The New Eve - Lewis Robert [28]
But when it comes to social and spiritual responsibilities, passively standing there like the original Adam becomes more their norm. The wife waits for her man to lead at home, but after a while she falls into prodding him: “Let's go to church. Let's do something with the kids. What about our relationship? Where are we going in life?” His response is the same as Adam's was to Eve: “You decide. You lead. You take the responsibility. I'll watch.” It never fails that when I say things like these to a male audience, the men hang their heads because they know it's true. In the substantive things of life, social and spiritual, men are naturally passive. It's our inheritance from Adam.
Authentic womanhood also took a major hit in the Garden. Eve lost her feminine nobility when she fell into Satan's deception. And precisely as Adam's passivity still lives in men today, Eve's vulnerability to deception still carries on in all her daughters. In every generation women are enticed with the same forbidden fruit: to neglect, compromise, or abandon altogether God's core callings for what the world convincingly promises is better. If anything, the deceptive fruits of a modern world are more plentiful than ever before, and as a woman, you are naturally prone through Eve to take and eat. This is the inheritance Genesis says Eve leaves you—the tendency to believe that there is something better out there for you to pursue than what God has already prescribed. But it's all a painful lie.
The fall also created a new reality of woundedness between men and women. Life between the sexes is cursed and infected with personal agendas and power plays. Look at God's words to Eve in Genesis 3:16: “In pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (emphasis added).
You will miss the significance of this divine pronouncement if you don't stay with this verse word by word. Pay special attention to the two words I highlighted in italics. The “desire” God said Eve will now feel for her husband and the “rule” Adam will now exercise over her are both desperate and tragic. They are corruptions of God's original design of Adam as a caring head and Eve as a supportive helper. Because the first couple chose to abandon God's design for them, every future man-woman relationship will be undermined with difficulty. That includes yours and mine. These corruptions are at ground zero of the struggle we often refer to as the battle of the sexes.
For us to fully grasp what the “desire” of woman is, we need to look at Genesis 4:7, where this puzzling word is used again in a more revealing context. How it's used here helps us unlock its meaning in Genesis 3:16. Notice in chapter 4 that God was speaking to Cain, Adam and Eve's firstborn son, after the young man had developed a murderous attitude toward his younger brother, Abel. At this point God said in verse 7, “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (emphasis added).
Did you catch that? Here “desire” is clearly associated with the idea of control. God told Cain that sin sought to control him. That was its aim. And this understanding of desire helps us unlock Genesis 3:16. The desire to control in Genesis 4:7 is also the woman's desire in Genesis 3:16. This means that even with the true love a woman will have for her man, the consequences of the fall will taint this love with an unholy struggle. From this point on, a woman's calling as helper will be mixed with the desires of a competitor.
In response to this controlling desire that every generation of women must now deal with, Genesis 3:16 says a man will seek to rule. This is not a reassertion of the noble leadership God set forth for Adam in Genesis 2. This is a cursed leadership—the kind that dominates, forces compliance, and demands submission. The Hebrew word used here often described the rule of kings. It is a rule of power, not