Woman and Man — One Flesh, Marriage, and Christ and the Church

Genesis 2:18–25 turns from the man alone to the creation of the woman and the institution of marriage. God declares that it is not good for the man to be alone, forms the woman, brings her to the man, and the passage culminates in the one-flesh union: a man leaves father and mother, cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Jesus explicitly appeals to this creation pattern in Matthew 19:4–6 and Mark 10:6–9, joining Genesis 1’s male-and-female language with Genesis 2:24 and grounding marriage in what God established at creation. Paul then quotes Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31–32 and says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” That makes the Christ-and-church dimension an explicit New Testament interpretation of the one-flesh text, not merely a later devotional invention.