I once remarked to a colleague how unfair it was of the devil to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden while Adam was away counting his sheep.  His reply...?  John, you’d better read that story in Genesis 3 again.  I did!  Stone the crows!  How can you read a Bible story so often and yet miss a crucial point?

During my years of full-time pastoral ministry my goal was to read the Bible from cover to cover, annually.  Yet it seems I’d always read, without really noticing, that when Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, she then gave some to Adam WHO WAS THERE WITH HER!  Oops...!  He was most definitely not off counting sheep.

I understood, of course, that in a sense Adam was more guilty than Eve.  Adam received the command, not to eat from that tree, directly from the Lord God.  Eve, we may safely assume, received the command second-hand from her husband, Adam.

So the story of The Fall in Genesis 3 makes for an interesting study of the interaction between the sexes.

There’s Adam, who stands there with his thumb in his mouth, while the sneaky serpent entices his wife (who got the command second-hand) to disobey God.  Adam makes no attempt to intervene – or even to assist his wife in facing the enemy.  And there’s Eve who is more than happy to take over and deal with the situation, without any reference to her husband.  Not once does she ask what Adam thinks of the matter.

All this has led to people speaking of an Adam syndrome and an Eve syndrome.

Of course contemporary marriage relationships don’t always fall into the same pattern that we see in the story of The Fall.  Yet over the years I’ve seen extreme examples of those syndromes.  More than once I’ve met, what we call, ‘hen-pecked’ husbands.  There are controlling wives who take over a relationship far more strongly than Eve did in Genesis 3.  I’ve even known of spouse abuse situations where the victim was the husband.  And it wasn’t just limited to mental abuse either.  I recall a man turning up at a church meeting with bruises – for which he made some feeble excuses.  It was when he was pushed off the balcony by his spouse that he fled the relationship for his own safety.

Of course in our society the shoe is too often on the other foot.  Too many women have fled abusive relationships for their safety.  Too many men have interpreted male leadership in such a way that they have tried to rule their families with an iron fist.  I’ve met too many men who prided themselves in being tough but who conveniently overlooked that one of the fruit of the spirit is gentleness.

So how do we negotiate the battle of the sexes?  How do we make sure that normal tensions of family living and marriage relationships don’t become World War III?

Paul has a beautiful formula for marriage – based on Christ’s relationship to His church in Ephesians 5.

Paul calls on wives to submit to their husbands.  But it’s the kind of submission patterned on the submission of the church to Christ.  So it’s a voluntary submission.  It’s not the kind of submission that’s enforced under the heel of a husband’s hob-nailed boot.

Paul calls on husbands to love their wives.  But just when we think that the bloke’s got the easy role, Paul adds that a husband’s love is to be like Christ’s love for His church.  And when we ask: “How did Christ love the Church?” then the answer is that He gave His life for the Church on the cross of Calvary.  He loved her to the death.  So any husband who thinks loving His wife is just a nice emotion that might buy her chocolates on Valentines Day, has got rocks in his head.  The question is: is he willing to lay down his life for his missus?

The point ultimately is this: that in a world where we’re taught to look after number one, marriage partners are to put their partner before their own interests.  That’s a big ask.  It’s only really possible when the love of God in Christ fills and motivates us.

Personally, I’ve found that Paul’s formula in Ephesians 5 works.  I find that the more I love my wife the more she wants to submit to me and the more she submits to me the more I want to love her.

John Westendorp