draw attention towards God. Christ restores our identity as well as its mission-focused reflection.
Next Steps
When Christ is your focus, His work in you restores your identity as His in its proper place, allowing you to live in His plan and design (Billy’s change of identity to being mission-minded).
- Live in the victory of Christ and in submission to Him
- Seek counsel on the original role God gave to your gender and to you
- Pray for and support those who are working with you in this life
Road trips get long and winding, but they usually come around – maybe a new song or new scenery. The crazy cycle can break, but only through the restorative work of Christ. Let Him lead you to your true identity.
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