When God created Adam and Eve and the covenant of marriage between the two, did He already have the marriage between Christ and the Church in mind?

Question

The union between man and woman, which we currently understand as the covenant of marriage, was part of God's original plan for His creation according to Genesis 2:

20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,

    “This at last is bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
    she shall be called Woman,
    because she was taken out of Man.”

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

[Genesis 2:20-24, ESV]

Notice that this was established before the fall, when sin had not yet infiltrated mankind. At this point, there was still no need for a Messiah and a plan of redemption. Yet, we are later revealed that marriage has a very important symbolic meaning: it points to the heavenly marriage between Jesus Christ (the Bridegroom) and the Church (his Bride):

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

    “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns. 7 Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready; 8 it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

[Revelation 19:6-9, ESV]

This symbolic parallelism is in fact acknowledged as a mystery by Paul:

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

[Ephesians 5:22-33, ESV]

Question: Did God create marriage in Eden with a messianic symbolism already built in? Did God create Adam and Eve already knowing that they would fall and that there would be a need for a Savior, and a Church, and heavenly marriage between the two? In other words, was the fall of man always part of the plan, and was marriage created precisely to foreshadow the plan of redemption?

Answer 1

Looking at Eph. 5:1-6:9 the intent of all human relationships is to express who God is (that is to glorify God). It starts out to imitate God as young children imitate their parents. After a discourse on general characteristics, the first relationship in a list of relationships is husband and wife (5:22-32), also the longest. In this relationship the husband is to express who Christ is and the wife the church.

People can argue whether predestination apply to individuals, but there is no doubt it applies to Christ and how we represent him.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:3–6, ESV)

Answer 2

I'll answer this in terms of typology. Revelation 19:7 expresses a spiritual reality:

Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;

This is the true heavenly type.

Genesis 2:24 describes an earthly type:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The point of this type is to show oneness intimacy as explained by Jesus in

John 17:

21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.

When God created Adam and Eve and the covenant of marriage between the two, did He already have the marriage between Christ and the Church in mind?

Yes, since the mind of God transcend time.

Was the fall of man always part of the plan, and was marriage created precisely to foreshadow the plan of redemption?

Marriage was created as a type to the heavenly oneness.

Answer 3

Was all that God initially instituted planned?

The questions in the OP may be pared down to two since there is considerable redundancy. With that in mind, I'll attempt to address the two fundamental questions in turn as I understand them. They appear to be these:

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I) Did God create Adam and Eve already knowing that they would fall?

II) Did God create marriage in Eden with messianic overtones, and was marriage created precisely to foreshadow the plan of redemption?

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I. God is omniscient. What that means is there is absolutely nothing that God does not know. When He created the material universe, He knew all that would ever transpire throughout history. Nothing surprises a Being with absolute intelligence and wisdom.

We often wonder: "Why did God put the Tree of Knowledge directly in the middle of the Garden? And, why did He allow a cunning serpent to tempt Adam and Eve?"

The answer is relatively straightforward: The Fall was preordained. Yes, Adam and Eve were destined to fall before they were ever created. God placed the Tree as He did to hasten the inevitable disobedience that followed.

The reason is this: Suppose God put the Tree high atop a mountain and never allowed Satan to tempt anyone. It may have taken thousands of years before someone would eat, whether intentionally or otherwise, and God expected every human being to be just as accountable as every other -- beginning with the first couple.

Many will claim that Adam and Eve had no free will before eating of the Tree. I suggest that argument is unfounded. Eve chose to eat. Adam chose to name the animals as he did. The first couple definitely had free will before the Fall: they were not automatons.

Further, when we join God in paradise with no Tree and no Tempter, are we then merely robots without free will? God created Adam and Eve in His image. Does it not follow that if the couple had no free will, then God is without free will? (Note that Adam and Eve were created in God's image well before their transgression.

II. The Bible is awash in symbolism from the Books of Genesis through the Book of Revelation. Scripture is clear that God instituted marriage as a union between a man and a woman. And, yes, marriage foreshadows God's own union with Man (i.e. man/woman) as a marriage. The Man in view is Christ. The Woman is His bride, the Church.

Naturally, we understand the word "church" used throughout the New Testament. The Greek word for church is ekklēsia used to identify the faithful, those who have been "separated" or "separated ones." This word is also used in Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew O/T text. The Hebrew term is qāhāl or "assembly."

This represented the nation of Israel as they gathered before God. We find the word "congregation" in the Old Testament often (cf. Lev. 4:13, Numbers 13:26, 15:24, Jos. 9:18, etc.). The terms used in the N/T representing the "church" are not new to the N/T. Rather, they derive from the O/T, thus, the O/T faithful of Israel was the assembly, or congregation -- church. The faithful of the O/T were just as much a "church" as N/T Christians (again, "assembly" in Jas. 2:2, NASB). They too were the Bride of Christ.

"Israel" denotes all the faithful: in the O/T this was the physical nation of the same name. In the N/T this represents the spiritual Israel of God. Note how Paul describes our status in Christ. We too are circumcised just as the ancient Israelites:

Colossians 2:11: "[In Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (emphasis added).

God did indeed create marriage with messianic implications. Christ, as God, intended to marry those who are collectively faithful to Him. He is the most exemplary Husband imaginable, one who gave His life through death by torture for His Bride.