Hi Men,
This is the sixth episode in our summer series, Meeting the Worldview Challenges in a Broken Culture, in which we repeat past episodes that are vital for men leading their families in 2023. This original episode was published on Easter Day of 2021. This summer we continue to experience an unprecedented assault upon God’s design of gender, with Christianity being blamed for adhering to so-called “oppressive patriarchy” which, it is alleged, leads to both toxic masculinity and the social construct of gender that says it is binary. This assault presents Christian men today with an unparalleled opportunity to show the glory of God’s original design of strong, self-sacrificing, protective MANHOOD while pointing to Jesus and his resurrection power as the only antidote to our masculine selfishness.
The resurrection of Christ, which overthrows the curse of death upon Adam and his race for their sins, is proof that God has begun to fix everything in this world broken by sin, including masculinity. Masculinity, itself, is under assault by many in our culture, some out of simple rebellion against God’s design, but many, because they’ve been injured by toxic masculinity in its various forms. This episode calls Christian men to show the world the glory of God’s design of manhood as it should be, because we know how to draw upon the same power at work in us that brought Jesus back from the grave
As we in the US enter what will be a contentious debate over H.R.5, The Equality Act, we will be told that a person in a male body who claims to be a woman has the right to continue in such a state of gender dysphoria, so our culture must bend to accommodate his delusion. We know better. Canceling God’s binary design of mankind as male and female is not the right solution to the terrible toxic masculinity revealed by the #Metoo movement, nor to the horrific sex slave trade carried on BY men and BASED UPON MEN’S evil corrupt sexual appetites. We’ve seen Western egalitarianism blame biblical teaching about the roles of men and women in marriage by claiming that the Bible promotes white male privilege. For example the recently changed (in 2018) American Psychological Association Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men states, “Privilege refers to unearned sources of social status, power, and institutionalized advantage experienced by individuals by virtue of their culturally valued and dominant social identities (e.g., White, Christian, male).” In other words, broken masculinity is the fault of Christianity, which teaches that men are to be the heads of their homes.
In such a world, it is easy to take the path of least resistance and minimize the biblical teaching of God’s design for male and female. Many weak men, including Christian leaders have. They seem ashamed of God’s command, Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 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. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Of course, we know of extreme cases where abusive husbands have quoted this verse to justify their selfish, ego-centered misunderstanding of male leadership at home. BUT THAT IS NO REASON TO CRINGE OVER GOD’S DESIGN. We ought to be spiritually mature enough to understand--as the culture does not—that the problem of toxic manhood is NOT GOD’S DESIGN but THE FALL. Are you teaching that to your children and grandchildren? Let’s review the fall of godly manhood into sin from just the first four chapters of the Bible.
1. Adam is assigned responsibility in 2:15 to protect Eve and the garden. But when Eve is attacked by Satan, and lured into rebellion against God, ADAM IS TOTALLY PASSIVE. Instead of protecting Eve from temptation, he lets Eve lead him into sin. God’s words of judgement on Adam are not politically correct, but God does NOT just punish Adam for eating the fruit. He says, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed….
2. Adam is assigned responsibility in 2:15 to spend his energy causing Eve, along with the rest of the garden, to thrive. But instead of encouraging words to cause her to flourish, he verbally assaults her, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” When God holds Adam accountable for what happened, instead of grieving over his failure as the leader of his home and bringing enormous pain into Eve’s life, he blamed her. Fallen men (including me) have been blaming their wives for their failures to love them well, ever since.
3. Genesis 4:1-8 reveals that the first human child, Cain, is insanely jealous of his brother, Abel, and murders him. Male rage has been wounding and abusing others ever since.
4. Before the end of chapter 4, we meet Lamech who is not only full of rage but a sexual abuser. Instead of using his sexual relationship with his wife to cherish her, he takes another wife. Genesis 4:23-24 record, Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.”
Men, it is crystal clear that the problem with toxic masculinity in all its forms is not God’s design of man as male and female with different bodies, mental and emotional make ups, and different roles in the home and church. The truth of God’s design of Adam and Eve differently to complete each other is obvious in Genesis 1. But just in case we missed it, Genesis 5 begins, When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.
It is our responsibility as the men of the church of Jesus Christ to love our neighbors by winsomely seeking the defeat of legislation that encourages transgender or homosexual behavior. Period. But I believe we have a second parallel responsibility that expresses love to those who surround us in the culture: TO SHOW THEM WHAT REDEEMED MASCULINITY LOOKS LIKE. God has brought the same resurrection power that will one day renew the entire earth into history in our lives for the purpose of showing the world what that restoration will one day look like. The solution to broken manhood is RESTORATION to God’s original design, not OBLITERATING that design. And it is the resurrection that gives us the power to do that. Author, Tim Keller points out,
The resurrection is not a stupendous magic trick but an invasion. And the event that saved us—the movement from cross to resurrection—now remakes the lives of Christians from the inside out, by the power of the Spirit. The cross and the resurrection together—and only together—bring the future new creation, the omnipotent power through which God renews and heals the entire world, INTO OUR PRESENT…This renewing power from the future is only here partially, but it is actual and substantial—and has entered the present world. The “incomparably great power,” with which God raised Jesus from the dead is now in us. (Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter).
Paul prays that the Ephesian Christians might know, what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. (Eph 1:19-20).
We need to call our sons and other men to the great vision of showing the world redeemed masculinity and by doing that, point to Jesus. The only power capable of fixing masculinity (or femininity for that matter) is the power of Christ’s future renewal of all things, yet, made available to us in part right now. By the way, although there is no sexual union in the renewed earth, God’s binary design of gender is not irradicated. God’s good, original creation will be renewed (Rom 8:21) and he created them male and female.
The Resurrection is Not Merely the IDEA of Rebirth. It is an HISTORIC FACT
Nearly every religion of the world has its own origin stories, but for the most part they serve as examples to follow. Christianity is unique. It doesn’t begin with, “This is how YOU should live” but, “this is what GOD HAS DONE FOR YOU.” It is important for our children and grandchildren to know that true Christianity is rooted in the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection. In the early twentieth century there was a movement to remove the supernatural elements of Christianity in order to align it more with modern sensibilities. An Easter message in such churches (often in the mainline denominations) would go like this:
We can’t believe in a literal, physical, historical, resurrection anymore. Ah, but we still have the idea of Easter. Doesn’t nature itself teach you that after winter comes spring? That even in a disaster and after death there can be a new beginning? That even in our misfortunes we can discover lessons and we can grow and we can begin afresh? That’s the principle of Easter (Ibid.)
This version of Christianity (which is not Christianity at all) is in steep numeric decline, but still popular with the media. However, as you know, man himself cannot free himself from the enslaving power of sin, and the resulting curse of death. Help had to come from outside. Jesus alone could purchase our freedom from sin. He also rose from the dead to bring into history the powers of the age to come, in which we will be resurrected and every tear will be wiped away.
Attempts to Explain Away the Resurrection
1. Jesus never died. He somehow was resuscitated in the tomb. A Roman spear was thrust into his side while on the cross making sure he was dead. If he had resuscitated, he would have to have torn his way out of the mummy strips, but they were found neatly folded. How could he have rolled the stone away?
2. The apostles stole the body and the resurrection a hoax. Ten of the original eleven apostles, died for their faith in Christ and his resurrection. You can’t explain this many people being persecuted and dying for a lie.
3. The Jewish leaders stole the body. They were trying to stop belief in Christ. If they had his body, they would have produced it to stop belief in the resurrection.
4. It is a legend made up by his followers
- Legends can’t grow during the lifetime of those who know the facts. The following summary of what the Christians believed was already circulating before Paul cited it, just 20 years after Jesus’ death in 1 Corinthians 15: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
- There was nothing in either Greek culture or Jewish culture that would have led anyone to expect an individual resurrection in the middle of history. The Jews who did believe in the resurrection believed only in the resurrection of the righteous at the end of time. A growing movement of Jews who worshiped a human being as the Son of God was a radical departure from the history of human culture thought. It was completely unprecedented. It happened right after Jesus’ death. There was no debate about this within the early church. This new belief was instant.
- Had the resurrection sightings of Jesus been fabricated, the myth would have expected the resurrected Jesus to look just like Jesus before death, as Lazarus did. Yet, eyewitness reports show that there was something about Jesus’ resurrected body such that at first, people did not recognize him. Mary thought he was the gardener, the travelers on the road to Emmaus did not recognize him, and the apostles out fishing did not recognize him at first.
- The gospels claim that the very first witnesses to the resurrection were women. Since women in that culture were not allowed to give evidence in court, why would the gospel writers would have invented them.
- The early belief in the resurrection is not based on one or two individual sightings. A large number of people, across a diversity of circumstances, testified that they had seen the risen Jesus. Peter Williams gives the list:
The resurrected Jesus is recorded as appearing in Judea and in Galilee, in town and countryside, indoors and outdoors, in the morning and in the evening, by prior appointment and without prior appointment, close and distant, on a hill and by a lake, to groups of men and groups of women, to individuals and groups of up to 500, standing, walking, and always talking (Ibid).
In our own day, the word, proof is mostly associated with scientific proof, which is defined as getting the same result when you repeat the experiment, (e.g. water, at sea level boils at 212 Fahrenheit—every time). But throughout history, guilt leading to execution could be proven beyond any reasonable doubt by two eyewitnesses. When you look at the eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection recorded in documents proven to be historically reliable—the factual, historic resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most well documented fact in history. And it makes Christianity completely different from every other religion of the world.
God’s Reclamation Project for Broken Manhood
The resurrection brings us both the power and the pattern for living life now connected to God’s future new creation.
A. Male passivity is overcome. Not only does God explicitly link Adam’s sin of eating the fruit to listening to the voice of his wife, God, similarly links to sin of Abraham in having sex with Hagar to birth a son to listening to the voice of Sarai (Gen 16:2). God’s design for men to lead their homes is further revealed when God says of Abraham, I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice (Gen 18:19). For the most part, Adam’s male descendants (the nation of Israel) failed in this leadership responsibility. The Old Testament ends pointing to the dawning of a new age when the hearts of the fathers would be turned to the children. Christ brings his resurrection power into this new age, commanding, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). We are called back to God’s original design and empowered by the Holy Spirit in this age to love and lead our families. Men, God doesn’t expect us to have a clue how to do this, because our sinful nature destroyed this ability. But IN CHRIST—asking him constantly for help—he wants us to show the world strong, godly, loving, masculine leadership in our families.
B. Male self-centeredness is overcome. At the core of God’s design of masculinity is spending ourselves so that those we are responsible for flourish. Adam is assigned by God the task (AVAD) of doing whatever it takes to cause the garden and those in it to flourish. He sweats, expending his energy so those he is responsible for thrive. He is a hero-maker. That is what Jesus taught his disciples that leadership is for—to be servants to others—to help them succeed, reaching their potential. “Though Jesus was rich,” writes Paul, “yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). Men, it is hard to keep putting the needs and desires of others—so they flourish—ahead of ourselves. Only the resurrection power of Jesus can enable such consistent unselfishness. But from the finish line looking back, the way you and I have denied ourselves, spend ourselves for others will bring us the greatest joy.
C. Male sexual corruption is overcome. Sex is designed to make a wife feel cherished, beautiful, desirable, wanted, secure by being known intimately but still adored unconditionally. The pain brought to a woman’s heart, to her delicate self-image by her husband looking elsewhere to images or another woman for sexual pleasure is immeasurable. Godly manhood fiercely opposes the treatment of women as an object to be used for sexual gratification and then thrown away like a piece of trash. Godly manhood fights for monogamous marriage across society. It imparts to our sons and daughters the highest possible view of sex. Like a blazing fire or just cozy embers in the fireplace at home, sex is an enormous blessing. But take that fire outside the home and it becomes a consuming forest fire destroying what is in its path. Men, what an opportunity we have to show our culture that sex begins in the disciplined heart of husbands who relentlessly keep channeling their sex drive only into their relationship with their wives and viewing sex as an opportunity to nurture and cherish their wives. That is redeemed sexuality.
The power that raised Jesus from the dead and will one day fix everything ever broken by evil has burst into history in this age. It is the only power great enough to fix our broken manhood. May we, the men of the church, accept our calling to show the world the glory of God’s original design for masculinity—leaning in to our relationship with Christ for his resurrection power to do so.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Why do you think Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians to understand immeasurable greatness of Christs power toward us who believe?
- Why do you think that many in our culture blame God’s design of male and females to be different for the evil inflicted on society by men instead of human sinful nature?
- Which part of the evidence for the resurrection did you find most compelling?
- Why do you think that when you have finished the race marked out for you and look back, having lived out God’s design of manhood will matter so much to you?
