Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
Genesis 4:1
“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.”
According to spiritual arrangements, in terms of relationship, after the sacred relationship between God and His people comes the intimate relationship between the man and his wife. As a matter of fact, to show the closeness, many times God likened His relationship with the Israelites to the type of relationship between the husband and his wife. Speaking to the Israelites in Jeremiah 3:20, the Lord declared;
“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel.”
Another passage directly tells us the Lord was even married to them, although they later broke the covenant of marriage.
Jeremiah 31:31-32;
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord.”(NASB).
Just as Jesus Christ, Who is God in human flesh, came to the earth to deliver men from the domain of darkness, so as to constitute them as His Bride, so did the Lord deliver the Israelites from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage, so as to be their husband. And even though the Israelites have broken the covenant of marriage that the Lord made with them, He is not relenting. He has spoken that He will at the end make a fresh covenant with them.
And in Isaiah 54:5 the prophet boldly declared to the Israelites;
“For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.”
Thus, the relationship between the husband and his wife is the next, after the relationship between God and His people.
Furthermore, clearly do we see this in the arrangement of the events in the Bible. It was after the relationship between God and Adam with his wife (Eve), was established in Genesis 2 and 3 that the Bible went ahead to talk about the relationship between the man and the woman in Genesis 4:1-- and Adam KNEW his wife. While the relationship between their two children, Cain and Abel, followed subsequently.
So it was with Cain. Genesis 4:16-17 says after defining his relationship with God, that of course he was no longer interested in Him, he departed from the presence of the Lord to dwell in the land of Nod and then KNEW his wife.
But we might have misinterpreted and misunderstood the word “knew” if the words “conceived” and “bare” had not immediately followed, both in the case of Adam and Eve, and in the case of Cain and his wife. Hence, the word “knew” in those contexts means to have sexual intercourse. Adam had sexual intercourse with his wife and she conceived and bore children, likewise their son, Cain. That is therefore the meaning of the word whenever it is used in such contexts in the Bible.
Now, the word of the Lord deliberately uses the word “know” to denote what exactly sex is. Paul, an apostle of the Lord, who by the mercy of God had received great insights about the mystical relationship between the Lord and His Bride, the church, says in 1 Corinthians 13:12,
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Talking about when he would be with the Lord, not in a relative sense, but absolutely, said; then shall he know even as he has been known.
The fact that God wants us to know Him is littered across the pages of the Bible. To this end has He given us His Holy Spirit – to teach and to guide us into all the reality of God – that by knowing Him, we might be one with Him in the spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17); just as the man and his wife should know each other to be one in the flesh. Even His life was given to us that we might know Him. John 17:3 says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ…”
But the way God has designed that the husband should know his wife is not through the life and the Spirit of God, but practically through sex. Sex is designed by God for the husband and his wife to have a deep knowledge of each other by transmitting themselves to each other. And just as the life and the Spirit of God mix with the believer who has received the mercy and grace to know God, so the lives of the man and his wife mix together, that they may be truly one in the flesh. Sex is therefore meant to perfect, or rather, consummate their oneness. Consequently, the first act of sexual intercourse following marriage is called consummation.
In essence, sex is not for the unmarried. It goes beyond the physical act into the exchange of lives between the parties involved. It is out of order and confusing to practise sex when not married because it is like an “exchange of the natural function for that which is unnatural,” that is, it is against the natural ordination of God (Romans 1:26). It will even be more detestable and abominable to have this act with different people. The Bible says those that practise this are worthy of death (Romans 1:32). Sex is a mysterious act God has ordained only to make one the two who have entered into the covenant of marriage. It is not meant for the unmarried, since they have not entered into the covenant of marriage. It is also not meant for one man and many wives or one woman and many husbands. For the two, (not three or four), shall be one.
