By God’s grace in 2005, I discovered the truth of biblical manhood and womanhood. Previous to that year I had no idea what it meant to be a man. What I soon discovered is that I was not the only one in the dark about how the bible addresses men and women. I was accompanied by almost everyone I knew, and from every church I had ever been a part of. Growing up for me included being around many men who seemed afraid of their wives, and many wives who called the shots. Most of the men’s and women’s groups reflected that fact by men confessing sins to each other but not their wives. The women gathering together bashing their husbands, and discussing their princess-hood. Those groups had a veneer of health, but at times actually encouraged dishonesty between spouses, and sinful understandings of the sexes. The misunderstandings, or the silence of biblical gender roles, is a problem all over the world but one I have seen to be rampant in our area. So, what does the bible have to say about this?
In college I was required to take Systematic Theology 1 and 2. One of the textbooks for those classes was a book titled Evangelical Theology. A chapter in the book was written by Elaine Storkey and was entitled “Evangelical Theology and Gender” in which she argues that “Gender is not an indigenous theological concept but a sociological one”. Essentially the argument from her is that if male and female are created equal then they ultimately have to be the same (Egalitarian Position). As an egalitarian she argues that any idea of Male and Female roles cannot come from the bible, rather it comes from broken cultural and sociological foundations. Is this true? Is the concept of gender simply born through culture and sociology, or is it rooted in the bible? If Elaine Storkey is right, manhood and womanhood do not exist, and it is inappropriate for me to go beyond person-hood to address men as men and woman as women. So this first post is devoted to explaining biblical Complimentarianism, the idea that God has created men and woman equal but unique. He has created us to compliment each other.
“Then God said “Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over tall the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”
The foundation for understanding the beauty of men and women is found in the God who created us in His own image. As we look to the Trinity we find some key pointers for us as we try to figure out what it means to be human, but also what it means to be different as male and female.
Within the Trinity there is complete equality. Biblical orthodoxy demands that we look at the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as One God in three persons. While maintaining that The Father is fully God, The Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God. All Christians agree that there is absolute equality within the Godhead. So as people created in the image of that God we are to affirm the equality of both men and women who are created in the image of God. It is inappropriate for a man or a woman to feel as if they are somehow superior to the other simply because of their gender. It is also not okay for a man to be a chauvinist, causing a woman to ever feel “less than”. The Christian position leads us to a place of demanding than men and women be treated and esteemed as equal in value. Does this then mean that men and women are the same? If men are given a specific role, and women their specific role does that mean one is less prized than the other?
The second thing we need to see when we look to the Trinity is that the Father, Son, and Spirit have differing roles, yet maintain equality. The bible reveals the beauty of both headship, and submission. Jesus says in Jn 12: 49 “ For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment- what to say and speak” and 1 Cor 11:3 says “the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God”. These are just two examples of what the scriptures over and over again affirm that Jesus is fully God, but He was sent by His Father and that He submitted to Him even to the point of sweating blood and death on a cross. Within God we see full equality, paired with specific orderly roles. Egalitarians like Elaine Storkey would argue back, and she does in the same chapter that was previously mentioned, that Jesus submission is only present in the incarnation of Christ on earth, but is not something that is present eternally. The problem with that position, other than not having scriptural support, is that it requires seeing the eternal God as changing during the incarnation into something different than how God has eternally functioned. God is no longer the God who is the same yesterday today and forever, but God who for a while functioned in a way that is actually different than He always has. Yet another huge problem for the egalitarian position is that while they maintain the obedience of Jesus as He submits to the Father, they deny the beauty of it. The egalitarian actually has to look at Jesus in the garden as He submits to the Father’s will and see it as derogatory and demeaning, rather than beautiful and life giving.
Men and women who are reading this: The God of the bible is beautiful. Gender roles are not just a post Gen 3 reality, but continue to shine bright from Gen 1 through the rest of the bible. The submission of Jesus to the Father did not bring death, but rather it brought life. The servant leadership of Jesus, as seen in his substitutionary life, death, and resurrection for his church is not to be looked down upon. Only within a complementarian position are we provided with the framework to see the beauty of manhood and womanhood. As we look to Jesus we have a rock solid substitute, and example of perfect manhood and womanhood.
So I affirm that true manhood and womanhood are not a happenstance of culture, but are the idea of the very God we worship.
1 Elaine Storkey, Evangelical Theology, Chapter11, pg 161
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