Contemporary culture in its more popular and scientific forms recognises that most crises at the human level (at least marriage and family) originate in a breakdown of communication between men and women. Enormous efforts are made to understand and solve male-female problems of communication. Christians are in a position to appreciate the truth of social, psychological, philosophical, political and scientific analyses but are not to be limited by them. We cannot accept, for instance, that men are really from Mars and women from Venus, that differences in brain physiology provide ultimate explanations of gender relationships, or that power, economic or otherwise, is the root cause of patterns of dominance and submission. These sorts of observations may be largely true of human make-up and behaviour but fail to provide an adequate framework for understanding the spiritual depths of humanity as male and female. The only sufficient perspective takes us back to the starting point of the story, the creation of humanity in the image of God. It is completed by a consideration of our joint destiny as men and women in Christ.
Communication in the Beginning
Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden with a vocation to ”multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). The early chapters of Genesis picture a level of communication able to sustain the unity and love of the first community within this call of God. The only recorded words of personal dialogue are Adam’s delight at the creation of Eve: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of man.” (Gen 2:23).What is unmistakable is that Adam takes the initiative under God to fully express himself as a person to Eve. His language is not clinical, detached, intellectual, abstract, or objective but fully personal. It is spoken from the heart, close to the place from which Eve was taken, and rings with tenderness, deep emotion and passion. It is a completely unguarded expression of intimacy and dependence. Eve is left with no doubt over what she means to her man, and that he needs her to complete his being. The next stage of the story will reverse all of this.
Communication Breakdown
“And Adam was not the one deceived, it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” (1 Tim 2:14). This text tells us that Adam bears the primary responsibility for the sin in the Garden of Eden. He is the one who first received the Word of God concerning the trees (Gen 2:16-17) and had the pleasure of initiating the relationship with Eve (Gen 2:23). He was in a position of knowledge and authority that was greater than hers. Despite this, he abandoned his God-given role in relation to his wife. As the serpent (which he named and exerted authority over, Gen 2:19-20) approached his wife he stood at her side in a position of silence and passivity (Gen 3:6). Spiritually, he left Eve naked and exposed. At this point, because of his failure to communicate the Word of God to her, their relationship was already broken. Since God spoke to Adam, the Word was in his heart (Rom 10:8), the place from which all the wellsprings of life proceed (Prov 4:23). In not speaking what God had spoken to him the man failed to open his heart to his woman in a way that he had so fully and freely done at first. By failing to guard his own heart he failed to guard the one closest to him and so failed relationally as a man in the image of God. The immediate consequences are disastrous.Both sexes share in a nakedness and shame that is deeply personal (Gen 2:7). It penetrates to the core of their being because basic trust has been broken. For Adam, the failure to be Eve’s guardian under God leads to a loss of inner authority. Because he failed to speak a Word from his heart in obedience to God and by faith, he is now filled with shame and guilt over this inner area of life. In particular, the emotional realm is no longer open but guarded. He will be plagued by a fear of an inability to communicate his deepest self. There will be an awareness of a lack of authority to speak from the heart corresponding to the failure to speak what was first given by God to Adam to share with Eve. If Adam’s role was to protect, Eve’s role was to seek protection. Since God had presented her to Adam, she must have known in her heart that she should have deferred the issue of the snake to her husband. In not doing so she left herself open to spiritual attack and acute emotional pain. This will be felt as a constant threat by the woman. Such fears bring the fulfilment of the fear with them. Instead of jointly exercising dominion over the earth, men and women will attempt to rule one another. If the woman cannot challenge the man in the intellectual or physical sphere she will try to best him in the sphere of the verbal and emotional expression of sensitivity. This means an abuse of the ordering that the man was created emotionally dependent on the woman.One way of reading Genesis 3:16 is “yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”, is that Eve will possess a ”desire to master” Adam (as in Gen 4:7) but he will dominate her. If this is a correct interpretation, the dominance of the man would be through anger and physical strength. God indeed made him to be a conqueror, but instead of stepping forward and conquering the illegitimate advances of the serpent he will be tempted to “conquer” his partner. This means abuse of power. Where there is relationship breakdown, man turns to the world of objects rather than persons for fulfilment. This is now his most confident sphere of influence, a matter consolidated by the nature of the judgement of God (Gen 3:19) that ties him to the ground. This generates emotional isolation. Woman tends to turn to the family for affirmation and meaning. The danger for her is that she will substitute her children for her husband and become emotionally enmeshed with them.
Jesus Communicates in Fullness
Although biologically male, Jesus engages men and women with equal freedom and beyond the cultural sensitivities of the time. Women recognise in him a sphere for safe emotional communication (John 2:4; Luke 7:36-38). His words and actions re-create the sort of community that God always desired for humanity. As the sinless Word (2 Cor 5:21) from the heart of the Father (John 1:18) he is without shame or guilt so possesses no inner fear of man or woman that would cause self – protection or manipulation. He is neither emotionally passive nor aggressive. Jesus never reacts but always has the initiative in every situation. This is because he only does “what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19), so that even the presence of the most threatening emotion, anger, occurs in a context where the kingdom of God and not self-protection is paramount (Mark 3:5; John 2:13-17). The indwelling Father (John 14:10) is his defence. Since the Father is his heart, the Word and the Spirit guard Jesus from within (Prov 4:23; Ps 119:11). His temptation in the wilderness reveals him as the conqueror of the serpent in a way that Adam failed to do. This victory is for his bride, the church. Jesus “emotional security and vulnerability” is not a property of his personality, however mature, but is grounded in his fellowship with God.
The Cross as the Death of Communication
As the bearer of the sin of the world (John 1:29; 2 Cor 5:21), Jesus must take into himself all that men and women fear most in their relationships. He must embrace the divine anger in the form that is a dread to unholy people (Rom 3:25), he must enter a place where it seems that his innermost being is completely unprotected, that he is not listened to and he is left unprotected against ridicule, scorn, anger and abuse (Mark 15:34). Jesus takes the fullness of our sin into his life (1 Peter 2:24) with all its emotional dimensions. He overcomes it without withdrawal, anger or self-defence. He refuses to live as though God were not his shield and defender. Unlike Adam who entered into unbelief despite all appearances to the contrary, Jesus maintains faith despite all appearances to the contrary. He will not betray his humanity as a person or as a man. By his total trust in God the Father, Jesus annihilates the shame, guilt and failure of humanity. The conquest of our sinful nature and Satan is complete on the cross (John 19:28-30)
The Resurrection as Completed Communication
The resurrection is the evidence of Jesus’ total victory, it signals the start of a new humanity. His communion with the Father cannot be interrupted by (our) sin, the law, Satan or death (Rom 6:9-10). He lives by “the power of an indestructible life” (Heb 7:16). Nothing can now enter into the experience of Jesus that could ever tempt him to defend himself, withdraw or in any way break communication with God or us. The old connection between Adam and Eve has been broken; there is a new creation “in Christ” for all men and women (2 Cor 5:17).
Christ is the Power of Communication
The Jesus who triumphed over our failures on the cross and in the resurrection now lives in us (Col 1:27). What is available through the indwelling Jesus is the power to communicate in all relationships through a new heart (Ezk 36:26). Such a soft heart is now able to receive the Word of God and allow it to dwell within (Rom 10:8; Eph 3:17; Col 3:16). All of this happens for us as it happened for Jesus, by faith and not by sight or feeling. We are to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11). There is no longer any valid reason for defensiveness or self-protection. As we trust the leading of his Spirit his strength to do “all things” (Phil 4:13), including in the realm of emotional security and vulnerability, is imparted within. The woman is no longer seen as an alien or threat, but a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Pet 3:7) imparted through the gospel. The old man and woman exist only in the sphere of unbelief. In Christ I am free to be the man that God always made me to be; something that is revealed, not by culture the comments of my wife/partner/friend, but by the one true man, Jesus. He alone is our hope.