Skip to main content

What Does Leaving and Cleaving In Marriage Mean?

By
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:24-25

Wayne Mack has some helpful insights. Taken from the book titled Strengthening Your Marriage by Wayne Mack.

"Leaving" means

1. You establish an adult relationship with your parents and your spouses parents.

2. You must be more concerned about your spouse's ideas, opinions, and practices than those of your parents.

3. You must not be slavishly dependent on your parents for affections, approval, assistance, and counsel. 

4. You must eliminate any bad attitudes toward your parents/your spouses parents, or you will be tied emotionally to them regardless of how far you move from them. 

5. You must stop trying to change your mate simply because your parents do not like him the way he is. 

6. You make the husband and wife relationship your priority human relationship. 

Marriage involves "cleaving" which is translated in the ESV as "hold fast to his wife." Here are some meanings of "cleaving:"

1. Holding fast (cleaving) is the contrast to "leave." This gets at our concept of starting a new life together. 

2. The result of "leaving" and "cleaving" is spelled out in verse 25: "and the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed." This means that sexual intimacy and relational intimacy are impacted by the husband's and wife's ability to leave their parents and hold fast to one another and become one. 

3. Handling conflict biblically is crucial oneness.

4. Couples should seek to be aware of the hindrances to oneness.

5. Sexual relations within marriage should be kept sacred according to God's view (Hebrews 13:4).


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflective Glory: How the Moon Displays the Mercy of God

By
Our sun is a fitting metaphor for the glory of God. In the context of our solar system, it is massive, bright, beautiful, powerful, self-sufficient, heat-producing, life-giving, and dangerous. It is, by far, the dominant feature of our solar system and without it the system would fling apart and all living things therein would die.  On the other hand, our moon is a fitting metaphor for human beings, especially for those who believe in Jesus Christ. First, compared to the sun, the moon is tiny and dim. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, its mass is 27 million times greater than the mass of the moon, and from our perspective its light shines 450,000 times brighter than that of the moon. The sun is so much greater than the moon that it’s difficult to quantify and express the difference. Likewise, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much great than each and all of us that it’s impossible to quantify or express the difference. Indeed, the Lord is very great and greatly...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Children Say "I'm Bored" By Julie Lowe

By
This Article is written by Julie Lowe and was originally posted on the CCEF blog.  I highlighted the areas of particular interest. I had already prepared a blogpost on dealing with boredom from a Christian worldview and then came across this. There is much overlap between the two, perhaps this one is more concise while my work attempts to explain the connection between the ability to think and the ability to be happy. You can visit the original blogpost in the link provided below.  https://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/children-say-im-bored   We have a common crisis in our home; it is the calamity of boredom. Our children might even consider it a catastrophe. “I’m bored” is repeated so often it would not be an overstatement to say that these words echo continuously throughout our home especially during any break from school. These are children with limited media time but still children with a Wii and Xbox system, a pool outside our door, multiple games, toy...
Post a Comment
Read more