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A worth while discussion about masculinity in the church has come up recently. What is helpful is that the discussion is among two complementarians who are working through how to be the most faithful they can in this setting to what the scripture says on this topic.
Michael Horton wrote and article entitled Muscular Christianity where he set out to critic a perceived problem of hyper masculinity being encouraged by some segments in the church.
To counter, Doug Wilson penned a response to Horton’s article where he pushed back by saying there is biblical reason for gender roles not specifically mentioned in Scripture.
I would encourage you to read each article.
There is the tension where, on the one hand, I would agree with Wilson that there is a perception of masculinity which we as Christian men are to communicate in normal things like speech, attire, etc, where we are distinguished from females. These things are culturally determined as Wilson points out. But, because all communication is culturally defined we must abide by it to communicate the glorious truth of gender distinctions. Thus, through the bible God sets the standard of masculinity, then we use culturally appropriate ways of communicating that biblical picture. For scriptural backing of this you can read Denny Burk’s post on 1 Corinthians 11 and read Wilson’s post to get the full articulation of this point.
On the other hand Horton raises a very important point where a perilous switch occurs. Cultural perceptions of masculinity become the standard and the bible is made to fit that perception. We are to start defining manhood by going to the bible and reading about how God defines men. Then we work through that meaning as it is communicated to others. But the problem occurs when we center manhood on a cultural icon of manhood—a “hunter” icon if you will. The man who has a 3 inch thick bread, who carries his weapon into the wilderness of the forest, and then slays his prey of deer or boar. If this is the pinnacle of manhood what does a man do if his wilderness is a cubicle where he settles insurance claims for customers? When the church features its annual men’s event in a hunter’s theme it can communicate to the man in the cubicle that he can come hang out with the real men. This is the issue I believe Horton is criticing. I believe he is right in signaling this out. The shift is subtle and so happens easily with many perceptions of manhood.
Do I hate sin because of its offense to God, or the offense it does to me? The answer to that question is massive. In contemplating over that answer I was reminded of this quote,
We are transformed into Christ’s image—that’s what sanctification is—by steadfast seeing and savoring of the glory of Christ…The work of the Holy Spirit in changing us is not to work directly on our bad habits but to make us admire Jesus Christ so much that sinful habits feel foreign and distasteful.
-John Piper, God is the Gospel, p 91-92.
The needed focus of my eyes and heart is clear—Jesus Christ. Not my sins. Focusing on my sins puts me in the center where the central thing I worry about is sin consequences to me. Instead, my central focus should be the glory of Christ so that He is center. And with that focus comes the killing of sin.
Regrets can be hard on us. Whether they are about our lives before our salvation or what happened yesterday. We think back about what could have been only if we had not messed up or if we did what we were suppose to. How are we to interact with these regrets?
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones helpfully lays out how we are to respond:
1. Dwelling on regrets is a waste of time. “Let us then lay this down as a principle. We must never for a second worry about anything that cannot be affected or changed by us. It is a waste of energy…You can sit down and be miserable and you can go round and round in circles of regret for the rest of your life but it will make no difference to what you have done.” (p. 82)
2. Failures in the past are not to make us depressed, but to spur us on to action. “if you really believe what you say about the past, if you really do bemoan the fact that you have wasted so much time in the past, the thing to do is to make up for it in the present. Is not that common sense?” (p. 83)
3. Turn away regret by focusing on who you are right now, at this moment. “What matters first of all if you are a Christian is not what you once were, but what you are…’I am what I am’—whatever the past may have been. It is what I am that matters. What am I? I am forgiven. I am reconciled to God by the Blood of His Son upon the Cross. I am a child of God. I am adopted into God’s family, and I am an heir with Christ, a joint-heir with Him. I am going to glory. That is what matters, not what I was, not what I have been.” (p. 85-86)
4. We are not to judge ourselves. “As Christians we must leave our judgement to Him [1 Cor. 4:1-4]. He is our Judge and you have no right to waste His time or your own time and energy in condemning yourself. Forget yourself, leave the judgement to Him; get on with the work.” (p. 87)
5. Forget yourself, know Him. “part of the trouble with these people is that they are still morbidly preoccupied with themselves, that they have not learned as Christians that they are to deny self and take up the Cross and follow Him and to leave themselves, past present and future in His hands….stop looking at yourself and begin to enjoy Him…If you were to feel more interest in Christ you would be less interested in yourself. Begin to look at Him, gaze upon Him with this open, unveiled face. And then go on to learn that in His Kingdom what matters is not the length of service but your attitude towards Him, your desire to please Him.” (p. 87-88)
6. Live knowing you are in the Kingdom of Grace. “Nothing Matters in the Kingdom but the grace of God…God has a different way of looking at things. He does not see as men do; He does not compute as they do; it is all grace from beginning to end…stop looking at what what you have not done and the years you have missed and realize that in His kingdom it is His grace alone that matters.” (p. 89)
To sum up, “Praise God for the fact that you are what you are, and that you are in the Kingdom.” (p. 90)
Quotes taken from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, p. 82-90
Great word from pastor Ortlund,
We are not ignorant of his designs. 2 Corinthians 2:11
The Bible reveals to us the devil’s playbook. How does he aim to defeat us? To begin with, in these four ways:
One, a judgmental attitude. In this passage in 2 Corinthians, the devil designs to make a church into a harsh environment, where people are “overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (verse 7). Such a church stops feeling like Jesus. It starts feeling like a scene out of Kafka. How to defeat this satanic design? Repent of self-righteous judgments, and eagerly communicate Jesus’ forgiveness, inclusion, honor.
Two, normal human instincts. In Matthew 16:21-23, Jesus rebukes Peter, through whom Satan is speaking. How did Peter open up to, of all things, satanic influence? Not by consciously opening up to satanic influence. All he did was think in normal human ways (“setting your mind on the things of man”). All he did was set his heart on survival, making the way of the cross unthinkable. Another of the devil’s designs. How to defeat him? Die to selfish survival.
Three, a spirit of accusation. In Revelation 12:10 the devil is exposed as “the accuser.” Another of his designs is to pierce our hearts with accusing thoughts about our sins – or even sins we haven’t necessarily committed, but we fear we have, or others say we have. He spreads a mist of vague anxiety within ourselves and dark suspicion of others. How to defeat this defeat? Run to the cross for all our sins, and refuse to counter-accuse against our accusers. A calm explanation might help at the interpersonal level. But if the negative emotions are really intense, the only thing to do is not make the feeding-frenzy worse. Wait on God to vindicate you.
Four, lying in order to win. In John 8:44 Jesus calls Satan “the father of lies.” It is his nature to lie, to deceive, to distort and twist and confuse. He spreads his trademark behavior to others, especially in scenes of ungodly conflict. He uses half-truths, self-serving accounts, spin. How to defeat him? Admit the plain truth, all of it, however embarrassing it might be. We won’t die. We will find it to be freeing. Our safety and joy are always found in honesty before God and one another.
We have an enemy, and we know his strategies. As C. S. Lewis taught us in The Screwtape Letters, we should neither ignore him nor obsess about him. But fixing our eyes on Jesus, we can crush Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20) by humbly staying in, or humbly returning to, the ways of the gospel.
Two posts have come out recently about the problem of manhood within this culture. First Owen Strachan used a Tide commercial to launch into the topic of who should work at home. Then Kevin DeYoung wrote about the absence of mature godly men from churches. The lack of godly men is glaring and sad. Everyone loses when men do not fulfill their part. God made two genders to be His representatives on earth. When one fails the other suffers. And this failure is all over the place.
I know that I am not wise or experienced enough to solve the issue. The complexity is very deep running from the plain sin of the individual man to the culture men find themselves residing in here in America. But here are some thoughts as being one of these men living during this time.
1. Sin lies and steals true goodness from us. “Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have kept good from you“ (Jeremiah 5:25), “For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword“ (Proverbs 5:3-4). The over arching problem is that the world is selling a lie about what men should be and do. God has his vision and the devil has his. the devil presents his view as the most pleasing and satisfying. The men of this day and age are biting into it hook, line and sinker. What we are dealing with, at the core, is not a motivation problem on behalf of men, but the same problem that happened in a garden when a serpent asked the question, “did God really say?” Is God’s vision of manhood really that good? They may ask, “how can that be good when what we see before ourselves seems so much better?” Feminists and Egalitarians tell men that they have no distinctive place or role in the world and so offer a world of laziness and passivity. The sexual “freedom” around us presents the lie that sexual happiness exists in having sexual desires fulfilled in selfish, debasing ways in the most immediate means possible. And where men think they will never amount to anything in the real world they can become one of the greatest Special Operation soldiers imaginable on a video game. All these are lies plain and simple. But they are the lies that men buy and the situation we are up against.
2. The glory of Christ is redeeming and restoring the people who have been ravished by this world. “And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32). “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,“ (Colossians 1:21-22). “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life“ (2 Corinthians 3:4-6). Here are two glorious truths that come against the darkness of all this: Jesus came to save sinners and Jesus will save sinners.
a. To fight against the lie of sin the truth of the gospel is placed over against it. Jesus has come into the world so that sinful, pathetic men can be reconciled to God and be made blameless and above reproach. The way this problem gets solved is not by finding the right cultural screw which is out of place and fixing it. It is by the Spirit opening dead men’s eyes to the glory of Christ so that they may drop all their efforts and have faith in the saving work of Christ.
b. And we can walk confidently in this reality. For the Spirit is the one who is at work when we bring the gospel to bear upon the lies of sin. Our confidence in the transformation from dark, sinful men to repentant, righteous men is solely the work of the Spirit invading the darkness with the sin defeating work of Christ as a word from the Father. He is our confidence, not any contrived social construction we can think of. Transformation will happen man by man as the Spirit makes each one anew in Christ.
3. As for teaching men who are already Christians we must remember that the main problem are the lies of sin they are still believing. The biblical vision of manhood is glorious! Loving leadership is a joy! The pursuit of holiness is a fight for happiness! Purity is to be desired as treasure! Let us call our brothers to cast off the unsatisfying pleasures of the world’s vision of manhood and let us proclaim and savor the joy of Christian manhood.
a. Now, the reality is still the same, holiness is hard to get. To settle for the world’s vision of manhood is the easy road (But it is also the broad road that leads to destruction as well). Where as the road of being made blameless and above reproach is hard work. However, as a Christian, holiness is not only something a man is striving for, but is something one already has obtained in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). The pursuit of this holiness is living in the reality of the promises one has in Christ while being fueled by divine power. The joy of holiness can and will be attained by the Christian even though the road is difficult.
b. We must cast off the old school method of building men by relying solely on the law. I remember finishing a Christian book on leadership which ended by basically saying, “striving for leadership will be hard, but you have to do it.” And after finishing his, what felt like, 180 things you have to be to become a godly leader I had no desire to try to become one. Who would? I am just going to fail. Gospel-less summons to manhood will not produce the men who will lead their churches and homes in godliness. War-like calls to fight the good fight are right and needed. But if in our desire to make true men we uproot the calls from the indicatives of who these men are in Christ we will kill who we are trying to revive.
c. We must never confuse symptoms with the problem. Issues like DeYoung point out are not the problems but symptoms of the problem. Unfortunately I under went a period where these things got confused. The answer to dealing with the immaturity of men was to, as was thought, get them married. This only lead to men who were selfish, immature, but now married as well. Discipling men is not simply getting them married. It is teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. If we are not seeking them to grow in every area the bible commands (leadership, service, love, compassion, doctrinal firmness and gentleness, etc) we cause harm by focusing on one just one area.
d. Churches should encourage single men to find an identity in Christ so as to live holy where they are in life. Here is a problem that I still come across. It is presented in a fashion that the only way to be a faithful man is to either get married or go over seas to become a missionary. We miss an important stage of life for single guys where they can become trained in godliness by grace (Titus 2:11-12) if we just want them to become married or a missionary. Singleness can be for sanctification just as much as marriage can be as I wrote before. Becoming a godly husband is an overflow of a godly single life.
e. Finally, the church must realize that the men who are being made a new in Christ need to be discipled. The men being claimed by Christ these days do not know how to act like men. Single men do not know how to pursue their sisters righteously. Men do not know how to manage their fiances. Men do not know how to build relationships with other godly men. Just commanding them to do so is an effort into futility. Men who are being redeemed out of broken homes with no example or instruction to follow will need to get the instruction from some where. The church must be willing to provide actual instruction of the things it commands.
There are many more things to say on the subject I know. But these are just some thoughts from me about this topic. I don’t know if I am adding anything new or not. But hopefully they are over all helpful.
For the same end, that your hearts may be rightly fitted and framed for the performance of these principal duties, the Holy Scripture directs you to walk in the persuasion of other principal endowments of your new state –
- as that you have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3);
- that you are the temple of the living God (2Cor. 6:16);
- that you live by the Spirit (Gal. 5:25);
- that you are called to holiness, and created in Christ Jesus to good works; that God would sanctify you wholly, and make you perfect in holiness at the last (1 Thess. 5:23; Eph. 2:10);
- that your old man is crucified with Christ; and through Him you are dead to sin, and alive to God; and, being made free from sin, you are become the servants of righteousness, and have your fruit to holiness, and the end everlasting life (Rom.6:6, 22);
- ‘You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory’ (Col. 3:3, 4).
Such persuasions as these, when they are deeply rooted, and constantly maintained in our hearts, do strongly arm and encourage us to practice universal obedience, in opposition to every sinful lust; because we look on it, not only as our duty, but our great privilege, to do all things through Christ strengthening us.
-Walter Marshal, Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, p. 86.
…you must believe steadfastly that all your sins are blotted out, and that you are reconciled to God, and have access to His favor by the blood of Christ; and that He is your God and Father, and altogether love to you, and your all sufficient everlasting portion and happiness through Christ. Such apprehensions as these do present God as a very lovely object to our hearts, and do thereby allure and win our affections, that cannot be forced by commands or threatenings, but must be sweetly won and drawn by allurements. We must not harbour any suspicions that God would prove a terrible everlasting enemy to us, if we would love Him; for ‘there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear; because fear has torment; he that fears is not made perfect in love. We love Him, because He first loved us’ (1John 4:18, 19).
-Walter Marshall, Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, p.85-86
What does it mean to love Christ practically? Erik gives J. C. Ryle’s answer to the question,
- If we love a person, we like to think about him.
- If we love a person, we like to hear about him.
- If we love a person, we like to read about him.
- If we love a person, we like to please him.
- If we love a person, we like his friends.
- If we love a person, we are jealous about his name and honor.
- If we love a person, we like to talk to him.
- If we love a person, we like to be always with him.
Go over to J. C. Ryle Quotes to read the explanation of these points.
“Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer’s soul and they promote sanctification. We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration, and the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God. The soul is so constituted that it craves fulfillment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual ones. The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of a Savior’s presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers. By the enjoyment of the love of Christ in the heart of a believer, we mean an experience of the “love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Because the Lord has made himself accessible to us in the means of grace, it is our duty and privilege to seek this experience from Him in these means till we are made the joyful partakers of it.”
-John Flavel
HT: Scotty Smith
Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved. But as this love at first acts by, and from itself, so it continueth to do until all things that are imperfections, are completely and everlastingly subdued.
The reason is, because Christ loves to make us comely, not because we are so (Eze 16:9-14).
-John Bunyan ,The Saints’ Knowledge of Christ’s Love
