3 THINGS WOMEN NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVE Elizabeth Garn for Core Christianity
Growing up in the church meant I heard a lot about Eve, and I have to say, I didn’t like her very much. She was the villain of the creation story. The mess-up, the seductress, the failure. The dangerous one and the reason everything went wrong. What’s more, because I was a woman, a daughter of Eve, those traits applied to me as well.
Eve, however, was not the villain in the story; she was a beloved, restored, redeemed child of God. The way we view her impacts the way we see ourselves and the women around us. Eve was not the mess-up and, for the sake of our hearts and the hearts of the women around us, we need to go back to her story and get to know her better. We need to cut through the misunderstandings that have clouded our view and remind ourselves of the truth of who she was before God—and who we are as well.
Here are three things women in the church need to know about Eve:
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1. She was always part of the plan.
First, Eve was always a part of God’s plan. In Genesis 1:26 God declares that he’s going to make both the man and the woman. That’s easy to forget, however, when we read about Adam’s creation in Genesis 2 and hear that it wasn’t good for him to be alone. We begin to believe that Eve was an afterthought, that God was moved by Adam’s need and responded to it by creating her. When seen like this, Eve, while important, is only important insofar as she could fill the void Adam experienced. She becomes the object of Adam’s desire and the solution to a problem.
But that’s not what happened!
God had already declared that he was going to create her and would do so for a specific purpose: She was to be an image-bearer. It wasn’t Adam’s loneliness that necessitated the woman, it was his calling. He needed a co-laborer, someone to stand with him in carrying out the call to fill and to cultivate the earth as an image bearer.
She was an important part of God’s plan, and so are you.
2. She was not a temptress.
The serpent came to the garden to destroy those who God loved. He lied, and Eve listened. She saw the fruit, longed for what he was offering, and believed him over her creator. She ate the fruit and then handed it to Adam.
