When I hear that the White House has been changed so that staff members and visitors can now use “Gender Neutral” restrooms, and that Seattle, Berkley, Santa Fe, Austin, and Philadelphia are among cities that have passed laws requiring single-user all-gender restrooms, it sickens me. I think of the words of one of my mentors, Elisabeth Elliot, twenty-five years ago, “Throughout the millennia of human history, up until the past two decades or so, people took for granted that the differences between men and women were so obvious as to need no comment.”
The absurdity of the gender confusion foisted onto American culture by the LGBT movement, makes me angry. We live in the midst of an unparalleled spiritual attack on marriage, and the glorious way that God designed the sexes to function in a complementary way. The rejection of God’s design for sexuality seems like a runaway freight train, out of control, picking up steam, destroying the fabric of American culture. My response is despair, depression, anger, hostility towards the LGBT movement. Sometimes, on the positive side, it leads me to more prayer for our country and a renewed commitment to speak out and to vote. What this runaway train does NOT lead me to do, though it should, is realize that the only people on planet earth capable of showing the world what marriage and sexuality were designed to be are Christ-followers.
Apart from Christ, sin mars everything—the way we view God’s moral law (as restrictive), how we search for love in relationships, how we understand sexual roles, the pathways we choose to fulfill sexual desire. Sin causes us to define freedom as the right to do whatever we want, instead of the power to function as we were designed to. And sin makes marriage about ME.
When I think about the spiritual battle over marriage going on in American, I have to admit that I see that same battle with sin going on in my own heart. Apart from Christ, how easily my sinful nature puts my focus on what I want in a mate—one who doesn’t nag me, who doesn’t cramp my style, who is beautiful enough to excite me, gifted enough to help me accomplish my goals, sexually responsive enough to satisfy me on my time table, who accepts me as I am and who fits well into my world. My anger and resentment towards my wife when she doesn’t meet this standard betray the fact that I too often view marriage just like the world does. As one study found,
Both men and women today want a marriage in which they can receive emotional and sexual satisfaction from someone who will simply let them “be themselves.” They want a spouse who is fun, intellectually stimulating, sexually attractive, with many common interests, and who, on top of it all, is supportive of their personal goals and of the way they are living now. (Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage).
How radically different is the Christian view of marriage! Christian wives must daily overcome their rebellious natures in order to obey the command to serve, respect, and submit to their husbands (1 Pet. 3). Husbands must overcome their self-centered nature if they are to obey Paul’s command to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Christianity’s marriage commands to both husband and wife are counter-intuitive and the exact opposite of what our sinful natures want. That is why in today’s world, only Christianity provides the challenge, calling, and resources to make marriage work, as God designed it to be.
Consider the way Paul challenges Christian husbands in his command to love our wives. Of the four Greek words, Paul could have chosen for love, he chose agape, which is the word for sacrificial love. A useful working definition of agape is “sacrificing what is dearest to you in order to meet the needs of another.” Most men, even non-Christians, would take a bullet to protect their wives. Men tend to be great at the heroic. But, when it comes to the mundane, saying “no” to ourselves on a daily basis in the little things, our sinful nature comes out. Agape love requires death to ourselves—our interests, preferences, comforts, rights, appetites, preferences—when it is necessary to meet our wives’ needs. It is a love that is costly. It only flows from a heart that has understood Jesus’ challenge,
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:24-25).
Paul’s command to Christian husbands to sacrifice whatever they need to in order to provide what their wives need to flourish also hearkens back to Adam’s original masculine calling given in Genesis 2:15. Adam’s calling to “work” the Garden was always a calling to make the garden’s inhabitants—the plants, animals, and humans (Eve and their children)--fourish. The Hebrew word, avad, means “to cultivate,” “make prosperous,” “cause to thrive.”
Paul’s command to Christian husbands shows us that they are to recover Adam’s original calling to cause those around them to flourish. Christians are the firstfruits of Christ’s work of restoring the world that has been shattered by sin (Rev 14:4). Jesus came into the world to overthrow sin, redeeming the world and restoring it—to fix everything that has been broken by sin. Christian men are called to the privilege of showing the world (though imperfectly), that God designed husbands to be continually focused on serving those around them—helping them develop to their fullest potential—so that they flourish.
As we have seen, Christian men are the only husbands given the challenge to die to themselves as Christ-followers, and called to show the world what God designed a husband to be. They are also the only men empowered by Christ with the resources to live this sacrificial life-style. The reality is that overcoming our self-centered nature is impossible apart from the empowering of Christ who lives in us by his Spirit and connects us to other believers in the body for soul-sharpening encouragement.
Our sinful nature battles against the promptings of the Spirit, whose job it is to produce spiritual fruit—including agape love, which we cannot produce in our own strength. If we would love our wives well, we are going to have to be intentional about asking God, by his Spirit, to root out our self-centered nature. It is often disguised as complacency, passivity, and an acceptance of the status quo—I’m not a perfect husband but I sure do a lot better than most guys. This process of daily asking for Christ’s help to overpower our selfishness, no doubt is a life-long pursuit. But it is a battle that Jesus calls us to fight!
May I suggest that it is time for men in America to make a radical commitment to show the world what God designed marriage to be? It is time for us to recognize that against the backdrop of sexual brokenness that is getting darker and darker in America, the brilliance and glory of God’s complementary design of marriage may be seen more clearly.
May every picture of a gender-free bathroom, every media report showing the influence of the LGBT movement, every new perverted story of sex outside of one-woman/one man-marriage, first grieve our hearts and then ignite fresh passion to fight harder to overcome the sin in our own hearts that damages our own marriages, through Christ living in us. For, God’s great complementary design of marriage is glorious, and it is a great privilege to be called to put it on display for the world to see.
