Complementary in the Regency Mandate
What God blesses man and woman to do in Gen. 1:26-28, He elucidates in Gen. 2. In verses 7-8, we find that God created the man (apart from the woman) from the dust of the ground and gave him the breath of life so that “the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). God then planted a garden in a place called Eden and placed the man there in the midst of trees that are both pleasing and good for food. At the center of it all are two trees: one called the “tree of life” and the other “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:8-9). We learn that not only are there trees, but the garden bears a grand river that is the source of four rivers which spread throughout various lands.
Sometimes when I think of this garden, I imagine it to be like the one found by Mary Lennox in the beloved children’s novel, The Secret Garden, which once was a place of serenity, comfort, beauty, and friendship, representing a good life lived so long ago, before death entered the story.[1] Yet the secret garden had been sealed off and abandoned. By the time Mary discovers the garden on her uncle’s land, it is in desperate need of tending, for it had been deserted after her uncle lost his wife, by whom the garden had been planted. The story underscores the fact that if gardens are not cultivated, they will not display the glory the gardener has in mind. This is why, in Gen. 2, though God Himself is the Gardener (2:8), the LORD places the man in the garden “to work it and watch over it” (2:15). Typically, we think of Eden as a place created with everything in its place, perfect, without need of tending. But if that is the case, why did Moses give us the detail in Gen. 2:5 that before mankind's creation, “no shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God has not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.”
Part of man's purpose was to keep the garden. This assignment relates to the mandate in Gen. 1:26-28: of ruling over and subduing the earth. Some have called that text the “cultural mandate” or the “dominion mandate.” A word like, “dominion” might not sound appealing in today’s world, because we associate dominion with domination and oppression. Thus, understanding the original language of the phrases used to describe man’s mandate are helpful:
It is important, however, to note that the proper relationship of man to nature is not simply that of ruling over it. When we go from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2, we find that Adam was given a specific task to perform: to work (abad) and to take care (shamar) the Garden of Eden in which he had been placed (v. 15). The Hebrew word abad literally means “to serve.” The word shamar means “to guard, watch over, preserve, or care for.”
Adam, in other words, was not only told to rule over nature; he was also told to cultivate and care for that portion of the earth in which he had been placed. If human rule over the earth, this command might easily have been misconstrued as an open invitation to irresponsible exploitation of the earth’s resources. But the injunction to work and take care of the Garden of Eden implies that we are to serve and preserve the earth as well as to rule over it.[2]
Therefore, I think a better term for the mandate would be one that corresponds to our regency. We were given a regency mandate. But how does this serving and preserving of the earth flesh out? Not only in our stewardship of the planet and the cultivation of its resources, but also in the creation of a God-glorifying community of image bearers, for man and woman were commanded “to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Yet when we arrive at Gen. 2, after God placed the man in the garden to work it and watch over it, the text tells us that God comments “it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him” (Gen. 2:18). Next, the Lord forms the animals out of the ground and yet, no helper corresponding to the man is found after a parade of animals are brought before him. The creatures themselves are named by the man, but they are not capable nor are commissioned agents to partner with Adam in accomplishing the assigned task. It must’ve felt dramatic for Adam, as each animal was brought before him. Surely, he was curious to see which one would be the one to aid him in fulfilling God’s command to fill the earth. And as the drama of that moment unfolded, it was then that the LORD God caused the man to go into a deep sleep and performed a surgery to create woman from the rib of the man. Afterwards, the LORD presents the woman to the man and you can feel Adam’s excitement upon seeing her as he proclaims:
This one, at last, is bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh;
this one will be called “woman,”
for she was taken from man. (Gen. 2:23)
The story climaxes with the creation of woman who is like the man. She is the same, is “bone of [his] bone and flesh of [his] flesh.” Unlike the tiger, the elephant, the monkey, the kangaroo, the bear, or any other animal the LORD created that day, Adam rejoiced over the one presented to him by his God as woman, for she was taken from him, truly a helper corresponding to man as she is both like him and distinct from him:
The woman is not merely created alongside of him but out of him (1 Cor. 11:8). Just as the stuff for making Adam's body was taken from the earth, so the side of Adam is the basis of the life of Eve. But just as out of the dust of the earth the first man became a living being through the breath of life which came from above, so out of Adam's side the first woman became a human being by the creative omnipotence of God. She is out of Adam and yet is another than Adam. She is related to him and yet is different from him. She belongs to the same kind and yet in that kind he occupies her own unique position. She is dependent and yet she is free. She is after Adam and out of Adam, but owes her existence to God alone. And so, she serves to help the man, to make his vocation of subduing the earth possible. She is his helper, not as mistress and much less as slave, but as an individual, independent, and free being, who received her existence not from the man but from God, who is responsible to God, and to man as a free and unearned gift.[3]
While most translations speak of the woman as helper, the King James speaks of her as the “helpmeet” which later became “helpmate.” Some have used this phrase to teach that woman was made to take care of the man, making sure things like his meals and clothes are always in place. While these things are some of the varied ways a wife may lovingly choose to serve her husband, they don’t make up the essence of what it means to be the helper corresponding to him. To understand her role as helper in Gen. 2, it must be rooted in the command both were given in Gen. 1: to rule and subdue. The woman was uniquely created as the counterpart to man, so that they could extend God’s reign on Earth together, both equally made in His image, with a delegated authority over the animal world, the land, and the sea. But the first few pages of Scripture leave us wondering, will man and woman live up to this command? Will they fulfill their created purpose as co-regents and fulfill the regency mandate?
In this book, we will strive to answer this question and see how each man and woman’s relationship through the Bible and in the church ultimately reflects Christ and His bride, the fulfillment of the regency mandate. This book is not meant to define the gender roles of a man and woman in marriage or even in the church but instead to understand ultimately what the relationship between a man and woman represents. This book is for men, women, married or single, seeking to understand the tiny puzzle piece they are in the painting of the story of God.
Excerpted from Christ & His Bride: How Men and Women Tell the Story of the Gospel by Julia B. Higgins (B&H Publishing, 2026). Used with permission.