Blueprints in the Beginning

“From the beginning it was not so.”

I’m convinced that one of the most important principles for reading the Word and living in the world can be found in the words from Jesus in Matthew 19.

In context, the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus in a contradiction by getting him on record either against the Scriptures or against popular sentiment. So they bring him a question they don’t think he can answer in Matthew 19:3: 

“Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 

Now, while there are good Christian debates to be had about divorce and remarriage, that’s not what this article is about. Instead, this article is about Jesus’ answer, specifically how he answers their question and where he directs their attention.

In response to their question about divorce, pay close attention to Jesus’ answer in Matthew 19:4–5:

“4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? “

Students of the Bible — and those with handy-dandy Bible cross-references — should instantly recognize where Jesus directs his opponents in his answer. He cites Genesis 1:27, which says:

“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”

What’s amazing is that right after alluding to this verse, Jesus engages in a bit of biblical-theological ju-jitsu and quotes right on the heels of Genesis 1:27 another part of Genesis, Genesis 2:24:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”

Here’s the first part of our principle: In the original context of Genesis 2, this therefore comes right after God introduces Eve to Adam and presides over their marriage. In other words, Adam and Eve’s marriage is the prototypical paradigm — the “Therefore” — of the institution of marriage, which God instituted — why “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

But notice what Jesus does in Matthew 19: he reads the “Therefore” in Genesis 2:24 as rooted in God’s creation of mankind as male and female! In other words, God made mankind “male and female” with marriage in mind! That’s the point of our two-ness. That’s the point of our differentiated-yet-complementary sexuality. Why are there two genders? Because of marriage! Why is marriage the union of two, one man and one woman? Because God made us male and female!

Here’s the deal. Anyone who tells you Jesus never addressed homosexuality is not reading their Bibles properly. While the Bible never records Jesus uttering the word “homosexuality,” he certainly addressed this sin by implication right here by presenting the God-created norm for human sexuality: God made us male and female for lifelong, unitive marriage. This is Jesus’ conclusion in Matthew 19:6:

So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Any deviation from this norm the Bible sums up with one word: porneia in Greek, which is often translated “sexual immorality.” Sexual immorality is anything that deviates from God’s original design for human sexuality in marriage, which includes both the heterosexual and homosexual variety.

But this encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees in Matthew 19 isn’t complete yet, and neither is the principle I want to highlight. The Pharisees were ready with a rebuttal. They want Jesus to look like a fool and contradict the Scriptures, so they reply in verse 7:

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 

Translated for our twenty-first century context, the Pharisees are basically telling Jesus, “What, you think you’re better than Moses?” Of course, the answer is yes. But Jesus also came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not to contradict them. Moses’s words are God’s Word, and as such they are Jesus, the Son of God, the Eternal Word’s words too. Jesus isn’t stumped. He inspired these words, after all. Before Moses was, He Is. But in his answer in Matthew 19:8, Jesus gives us an all-important, all-encompassing principle to live and learn by:

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

Don’t miss this. In response to their first question, Jesus directed his opponents to recall how it was in “the beginning,” in Genesis 1 and 2, when God first created the world. Importantly, this was before sin entered the world, which happens in Genesis 3. Genesis 1 and 2 record how the world was meant to be, how God designed it to be, which God called “good” and “very good.”

And this is what Jesus teaches us in his second response: sin introduced rebellion, and complications, and hardships, and hardness of heart, which must be regulated and restrained in a fallen world. That’s why God gave Moses those words which the Pharisees tried to throw in Jesus’ face. But from the beginning it was not so.

The implicit question embedded in Jesus’ response is this: What was it like in the beginning? Read Genesis 1 and 2 carefully, and you will see exactly how it was meant to be. Mankind created in God’s image, male and female, for procreative marriage and familial life, ruling as God’s vice-regents over all the earth.

Jesus rebukes the Pharisees with Moses’ words saying they were added because of the hardness of their hearts—because of the sinfulness of man. But from the beginning it was not so. 

Do you want to know how things ought to be? Do you want to strive for the way it should be? Do you want a paradigm for ethical living, for human sexuality? In other words, do you want to know what it’s all for? Do you want purpose? Do you want an aim, a goal in life?

Go back to the beginning with Jesus and find out how it was so, which is how it should be. Finally, we have the principle: God created the world with a specific design and purpose, including our maleness and femaleness. Study the form, the design, the origin, and you will find the purpose. And you do that by going back to the beginning with Jesus, to Genesis 1 and 2, because from the beginning it was so. 

Theologians have called this principle by variable names: Creation Order, Natural Law, Natural Morality. I like to call it common sense. If you want to know how something works, you read the owner’s manual and study the blueprint. Genesis 1 and 2 is our blueprint.

Note: For a group study that goes deeper into the biblical texts on male-female design and purpose, see this curriculum written by myself, Denny Burk, and David Closson published last year with Christian Focus: Male and Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, and Marriage. This eight-week study includes a free, optional video component with content from Rosaria Butterfield, Albert Mohler, H. B. Charles, Heath Lambert, and many other faithful Christian voices.