God and Women – Both Helpers

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." – Genesis 2:18

Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield. – Psalm 33:20

A lot of people have pointed out that the word used for helper in Genesis 2:18 (ezer) is often used to refer to God. I’ve been really thinking about this today, and was really enjoying what I think this means for our relationships with the opposite sex, but also what it means in our relationship with God.

I’ve got two things to point out:

1. This means we have different roles

This word pops up twenty-one times in the Old Testament. Sixteen times it refers to God. Most importantly, it NEVER calls US God’s helpers.

Such an idea is disgusting. Acts 17:24-25 says,

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything

God DOES NOT NEED help. He can totally do without us. To imagine a God who needs help is to imagine a non-God. Self-sufficiency is essential to the concept of the Biblical God.

God is a helper, we are not. We are different in roles. We dare not be God’s helper, and we dare not deny the Scriptures by saying that we don’t need God’s help. He MUST be helper, we MUST be helped. John Piper likes to say “the giver gets the Glory”. If we try to assert some sort of egalitarianism in our relationship with God, we deny Him Glory.

Men need help. That’s why God made a woman, and then commissioned her to make up for man’s insufficiency. The Reformation Study Bible notes that “The word ‘helper’ entails his inadequacy, not her inferiority”. Imagine a world with only male human beings. That’d be a disaster (uhh, at least more of a disaster).

The word ezer always refers to relationships where there is a difference in roles. The helper does not do the same thing as the helped. If a man tries to impose some sort of egalitarianism in his relationship to his wife, he denies the woman the glory of enjoying God’s assigned role to her. There is a difference between their roles. And this difference is always that the helper acts for the helped. We don’t even need to look at all the examples, since Paul does this interpretation (through the Holy Spirit) for us:

For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man – 1 Cor. 11:8-9

Therefore, women are for men in a way that is different from the way that a man is for a woman. God serves us in a way that is different from the way we serve Him. They are not the same roles. They are very different.

2. This means that being an ezer does not mean a compromise in worth

God is our helper. He is FOR us. As Christ He came to serve, not to be served (Matthew 20:28). And He did this and does this without ever compromising His infinitely superior worth.

In fact, it is part of His Glory that the Almighty King of the Universe would be for His Creation. I will never be for my clothes, my clothes are for me (not that I made my clothes, but you get the idea). It is unthinkable that I would become for my clothes. Yet the potter, in an act of incomparable humility and grace, became for the clay. The giver gets the Glory!

Women get to display a similar beauty when they, despite being co-bearers of God’s Image, submit themselves to the headship of men. And they are able to do this, like God, without ever compromising their worth. And the Glory goes to God!