Rejecting Jesus’ Call to Biblical Manhood

Today I want to camp for a moment on the way we introduce the podcast: Hello and welcome to the podcast devoted to helping you hear “Well done” from the lips of the Master after running the race he has marked out for you. For those of us with families, I think the commendation we most want to hear some day from Jesus’ lips is, “I entrusted to you this wife and these kids to love and lead. Well done. They have been enriched and I have been honored.”

But to be honest, there are so many forces in today’s culture, our own hearts, our wife’s heart, and churches today that are pushing hard against men taking leadership in their homes and churches, that daring to lead our families is tough. It isn’t for sissies. It demands courage to overcome our uncertainty about what we are doing, a thick skin to resist peer pressure, and determination to defeat our passivity. But men, we can’t let our families bear the cost of our rejection of Jesus’ call to biblical manhood. They will suffer. This episode is for those who refuse to offer Jesus a slight nod and mediocre commitment to being a godly man. It challenges men instead to say to Jesus, “I don’t care how strong the resistance is, how unequipped I feel, or how many times I fail, by God’s grace I am going to define MY role as a man in MY home BIBLICALLY and lead My wife and children according to that design as best I can for their welfare and Jesus’ honor.”  

At this cultural moment the biggest assault against God by the kingdom of darkness seems to be the attack on his image—his design of male and female differently to complete one another in the loving union of marriage. Satan has launched an all-out frontal assault against respecting God’s gender design. This attack includes an assault upon OUR COMMITMENT to embrace God’s design for godly manhood. The question is, “Are we going to stand against this assault or cave?  In the words of Chuck Colson, “If we fail to stand for Christ at the place where the world is denying Christ’s Lordship, we are missing the mark” (Who Speaks for God.) Martin Luther sees such a denial as personal disloyalty to our Master, Jesus. He astutely observes,

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are attacking at that moment, I am not confessing Christ…Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all battlefields besides, is mere flight and disgraces if he flinches at that point (Ibid).

Any man determined to lead his family well faces fierce headwinds coming at him from multiple sources. Let’s consider six:

• From egalitarianism: The very idea that one partner in marriage has the leadership role is oppressive and a Christian wife being told to submit to her husband reeks of chauvinism. Never mind that Jesus, who was equal in dignity to the Father submitted to the Father to accomplish our redemption.
• From feminism: Making any distinctions between males and females is sexist. Generalizations are oppressive. Never mind that women happen to have a womb and breasts to nurture, and that behavioral science has proved repeatedly that differences in testosterone and estrogen cause clear differences in male and female behavior.
• From critical theory: Gender roles and distinctions are cultural constructs imposed on women by oppressive men. Never mind that common sense, 4000 years of history, and the very survival of the human species that requires one man and one woman uniting to procreate—all show that male and female are different.
• From gender theory: Everyone has the right to determine his own gender. Never mind that this delusion is refuted by science. The presence of the XY chromosome in male babies, instead of XX, irreversibly shapes his brain differently than girls'. Every cell in the normal female body—over thirty trillion—is marked XX. 
• From the world of religion: Today some “Christians” twist Scripture to deny its clear teaching of two genders and two gender roles and are drawing our loved ones into their false teaching, bending Scripture to go along with culture instead of standing against culture. Never mind the fact that some who claim to be Christians have always gone along with culture instead of standing against it—for example against chattel slavery, or against the Third Reich.
• From our fallen nature, which rationalizes, “My wife is smarter and more spiritual than I am. Besides, Jesus taught that authority is for serving. My wife decides where we should be going and I focus on serving her. My wife and I co-lead our home.” Never mind the fact that in God’s own words, Adam was punished for “listening to the voice of his wife” instead of leading.

I believe that Jesus stated the same warning about compromising in a hostile culture that Martin Luther articulated. He said, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet (Mt 5:13).

To be sure, there are many Christians today who are, perhaps, even unconsciously rejecting biblical teaching about gender differences, whose intentions are right. Toxic masculinity is real. And way too often it has been covered up by males who hold power in churches, Congress, and business. Sexual harassment in the military was excused far too long. Women have been unfairly denied participation in many occupations and unfairly underpaid in the marketplace. They have been demeaned by unbiblical traditionalism that confined them to cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. There is no denying the way women have been abused, taken advantage of, and devalued. No Christain can ignore this fact. All women carry the full weight and dignity of being God’s image bearers that men do.

But we need to help others think carefully about this mistreatment in a fallen world. Is the problem the structure of order that God gives for the home? Or is it the sinful nature of those living out the structure? In my experience, for every Christian man discovered to have turned his leadership role into an excuse to abuse his wife or kids, there are fifty Christian men using their leadership role trying to sacrifice daily to love and lead their wife and children well. The problem is NOT the structure, but human sinful nature in both women and men. However, the hurricane-force winds of ideologies that undermine God’s gender design are being felt intensely by our loved ones. They are at risk of being drawn into destructive worldviews not because they are true but because no one is refuting them. The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Prov 18:17). There is zero ambiguity about the biblical teaching that God created male and female for different roles in the family and church.

• Eve is created to be the vital assistant (suitable helper) that Adam needs; Adam is NOT created to be the assistant of Eve.
• Eve is brought to the man; Adam is not brought to Eve.
• Adam names Eve, a universally recognized expression of his authority in the ANE.
• Sarah is commended for obeying her husband. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord. (1 Pt 3:5-6).
• Colossians 3:1-2: Wives, be subject to your own husbands.
• Since the church is the household of God, men are to lead there as well. Speaking with Apostolic authority about ordering worship, Paul wrote, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. The teaching in view here is the authoritative teaching done by pastors from the pulpit. Although in Gal 3:28 Paul insists that women are full members of the Body of Christ, he sees no contradiction in God assigning the leadership role in the church to qualified men.
• An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife. Paul did not say or the wife of one husband, even though there was a strong group of Christ-following women, including Mary the mother of Jesus who were part of the church.
• The NT teaching of gender roles was not confined to Paul. Peter wrote, “Wives, be subject to your own husband.”
• Ephesians 5:22-24. 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. A man who refuses to accept his leadership role but insists, “We co-lead our home” sins profoundly against his wife, his children, and his God. This verse means what it says. Either this is God’s perfect design for marriage or not. Either God’s Word is so impotent, and God so incompetent that he needed modern feminists, egalitarians, and critical theory advocates to correct his Word, or his Word needs to correct feminists, egalitarians, and CRT advocates.

WISDOM TO HELP US SEE THE MAGNIFICENCE OF GOD’S GENDER DESIGN

God does not leave us in the dark about what the “headship” of the husband looks like in marriage. We are going to see that this ugly, evil term to egalitarians, feminists, and gender theory ideologues, in fact describes a magnificent design. In 1 Corinthians 11:3, we read,  I want you to understand that the HEAD of every man is Christ, the HEAD of a wife is her husband, and the HEAD of Christ is God. We’re going to examine four characteristics of God’s headship of Christ, and Christ’s headship of the church to determine what the husband’s headship of his wife should look like. We are going to see NOT an ugly, disgusting picture of patriarchal oppression, as anti-Christian ideologies allege, but a glorious picture of strength, sacrifice, and protective care that has the potential to melt the hearts of wives and which honors God.

A. Headship Is Leading. In John 17, God (Christ’s HEAD) sends Christ to accomplish the plan of salvation. God the Father leads and initiates. Jesus responds to the Father with “obedience even to the point of death” (Phil 2). Jesus is accountable to God, his HEAD. In a parallel way, Christ (our HEAD) sends us into the world to accomplish his mission--the spread of his kingdom--calling us to obey everything he has commanded us, being accountable to Christ, our HEAD. In a parallel way, we (our wife’s HEAD) are to take the initiative and lead our wife and family to follow Christ. We are the ones accountable to Christ for our family, not our wife. Respecting our leadership, for her, does NOT mean passive obedience. To the contrary, it means letting her husband see what she sees, and providing assistance that only she is equipped to provide him. However, if they can't agree, in the end, she is to submit to him. This design enriches a wife’s life. It frees her from carrying the weight of responsibility for the family since her husband is the one accountable to God. When he carries that weight, she is free to flourish, contributing her greatest assets, i.e. being eyes to help her husband see what he does not, and nurturing others along their path.

B. Headship is Coaching. What I mean is that the goal of headship is to see the one under our authority honored. Headship is being a hero-maker. In John 17:1, Jesus’ words to the Father (his HEAD) reveal Jesus’ knowledge that the Father’s intent was to honor him. “Father, the hour has come; GLORIFY YOUR SON that the Son may glorify you.” A few verses later, he said the same thing, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, GLORIFY ME.” God, who was Christ’s HEAD was motivated by the desire to see him glorified. In a parallel way, later in the same prayer Christ (our HEAD) expresses his desire that we be glorified by being sanctified in truth. At the core of headship is a sacrificial commitment to see those under our care flourish. That is what Jesus taught in Mark 10:43-45: You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you…For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to GIVE HIS LIFE AS A RANSOM FOR MANY."

Jesus, our HEAD, died so that we might flourish, being set free from sin’s slavery to reach our fullest potential and glory as humans. This definition of headship corresponds with Adam’s calling in Genesis 2:15 where he is placed in the Garden to cultivate it. The Hebrew word, AVAD means to help reach its fullest potential. This same headship principle is assumed by Paul when he says, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, THAT HE MIGHT SANCTIFY HER—(helping her reach her full potential)—having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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. We don’t wash our wives in our blood but our headship calling with our wives is the same as Jesus’—that our bride reach her fullest potential of sanctification becoming filled with the radiance of inner beauty. How does this design enrich a wife’s life? What wife’s heart would not be melted by a husband who sweat, striving to do everything he could to provide for her, so that she could reach her greatest potential and highest level of lovliness?

C. Headship is Protecting. Christ our HEAD prayed in John 17, Holy Father, keep them in your name… I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled… I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one (vs 11-15). Adam, the HEAD of Eve was placed in the garden not only to cultivate it (AVAD) but to protect it, (SHAMAR). Most commentators believe that Adam failed in his responsibility to protect the garden paradise and Eve from evil. As Larry Crabb points out, when Adam saw the serpent speaking to Eve, he should have stepped up saying something like this:

“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.” (Anchoring Your Child, Yagel).

Headship requires husbands to protect their wives, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What wife wouldn’t want a husband devoted to keeping her safe from harm in all three of these spheres?

D. Headship is Loving Unconditionally. God (the HEAD of Christ) loved him. We see this reality in Jesus’ request of God in John 17:24: Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because YOU LOVED ME before the foundation of the world. We also see the affirming, nurturing component of headship love in God’s audible words to Jesus, “This is by beloved sin in whom I am well pleased.” In a parallel way Christ, our HEAD loved us unconditionally and sacrificially in going to the cross. Headship for husbands requires this same sacrificial, unconditional love for our wives. It is a preoccupation with concern for our wife’s needs that is as natural as paying attention to our own body. Husbandly headship nourishes our wife’s soul through attention to her inner beauty and a commitment to encourage her with the words, “Many wives have done excellently. But you surpass them all” (Prov 31:29). The headship calling to love unconditionally those under our care meets the deepest needs of a wife’s heart. Christian Counselors Gary and Barbara Rosberg write, “Every wife’s life story is different, but every wife shares this same need for unconditional love and acceptance. That became clear to us when a majority of our female survey respondents said that the need for unconditional love and acceptance was their number on love need” (The 5 Love Needs of Men & Women). 

The ugly portrayal of headship is a lie that Satan is using to harm millions today! But where do we get the courage to walk steadily into hurricane-force winds?

THREE ROOTS to COURAGE to EMBRACE GOD’S GENDER DESIGN in a HOSTILE WORLD

Humility: God devotes 5 verses in Genesis 1 to emphasize Adam and Eve’s equality and 21 verses in Genesis 2 to emphasize their differences. Adam is made for the ground (the garden is described as needing a gardener), from the ground, given a name that means ground, called to work the ground, and when he sins, what is cursed is the ground. In an exact parallel structure Genesis tells us that Eve is made for the man (to provide companionship), from the man, given the name woman (ISHA) because she came out of the man,(ISH), called to the work of assisting the man. When she sins, what is cursed is her relationship with the man and their kids. If I cringe at saying "Woman was created FOR man," where does the problem lie? With Scripture or with ME? I need the humility to say that the shaping of my egalitarian culture is the problem, not Scripture. Every culture's values are contradicted at some point by Scripture.

Love:  True love does not compromise the biblical teaching of roles because it makes people feel bad. To the contrary, Scripture teaches us that real love rejoices with the truth. Agape love provides what another needs. In view of God’s revelation to us about his intentional design of male and female to equally share the role of his image bearers, it follows that many of men and women’s needs would be the same. But he also intentionally created male and female differently, with distinct needs and abilities, (the whole point of Genesis 2), so that they could come together in the loving unity of marriage, completing what is lacking in the other as the loving unity of the Trinity completes it. So, God intends males and females to be different! A husband cannot love his wife well without understanding femininity.

Allegiance to Jesus:  In public settings, when someone is criticized for making male and female distinctions, we can have the courage to say, “I don’t agree with that assumption. Common sense and science tell us there are significant differences between males and females.” When gender theory is being pushed, we can say, “The idea that a teen girl has the right to require others to identify her as male, which contradicts both science and common sense, comes from a radical ideology called gender theory. We should base policy on common sense and science not radical ideological myths." Ultimately the courage to take a stand for Biblical truth is about loyalty to Jesus. I want to repeat what Martin Luther, a GIANT IN STANDING AGAINST FIERCE CULTURAL HEADWINDS, said. “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are attacking at that moment, I am not being faithful to Christ…Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved."

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. What to you is the hardest thing about a Christ-following man’s call to be the leader of his wife and kids?
2. What most stood out to you about the “headship” of husbands in marriage?
3. How best can you help other Christians grasp the magnificence of this design?
4. Which parts of headship do you most want to remember and concentrate upon if you have a family?
5. Which roots of courage to stand alone sometimes in this culture for God’s gender design have to most power to energize you?