The Fall and Redemption of Marriage
Sin shattered the union between man and woman, but through Christ, God restores marriage to its original beauty and purpose.
God’s Design for Man and Woman
Last time, we considered how men, generally speaking, were intentionally designed by God to need a wife for companionship and help. Before God gave the first man, Adam, a wife, he said creation was not yet complete: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18).
This shouldn’t surprise us since our Creator is a relational God. The Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—came together, so to speak, to form Adam and his wife. In Genesis 1, God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). It’s as though God said, “We are relational, so let’s create a being in our image who is also relational. Let’s create man in need of a counterpart to love and cherish and depend on.”
So he did. But some of us might be tempted to look at God’s original design for husband and wife and think, That sounds really nice, but it doesn’t quite match the reality of my own marriage. That’s because the story doesn’t end with Adam rejoicing over his wife or God declaring, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
To see the whole picture, we have to keep reading. The creation story doesn’t conclude with Adam’s joy or even God’s pronouncement that all was “very good.” It ends with one more verse—one that prepares us for everything that follows in Scripture: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).
The Perfection of Marriage Before the Fall
After Adam was created, shown his need for a wife, and given Eve, we read, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).
As a child, that verse baffled me. I grew up in a very conservative, modest household. We hardly walked around the house without socks, let alone without clothes. The idea of a husband and wife seeing each other naked was foreign to me, and since I’ve only ever known a fallen world, I’ve only ever known a world that requires clothing.
Even as adults, we may find this verse a curious way to end the creation account. It’s the last word on God’s perfect world before the serpent appears and sin enters the story. Why include this detail? Why emphasize that they were naked and unashamed?
Because it perfectly summarizes life before sin, especially the marriage relationship. As you read through both the creation story and Adam’s fall, you’ll notice marriage stands at the center of the narrative. As marriage goes, so goes humanity, and vice versa.
This is why the church can never talk about marriage too much. It’s not one topic among many; it’s foundational to human civilization. By God’s design, marriage is at the heart of creation itself. It wasn’t until Adam and Eve were united in the covenant of marriage that God said his creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Only after their union could they fulfill the cultural mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
The Modern Assault on God’s Design
You’ve likely noticed the world’s growing assault on traditional marriage. Over the last several decades, our culture has steadily redefined what God established in the beginning.
Some say it began in the 1960s with the so-called “free love” movement—the idea that marriage and monogamous commitment were unnecessary. People believed they could gratify every desire without the constraints of covenant love. Eventually, monogamy came back into style, but marriage remained optional. Watch almost any television show from the 1990s and you’ll see the same pattern: two people fall in love, move in together, maybe even have children, and sometimes never marry at all.
Jump to the present day, and we’re not just neglecting God’s design; we’re distorting it in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.
Here’s one example. The New York Times recently published this story:
In 2021, Kira Benson, a violinist living in Seattle, knew it was time to get a divorce. Ending their two-year “lavender marriage” wasn’t an easy decision, but the musician had a supportive ally. “If you have to dump your ex-husband,” Mx. Benson said, “co-dump him with his mistress.”
The article continued:
Before the breakup, Mx. Benson, 27, who uses the pronoun they, checked in with their therapist, who said a divorce would be a “good choice.” Out of queer solidarity, they informed their husband’s “mistress”—this was kosher in Mx. Benson’s arrangement, which was not a legal marriage but a domestic partnership—about their shared partner’s troubling behavior. The night of the breakup, Mx. Benson and the mistress spent a cozy evening together.
It took me a few reads to untangle what was happening. In short, this woman—presumably—was in what she called a marriage, though it wasn’t legally one. Her “husband” had a mistress, which she accepted. Then, when things fell apart, both women left him together, with the therapist’s blessing.
If we tried to diagnose everything wrong with that story, where would we even start? On one level, it’s so absurd that it’s almost funny. On the other hand, it’s deeply tragic. It’s a snapshot of modern humanity’s spiritual lostness. People have become so disoriented that every principle in Genesis 1 and 2 has been forgotten. Marriage aside, we can hardly agree anymore on what a man or a woman is.
And this confusion doesn’t only come from fringe corners of culture. It’s championed by influential organizations and movements. Back in 2020, the Black Lives Matter organization published a statement of purpose that read, “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”
Even if we read that charitably, assuming they meant to emphasize community care, the opening phrase remains: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” That language was no accident. The statement continued, “We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” By heteronormative, they meant the belief that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl.
Many people rightly asked, “What does disrupting the nuclear family or promoting sexual confusion have to do with racial justice?” The answer, of course, is nothing. So why would an organization devoted to civil rights deliberately undermine the traditional family?
At one level, the motive is political. Many activists want to tear down Western civilization to rebuild it in their own image, and they know—correctly—that the surest way to destroy a society is to destroy its foundation: the God-ordained family. But behind that human agenda lies something far darker. Pull back the curtain, and you find Satan himself handing out dynamite, urging people to blow up the very institution God designed for blessing and stability.
But we’re getting ahead of the story.
The Serpent’s Strategy To Undermine Marriage
Genesis 2 ends with a picture of perfect harmony: “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Adam and Eve were fully exposed to one another—nothing hidden, nothing broken—and yet they felt no guilt or fear. There was no barrier between them, no tension or uneasiness, no need for self-protection. They were known entirely yet completely loved.
That kind of openness is something you and I have never experienced. Only in God’s perfect world could two people be fully exposed, even to their spouse, and feel no shame.
If you think, Well, my wife and I don’t keep secrets; I’m fully transparent with her, consider this: Does she know every thought that’s passed through your mind? Every wayward glance? Every small lie? Every hidden regret from before you met her? If we’re honest, we all have something to be ashamed of. But that wasn’t the case in the beginning. Adam and Eve were pure in heart, fully known, and still entirely accepted.
Then the serpent entered the story.
Genesis 3 begins, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). Into this perfect creation slithered the devil himself. He aimed to oppose God by destroying his image-bearers. If he could keep them from trusting and obeying their Creator, he would succeed in corrupting everything good. His chief weapon was deception. Scripture describes him as “more crafty than any other beast,” and Jesus later calls him “the father of lies” (John 8:44).
The serpent’s cunning appears not only in what he says but in whom he approaches. He doesn’t go to Adam, the head of the household. He goes to Eve. His goal is to subvert God’s created order and sow division in the very first marriage. In doing so, he attacks both the image of God and the structure God ordained for human flourishing.
The apostle Peter later describes the woman as “the weaker vessel,” not inferior but more vulnerable to deception, especially in this context (1 Peter 3:7). It’s possible that Eve received God’s command about the forbidden tree secondhand through Adam. The devil knew this. By approaching her directly, he bypassed Adam’s leadership and inverted the divine hierarchy within marriage.
Commentators differ on whether Adam was present for the serpent’s conversation with Eve. Some believe he stood silently by; others think he arrived later, when she handed him the fruit. Either way, the result is the same: the order of creation is reversed. The serpent tempts Eve, Eve leads Adam, and Adam follows her into sin. The head follows the helper, and the marriage God designed as the foundation of creation begins to crumble.
Adam’s Failure of Leadership
Genesis 3:6 tells us,
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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Whether Adam overheard the serpent’s words or arrived afterward, he was present when Eve ate and made no effort to intervene. He had been commanded to “work” and “keep” the garden, which included protecting what God had entrusted to him, especially his wife (Genesis 2:15). Yet he stood by in silence, allowing her to sin and then joining her in it.
We might wonder what Adam was thinking. Why did he let this happen? The Bible doesn’t give us a psychological profile of his decision. We can’t blame a sinful nature—he had none—and he wasn’t ignorant of God’s command. Paul writes plainly, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:14). He knew what he was doing.
So why did he do it? Richard Phillips, in The Masculine Mandate, suggests it was misplaced affection. John Calvin said something similar. Adam faced a choice between loyalty to God and loyalty to his wife, and he chose his wife. He made an idol of her. Perhaps he thought, I’m supposed to love my wife, so I’ll stand by her even in disobedience.
But as Paul later wrote, “[Love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Allowing a spouse to sin, or joining her in it, is not love. It’s idolatry. It’s choosing the gift over the Giver.
Whatever was going through Adam’s mind, he failed in his role as leader and protector. Instead of guiding and safeguarding his wife, he passively followed her into rebellion. We see no hesitation, no argument, no resistance—only silence and compliance.
Some have speculated that Adam sinned out of curiosity, wanting to know what he didn’t yet know. Others, as Phillips hints, think he wanted to avoid conflict. And that’s a temptation every husband understands. Conflict is unpleasant, and avoiding it often feels easier. But sometimes confrontation is necessary, especially when sin is at stake.
Before I got married, my brother-in-law gave me some advice. He told me that when disagreements arise, I should pause and ask, “Is this really important?” He said that 99.9 percent of the time, the answer is no. But for the 0.1 percent of the time when it is important, when the issue involves God’s truth or obedience, a husband must stand firm. Avoiding conflict is not always peacekeeping. Sometimes it’s abdication.
Adam’s silence was not humility. It was neglect. He let his wife walk into temptation unguarded, then followed her lead into sin. And from that moment, the created order within marriage, not to mention humanity, was shattered.
The Curse and Its Consequences
When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the consequences were immediate.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:7–13)
The contrast with the last verse of chapter 2 could not be sharper. Before sin, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. Now, for the first time, they see their nakedness and feel exposed. They rush to cover themselves with fig leaves and hide from God among the trees.
While their guilt before God is primary, notice also what happens between them. Shame enters their relationship. They cover themselves not only from God but from each other. The intimacy they once enjoyed—their complete openness and trust—is replaced by fear and concealment. When God confronts them, blame replaces love. Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent. The harmony of marriage collapses into self-preservation.
Adam, the head and protector, immediately throws his wife under the bus. The man who once sang, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” now says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit, and I ate.” (Genesis 2:23; 3:12). As Richard Phillips observes, Adam becomes “the first in a long line of male blame-shifters.”
The fall didn’t only alienate humanity from God; it alienated husband from wife. The serpent succeeded in his plan. By striking at the unity of marriage, he fractured the foundation of creation itself.
As marriage goes, so goes humanity.
Then come God’s judgments. Adam and Eve had already shattered their relationship; now God reveals the lasting consequences. Yet even here, before the curse fully unfolds, we see the first glimmer of hope.
God tells the serpent:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)
This verse—often called the protoevangelium, or “first gospel”—points to a Redeemer who would one day destroy the works of the devil. God shows mercy where he could have given only judgment. Though sin entered through a woman, redemption would also come through a woman’s offspring.
Adam seems to recognize this promise when he later names his wife Eve, meaning “life-giver” (Genesis 3:20). Paul echoes this idea when he writes, “The woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:14–15). Through the pain of childbirth, God would bring forth the One who restores life—Jesus Christ.
But pain would indeed be part of the curse. God tells Eve, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).
The Hebrew phrase here is debated. The ESV once rendered it, “Your desire shall be for your husband,” but even that can be misleading. The same word desire appears in Genesis 4:7, where God warns Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you.” In other words, Eve’s desire would not be affectionate but controlling—a desire to dominate or usurp.
Yet Adam’s headship would remain: “He shall rule over you.” The result is tension within marriage—a struggle between love and control, between leadership and resistance.
Matthew Henry captures it beautifully: “If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness.”
But now, because of sin, the marriage relationship is marred by conflict. To be clear, the curse is not prescriptive; it’s descriptive. God is explaining why husbands and wives experience such strain: because sin turned harmony into rivalry.
Next, God turns to Adam:
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17–19)
Notice that opening phrase: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife.” In other words, because you failed to lead her. Adam’s abdication of responsibility carries devastating consequences. Work becomes toil; creation itself turns against him. The ground that once yielded fruit with ease now demands sweat and struggle.
This curse also touches marriage. Work, which was meant to be a joy, becomes exhausting, consuming time and attention that should be shared with one’s family. The most common complaint I’ve heard from wives is that their husbands are too distracted by work or hobbies to give them meaningful time. And the most common complaint from husbands is that their wives demand too much of them. The tension Adam introduced continues to this day—husbands drawn to their labor, wives longing for attention, both frustrated by the other.
Sin fractured everything—our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, and even our sense of purpose in the world. Yet in the curse, God’s mercy remains. The covenant of marriage, though strained, endures. Adam and Eve leave the garden together. God does not dissolve their union; he sustains it. The road ahead will be hard, but grace still holds.
Hope in the Promise of Redemption
Even in judgment, God’s grace breaks through. Again, Genesis 3:15 offers a glimpse of redemption:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
In those words, God promises that one day the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. The enemy will be defeated by the very humanity he deceived. Instead of condemning Adam and Eve to immediate destruction, God gives hope. Though the curse remains, mercy reigns alongside it.
God’s grace appears again in verse 21: “And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” The fig leaves they sewed together were insufficient, so God himself provided a better covering. This is not only mercy but foreshadowing. To cover their shame, an animal’s life was taken. Innocent blood was shed so the guilty could be clothed. From the very beginning, God hinted at the cost of redemption.
And when the Lord drove them from the garden, he did not separate them. Adam walked out with his wife. Marriage—that is, the covenant God had instituted before the fall—endured after it. Though distorted and burdened by sin, the union still stood as a testimony to God’s faithfulness. He did not revoke his design; he began redeeming it.
In all of this, we see the pattern of grace that runs through the entire Bible. The curse is real, but it is not final. Even in the garden, God was already writing the story of salvation.
The Second Adam and the Redemption of Marriage
When we turn to the New Testament, we find Jesus Christ described as the second and better Adam. The parallel is deliberate. Paul writes, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).
Where Adam failed, Christ triumphed. Where Adam led his bride into sin, Christ laid down his life to save his.
The first Adam grasped at equality with God. The second Adam, though equal with God, “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8).
Adam blamed his wife to cover himself; Christ bore the blame of his bride to cover her with righteousness. As Paul writes in Ephesians 5: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her … so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:25–27).
This is the gospel pattern for every husband. “Love your wives, as Christ loved the church.” That command is impossible apart from grace, but because we are “in Christ,” the impossible becomes possible. The curse is being undone.
Through Christ, we are no longer slaves to the sinful patterns that entered the world through Adam. We are able, by the Spirit, to love as we should, forgive as we should, and protect the covenant God has given us. The gospel restores what sin destroyed. Husbands can now lead their wives in humility, not domination; wives can respond with willing trust rather than resistance. The hostility between the sexes, born in Genesis 3, begins to give way to harmony in Christ.
Paul reminds believers in Colossians 3:3, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Because our lives are hidden in him, we are free to live differently. He continues:
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12–14)
Remember how sin caused Adam to condemn his wife in order to cover his own sin? But now, forgiven and sanctified by God in Christ, a Christian man is able to have compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience toward his wife. Conscious of having been so wonderfully forgiven through Christ’s blood, I now have the ability to forgive others who sin or let me down, just as my wife now has forgiving grace for me.
He continues:
I do not have to wait until I fully understand my wife in order to love her. In Christ, I have no warrant to withhold my love until she changes according to my self-serving agenda. I am free in Christ, through the resources of God’s redeeming grace for me, to love my wife. Because God has forgiven me, I can truly forgive her. Because God has given to me, I can gladly give to her. With God’s compassion for me, I have compassion to give; with God’s grace, I can show grace. And with God’s Word dwelling in our relationship, my wife and I can grow in this grace so that we learn more and more to love one another while drawing more and more from the wells of God’s saving love for us.
In summary, though marriage was cursed through Adam’s sin, Christ has redeemed us, our relationships, and our marriages to his glory and praise. In Christ, what was broken is being made whole. The love Adam failed to give his bride, Jesus gives perfectly, and through his Spirit, he teaches every husband and wife to reflect that love until the day we join the great marriage supper of the Lamb.