This is an excerpt from a sermon I preached yesterday on the theme of LOVING THE STRANGER — part of a larger series on marriage influenced by Timothy Keller’s excellent book, The Meaning of Marriage. It is part of the section that discusses Bible illustrations of people who married a stranger.

In the Bible story of Adam and Eve, you might say that they had the original “arranged” marriage. But then, what other options did they have?

When God performed their marriage, they were total strangers. They had never met before. They didn’t date or have an engagement time to really get to know each other. They knew absolutely nothing about the differences between men and women except the obvious physical externals, and they had no marriages of their parents which gave them any clues about how to relate to the opposite sex.

But it seems clear that for Adam and Eve, learning about each other was pure fun and joy and only enhanced their love because every “stranger moment”was another revelation of something intriguing and wonderful about the other that they didn’t know before. After all, they were perfect. They were sinless beings. They never argued or were demanding. They weren’t jealous or petty, and they used to put-downs or sarcastic jabs. They were totally loving and unselfish. Their marriage was pure joy.

I love the simple but profound description of their relationship in Genesis 2:25: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

Naked and unashamed! Their nakedness was far more than not wearing any clothes. They were naked physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. There was NOTHING between them; nothing hidden; no secrets; no cover-ups; no deception; and nothing held back.  They were TOTALLY OPEN and VULNERABLEbecause they were TOTALLY ACCEPTED and AFFIRMED.

Their TOTAL OPENNESS and VULNERABILITY must have brought a flood of “stranger moments”but each of those new revelations were TOTALLY ACCEPTED and AFFIRMED by the other. Every stranger moment opened a new and exciting discovery to celebrate and enjoy in their marriage. They must have frequently said, “Now I know and understand you better and it makes me love you more and more.”

This suggests that a key to loving the stranger you married is being totally open and vulnerable and totally accepting and affirming.

But when SIN came into their lives – everything changed. The curse sin brought changed everything. They were different – sinful, selfish, and broken instead of righteous, loving, and whole. Now they were broken people living a broken world – and so are we – broken people living in a broken world.

People and the world around us still display the breathtaking beauty of God’s original creation, but it is also marred by the curse of sin.

But Genesis 3 reveals that for Adam and Eve the stranger moments didn’t remainall wonderful new discoveries that enhanced their marriage. Now some of the stranger momentsbroughtconflict, stress, blame, cover-up, hiding, deception, excuses and distance in their relationship. Now, they sometimes acted more like enemies instead of partners; like two strangers instead of “one flesh.”

Genesis 3:16 reveals that part of sin’s curse was that now, for the first time, the women would desire to control the man, but that he, the stronger of the two, would rule over her. Part of sin’s brokenness was the gender wars, the power struggles in marriage, and the oppression of PATRIARCHY – men ruling over women. Clearly that was not God’s plan, but was part of sin’s curse.

In the sin-broken world in which we live, it is true that all of us married a stranger and our stranger moments are sometimes wonderful discoveries of some good thing we didn’t know about our spouse and some are troubling surprises that easily produce conflict and stress.

The Genesis story about Adam and Eve suggests the importance of constantly pursuing total openness and vulnerability coupled with total acceptance and affirmation in our marriage. Every marriage could use a healthy dose of “naked and unashamed.”

I’m so thankful that the Genesis story also records the first promise of the coming Rescuer, Jesus, the “offspring” of Eve who, on the cross, would crush the tempter’s head (Genesis 3:15).