21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam 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 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
This is the greatest illustration of the making of the Body of Christ I have been able to find in the entire Bible. Consider the following points:
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam...This is a type of the death of Jesus. And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman… He took that which was inside Adam and made another creature. Please note also that the script is careful to remind us that God closed up the flesh again wherein there was no appearance of the wound. There was no way to tell that there had been an operation. You simply saw the finished product.
“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” Adam acknowledged the fact that the woman was made of his substance. She was his bride, and her body belonged to him.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother. This union of the man and the woman created another institution apart from all others; marriage. There was to be no outside, strange or foreign influence in this union.This is also symbolic of the departure from one fleshy family to another fleshy family. When a man or woman marries, they depart from being the same flesh of the father and of the mother, to now the flesh of the spouse. Likewise, we abandon our first fleshy family to take on the Body of Christ; they shall be one flesh…
God inspired Moses in the writing of this account, that such a union made them one and the same flesh.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This is where it all began. This making of man in the image of God, is the beginning of the making of the Body of Christ. God created Adam in the same image in which He would come to the earth. That body He created called ‘man’ was the body He had chosen to be His dwelling place on the earth. It was the bodies of men that would eventually become His Temple, His Tabernacle, His Body on the earth. We are all the Bride of Christ; individually and collectively. He is living in every son of God. Just as the institution of marriage demands a departure from your earthly family, so does the institution of salvation. In spiritual reality, we are no longer kinsman to our natural parents or siblings, we have become members of the family of God.
Ephesians 3:14-15
14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is name. Through the Spirit of Christ and by the body of Jesus, we are now the sons of God.
Ephesians 5:30
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones
It is so important that you grasp this concept of the Body of Christ; for it is the mystery of Christ revealed in the earth. Our bodies are now the temple of God. He lives in our flesh, which He bought and paid for with the blood of Jesus. Look upon us, we are indeed the image of God on the earth today.
