On the day I had my wedding, the pastor who officiated the service told several stories about what happens in marriage. One of the stories was about a husband who intelligently defended the wife when the wife cooked a very delicate meal with the wrong recipe. The husband told his friends that he taught the wife that recipe just to avoid the friends making mockery at the wife. When the friends left, this husband showed the wife how to cook the recipe well. He did not expose the wife’s weakness in public. The pastor concluded that since marriage makes the couple one flesh, the man identified with the shame of the wife and stood in for her. He did not want the wife to feel humiliated, because indirectly the man would have been humiliated too. A cliché I got exposed to while growing up is “no one takes money to marry their enemy.” But, I think these days, lots of couples seem to be living with their enemies. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24) The principle of one flesh implies that the couple become one in the sight of God. They don’t lose their individual personalities but the two different people form a new flesh. God sees the couple as one. The unity between the married man and the woman is expected to be so strong that it is difficult to pull apart. The only way to break one flesh is to cut it apart. This oneness is not sameness but an identity that causes them to see themselves as a unified whole. They cover one other’s weaknesses and help each other to grow. They see the success of one as the unified success of the couple. Unity pushes forward a formidable force. In Genesis 11, it took God Himself to thwart the plans of the people to build a tower because the people were united. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6). The deep unity God expects from marriage is the main reason identifying the vision of your partner is important. This ideally should be a premarital step. You need to know how you fit into each other’s life. This makes it easy to experience the principle of one flesh. With this same unity, a couple builds their home, raises godly offspring, builds their ministry, builds their businesses etc. As no one acting normally hurts themselves, when we fully understand one flesh, we do not hurt one another because the implication is hurting self. We bear one another’s burdens. We share each other’s joy. We feel each other’s pain. No one leaves their legs in the midst of trouble because the leg accidentally hits a bar and gets wounded. The pain is experienced by the whole body. Even though the hand is innocent of causing the pain, it feels the pain and applies healing balm on the leg until the leg is healed. This is applicable to one flesh in marriage: the couple feels one another’s pain and does not abandon the other in trouble. Remember, the devil’s attacks against marriage include taking our eyes off some of the foundational principles of marriage. He is constantly introducing something to make couples refuse the idea of one flesh. Do not give the devil a footstool in your home. He will take charge of everything.
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