Are You Ready to Get Naked?
Have you ever thought about these profound words? ”For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame,” (Genesis 2:24-25).
Several interesting ideas can be found in these profound words, all of which we need to keep in mind when praying and working for our marriages. First, God described the union between a man and a woman as one flesh. It’s difficult to overemphasize the significance of this idea. Remember that the event leading to the creation of Eve was Adam’s survey of the animal kingdom and finding no suitable partner: Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found (Genesis 2:19-20).
Aren’t you glad that Adam didn’t see something he liked? I think Adam showed great levels of insight and discernment there. What if, while God was parading the animals before him, Adam had suddenly said, “Hold on, God. Stop right there. Helloooo, Kangaroo!” I’m really glad that didn’t happen.
God wanted Adam to see just how special Eve was going to be. He wanted Adam to know that what he needed was a special creation of God, someone with whom he could be completely one. His phrase one flesh is the highest compliment God could pay a human relationship. It’s also the high standard he set for our marriage commitment. God wants and expects us to experience in marriage a level of unity unmatched by any other relationship we have. He wants us to be one.
Second, God established marriage as our number one priority next to our relationship with him. He instructed all men and women who choose to marry to leave their family of origin and create a new family unit. That new family is to be their relational priority and merit their best efforts. It’s like God is saying, “If you’re going to be married, then I expect you to fully throw yourself into the relationship. I want you and your spouse to cling to each other more than anyone else.” When that type of no-holds-barred commitment is manifest in marriage, it will help build serious marital intimacy.
Finally, God expects us to be fully exposed to and vulnerable with each other in our marriage relationship. The words naked without shame are both descriptive and poignant. It’s obvious that Moses was referencing, at least, Adam and Eve’s physical nakedness. He was describing the time before sin entered the picture and shattered the union that Adam and Eve had with God and with each other. After their rebellion, God clothed them with animal skins. They were no longer innocent and thus, their physical nakedness was no longer appropriate.
But Moses’s words refer to much more than just Adam and Eve’s initial lack of clothing. Implied in the Hebrew phrase are the ideas of vulnerability, authenticity and safety. Neither Adam nor Eve felt any need to hide from the other. They had no secrets, and they certainly had no fear of feeling shame or rejection. They were completely exposed to each other—physically, emotionally, and mentally—without any fear of a negative reaction from the other. It was the safest, purest relationship in the world, and it represents exactly what God wants you to know in marriage. Such intimacy is impossible to achieve without you and your spouse both having meaningful, thriving relationships with God.
Nakedness isn’t in our nature. Even though we’re born naked, we quickly learn to cover ourselves and to stay that way. But as I look again at the crowd around me, I see something else. I see men and women who are equally clothed—protected—emotionally. Almost as quickly as we learn to cover ourselves physically, we learn to also cover up emotionally. Conventional wisdom tells us that the world is a rough-and-tumble place. If we’re going to survive, we had better guard our hearts. And so we learn to protect our innermost feelings—our fears, our hopes, our hurts, our needs—even in marriage. Few of us do relational authenticity well. Most of us just fake it.
How good are you at being real and authentic? It doesn’t take much to make us shut down our hearts and take a vow of emotional celibacy. Has something caused you to build a wall around your heart? Did your parents divorce or did you lose a parent when you were young? Were you the victim of emotional, verbal or physical abuse? Did you have few healthy friendships growing up or too many failed dating relationships? Were you overweight, not very athletic or pretty, or were you an underachiever? Did you experience the ridicule that often goes with not hitting the cultural high bar for what makes you “acceptable?”
Any of these situations can have a major negative impact on your emotional health and your willingness to be vulnerable. If you go into marriage without the healing of God’s Holy Spirit in these areas, you can bet that naked without shame isn’t going to happen easily. But these types of issues don’t have to be relational deal-breakers.
From Pray Big for Your Marriage–On sale this week only for $1.99 (e-version).
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