Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Happy 2025!

This past year was a very good one for Sunday Morning Greek Blog and my own prospects as well. I finished the year with over 49,000 views in over 180 countries (or at least, 180 countries where people were getting their VPN link from), nearly double the 25,000+ I had in 2023. A few years ago, I started posting my sermon audio files along with my sermon text for the messages I preached at Mount View Presbyterian Church. I was three short of 3,600 sermon audio file downloads in 2024. This has been a great encouragement for Mount View’s small congregation to know that their preaching ministry is reaching around the world. I preached the last 10 Sundays of 2024 there and am taking a well-deserved break with a road trip with my daughter to get her back home to SA.

I also ended the year back in the classroom as well. I taught a Biblical Interpretation course for Crown College’s extension program in Omaha at the Christ Community Church campus. It was good to be back in the classroom again, as I felt completely at home in that setting. Crown College is a Christian Missionary Alliance school based in St. Bonifacius, MN.

For the past three years (has it been that long?) now, our Men’s Group at StoneBridge has been reading through the One Year Chronological Bible. They started when I’d taken a short sabbatical from the group after having a few surgeries to get a small but mildly invasive malignant glomus tumor removed from my leg in early 2022. They had started in the New Testament and only read together on Saturdays, so it’s taken this long to make it to the Christmas Eve readings last week. I decided it would be a good idea for me to read the Bible through in a year again, so I started at the Beginning, and I was surprised by something almost immediately in Genesis 2 that I’d like to share with you here.

I was reading Genesis 2 when it struck me what the phrase “they will become one flesh” was referring to. It was so obvious as to slap me in the face and cause me a bit of personal embarrassment that I hadn’t noticed it before, and I’ve read that several times. In 2:21, we read that God caused Adam to go to sleep and basically performed surgery on him to remove a rib and fashion the woman out of it. Was Adam sore after that, or could he at least sense that something was missing? The text isn’t clear, but then, that’s not the point. When Adam sees the woman, he’s so elated he crafts the world’s first love song in vs. 23:

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.^[1]

In vs. 24, we have the summary statement where the profound point is made: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”^[2] In other words, when Adam “unites” with his wife, Eve, Adam’s missing part “completes” the imago dei of mankind from Genesis 1:28, and in a more personal sense, the woman “completes” the man. More on that later.

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.^[3]

Biology teaches us that it is the man’s “donation” in the reproductive process that ultimately determines the gender (male or female; all other manifestations purported by fallen humans are smoke and mirrors) of the child. Now I could get all sentimental about the woman being taken from the man’s side and being an “equal helper,” and I DO believe that is the case, but I’m looking more at the science of the matter. If God had created woman first, theoretically he could not have taken a rib out of the woman’s side to create a male because she would not have the genetic makeup to provide the male Y sex cell.

By design, then, the male had to come first. Then God miraculously and immaculately created the woman for, in part, the ability to perpetuate the human race. This is not to sell short woman’s other gifts she brings to the relationship, like companionship, nurturing, and emotional and physical support. Nor does this sell short the man’s contribution, as indicated after the fall, of hard labor and toil to provide food for his family and protect them from danger. The relationship ideally is one that is mutually beneficial for both partners.

We find an excellent summary from Paul of this relationship in 1 Corinthians 7:3–5:

³ The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. ⁵ Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.^[4]

Modern studies suggest that the main thing a woman needs from a relationship is a sense of security, consistent with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The main thing a man needs is a source of intimacy, which can also be a sense of security and acceptedness, as he doesn’t get that from other men, especially in a competitive workplace.

I do want to say a word here about celibacy, because one of my good friends has never been married. Paul himself was apparently celibate, as he points out a couple verses later in 1 Corinthians 7:

⁷ I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.^[5]

Paul strongly suggests here that celibacy is a gift. Given the discussion on the Genesis passage then, I would argue that this “gift” is a grace God grants to those who find their lives complete already without a spouse. It’s not our place to judge the motivations of a person who feels that completeness. Paul does go on to say later in 1 Corinthians 7 that the unmarried are able to focus on serving and honoring the Lord; their attention isn’t divided. It is a great gift indeed!

And so concludes my quick thought this third day of the new year. I pray that you all will have a blessed new year and will have the strength of will and the courage to move forward with whatever positive resolutions you’ve made for yourself. May the peace of Christ go with you all. Amen.

For further study on divinely appointed marriage responsibilities, see also the last half of Ephesians 5.

Scott Stocking

My opinions are my own.

---

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.