Man, Woman, and the Gospel
This was the third and final message of a 3-part series delivered to the middle schoolers and high schoolers at Sioux Falls Christian on the topic of biblical sexuality.
Introduction
Good morning, Sioux Falls Christian! It is a joy to be with you all this morning and I want to thank you, on behalf of myself, Pastors Ryan and Logan from the past 2 weeks, for attentiveness and your grace to listen and process this difficult topic of biblical sexuality—manhood and womanhood. My aim in this final talk is to wrap this series up and make this main point: to image God means to live as he created you, as men and as women—broken by sin, and redeemed by the blood of Christ.
Gap Analysis
There exists a theory that is utilized all the time by major corporations, small businesses, sport teams, educators, students—it’s called Gap analysis. Gap analysis is a technique used to evaluate the difference between the current state of something and its desired or ideal state. The purpose of gap analysis is to identify areas where improvements or changes need to be made to bridge the gap between the current state and the desired state.
We do this all the time. Think of the tests you take in class—they are assessments. The way to see how we are doing compared to an authoritative standard and identify the “gaps”, or what needs improvement. Notice, for the gap theory to be of any actual help, it requires an objective standard. One that isn’t going to change flippantly but is fixed and outside of us. For tests, that’s your teacher. For your job, that’s your boss. But what about manhood/womanhood? Who gets to define those things? The Creator.
We do live in a very confused world. When we can’t define words like “men” and “women”, phrases like “women’s basketball” or “men’s bathrooms” become even more confusing. There are significant gaps. And as Christians, we are called to be loving and compassionate to all those who are confused. Words like “love” and “compassion” also need definitions. Imagine a man drowning at the beach and in between his gasps for breath he keeps screaming, “I’m not drowning!” He’s clearly confused, and it is not loving or compassionate to leave him there.
“The biblical worldview doesn’t stop with sympathy and compassion. The biblical worldview grounds our own identities in something—Someone—more solid, and helps us point others toward the same.” We know where the shore is, because we’ve been brought there by Christ.
Sioux Falls Christian’s mission statement begins with these words, “With God’s Word as our foundation…” God has revealed himself in creation, in his Word, and ultimately in THE Word, Jesus his Son in order that we might know him, know ourselves, recognize that gaps exist, and to know what must be done to close those gaps.
The past 2 weeks, Pastors Logan and Ryan have set forth a biblically faithful vision for what it means to be a man and a woman. Men and women are created equally in the image of God, but created differently to fulfill the Creation Mandate in Genesis 1, to be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion over the earth. And we are to obey this command AS men and women.
Manhood: Men are for productive, representative rulership and should humbly seek to be providers and protectors, living in obedience to God’s Word.
Womanhood: Femininity is the unique glory of women, and God made women to nurture life, to take dominion, to help and complete, and ultimately for glory.
Complementarity: Men and women were made to go together—like peanut butter and jelly. Those are two distinct flavors that are delicious on their own, but when put together are even better. And in order for them to complement each other, they must stay distinct.
The question before us today is, “Well, are there any gaps?” And if there are, what caused those gaps?
The Fall
In the beginning, God created all things and he said it was good. And the climax of that creation was the creation of a being that was unlike any of the other creatures—this creature bore his very image—more than that, this creature IS the image of God. He made them to know him, to love him, and to reflect his glory. He also designed them in such a way to accomplish his ultimate goal in creation…for his glory to spread throughout the whole world. Mankind was designed to live, work, and thrive together with God dwelling in their midst.
Of course, you all know the story, that did not last long. Genesis 1—God creates the world, with humans as its crowning feature. Genesis 2—zooms in on the creation of Adam from the earth to work the earth, and the creation of Eve from Adam’s side to work alongside Adam and help him. Genesis 3—sin. They didn’t even make one chapter!
The inauguration of sin in the world through Adam and Eve had a complete upending effect. It turned the world upside down. The God-designed roles that men and women were created to fulfill were reversed. Like a drill, designed to drill screws into a 2x4, now being used to cut the 2x4. Eve wanted to be Adam, leading and spearheading a trail to being like God. Adam submitted and abdicated when he should have lept in and crushed the head of the snake. All this leads to the just curses of God.
Genesis 3 describes these curses in detail, and just like they sinned by upending and reversing their roles, the punishments laid on them are addressed specifically to those God-given roles. For men, who were made from the earth to work the earth, they will struggle to produce and labor to provide for themselves and their families, until they eventually return to the earth in their death. For women, their unique gift of producing and nurturing life would now be fraught with pain and suffering, and because they respond to the leadership of men, and because those men are now broken with sin, their relationships with men will be strained.
At the Fall, gaps opened up. Whatever God made for good, mankind will abuse it. Paul describes this broken state in Ephesians 2:1–3.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
This is the world we live in, and we are participants in it. And sin also infected our sexuality. After the Fall, we did not stop being men and women. We are and always have been and always will be sexual beings. Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. I have always been a man interacting with other people who are also men or women. So this effects our daily lives. Because of sin, we should not be surprised that we live in a hyper-sexualized world.
Think of all the things our culture celebrates: sexual orientation and identity, transgenderism, bathroom laws, drag queen story hour at the local public library, homosexuality, and more. All of this speaks to the brokenness and confusion that we should expect to be present in a world full of sin.
But not only that, we have within our possession, almost at all hours of the day, a device that has technology that opens up that entire broken world to us at all times. The technology of your smartphone is more than what NASA had to put a man on the moon. And every one of us has that power at our fingertips.
Another result of the Fall is that what was protected and confined to an intimate marriage is now on display to the world. Pornography and sexual immorality is not a 21st century problem. The Bible characters had to deal with temple prostitutes. The Victorians had to deal with brothels. But now every person has a brothel in their pocket. Access to real temptation is everywhere: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Netflix—and the result is a numbing effect on our souls.
Elisabeth Elliot says it well when she says…
The distinction between intimacy and openness is rubbed out altogether. The craze for “sensitivity” and “sharing” has done its pernicious work. There is no longer a sense of occasion or appropriateness. What ought to be hidden is displayed. What ought to be whispered or covered in silence is shouted. What ought to be kept back for a chosen time, a chosen place, and a chosen individual is thrown out into the thoroughfare.
So sin has opened up serious gaps, and it effects our daily lives as men and women. Sin has marred and broken the image of God in which we were made. But what does this look like? Let’s look briefly at how the Fall has effected manhood and womanhood directly.
Fallen Manhood
Men are called to take responsibility and not make excuses. That means humbly recognizing and acknowledging that you are wrong when you are wrong. But prideful men want to take credit only for successes, and failure threatens success, so blame is passed and excuses are made. But instead of taking responsibility, men either abuse or abandon this responsibility.
Men are also called to protect life and to provide for those in need. But instead of protecting life, selfish men take whatever they want for personal gain and destroy those around them.
Men are called to be wise. In fact, the repeated command and plea of Solomon to his son in Proverbs is this (Proverbs 4:5–9)
Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her (Lady Wisdom), and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.”
But instead of becoming wise, men wallow in their foolishness, happy to be tossed in the wind. Sinful and immature men become slaves to foolishness and content to follow whatever their friends or the internet think.
Finally, men are called to image and reflect the glory of God. But instead of imagining the glory of God, men worship themselves and inflate their ego and pride, or they withdraw and let others do the work for them. Sin really has ravaged what it means to be a man. But what about womanhood?
Fallen Womanhood
Just like men, women have been called to live a certain way as women, designed and purposed by God. But instead of seeing their femininity as unique and glorious, women despise their femininity and seek to be like men in every way.
Like men, women are prone to gender-specific temptations: gossiping, manipulation, seduction, nagging, etc. Like men can be on two ends of a spectrum (abusive or absent), women can too: controlling and manipulative on one end and dependent enablers on the other. Women are vulnerable to putting up with abuse and mistreatment for the sake of attention from men.
Women are called and created by God to create, carry, and nurture new life, but instead of seeing that as an incredible gift, and miraculous and majestic gift that deserves endless praise and honor, our society despises that fertility. We want sex without the consequences of it. Instead of cherishing and protecting the fruit of the womb, our society seeks to murder children in the womb.
Women are also called to follow and respond to godly leadership from men, and specifically from their husbands. But instead women follow worthless men into sin and wreckage. And because worthless men are broken, it is a heartbreaking reality that evil men often abuse or abandon those whom he is responsible for; and women are the victims.
Gospel Hope
So what hope is there for us? Are we left to die in this broken place? Is there no hope of escaping all of this? Are we left in the place of Christian at the beginning of Pilgrim’s Progress, weighed down with this great burden of sin on our backs? How can we live as God made us to live when we are so tempted to abandon this design all the time?
All that we have discussed today is just fruit, broken fruit, as a result of sin. Sin has left us with broken, distorted, and evil desires and we follow those sinful desires. Like Paul said in Ephesians 2, we are dead in our trespasses and sins. We mar the image of God, and in our sin we even despise it. And we live in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. But what is the solution to this problem? What hope do we have?
This is the real crux of it all—we need to be saved from our sin. We will not and can not live as God has made us to or for the purposes he made us for until we our hearts and minds are redeemed. And the Bible says over and over again that we can not save ourselves. So what do we do? Answer…nothing. We can’t do anything on our own—but God can.
Look at how Paul says it next in Ephesians 2:4–9, and notice who is the chief doer…
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Because of God, and what he has done in the death and resurrection of Christ, we are now able to be freed from sinful desires. He has saved us from our sins and has brought our dead hearts back to life. Because of the Gospel, we are no longer slaves to sin and the passions of this world. That is good news!
Paul ends this famous passage with this in Ephesians 2:10…
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The image of God that was created in the beginning, and that has been broken by sin, is now re-created in Christ Jesus. And this is not a stagnant image, like some portrait or photo, but is living and active and walks. This new creation is to be lived out.
For men, this means no longer abusing or abandoning responsibility, but joyfully and gladly taking hold of your responsibility, and humbly laying your life down for others. It means being forgiven for your sins and foolishness and extending forgiveness to those who sin against you. It means abandoning folly, and seeking Lady Wisdom and finding her and treasuring her! And it means leading others, including your future wives, in Christ-honoring and glorifying ways.
For women, that means accepting and embracing your God-given femininity and gladly preparing for womanhood by cultivating nurturing skills, learning to value the family and household. It means gratitude for all that God has done for you, and gives you new eyes to see what is God-glorifying and honoring and beautiful, and enfleshing that in the world. And as you look for a future husband, you are looking for a man worthy of your submission, and that is a man who will love you like Christ loves his church and lay his life down for you. And that means extending and receiving forgiveness and peace that leads to glad-hearted submission, seen most clearly in how the church submits and responds to Christ.
So, in one sense, this is what we were made to be as men and women. But we have failed and we are flawed, just like our first parents, Adam and Eve, who were tasked as one flesh to establish dominion in the garden. Adam stood passively by while Eve usurped his authority, was deceived, and ate the fruit. And then Adam jumped into sin headlong with her. And lastly, instead of taking responsibility and saying, “Take my life instead of hers,” he turned around and blamed Eve, and ultimately God, for their sin. And we are just like Adam and Eve in our sin.
But the God-man, Christ Jesus, bore the blame for every abusive man, every passive man, every insensitive man, every unfaithful man, every violent and domineering man, every irresponsible and abdicating man. And Jesus took the blame for every seductive woman, every vain woman, every selfish woman, every smothering woman. And it’s only in Christ that we are made new. So when we fail to live up to God’s design as men and women, we must turn from ourselves and trust God’s wisdom. The only way to live out our identities rightly is by trusting God for grace, receiving his forgiveness, and turning to him by faith.
So, if you don’t know this type of forgiveness, I implore you to turn to Christ. It is only in Christ that we can truly live as men and women in this world. Turn to him, submit your life to him, for he is not only the author and creator of your very life and male or female body, but is the author and creator and sustainer of your salvation. And as you do so, as you turn to him, you will find that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.