The Restoration of our True Identity
The Restoration of our True Identity
Knowing our true identity--who we are--should not be a secret. It is foundational to self-awareness, self-understanding, life purpose and goals. Knowing who we are helps us determine what we do with our day, our week, and our lives. It can shape our marriage, parenting and discipling values and priorities.
One of the best kept secrets about our original God-given identity and purpose as human beings is buried out of sight in the English Bible versions of Genesis 2:21-22.
Here, Moses provides us with three clues. Let’s follow those three clues and discover our identity. When God built the woman from the man, the Hebrew Bible states:
“And LORD God caused a deep slumber on the human. And he slept, and He took one of his SIDES and CLOSED UP the flesh and the LORD God BUILT the SIDE he had taken from the human into a woman and He brought her to the human.” Gen. 2:21-22
SIDES, CLOSED UP, AND BUILT, architectural terms, are conspicuously used in describing the making of the woman. This is unusual and striking. We’d expect the author to use medical or anatomical terms. Instead, he uses Hebrew words associated with the construction of a building.
The Hebrew word “SIDE” (not “rib,” as some translations render it) used here is the same word used to refer to the side of the tabernacle or the temple sides throughout the Old Testament. Both the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple in the Promised Land had two different sides and were the holy dwelling places of Israel’s God. The Genesis author intentionally used this same word “side” to identify the part of Adam used to build Eve. It appears that the author might be teaching us that Adam is one side of a temple and that Eve is the second side. But are there more clues? Read on.
The familiar word CLOSED UP has been assumed to be a medical term, such as used by a surgeon to suture up a wound in the body. But assumptions need to be examined. In fact, the Hebrew word CLOSED UP is also a construction word and refers to closing the door to a building or closing the gate to a city. So, after God took one of Adam’s sides, He closed the door to Adam’s body. Sure does sound like Adam’s identity is a building of some sort. He has a SIDE like a building and he also has a door like a building. There’s a third clue.
At this juncture, we might expect Moses to use verbs like “create” or “make” to describe the formation of the woman. Not so.
Once again, Moses inserts a third clue into the story. He uses a construction term—built--to depict what God was actually doing when he formed the woman from Adam’s side. When God formed the woman, He was erecting the side of a building, the other side of a temple of which Adam was the first side. Together, man and woman combine two sides, a completed temple, designed intentionally to be a dwelling place to worship God, mutually devoted to His glory.
In Christ, our original temple identity is restored: “Don’t you (plural) know that you yourselves are God’s TEMPLE and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Cor 3:16). “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you” (1 Cor. 6:19)? “We are temples of the living God.” (2 Cor. 6:16).
If you are a follower of Jesus by faith, then your true identity has been restored to its original design. You and your spouse are a temple of the LORD God, a temple with feet--mobile temples. As parents, you are raising temples to fulfill their true identities.
And when we meet a fellow believer in Christ, regardless of socio-economic level, color, age, gender, political preference, or national origin, we meet a human with staggering value, immense dignity, a fellow temple of God worthy of our reverence, care and respect.
We don’t go to a temple or to a church on Sundays to worship. We exist as temples, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to worship the triune God and bring glory to Him by means of our bodies. The best kept secret about our true identity in Christ should no longer be a secret.
Thank you for reading.
Key words: Genesis 2:21, identity in Christ, body as temple of God, creation of woman