What if Jesus were to say to you, “I have an urgent mission for you. You were created for this very time in history to accomplish this mission and the world will suffer significantly if you do not accomplish it.” Nearly all Christian men I know would respond, “I’m in. Now what is the mission?” At this particular moment in history, when influential but irrational western cultural voices deny that the order of creation points to an Orderer—i.e. our Creator, culture is reaping the fruit of such spiritual blindness and plunging further and further into darkness concerning gender and sexuality. Christians have an unprecedented opportunity to rescue the world from this destructive denial of God’s gender design and show the world the greatness of our God revealed in his magnificent gender design of mankind as male and female. In particular, Christian men have an extraordinary opportunity to point to Christ as the only one who can set men free from selfish, toxic manhood into the glorious, strong, self-giving masculinity that God designed it to be. This episode examines this portrait.
One of the greatest treasures given by God to his people is his revelation of how he created man and woman differently in Genesis 2. This episode examines God’s perfect design for masculinity. Christ wants to redeem every Christian man’s fallen, self-centered masculinity and restore him to the original design God displayed in creating unfallen Adam as a male. Christ came to fix everything that is broken in this world, including manhood. In Christ, the Second Adam, men are empowered to become the Christ-like man Adam was designed to be.
In addition, there is an even higher calling for Christ-followers that we must help our covenant children see. A Christian man who marries is called by God to show Jesus to the world by loving his wife the way Jesus loves his bride. His relationship with his wife has been chosen by God to represent the deepest of mysteries: the relationship between Christ and the Church. 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…. This mystery is profound (Eph. 5:23, 32). Let’s examine the design of Adam.
A. Adam Is Placed in the Garden to Cause It and Its Inhabitants to Flourish
In Genesis 2:15 we are told that God placed Adam in the garden to work it (ESV). The Hebrew word for “work it” is AVAD, which is also translated cultivate (NASB). It means to make fruitful, to cause to flourish, to produce, to build, and to shape. Adam is to make the garden (which includes its inhabitants) fruitful—to provide what the garden needs to thrive--to help it and its inhabitants reach their fullest potential. This core concept of masculinity is that we spend ourselves (energy and time) to cause those under our care to develop to their fullest potential. We sacrifice our greatest assets, time and energy, so that the garden (or civilization) as well as our wives and children (also in the garden) flourish. Adam is to cause those in the garden, and civilization in general to flourish in at least four ways:
1. To continue God’s creative work of developing the potential he created into planet earth, including the potential of human beings. God wants iron to become steel and bridges to be built, the principles of harmonics employed to create soul-riveting music, and the relationships brought about by the diversification of labor to be regulated by his moral law. Both Adam and Eve are involved in this process of developing culture. However, Adam is more specifically assigned to provide from one part of the garden what another part needs (e.g. water in the garden to irrigate the trees, pears from the garden to feed humans, etc.) That is what “cultivating the garden” means. AVAD means providing. Men tend to feel it their responsibility to be the material providers of their families for a reason. Their calling is described by the word AVAD.
2. Adam’s call to help those in the garden flourish applies particularly to his relationship with his WIFE. In fact, the word, husband, is used in the field of agriculture for one who cultivates plants and animals. When in the Boy Scouts I earned an Animal Husbandry merit badge. Adam is to sweat and work and provide, so that his bride becomes all she can be. Paul appears to go back to Adam’s garden-assignment—to devote himself to developing the potential in the garden—when he commands husbands to cultivate his wife’s spiritual potential by devoting himself to her inner sanctification—her spiritual beauty. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her…. so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Eph 5:25-27.) JESUS sacrificed his blood to defeat sin, clothe HIS bride in the robe of righteousness, and empower us to live holy lives. WE sacrifice our time, energy, intercessory prayer and careful thought about our wife’s spiritual growth so that OUR bride will be clothed with the inner beauty and radiance of godliness.
3. Adam’s assignment to cultivate what was in the garden was a called to help his SONS AND DAUGHTERS thrive spiritually, as well. A father’s role in the spiritual development of his children is clear in Genesis18:19 when God says, For I have chosen him (Abraham), that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. In Colossians 3:21 and Ephesians 6:4 fathers are challenged to raise their children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord. That is masculinity! Our job is to impact and shape those around us, so they prosper and reach their fullest potential. That is the exact purpose of our training and discipline of our children—causing them to flourish. It shouldn’t surprise us that Paul, whose views of manhood were shaped by Genesis 2, would make training the children the father’s responsibility. Of course our wives are vital, necessary allies in the process, but God puts the responsibility for training the children squarely on men’s shoulders.
4. The masculine calling to cause those under our care to flourish requires a life of sacrifice. We die to ourselves, sacrificially providing whatever it takes so that those under our care flourish physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This is the masculine calling of a man—to servanthood—to put the welfare and prosperity of those entrusted to him, before his own needs and desires. The masculinity that Christianity restores Christian men to put on display is not the selfish abuse of authority but self- giving manhood. Our headship is assigned to us so that we can cause those under our care to thrive. Wives and children need men who will “man up” and lead this way! That is why we daily need Christ. Only he can empower us to overcome our tentativeness, passivity, and selfishness to do our jobs!
B. Adam is Placed into the Garden to Protect It
Genesis 2:15 continues, The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and KEEP it. The Hebrew word that is translated “keep it” is SHAMAR, which also means to guard, watch-over, and protect. The word is used of soldiers, shepherds, custodians, and government officials. Rick Phillips writes, “This calling to keep rounds out the masculine mandate of the Bible. A man is not only to wield the plow but also to bear the sword. Being God’s deputy lord in the garden, Adam was not only to make it fruitful but to keep it safe” (The Masculine Mandate). As the ESV Study Bible points out: The man’s role is to be not only a gardener but also a guardian. As a priest, he is to maintain the sanctity of the garden. In other words, Adam should have protected the garden from evil.
Adam failed in this responsibility. He was standing right next to Eve when she was tempted. He should have protected both the holiness of the temple sanctuary, and Eve from Satan’s temptation to do evil. Adam’s sin was both an act of conscious rebellion against God and a failure to carry out his divinely ordained responsibility to guard or ‘keep’ (Gen. 2:15) both the garden and the woman created as his suitable helper. When God pronounced his just punishment upon Adam, He does NOT just say, “You ate the fruit I told you not to eat.” God’s words were, “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 is the ground because of you… God’s created order has been subverted. Instead of Adam exercising dominion over the animal kingdom and exercising leadership in his marriage by protecting Eve, the serpent’s leadership (a member of the animal kingdom) is followed, and Eve’s word lead Adam. Larry Crabb, in his book, The Silence of Adam, tells us what perhaps Adam should have said:
“Now, wait just one minute here! Honey, this snake is up to no good. I can see right through his devilish cunning. He’s deceiving you into thinking you have more to gain from disobeying God than by remaining faithful to him. That’s a lie! Let me tell you exactly what God said to me before he made you. And look around us. This is Paradise. God made it and gave it all to us. We have no reason to doubt his goodness.” And then, turning away from Eve: “Snake this conversation is over. TAKE OFF.”
In the book of Ruth, there is a little known but clear picture of masculine protection shown by Boaz to Ruth. Ruth, and her mother-in-law are both widows during a famine. Ruth decides to visit a relative of her father-in-law named Boaz to glean after him, which the poor were allowed to do. The first thing Boaz does, when he finds out she has come into his fields is to protect her from being raped. He says to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn” (Ruth 2:8-9).
We further see Boaz’ protective heart towards Ruth’s dignity in his discreet solution to her poverty. When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her” (2:15-16). No one wants to depend upon others for handouts.
Also, after Ruth’s pass at him, which involved a conversation on his bed in the middle of the night, Boaz protects her reputation. So she lay at his feet until the morning, but arose before one could recognize another. And he said, “Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.” And he said, “Bring the garment you are wearing and hold it out.” So she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her (3:14-15). Her intentional middle of the night request to Boaz “after he had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry” to marry her as her Kinsmen Redeemer does not hint of sexual sin, just womanly wisdom from her mother-in-law about men. Nevertheless, Boaz protects her reputation, in case anyone saw her at the foot of his bed. At the core of godly masculinity is a predisposition to protect those under our care and those who are vulnerable.
C. God Prepares Adam to Appreciate The Wife He Will Create for Him
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 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” (Gen 2:18-23).
God does nothing randomly. He must have known that there was something about the masculine calling of Adam to be a builder, a shaper, a worker that would make it easy for him to forget how precious his woman is—the pinnacle of creation, made to be kept near to his heart, made to want, of all things, a relationship with him. God wanted Adam to treasure Eve. When a wife doesn’t feel treasured by her husband, all kinds of bad things happen in her heart, her marriage, and her family.
In case we missed this lesson in Genesis 2, God spells it out again in Proverbs 31. A virtuous woman deserves and needs to be treasured. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all….” A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates (vs 28-31). How could God make it clearer, that a wife needs to BE TREASURED, and CONSTANTLY HEAR THAT SHE IS TREASURED by her man.
D. A Man Is Called to Leave his Home to Pursue his Wife
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:24-25). Moses, the author of Genesis, reveals the universal principle that when it comes to the dance of man with woman, the man is THE INITIATOR. He is the one who leaves his father and mother to find and pursue her. He asks her to dance. When we combine Genesis 2:24 with New Testament teaching for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church, we see that the man takes the initiative to pursue the woman to give her his love, to enjoy her, and to partner with him as the leader in their joint calling to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Let’s examine each of these parts.
1. The man takes the initiative to pursue the woman. At the heart of masculinity is the concept of taking initiative. CS Lewis once made the statement, “God is so masculine that all of creation is feminine in comparison.” What he meant was that when God speaks (initiates action), creation responds. In the Genesis 2 establishment of the institution of marriage, the process is initiated by the man, not by the woman. Moreover, the perfect husband, Jesus, leaves his place in heaven as God’s equal, and comes into the world, taking on the form of a servant, sacrificing himself for his bride at the cross, and then drawing her to himself with the cords of love. Jesus initiates, we respond. We belong to him because he pursued us. When a husband is feeling underappreciated, unloved the way he wants to be loved, and like his wife criticizes him ten times more than she builds him up, it is easy to go into our man cave and shut her out. But we cannot stay there. It is OUR calling, (though we are sure we are RIGHT!) to go put our arms around her and say, “Let’s talk about it.”
2. The man takes the initiative to give her his love. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). The Greek word for love is AGAPE, which describes, sacrificial, loyal, fierce, undeterred devotion. This is the call to manhood—the sacrifice of ourselves for others. We die to our desires, sacrificially providing whatever it takes so that those under our care flourish physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We put other’s needs ahead of our own desires. When we do this for our wives, the world sees Jesus.
3. The man takes the initiative to enjoy her. It is hard to miss the exuberance in Adam’s words, when he first meets Eve. AT LAST! This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man (2:23). The reason we know a husband pursues a wife to enjoy her is because that is what Jesus does with his bride. He died to remove all the guilt and sin that came between him and his bride. He wants union with us. He wants fellowship with us. We are his delight. Isaiah foretells the love of Christ for his bride: As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (62:5). A husband pursues his wife to enjoy her. She is a delight to him!
4. He invites her to partner with him as the team leader. Both Adam and Eve are commissioned by God: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Together, Adam and Eve use their gifts to develop the potential built into the earth, exercising dominion over their family and shaping the immerging culture FOR God. They are to rule as deputy lords for God—shaping every sphere of their lives according to what pleases God. Adam is to lead the way in this obedience to the cultural mandate. However, in the biblical design, a man is incomplete by himself. Unless he has the gift of being single, he needs a wife to complete him. She brings enormous resources (intuitive radar, discernment, wisdom, perspective, a tender heart, a relational focus) he needs to navigate through life making good decisions. The biblical concept of marriage is interdependence—needing each other to be complete. Adam and Eve’s roles are not interchangeable, however. He is to lead, but a wise leader invests heavily in his relationship with his top assistant on the team he is responsible for.
This has been a look at a quick video clip entitled Manhood as God Designed It to Be. What woman do you know who would not be instantly drawn to such strong, unselfish, loving, initiating manhood. If you are as convicted as I am in how far I fall short of the ideal, you might want to review it again with your CO looking over your shoulder making notes of how you need to put these characteristics of godly manhood into action. May we lead our daughters to look for such men, and our sons to want to be such men, but even more importantly strive to be such men through the transforming power of Christ in us.
