Genesis 2: Man, Woman, Marriage and Other Misunderstandings

Introduction

“Man, Woman, Marriage and Other Misunderstandings”: this is the title Alessio Passarella chose for his second visit to ICF St. Gallen. Married for 18 years and a father of six, he admits right away that the first five, six, maybe seven years of marriage were “super exhausting.” No Disney movie had told him what happens inside a couple. “You get married and you think: this is not beautiful at all, it's a battlefield.”

With his wife, he searched for God's design for marriage, because nothing they found around them was helping. One conviction goes with him: “Marriage problems are single problems.” The cracks are already there before the wedding; the spouse only reveals them. And because the family is “the backbone of every society,” he wants to wake up couples and families.

Before beginning, he asks the congregation for one single attitude: “Jesus, change me.” He warns against the spirit of the “professional Christians”: “I've been married for 18 years, I could say I'm a professional husband. The problem is that with this attitude you will never grow again.”

Message Outline

1. Shaped More by Culture Than by the Bible

What we live out in our families is most often influenced by society: what we see everywhere, what the moms say at the daycare, the idea that both must work to afford vacations, three cars and a bike.
The preacher denounces the reflex of putting children in daycare “as fast as possible” so as not to lose one's standard of living, while God gave them to the parents so that they would shape them and care for them.
“We are far more shaped by our Western society than by this book.” In his view, all problems, whether single or married, come from not doing what the Word says. “Everything written in this book is a blessing for you and life for you.”
So he refuses to set aside the difficult texts on the pretext that Paul was writing to the Corinthians and not to the people of St. Gallen.

2. God Invented Marriage, God Defines It

The first thing God creates for humanity in the garden of Eden is a marriage: not a church, not a government, not a party.
The Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a wedding, that of the Bridegroom and the Bride, of Jesus and his Church, in Revelation.
“If God is the inventor of marriage, he is also the only one who has the right to define it.” Like Apple with the iPhone: you can have an opinion, but nobody is interested in it.
For a Christian, his personal opinion on marriage and family is “super irrelevant”: it is in the Word that God defines marriage.

3. Equal in Worth, Different in Nature

“Two builders, one house.” Man and woman have absolutely equal worth, without being identical.
To the objection “if I submit, I'm worth less,” he answers: “Who says that? On the contrary, when someone gives himself for you, your worth is measured by the fact that he gives himself for you.”
He warns against the question “And what's in it for me?”: “That's not how you begin your life with Jesus. That's not the Gospel.”
Adam is taken from the dust and sent to work, “sleeves rolled up.” The preacher jokes in passing about remote work that encourages passivity in men. Eve is placed in the garden and loves the atmosphere and the beauty.
With humor, he compares the messages for men (“Get up, you need to get moving!”) and those for women (“You're beautiful, you are enough”), then reminds us that in a couple, both carry a responsibility. We just need to understand where each one's lies.

4. The Helper, a Title God Himself Bears

The Bible calls the woman a “helper” (Genesis 2:18). For most women, at least in Germany, after “60 years of feminism,” the word goes down badly.
“But God has no problem with this term.” In Psalm 121:2, help comes from the Lord, with the same Hebrew word, ezer, as for the woman.
“As a husband, I absolutely need to be completed.” He mentions raising children: his wife is attentive and incredibly patient, he much less so. If only one of them were at the helm, the children would be raised in only one direction.
Comforting is something feminine in the Bible, he says, and a mother nurses her baby, which is of vital importance. “Equal in worth does not mean identical.”
With the fall comes the fracture: who dominates whom, who controls whom, who has the last word? “There are three letters in you that must die: E, G, O.”

5. Two Empty Vessels and One Savior

He describes his own family: he works outside the home, his wife is at home with six children aged 17 to 2, two loads of laundry a day, the meals, the dishes, the homework.
In the evening, each one hopes the other will fill them. The husband comes home and the two-year-old is put in his arms. He asks: have you thought about what you are communicating to this child? That he is a bother and exhausting, instead of being loved and being a blessing.
“What happens when two empty vessels meet in the evening and one says to the other: fill me? And the other answers: I was about to tell you the same thing.” He recalls: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).
“My responsibility as a man of God, as a leader, is not to hope that my wife will save me. I already have a Savior, and he died on the cross for me.”
On the way home, he takes twenty minutes to be filled and comforted by Jesus, to talk with his Father. At the first step into the house, he knows the atmosphere changes in the name of Jesus: he arrives with joy and lightness.
His wife does the same while doing laundry or cooking. She has to do it more often, he says, “because her task is far more important than mine.”
He defends the stay-at-home mother: “Since when is it no longer honorable to be a stay-at-home mom?” For him, it is “the only real job,” because the family is the smallest cell of every church.

6. Desire Rather Than the Calendar

He is amused by the teachings on “date nights” entered in the calendar. To a man who explained that he would forget if he did not write them down, he replied: “Then you don't have a calendar problem, you have a priorities problem.”
Nobody needs a reminder to have lunch or dinner: we are hungry. In the same way, he speaks of the Hebrew word teshuqa, desire, and points to the Song of Songs. “For desire, you don't need an entry in your calendar.”
“We need couples who long for each other again.” The only path he knows, for the husband as for the wife, is to die to oneself, to set one's ego aside and to say: “Jesus, change me.”
He issues a challenge to wives: spend 24 hours without criticizing their husband, in a situation where they are really together. “Maybe you will already fail on the way home. We need Jesus.”

7. Marriage, a Spiritual Battle

“Your spouse is not your enemy. But you, as a couple, have an enemy.”
God and Adam walk in the garden, with no serpent in sight. Eve arrives, a marriage is born, and that is when the serpent appears, something that wants to divide.
Marriage is the main point of attack, because the devil knows it is the backbone of society: stability, family and educational values, the love of a healthy home, “that is what changes the world.”
He also recalls the account of the fall (Genesis 3:6): Eve eats the fruit, but Adam was standing right beside her and did nothing. This is the theme of his first book on the passivity of men.

8. The Exchange of Hearts

In marriage, an exchange of hearts takes place: each one takes his heart out of his chest, gives it to the other and says: “Please take care of it. If you hurt it, I am broken.”
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). What we hold most precious, we entrust to the person we trust most.
Because he carries his wife's heart, he will not willingly do anything that hurts her. He does not call himself a professional for that, though: both have strong temperaments and their arguments are fierce.
His role as a husband: to bring into the home what pleases his wife and not to let in what upsets her, “not passive like Adam.”
“You can lift your hands as high as you want during worship. I can see in your wife's eyes how much you walk with Jesus.” His first church, his first priority, is his home.
One category often slips through the cracks when we seek to develop people's potential: our wives, our husbands, our children.

9. On Our Knees Every Morning

Young people from their church who were thinking about marriage could not name a single model family around them. “No role models.”
“Your problem is not your stress, your problem is that you don't let Jesus fill you.”
When asked how they manage with six children, he answers: “I have no idea. Grace.” Not enough money, not enough energy, not enough vision: that is the right place for Jesus to work, because pride and ego fall.
Every morning around 7:30, he and his wife are on their knees, placing their lives in the hands of Jesus. “If you do that, you don't even have time to argue.”
“Take up your cross daily,” says the Bible (Luke 9:23). “God is my provider. I don't need to take. Ask Eve. I receive.”
In his closing prayer, he asks for a new fire of desire and passion in couples, healing where we hurt each other most, and “a new marriage with the same spouse.”

Key Takeaways

God invented marriage, so he is the only one who can define it. His Word is a blessing, even in the passages that disturb.
Man and woman have absolutely equal worth, without being identical. God himself bears the title of helper.
Your spouse is not your savior: Jesus is. Let him fill you before you cross the threshold of your home.
Marriage is a spiritual battle. Your spouse is not your enemy, but your couple has one.
The path of a living couple runs through the death of the ego and through prayer: “Jesus, change me.”

Personal Application

In the way you live your marriage or your family, what comes from the surrounding culture rather than from the Word of God?
When you come home in the evening, do you expect the other to fill you, or have you taken a moment to let Jesus fill you?
Where does your ego still demand: “And what's in it for me?”
Could you take up the 24-hour challenge of not criticizing your spouse, and speak well of them even when they are not there?
If you are single, which cracks can Jesus work on in you right now, before a marriage reveals them?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is God the only one who can define marriage?

According to Alessio Passarella, God invented marriage in the garden of Eden, before any church or government, and the Bible ends with the wedding of Jesus and his Church. Just as Apple defines the iPhone, the inventor defines his invention. Your opinion on marriage may exist, but for a Christian it carries no authority.

Does being called a “helper” make a woman inferior to a man?

No, according to the preacher. The Hebrew word ezer, used for the woman, is also the one used in Psalm 121:2, where God himself is called the help. Man and woman have absolutely equal worth, without being identical. The husband needs to be completed, for example in raising children.

What should a couple do when both come home exhausted in the evening?

Alessio Passarella describes two empty vessels asking each other: “Fill me.” His advice: do not expect your spouse to be your savior, since Jesus already is. He uses his twenty-minute commute to be filled by Jesus, and his wife does the same while doing laundry or cooking.