Biblical Manhood
Welcome to 30 Minute Theology Studies, where we take a Christian doctrine and try to make sense of it, all in about 30 minutes. God’s already given us the sense in Scripture, we just need to work through the biblical data, organize it in a helpful way, and then apply it. Of course, theologians do this all the time and come to different conclusions, so we’ll have to address some of the problems along the way, before we can arrive at a solution. So, let’s see how much of that we can sort out in this short time. Let’s go ahead and get started.
In this lesson, we’re talking about biblical manhood. So what’s that about? What do I mean by biblical manhood? Well, you may have heard it phrased ‘biblical headship in the family and in the church’. Or, maybe you’ve heard the terms egalitarianism or complementarianism. What we’re talking about, what we really want to know is, what God thinks about gender and sexuality. What does it mean, according to the Bible, to be a man (we’ll probably have to save biblical womanhood for another lesson)? So, what does the Bible say about men, and what does that mean for family life and for church leadership?
And it makes perfect sense that we’d go to the Bible with these questions. If we believe that God created humans, and that he’s an intelligent designer (that he knew what he was doing when he created us), then he’d be the perfect person to ask about our makeup—he’d be the one to tell us about how we work best. And if we believe the Bible, and Christians do, then we can be confident that we’ll find some answers there in the Bible. God wouldn’t want to keep us in the dark on this all important issue. God DOES care about manhood, and he wants us to care about it too. He’s gonna give us what we need in the Bible. And I think it’s actually pretty clear in what it teaches on the topic.
So, I’ll go ahead and say upfront what I’m convinced of. I’m convinced that the Bible teaches that men are different from women, and that those differences are by design. And with that, men do different things, and we’ll do them differently, again by design.
And really, in all this, it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that—that men are different, and we do different things, and we do them differently. But of course, this issue does get complicated, because we tend to abuse God’s good design, so I do understand the complaints from the other side. And maybe we’ll have time to consider some of them here.
Ok, so we’re talking about biblical manhood, which more broadly is about gender and sexuality. And I don’t have to tell you how important it is to learn what God thinks about these things. There may be no more important social issue today than gender and sexuality if you think about it. Homosexuality, transgenderism, feminism, abortion—most of the battles in the culture war today are over gender and sexuality. Now, I don’t know how much Christians need to be fighting on some political front—we’ve got other things to do, like evangelism. I’m no culture warrior, but we Christians should be prepared with God’s answers to culture’s questions, and I’m convinced we can find them in the Bible.
And, if you ask me, Christians HAVE to get this issue right. If the church isn’t absolutely clear on this matter, if we compromise even just a little bit, then Satan’s gonna jump all over it. Secular beliefs on gender and sexuality are already forcing their way into the church, and sadly the church has already compromised on some things, like divorce for example. I fear that the other issues—homosexuality, transgenderism, feminism, and abortion are just waiting for their opportunity, just waiting for the church to give-in just a little. Christians have gotta be strong, we gotta stand firm with the Bible on gender and sexuality—on biblical manhood. Anyway, let’s get into the data.
Scripture gives us plenty of material to discuss, but I’ll have to limit our data to the most relevant passages. Actually, we could probably just kinda focus on Genesis, which contains the foundational passages on gender and sexuality, and then we can look at how both Jesus and Paul pointed back to those same foundational passages.
So, Genesis means origins. It’s great that God gives humans an origin story in the Bible, to let us know where we came from and what we’re supposed to be doing. We read in chapter 1 that “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
So, both questions are answered immediately: where did we come from? God created us in his image and likeness, he created us male and female. AND what are we supposed to be doing with our lives? We're supposed to fill the earth with humans. We’re supposed to subdue the land and dominate the animals. We’re supposed to rule the world as God’s representative (his image), to expand God’s glory until it covers everything.
Of course, for our purposes, we’ll first make note of humans being created as male and female. And we get more detail on that in verse 7 of Genesis chapter 2:
“The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed,” and again in verse 15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
So we understand here that humans were given a job to do. Rule the world by cultivating the ground, by creating culture.
Understanding that that’s a lot for one man to do in the garden, God gave Adam a helper. We read in verse 18 and following:
“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 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.” So we learn that the animals weren’t a good fit for Adam’s helper.
So we read that, “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. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 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.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
So a woman was created, and she would be that helper fit for man. And then we’re told that, the kinda normal progression, the way to get our jobs done moving forward, is to leave our parents and unite with a spouse—to do that work together as husband and wife. So, some pretty straightforward biblical data to start with. Created by God as males and females, with work to do. We’re gonna rule the world. So we’re paired together in marriage, not only so that we can multiply humans, but also because our differences are helpful in working and keeping the garden.
Alright, so after creation comes the fall. The first real plot twist in the biblical story. We have the serpent, who we know to be Satan, and it says that the serpent was crafty. Part of his craftiness was to approach, not the man who was made first, but to go to the man’s helper and try to deceive her into eating the forbidden fruit. And, of course, the man’s real failure was that he allowed it to happen, while he should’ve been out there protecting her from the serpent. Which is why, when they got busted for eating the fruit, God came down hard on the man. It was Adam who really messed up; HE got the two kicked out of the garden.
So, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and then God would make things more difficult for them—it became more difficult to multiply and fill the earth, childbearing would now be painful. And God would make working and keeping the ground more difficult. There would now be thorns and thistles. But there’s more. We read in verse 16 of chapter 3 that along with pain in childbirth, that the wife’s “desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” And there it is: the power struggle between the sexes begins. And we see this play out almost immediately, as the people spread out around the ancient world. Throughout the Old Testament, we see men overpowering women, and even within the people of God, within Israel, there doesn’t seem to be much really done to protect women. The law of Moses did mitigate some of the worse abuses, but it was still a problem.
Then Jesus comes along in the New Testament and he was a champion of women. He attends to women, he brings them into his inner circle, he gives them roles in his ministry. And he brings with him a new law regarding the relationship. His law of the kingdom filled up Moses’ law. He took things like adultery and divorce even further than Moses ever did. In Matthew 5, he says:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
And again: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
But still, Jesus’ kingdom law was based on creation. When questioned about divorce by the Pharisees in Matthew 19, for example, he pointed back to the Genesis account:
“And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And even when the Pharisees, trying to trap Jesus, brought up the Old Testament’s poor treatment of women, like in Moses’ allowing the Israelites to leave their wives (or we could even throw in there his allowing men to take additional wives—as in polygamy), Jesus said that’s not how I meant for it to be, that’s not what I wanted for men and women, but because yall messed things up, because of sin, I had to change some things around. As I slowly, incrementally reveal my plan of redemption to the world. Verse 8 “Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” Jesus was saying, “yeah, I made some concessions because of sin, the fall changed the condition of the world, it presented people with a new situation, and I adjusted my plan, I did things a little differently for awhile, but that’s not the way I created men and women to relate to each other. And that's not the way we’ll all live in my kingdom, there will BE no divorce or polygamy. In fact, no adultery of any kind, and that includes lusting in the heart.
So, kingdom living, according to Jesus, just like creation living, would include faithfully married men and women, ruling the world—multipying children, subduing the land, and dominating the animals. But now it would also include another mission, spreading the message of the kingdom, and inviting others into the church.
Then Paul comes along and takes up Jesus’ mission. He makes converts all over the ancient world. He plants churches, and after getting them set up, he writes them letters with instructions—details on kingdom living within the church. But even with the institution of the church, Paul continued to point back to creation.
He teaches the church in Corinth, for example, saying: “the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband.” Pretty clear instruction. And the reason he gives is also pretty straightforward: “For man was not made from woman,” he says, “but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head.”
So, families in the kingdom have husbands as the head, or leader of the home, because of creation. Man was created first, and woman was made from him, to be his helper. And there at the end, Paul adds that the differences in the sexes should be made evident to all. There should be, outwardly, some sort of visual reminder that men and women are different by design.
Paul also tells Timothy, in another letter, to pass on to the churches to: “not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”
Now, that verse obviously needs some more context and maybe we’ll have time to get into that, but again Paul gives instruction here, regarding men as leaders in the church. Men are to be the teachers, they are the pastors and elders, again because of creation. Adam was formed first, then Eve. And again, he points out that it should’ve been Adam, out front of Eve, protecting her from the serpent.
Ok, so we have some biblical data. Now, let’s do some organizing of that data, to see if we can make some sense of it.
So, in Genesis we have our foundational passages. We learn that God created people in his image, so that we would rule the world, like God would. And we learned that we would rule the world within a relationship. That we were created male and female, and that we’d relate to each other. Man was created first, and then God gave him a helper. There’s nothing demeaning about being a helper, by the way—it’s just our doing different things, differently. And that man and woman would share the work of multiplying more people, subduing the land and dominating the animals. That we would cultivate the garden; together we’d “create culture.”
But quickly everything got flipped on its head. The crafty serpent saw an opportunity to invert the order of things. He snuck around the man and instead went to his helper, to deceive her. And we know how that went. Adam and Eve fell, and sin entered the world. And now, among other problems, men and women would be in a perpetual power struggle.
We saw that both Jesus and Paul, when addressing gender and sexuality, both pointed back to this important part of the Bible, to our origin story in Genesis. They made a big deal about being created male and female, with man created first and woman made the helper, and about her being deceived, and not him.
So, in making sense of all this, what’s the most obvious indicator today that this was what God intended, and that it still applies today. That we were made differently, to do different things. Is there anything we can point to? In my mind, it’s just the eye test, really—what do we see, what do we notice first about men, how they look, how we act?
It seems to me, we can always point to man’s greater size, strength, and aggression. It’s kinda funny to me, that even to say that has become controversial, but I mean, how can it be disputed? Actually, people do try to dispute it, they’ll introduce some exceptions as evidence, and think they’ve proven something. I don’t know what they think they’ve proven, other than that yes, there are exceptions, there are some exceptionally large, strong, and aggressive women. But are they really arguing that women are bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than men? I don’t think so. Or, maybe they’re saying that men and women are the same? Which would be a strange argument. Or, probably because it’s so obvious, they’re most likely just saying that it shouldn’t matter?
Well, I’m arguing that it does matter. It mattered to Jesus and Paul to point back to creation. To our design. And because I believe God was purposeful in his design. God didn’t just randomly put people’s parts and personalities together, I believe it’s still important. And the connection is right there. When God commanded man to work the ground, and when God subsequently addressed him (the man, and NOT the woman) in God’s cursing the ground, making it now difficult work—even dangerous work, that God would have given man the greater size, strength, and aggression so that he could do the difficult, dangerous job. It’s right there, it’s pretty clear.
So, man’s being created first means that he’s out front. Out front of the family, and out front of the church. And he’s been given at creation, by design, all the tools he needs to be out front—the size, strength, and aggression to do the job. Now, being created first doesn’t have to mean some kind of top-down authority. I don’t like the visual of men high on top. High, as in hierarchy. And I don’t like the feel of men SITTING on top. It feels heavy, oppressive. Men don’t sit on top like some dictator, no, they STAND OUT FRONT. Husbands go BEFORE the family, they’re in front of the family, and Elders, in the same way, go before the church, there out there in front.
And men aren’t in front because we’re more important (actually, if you think about it, maybe it’s because we’re less important). Men are out front to be the first in the line of fire. We do the difficult, dangerous work, not because others couldn’t do it, but because we’re meant to do it—we’re meant to die before the others do. If we wanna get right to it. That’s what it’s all about. Men are expendable; it’s our job to go get ourselves killed, so that the others can live.
Isn’t that what Paul meant in Ephesians 5, when husbands are to die for their wives? Paul again wrote in Ephesians that, “the husband is the head of the wife,” but this time he adds, “even as Christ is the head of the church” so, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Paul says, “Men, go get yourself killed like Christ did.” That’s the call of the husband. And WE CAN DO IT, that’s what I mean by men’s aggressiveness by design—it’s not toxic masculinity. It’s about will and determination to care for the ones you love. It’s aggressive care. Go get yourself killed!
I love Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus facing death, it says in Isaiah chapter 50, verse 7, and this is Jesus talking, he says, “I have set my face like flint.” Flint is a rock, a stone, and then we have that verse's fulfillment in Luke 9:51 “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Such resolve. He was stone-faced in the face of death. He set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem to die. THIS is what men are made of. It’s what we’re supposed to do. We lay down our lives for others.
So, you can see here I’m mostly talking about protection. Men are out front protecting the family from danger. And it’s not that men are looking for a fight. And this is important. We’re not looking for a fight. No, we’re only looking to draw the fire, WE absorb the blow; we take the punch. We’re not killers; we’re not out there on the attack. No, we go get ourselves killed . . . SO that while we’re being attacked, the others can get away. That’s different. That’s not this macho, chest-pounding, UFC stuff.
Now, of course, rarely is this protection that I’m talking about physical like this. Not the way I’ve been describing it. Few of us will literally have to die. Or even take a punch (Maybe some of us will) But more often it’s just things like making hard decisions and taking resposibility for them. It’s standing up for something controversial and taking the hit for it. Again, back to the garden, Adam should’ve been out front of Eve with the serpent. And notice it wasn’t that the serpent was about to strike Eve, it wasn’t a violent encounter, where Adam was gonna have to put the serpent in some choke hold. No, Adam just shouldn’ve been out there defending God’s Word, directing the family, and ultimately taking responsibility to redirect things if it goes bad.
Ok, so, how do we apply some of this stuff? And our time went fast, we hardly got into the broader issue of gender and sexuality. There’s so much more we could say. But, for this lesson, we leave the focus on biblical manhood. What does it mean, according to the Bible, to be a man? How are men different, what do we do differently, for both the family and for the church?
We first drew out some of the biblical data—the most important passages being the creation story, the Genesis account. And we saw that both Jesus and Paul also pointed back to creation, to Genesis, in their teaching and instruction. We learned that God created us male and female, in THAT order, and that the order, man created first, was important because it put him in the position of being out front, as protector. Not on top, as dictator, but out front, as protector.
And then in organizing the data, we put God’s creative design to the eye test—simply seeing with our eyes that men look and act differently. We noticed their greater size, strength, and aggression, and put it together, along with God’s curses after the fall, that those things were purposeful. That men were meant to do the dirty work—those difficult, dangerous things that only men do.
By the way, in passing, I make a quick note, regarding some women’s complaints about how it’s mostly men who have all the best, most prestigious, and highest positions in the workforce, isn’t it interesting how they never talk about how men also hold all the worst jobs, the most difficult jobs, the most dangerous jobs out there. Think about it, there are virtually no women road construction workers or garbage collectors, for example. They’re all men. So, yes, some men have the jobs that everybody wants, but many more men do the jobs that nobody wants. For the most part, it’s men who do the dirty work in society. Because we’re made for it.
Anway, So, we’ve talked more about husbands and fathers, but elders and pastors also do a lot of the dirty work. Which is why Paul tells the Thessalonians to give them their due. In chapter 5, verse 12, he writes, “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you” By the way the word there for those who are over you, your leaders, is proistemi (PROIS-tah-me), and it means “to stand before, to go before.” Respect your church leaders who labor, he says, those who lead you. These men go before to do the hard work (they labor) the hard work of admonishing or exhorting, which means to warn, to reprove, to rebuke—it’s difficult, dangerous work.
So again, we didn’t have time to address all the current concerns and male headship in the church, but it’s no secret that some women want to be in the pulpit. They feel called to preach. But it’s difficult, dangerous work to get up there and admonish and exhort, but that’s what preachers are called by God to do from the stage, and I wonder if those women who want to preach plan to admonish and exhort. The ones I’ve heard speak seem to be mostly interested in inspiration or motivation. I’ve not heard about them wanting to confront—to warn, reprove, or rebuke. Which is why allowing women into the pulpit actually says more about what we’ve done with preaching than anything. Our preaching has lost a lot of its flinty aggression.
But remember Paul makes Timothy promise to “Preach the Word!” and then he goes on to explain that, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth.” People are coming to church to hear what will suit their passions, they want that inspiration or motivation, they don’t want a confrontation.
But Jude tells us to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Fight for the truth, he says. Preachers are to get out there, preach the Word, and absorb those punches. Elders do things like practice church discipline—thats front line kinda stuff. I can’t imagine sending out my Christian sisters and daughters, while I sit back. I couldn’t say to them, go get yourself killed. This is why the Bible limits the role of pastor or elder to men.
And again, it’s not that some exceptional women couldn’t do it, there are plenty who could get the job done. But like Jesus and Paul, we gotta point back to creation—to God’s good design.
Alright, we’re outta time, and I’m not sure if we actually got around to much application. And I guess, as I close here, that I’ll mostly talk to men.
I can’t give any better advice than to follow Paul’s instructions as he closes his letter to the Corinthians. He writes in kinda a quick, staccato fashion, almost like marching orders, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”
So let’s do that men. God gave us greater size, strength, and aggression, so that we can love big, stand strong in the faith, and aggressively care for our families and our churches. Society will tell us that those differences don’t matter; culture says that science and technology has advanced us beyond God’s original design. But we’ve seen that both Jesus and Paul both point to creation for why men are here and what men are to do. We’re here to rule the world like God, alongside a wife. We can’t do it without her. And within that relationship, in our families and in our churches, let’s have the will and determination, flint-like faces to do the difficult work, the dangerous work.
Thanks for listening to this 30 minute theology study. Hope to see you at the next one.