2018 “Created for Partnership” CBE International Conference
How God’s Design for Equality in Marriage Has the Power to Strengthen Intimate Love
What do Gen. 2:24-25 and Eph. 5: 21-33 have in common? When rightly understood, they both provide an almost formula-like description for a pleasurable, loving, faithful marriage of oneness. And both passages are built on equality and mutuality. Modern science teaches what the writers of Genesis and Ephesians could not have known. In these passages, the Holy Spirit inspired a poetic, yet biological picture of how God intends to create a literal chemical bond between husband and wife through invited touch and self-giving behaviors. When both spouses give each other the multifaceted pleasures of exclusively “clinging” and “submitting to one another,” the hormone oxytocin flows. Oxytocin in turn creates a chemical bond between them that supports becoming one flesh, and makes giving oneself up for the other almost inevitable! This biological/psychological knowledge is so powerful that it became the tipping point in helping the Sabiny tribe of Uganda abandon the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Since these biblical and biological messages have the power to bring an end to FGM, think what they can do for your marriage!
