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Yes, man is a physical being. But already, on the first page of the Bible, we learn that man can’t be explained as a merely physical being—a collection of cells, tissues, and organs. Human beings transcend the categories of chemistry and biology. Ultimately, man can only be understood in relation to God. This great mystery of creation—that we are created in God’s image—is the key reference point for understanding all aspects of humanity, including our sexuality.
When Christ referred his questioners back to the beginning, he was directing them to look at man’s created nature. To learn God’s intent for marriage, we must look back to that state of original innocence. “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard,” Jesus says. “But it was not this way from the beginning.” Even though man has lost his innocence and our hearts have grown hard, God’s design for marriage hasn’t changed.
Right from the moment of his creation, man is in search of himself. As we would put it today, he is in search of his own identity. By naming every other living creature, Adam discovers what he is not—but he still wonders what he is. Here is the first clue to man’s identity: he cannot identify completely with the physical world. The philosopher Aristotle defined man as a “rational animal.” He is an animal, yes, but he is distinguished from the other animals by his rationality. Only man possesses language and a moral sense—and these things cannot be explained in terms of the physical world
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Genesis 1 says that man was created in the image of God. In Genesis 2, he becomes the subject of a covenant with God. A person is meant to be a partner of God. He must discern and choose between right and wrong, life and death. Among all living creatures of the visible world, man alone has been chosen for communion with God. Every human person has a unique, exclusive, unrepeatable relationship with God himself.
The body reveals the person. This phrase tells us all there is to know about the body. Science can examine our flesh in minute detail, down to our cells and even our DNA. But no amount of scientific exploration can replace the truth that our bodies reveal us, giving form to our innermost being and unique personality. Our bodies are sacramental—they make the invisible visible.
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Through the ages, many philosophers have spoken of man as though he were divided into two distinct parts: soul and body. This isn’t the biblical view, though. In Genesis, the fundamental division is not between body and soul, but between dust and breath (life)—between unformed matter and living beings.
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The language of Genesis is mythical, in the sense that it truthfully describes things that are beyond human knowledge. Understood in this way, a “myth” is not a lie, but an ancient and deeper way of knowing. Even with all the discoveries of modern science, we have not surpassed the truths about man found in Genesis.
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To the extent that they live together in love, man and woman become a picture of the inner life of God. This might be the most amazing thing that we can say about marriage. From the beginning, the male and female bodies were created to form a deep unity.
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Sex is a powerful bond established by the Creator. But it is far more than just a biological drive. In becoming one flesh, husband and wife are no longer two separate individuals—each takes the other in, expanding the meaning of “self.” They are now a communion of persons. The body, through its masculinity and femininity, makes this communion possible.
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“Nakedness” signifies the original goodness of creation in God’s eyes. It characterizes the fullness of God’s vision, through which we see the high value of man and woman and the purity of sex and the body. At the time of creation, there was no opposition between the physical and the spiritual. There was also no opposition between male and female—the two existed in unity. Adam and Eve looked at each other not just with the exterior gaze of their eyes, but with the eyes of their hearts.
Genesis 2:25 tells us that Adam and Eve were unashamed. They were not afraid to open up to each other, to become vulnerable. They saw and knew each other intimately, in the peace of their interior gaze. Because they were complementary—Adam’s masculinity and Eve’s femininity completed each other—they had a special understanding of the meaning of their bodies. They became gifts for each other.
Amidst all the wonders of creation, something was lacking. In Genesis 2:18, for the first time, God notices something that is not good: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Freedom lies at the heart of the gift-giving meaning of the body. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were free from the constraints of sin. Naked and unashamed, they weren’t oppressed by the urge to misuse each other.
We were created by Love, and we’re called to love in return. A man can only find his true self by giving himself away. When we live according to the nuptial meaning of our bodies, we fulfil the very meaning of our existence.
By giving themselves away, Adam and Eve were able to discover this truth about each other. In their first meeting, Adam found Eve, and Eve found Adam. He accepted her as a unique person, willed by the Creator for her own sake, reflecting the image of God in her femininity. And she accepted him in the same way—as a unique person reflecting the image of God in his masculinity.
The creation of man as male and female, the nuptial meaning of the body, the original happiness of Adam and Eve—all these things are aglow with the radiance of love.
As we’ve seen, man and woman felt no shame in the beginning. Freedom from shame is the result of love. This freedom points us to the mystery of original innocence. Because they were in complete communion with God and each other, Adam and Eve experienced creation at its fullest and deepest dimension. Filled with grace, they walked in God’s holiness. This was the source of their innocence. Grace is what enables a man and woman to make a sincere gift to one another.
Nakedness becomes shameful when the woman is an object for the man, or the man an object for the woman. Interior innocence kept Adam and Eve from reducing each other to the level of a mere object. They were united by their shared awareness of the body as a gift. When does the body cease to be a gift? When we turn it into an object, using it for self-gratification. This denial of the gift marks the end of innocence and the beginning of shame.
In the mystery of creation, the woman is brought to man as a gift. Thanks to original innocence, she is accepted by him as a person good in and of herself, not as an object. Because of the way Adam accepts and welcomes her, Eve discovers herself and the meaning of her femininity. She finds herself because she’s been accepted in the way the Creator meant her to be accepted.
Adam and Eve realized they were naked at exactly the point when they ceased to be completely selfless gifts for each other. And, for the first time, they were ashamed. The Fall radically changed the way man experiences the body.
After the Fall, man lost his original grace, making it harder to see the nuptial meaning of the body. But the meaning of the gift remains inscribed in the depths of the human heart. Through the veil of shame, man must continually rediscover himself as the guardian of the gift. He must defend the body from being reduced to a mere object.
The body alone is capable of making visible the invisible. It was created to be a sign of God’s love in the visible world. Through man, created in God’s image, the sacramentality of the world is revealed. By means of the physical body, the human person is a visible sign of the love out of which God created all things.
Check out this quote.
This term, “knowledge,” raises human sexuality above the level of animals to the level of persons. Knowledge refers to the deepest essence of married life. In becoming one flesh, both men and women acquire knowledge through the body. A husband and wife come to “know” the meaning of their bodies. In a unique way, the woman is given to the man to be known, and he is given to her. This experience of the gift mysteriously makes them one, without blurring their individuality.
By revealing the mystery of masculinity and femininity, procreation expands the knowledge shared between man and woman. In sex, a husband and wife know each other, and find themselves affirmed through each other. In procreation, a husband and wife come to know themselves through a third person, sprung from them both.
The Incarnation, together with the redemption won for us by Christ, also raised marriage to the level of a sacrament, a means of receiving God’s grace. Christian marriage is far more than a contract or a social arrangement. It is a vocation, a path to holiness and salvation. And a solid, biblical understanding of the body, male and female, is crucial to this vocation.
By fulfilling the Law, Jesus reveals its true meaning. God doesn’t want us to just “follow the rules.” He desires us to have holy thoughts and intentions, too.
are far more than just biological creatures driven by impulse. We are moral beings, capable of choosing between right and wrong, and responsible for our decisions. But our outward actions are only an expression of our interior lives. True morality begins in the heart.
Creation is God’s gift, born from love. Sin arose when man rejected this love, and treated creation as something other than a gift.
Nakedness here goes beyond literal, physical nakedness. Remember, nakedness is actually a sign of fullness—of all the good that God intended for man. In the beginning, the human body was a clear sign of God’s image. Through its masculinity and femininity, it was a sign of mutual, self-giving love. In a way, man’s acceptance of the body was the key to his acceptance of the entire world—the gift of creation.
Sin obscures the true meaning of the body as a sign of the human person, made in the image of God. At the same time, it creates a rift between the body and the earth.
Shame is not directly linked to the body. Neither is lust. Shame and lust arise from the heart; they are results of sin, not nakedness in and of itself. Like all forms of evil, lust is not a positive thing in itself; it is a lack. Lust is not food, but hunger; not fullness, but emptiness.
In the fullness of creation, Adam mirrored God not only by himself, but in his communion with Eve. God is a communion of persons; so are a man and woman when united in love. When shame disrupted their communion, Adam and Eve were compelled to hide their nakedness from each other.
The words, “I was afraid, because I was naked,” reveal a rupture in the original spiritual and physical unity of man. For the first time, Adam becomes conscious of having a body. He looks upon his body as a physical, almost foreign, thing. What once was light, aglow with the spirit, transparently revealing the image of God, now seems heavy and burdensome.
In the state of original innocence, the body was fully illumined by the spirit. Now, something within the body is at war with the spirit. The unity of the person is at risk.
Self-control is essential to the moral integrity of human beings. Lust attacks the person at his core by throwing body and spirit out of balance.
Because they bear God’s image, and because God is a community of three Persons, man and woman were created to form a communion of persons. This is expressed by their complementary bodies. This communion was shattered by the first sin. The original meaning of the body as a gift, so eloquently expressed in the second chapter of Genesis (“The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame”), is brought into question.
For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced their bodies—male and female—in opposition to each other. “They realized they were naked” and they felt shame within themselves not only before God but also before each other.
In the state of original innocence, the masculine and feminine bodies were the basis of the communion of persons. In the state of sinfulness, sexuality seems to be an obstacle to unity—a cause for fear and mistrust. Because of the broken communion between man and woman, the body must be covered and guarded. The gift is now limited.
Sin broke the original communion between man and woman and put them at odds with each other. Their sexuality—which was intended for union—became a point of division. In the beginning, man was created male and female. Now, it seems, man is male or female.
If they continually nurture the nuptial, gift-giving understanding of the body and strive to protect it from lust, a married couple can experience sexual union the way it was meant to be—as a true communion of persons.
We know from the Book of Genesis that human sexuality was not created only for procreation. The body, masculine and feminine, has a nuptial meaning: it is capable of expressing the selfless love by which a person becomes a gift. By becoming a gift, the human person fulfills the deepest meaning of his existence.
When sin entered the world, the body almost lost its ability to express gift-love. Almost. The gift is constantly threatened by lust, but it can’t be entirely destroyed.
The human person is the only physical creature created for communion with God. For that reason, the person should never be reduced to an object. At the same time, a person can only discover his true self by making a sincere gift of himself to another.
If a man treats a woman as an object and not a gift, he condemns himself to become an object in her eyes. Both hearts lose the ability to freely give of themselves.
In the nuptial meaning of the body, there’s a beautiful understanding of mutual belonging. My beloved. This phrase resounds throughout the Song of Songs. “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). Here, possession is not domination; ownership is not reduction to an object. Instead, “my beloved” speaks of mutual giving and receiving. When spouses are united in one flesh, experiencing the mutual gift of masculinity and femininity, the meaning of the body is preserved.
Because of their hardness of heart, the people of the Old Testament deviated from God’s original plan for marriage. The Law could do nothing to restore what had been lost. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ proclaims a new way forward: the Gospel.
Over the centuries, God’s will for his people concerning marriage became obscured. A legal system developed that was based more on human weakness than divine intent. Christ didn’t want to do away with this Law, but to reveal its true meaning. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mt. 5:17).
Taking another man’s wife was strongly condemned—but more as a violation of property rights than a violation of God’s design for marriage. This is why Christ appealed to “the beginning” when answering the Pharisee’s question about divorce.
Clearly, Christ considered adultery a sin. But when he turned to the accusers, he didn’t quote the Law—he spoke to their consciences. The law written on the heart can be deeper, and even more reliable, than an external law.
The Sixth Commandment, “Do not commit adultery,” had been obscured by layers of compromise and legalism. Christ wipes away these layers, revealing the true meaning of the commandment—a shining call to purity.
