Why Did God Make Man First?

some thoughts on creation

Why did God create Adam first? Was God’s creation order a way to designate who should be the spiritual leaders? Is that how God designates who ought to lead?

Not too long ago, our church went through the first few chapters of Genesis. Our pastor explained how Genesis is not a scientific account of how God made the world. If we seek scientific answers from Genesis, we might come up with some strange answers. Genesis compels us to ask different questions.

Likewise, I think if we ask Genesis to tell us who ought to lead, we may come up with some goofy answers.

So what is the significance of how God created man and woman? Is there any meaning or symbolism behind the way God did it? I think the Bible says there is and I’d like to share three of those things here. 1) I think the way man and woman were made reveals something about God. 2) I think it also says something about the responsibility of those who have been given something first. 3) And I think it says something about goodness and unity.

1. What the Design of Men and Women Says About God:

Okay, this part is cool!

First, I think the unique way that God made man and woman mirrors how God saves us. The Genesis account explains how people of flesh are made. The gospels and Paul’s letters explain how people of God’s Spirit are made. Both the first Adam, and the second Adam, who is Christ, are creation accounts told in a certain order.

The Man of Flesh

Men of flesh are made of dust. God made them out of finite material, and they don’t have God’s Spirit in them. People of flesh make more people of flesh. When a man leaves his father and mother, clings to their wife, and becomes one flesh, he plants his seed of the flesh in the woman. The man is the driving force, so the speak. He starts the thing. The seed combines with the woman’s egg and grows a new life in the woman’s womb until the day arrives when she, in great pain, gives birth.

The Man of Spirit

Likewise, when God wanted to make sons and daughters of his spirit, he sent Jesus to provide the means by which fleshly humans may enter a union with Him and obtain the Spirit of God within themselves. This Spirit of God is like a seed that grows and grows in those who believe, i.e. the church. And now God’s growing children groan as in the pains of childbirth waiting for the day that we will be born anew.

Parallels!

Do you see the beautiful parallels this draws between humans making children and God making children? Man’s and woman’s bodies mirror how God transforms us from fleshly children to spirit-filled children of God. Just as man is the driving force to make babies of flesh, God sending Jesus to earth was the driving force to make children of the spirit. The first man of dust sowed seeds of the flesh. The second man with God’s Spirit sows seeds of the spirit. All people of flesh came from Adam, including Eve. And all people with God’s Spirit come from Jesus. See 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5.

Side note: I think this is one of the ways Paul uses the word “head” when describing Christ, Christ is the origin of a new family. Another way to say this might be to say that Christ was the original seed planter.

2. What the Creation Order Says About Responsibility

Secondly, I think man and woman’s creation order shows how those who are given something first are in charge of safeguarding that thing and passing it along to others.

Examples:

If someone gave a man five loaves of bread and three fish, he would be responsible for preserving that food—not letting it rot or be eaten by birds—and he would be responsible for sharing that food with those who have none.

If God gave a nation His divine revelation about His laws, that nation would be responsible for ensuring God’s laws weren’t corrupted and for passing those laws on to the world.

If God gave a man the Kingdom of Heaven within him, that man would be responsible for guarding the safe deposit within him and also sharing the Kingdom of Heaven with others.

If God made man with a metaphorical seed first, that man would be responsible for safeguarding his seed, ie, using it wisely, and passing that seed along to the woman, who was created without the seed.

Similarities:

Likewise, Adam was given God’s law about the forbidden fruit. He was to watch himself so that he didn’t sin, and he was responsible for passing that law along to Eve. This would’ve been an important message for the Israelites who were the original recipients of Genesis and who were about to receive God’s law and enter the Promise Land where people didn’t know God.

I think this is what Paul meant when he referenced the Genesis account in 1 Timothy 2:13. If you’d like to read an extensive explanation of this passage, click the link below.

In conclusion, the creation order tells us that those who are given something have a responsibility to guard and pass along what they have to others. Historically, the Jews have been given God’s law to guard and pass along to others. And, according to the gospels, both men and women were given the gospel to guard and pass along to the world.

Side Note: I suppose one might argue that God gave Eve to Adam for safekeeping, which doesn’t seem totally absurd. But I don’t think this is synonymous with saying that God gave women to men so that men could be their spiritual leaders or decision-makers or spiritual protectors.

1. The Genesis account doesn’t mention anything about Adam being Eve’s protector or leader. We see that Adam could’ve protected or helped Eve with the serpent, but that’s not because he was a man but because he had God’s word told directly to him. He had this advantage over Eve in being created first. The fact that men have a disconnectedness in their brains and superior strength makes them generally better at physical guardianship, but to say that spiritual protection is accomplished through man’s strength is to say brute force or following men is the solution to temptation and not the word of God.

2. If Adam was supposed to protect Eve from the devil’s lies, which would imply spiritual protection more than a physical one, God doesn’t say anything to Adam for failing to protect Eve when she eats the fruit. Rather, Adam gets busted for listening to his wife and disobeying God.

3. This message—men are women’s leaders or spiritual guardians—doesn’t seem like the message Genesis’ original audience most needed to hear. Genesis’ original audience was the Israelites receiving God’s law en route to the Promise Land. Rightly conveying God’s law to those without God’s law and resisting the influence of the Canaanites seem like more pertinent messages for the Israelites. These messages also coincide with Paul’s admonishment in 1 Timothy 2. Another possible Genesis message might’ve been a foreshadowing of what Israel would do in Canaan. Just like Adam listened to Eve and disobeyed God, the Israelites would listen to the Canaanites and disobey God.

4. When Paul references the creation order in 1 Timothy 2:9-15, he is giving instructions to the Ephesian women about how to learn, not to the men about how to be spiritual protectors. Paul’s instructions are for women to learn correct doctrine in quiet submissiveness from their husbands and to not to exercise forceful authority over their husbands in something relating to childbearing. Paul’s specific instructions to the men in 1 Timothy 2:8 are not, “Be the spiritual protectors in the church” or “Don’t let women handle false teachers” (although I do believe men and women are called to spiritually protect one another in unique ways). Pauls message for the Ephesian men is to pray instead of being angry and quarreling. 1 Timothy 2 doesn’t sound like the men are failing to step up and protect their wives, but rather that the wives aren’t submitting to their husband’s teaching. Again, if you want to read more about this, click the link. Sorry, that was a long side note.

3. What Creation Order Says About Goodness And Unity

Lastly, I think the creation order says something about goodness and unity. We know from Genesis 2 that man was naming the animals and doing God’s work before Eve was made. Despite man’s ability to do all this alone, God said it wasn’t good for man to be alone. He wasn’t in good order without an ally to do the work with him. Thus, Adam was made of dust first, and then Eve was made from Adam’s side.

From this creation account, we might falsely conclude that women are made of finer stuff than men. We might also conclude that men don’t need women to follow God’s laws and get their work done. But I think this would be false.

Rather, I think God is communicating three different things. (There’s probably more than three, but three is all I’ve discovered in scripture so far.) I think God is communicating:

1. It is not good for man to do God‘s work alone. And who man needs is not another man but woman. Gen 2:18

2. Woman is bone of man’s bone and flesh of his flesh, i.e. man’s body. Gen 2:23

3. And woman bring glory to men in a unique way. 1 Cor. 11:7-8

I’m not going to get into the 1 Cor. 11 passage here, but if you’re interested in reading about it, click on the link below and scroll down to the section that says Things About Veils. This passage really touches on the order God did things and what that says about who brings glory to whom.

Don’t Do It Alone

Anyway, Adam had the power and ability to do God‘s work alone, but it wasn’t good. God made men and women to be united in doing His work. This is what it means to be functioning properly as God intended. If any woman or man is in doubt about how they are to function, it is alongside one another, not in insisting they exercise power over one another.

Head and Body

The unique way that woman was made from man’s body is a visual illustration of what she is to him. Adam even says that woman is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Paul later calls man the head and woman the body in Ephesians 5.

Again, we could conclude all sorts of false things from this analogy—men make all the decisions and women do all the work; men are the brains and women are the heart; men are supposed to lead and women are to follow—but I don’t think this is what Paul or the creation account is trying to say.

Rather, I think Paul and Genesis are emphasizing that we are to love others as we love ourselves. We are to treat others as we would treat our own bodies. We are bone of one another’s bone and flesh of one another’s flesh. We are intimately connected.

Why didn’t Paul say that men and women are like two arms on a body? Why did Paul make men the head? Again, I think this reflects how Adam was the origin of a new family—Eve & all humanity came from Adam. Men are also the head in that they are the seed planters of new families—they give women the sperm. The Greeks even thought men’s heads produced sperm. As far as I understand it, head used as a metaphor like this did not mean leader but the origin of something.

For more about how the word “head” was used in the koine Greek, click on the link below and scroll down to the section that says And Now Interesting Things About Heads.

Treating someone like they are part of your own body means treating them like we would like to be treated. Thus, if women don’t want to be belittled, then we shouldn’t belittle men. If women don’t want their husbands to dominate them, then we shouldn’t dominate our husbands. If men don’t want women to use their womanly ways to override them, then men shouldn’t use their manly ways to override women. If men don’t want their wives to be the boss over them, then men shouldn’t insist that they are the boss of their wives. If wives don’t want their husbands to make martyrs of themselves, women shouldn’t make martyrs of themselves either.

It is only when men and women treat each other like they would like to be treated that they can be united as one body. When men and women see one another as allies walking shoulder to shoulder on this journey to Jesus, then we are walking as one body. That is very good.

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To read an alternative take on the Genesis 2 passage that I discovered after writing this blog, click the link below.