Genesis 3, “Sin Enters Marriage…”

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves waist coverings. (Genesis 3:6-7)

Theology of Marriage:

After God created man and woman to live in a covenant marriage with one another in the garden of Eden, everything was good. They enjoyed fellowship and love with each other, and they also enjoyed fellowship and love with God. God intended that this would be a three-way relationship where Adam and Eve would relate to each other as lovers and spouses, where they would relate to God as individual followers of God, and where they would relate to God as a couple (one flesh). This triune relationship between God, husband, and wife was holy and it reflected God’s glory. This is of course until Satan entered the serpent and tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God. Once they sinned against God, then everything changed; the image of God in them was marred, death entered the world, and their relationship with God and with each other now became tainted by sin. Today, because of Christ, we can be restored to a right relationship with God and with our spouse, but this issue of sin is something that couples now have to battle with and we must build our marriages under the Lordship of Christ.

• Satan realized that he could not directly attack God because he is only a fallen angel and God is all-powerful. So, he craftily chose to attack God’s creation, man and woman, and he attacked them at the point of their marriage relationship. This is something he continues to do today. The spiritual battle for this world happens in the family and in the church. If our families stand against Satan then the church will stand against him, and he knows this.
• Notice that the Devil attacked the family structure. First, he went to Eve and tempted her first. This was not because she was weaker, but because he was intentionally bypassing the family structure with Adam as the head of the home. He was tempting Eve to not only eat the fruit that looked delicious but also to assert her own “authority” by disobeying God and bypassing the leadership of her husband. She saw the fruit as an opportunity to be equal with God and her pride led her to sin. Her conversation with the serpent should have been one of pointing back to her husband and telling the Devil that she was under Adam’s authority and committed to obeying her husband as the spiritual leader of their family.
• Adam is at an even greater fault than Eve. He was not in a distant part of the garden during the temptation, but he was actually “with her.” He listened to their conversation and he allowed his wife to be tempted and fall. Then after her sin, he followed her and committed the very same error. As the head of his family, he had been tasked with teaching her the word of God and protecting her from error. Yet, if you notice from 2:16-18, Eve was actually created after Adam received the commandment to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was Adam’s responsibility to teach his wife and help her know how to please God. However, 3:3 shows us that Eve was a bit confused by the commandment and she had even added to the word of God by saying they could not “touch” the tree. As the head of the home, Adam shares the blame for Eve’s confusion with God’s word and he also shares the blame for not intervening when she made her fatal choice. Sin comes to all of us through the line of Adam (not Eve). Both Adam and Eve sinned against God and now everyone who is born in the line of Adam (everyone in the world) is born a sinner.
• This sin, unfortunately, affects every area of our lives, including our marriages. We must be especially careful to resist sin and live under the Lordship of Christ. The rest of chapter 3 explains the curses that fell on the creation and on Adam and Eve as a result of their sin. Today, we still bear that curse and we see the world suffering because of the entrance of sin into the very first marriage. Much like Adam and Eve we see husbands and wives playing the “blame game,” where Adam blames his wife and God, she blames the snake, etc. We see Eve is cursed to experience pain in childbirth and be bitter with Adam’s leadership in the home (see vs. 3:16). These results of sin are continuing in our marriages today and only Jesus can deliver us from sin and make our homes like they were intended to be before sin entered the world.