Genesis 2

Our Pastor was teaching from Genesis 2 yesterday. I'm a visual learner so I confess that sometimes my mind wanders during sermons. Yesterday thankfully it wandered while still staying on topic.

The verses read were

(18.) Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." (19.) Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. (20.) The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. (21) So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. (22) The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. (23) The man said, "This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man."
(24)For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. (25) And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

It occurred to me when I was thinking about these verses that Adam and Eve were perfect and complete in this state. They had no children yet and yet God declared that His creation of them was "good" (Genesis 1:31). Not only good, but very good. The only aspect of all of God's creation to receive this added measure of God's pleasure.

Children do not enter creation until after the Fall. Theologically it makes sense that it almost had to happen this way. Otherwise we would have had a third or more perfect person(s) who may or may not have sinned with Adam and Eve. And in Adam and Eve's state of perfection, children were not necessary for labor or provision because there was no work, illness, or aging. They weren't needed to further the human race because Adam and Eve were never to die.

God did bless procreation pre-Fall (Genesis 1:28). So, it stands to reason that children were a part of the Perfect Plan, though He also had foreknowledge of the Fall so He also knew that children would become necessary once death entered the world.

All that to say that this is not a strong theological argument and I don't intend it as such. There are deep implications in both directions when interpreting this passage as a mandate or eternal value judgment on children or no children. I don't think the passage was intended to be any of those things. But at the end of the day, it is undeniable that for whatever reason, children did not enter the world until after the fall, and they became part of both our condemnation and our redemption. (Did not the Lord Christ Himself enter this world as a baby?)

No one can say how a pre-fall creation would have made that unit "More Good," and it is undeniable that children are a blessing. However, it cannot be ignored and it encourages me greatly that God, in His infinite knowledge of all that was and would come to be, declared the two-person family to be "very good."