"The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.' Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field." Genesis 2:15, 18-20.
When I began to think about who Eve was, I asked myself the question: "Was she a mere afterthought, in God's plan for creation?" This question was of inifinite importance to me, because it would define my purpose as a woman.
In this passage, we see that God brought all of creation before the first man and instructed Adam to give everything a name. Adam had to evaluate the essence of each creation, to give it name according to it's nature. I'm not sure how long it took Adam to observe all of creation, but when he was finished, he must have made an educated and significant discovery: there was not one creature on the face of the earth suited by its nature for him to relate to - no creature shared the image of the living God. Verse 20 says,
"But for Adam, no suitable helper was found". During this time, the world was perfect - untouched and unblemished by evil and sin; it existed exactly as God intended it to be. Yet,
something was missing.
In "Captivating", Stasi Elderedge casts an incredible image of who Eve was, at her time of creation:
"She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch. Step to a window, ladies, if you can. Better still, find some place with a view. Look out across the earth and say to yourselves, 'The whole, vast world is incomplete without me.' Woman is the crown of creation - and she, too, bears the image of God, but in a way only the feminine can speak. God wanted to reveal something about himself, so he gave us Eve."
This truth helps me see that Eve was never an afterthought in His design for Creation. He had always intended to create her,
but until Adam recognized his great, righteous, and unsinful need for her, God held off giving her to him. If Adam had never known to what capacity he was alone, he would have never been able to cry out, in thanksgiving to God:
"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" (Genesis 2:23). He would have never so thoroughly recognized her as the precious, strong, perfect, and
infinitely necessary match for him that she was.
So, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24). And, in the New Testament, Jesus re-established the importance of marriage by saying:
"Haven't you read, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God had joined together, let no man separate." Matthew 19:4-6.
Mankind has been programmed with a capacity to not only be in intimate relationship with God, but has been given a divinely inspired and established right to be in intimate relationship with one another.
So, cumulatively, I think that both Adam and Eve were created to each represent specific aspects of God's glorious personhood, and to thus recognize that their union creates a tangible picture of His beautiful image - there would be no Adam without Eve, and no Eve without Adam.
Now, how this defines my purpose as a woman, I have yet to discover (lol), but I love thinking about Eve!
