Tag: gender

1 PETER #20: SELF SACRIFICING MEN

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Peter, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Kevin Bidwell on Pexels.com

God calls wives to trust him so much that they allow their husbands to take the lead. He calls husbands to trust him so much that they approach their wives in self-sacrificing love. If both men and women listen to God’s call, the result is usually a marriage in which the wife feels secure and cherished, and the husband feels supported and admired.

Peter also tells his readers to maintain an awareness of the significant differences between women and men. Those differences are reflections of the glory of God, and when we honor them, it brings variety and joy to our lives.

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Download 1 Peter Part 20

1 PETER #20. 1 PETER 3;1-7 PART C

We’ve already had two messages on this passage. We talked about what it means for wives to submit to their husbands, and also what it means for women to submit to the male leaders of their churches. We talked about the very significant example of Sarah from the Old Testament. If you haven’t read those first two messages on these verses, please do so, because they are very important. One short definition of submission (in this context) is that women make room for their husbands (or church leaders) to take spiritual responsibility for their homes and churches. The women entrust themselves ultimately to God, which makes it easier to allow flawed men to lead. They are trusting God, not men. Women should, while allowing the men to lead, encourage them, support them and use their gifts and abilities to assist that leadership.

Now, it’s time to talk about the part of men in all of this. Peter devotes just one short paragraph specifically to men, which we’ll get to in a minute. In the meantime, we have not only this letter, but also the entire Bible, and most Bible teachers agree that the most complete teaching in one place on this subject of male leadership and female submission comes from Ephesians 5:22-35

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

(Ephesians 5:22-33, ESV)

Husbands are directed to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The word for love in this case means “self-sacrificing love.” Christ loved the church by literally dying for her. He gave his own life for her sake. This is the standard for how husbands should treat their wives.

Let’s get real about this for a moment. I know men who are pretty certain that they would physically give their lives to save their wives. They believe they would step in front of a bullet, or dive in front of a speeding car to knock her out of the way into safety. And they might, in fact, do such things, if it came down to it.

But self-sacrificing love is not just about the exceptionally rare cases that involve physically saving someone’s life. It means that you die to your own wishes in order to show your wife that she is loved. So, maybe you’ve had a rough day at work, and you’d really just like to put up your feet and watch TV and relax. But she’s had a rough day, too, and someone has to do the dishes. Maybe, in this case, dying for your wife means that you get out of your chair and do the dishes so that she doesn’t have to. Or, it might mean engaging her in meaningful conversation, even when you’re already worn out, or supporting her decision to go back to school even though you are worried about the money.

A lot of men I know are good at sacrificing themselves in mainly one specific way: working hard at their jobs. I’ve met many men who work long hours, and make sacrifices to climb the corporate ladder, all so that, as they might put it: “I can give her the life she deserves.” What they mean is, “buy her the things I think she wants.”

But a lot of women I know would be happy with a little less “stuff” and more meaningful time spent with their husbands. Many women are fully supported financially, but are barely on life support emotionally. Sometimes, for a man, dying for their wife might involve less success at work, and more time spent with their wives. It might mean less financial investment, and more emotional investment. Other men insist that their wives work, to do their part to support the family. Maybe for such men, self-sacrificing love means that you will give up some financial security in order to let her pursue a dream that doesn’t involve a career.

You see what I’m getting at? The way husbands are directed to love their wives means that we husbands should consider the needs of our wives at least as important as our own. When in doubt, maybe we should consider them more important. That’s not to say that a husband can never have a bad day, or that it is never appropriate for a wife to be self-sacrificial to her husband. But it means husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies, and indeed, their very selves. In fact, the standard is the way Jesus loves the church.

It is true that the Lord is asking a lot from women when he says that they should submit to their husbands, and also allow men to lead their churches. It requires a lot of trust in God (which is, I think the main, and most important reason for it). It is also true that the Lord is asking a lot from men when he says that they should love their wives even when it involves sacrificing their own comfort and their preferences, even to the point of dying for them. I hope you can see that if both men and women follow these teachings, the result will often be a marriage in which both the wife and husband feel honored and blessed.

When a husband loves his wife in this way, even if maybe he doesn’t do things exactly the way she might prefer, she should be able to say: “I know he loves me. I know, even when it’s not perfect, that he truly has my best interests in his heart.”

When a wife loves her husband and trusts God by encouraging and supporting her husband’s leadership, he should be able to say: “I know she has my back. Even when it’s not perfect, I can’t doubt that she’s with me, that she’ll stand up for me, and stick with me no matter what.”

Peter gives some specific additional information that is not found explicitly in other passages:

7 Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

1 Peter 3:1-7

As it turns out, this passage has become more important in recent years than it was for quite some time. Because, you can see that Peter is telling his readers to remember that men and women are significantly different. He tells men to be understanding of women. This presupposes that there are differences which should be understood and taken into account when men and women relate.

Peter also writes that women are the “weaker vessel.” Though in our culture it has become almost impossible to say without being censured, there are significant biological differences between men and women, and also emotional and social differences. One of the biological facts is that men, on average, are physically stronger than women on average. Could we find some women who are stronger than some men? Of course. But the strongest human being in the world will always be a man, because men develop more muscle mass than women. It’s just a fact of life, confirmed many, many times by science. Most women will indeed be physically weaker than most men.

I think Peter has three main reasons for pointing this out. First, he wants men to avoid becoming physically rough or abusive with their wives. He wants men to use their strength to provide for and protect their wives, not scare, dominate or abuse them. In Peter’s day, this reminder that women are physically weaker would have shamed any man who used his strength to dominate women. It’s a bit like saying, “Only a coward would hurt a woman. Pick on someone your own size.”

Second, Peter is reminding men of the Christian principle of showing honor to one another. I think most people these days forget (if they ever knew), that physical strength was much more important before modern technology. Most women literally did not have the strength to plow a field, either on their own, or even with a team of horses or oxen. They didn’t have the strength to build a house made out of large stones, or logs, or to fight off wild animals or bandits. To whatever extent women could contribute to these activities, they wouldn’t be as effective as men.

In our culture today, we can lie to ourselves about sex differences. But without technology, in the time of the New Testament, such differences were on display every day. Almost anything a woman could do could also be done by men, but there were a lot of things men could do that women were simply not physically capable of doing. So there was a tendency to see women as less important than men. After all, what good were they? They couldn’t really farm, build, or fight with first century technology, certainly not as well as men. But Peter says, “Yes, they might be physically weaker, but you must honor them.”

Why? Why should men honor women when they can’t keep up with men physically? “Because,” says Peter, “they are coheirs with you in the grace and life of God.” This is one reason Peter earlier reminded everyone of Sarah. Sarah’s life proves that in God’s eyes, women are as important as men. So, Peter writes: “You men, honor women as equals in God’s eyes. God made Sarah equal to Abraham in his plan of salvation. He makes all women equal to men in the grace and life that we have in Jesus Christ.” This was hugely counter-cultural in the time of the New Testament. Christianity is almost single-handedly responsible for raising the status of women worldwide over the past several centuries.

Third, I believe that this text is here as a reminder for us today. Our culture has begun to tell lies about the nature of sex differences, claiming that they are minimal, and unimportant, or even nonexistent. But we can only say such things because technology has evened things out between men and women. Don’t get me wrong, I think the fact that technology and the modern economy have made it possible for either sex to do almost any job is generally a good thing. But this situation also allows us to forget, or even to distort, the truth about the differences between men and women.

In sports, however, we generally recognize the truth. Women don’t compete directly against men, because of the physical differences. The world’s best female tennis player was, for several years, Serena Williams. Talk show host David Letterman spoke to her in 2013, and suggested she might be better than some of the top-ranked men. Williams responded:

“For me, men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports,” Williams said. “If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

(https://www.good.is/sports/serena-williams-john-mcenroe accessed 6/29/22)

I’m not sure that Serena Williams could, or would, say such a thing in public today without being severely criticized by those who pretend that there is essentially no difference between men and women. However, neither the silence nor the censure can change the facts.

Peter tells men to be aware of sex differences, so that they can treat women well. In action movies for the past decade or more, it is common to see fight scenes between men and women, and normally, in such scenes, the women beat the men. I do agree that some exceptional women would be able to win a fight against unexceptional, or somewhat weaker men. But these movies implant the idea that fights between women and men are “fair fights.” They are not. A male-female fight is between a bigger, stronger, faster, more aggressive person and a smaller, slower, weaker, less aggressive person. That’s the truth, no matter what it looks like in a fictional movie. Peter tells us to get real: men need to be aware of the differences so that they can honor women, and not hurt them.

Both men and women should be aware of the differences, because God created both male and female, and he did so as a way to show the universe part of his glorious image. In other words, being female is part of the glory and image of God. Being male is part of the glory and image of God. When we disparage either male, or female, we disparage God. When we suggest they are unimportant, or interchangeable, we lose part of the beauty that God built into humanity.

At this point, I need to say something, obviously, about transgender folks. A trans person feels that the sex of their body does not reflect who they are on the inside. I believe that transgender people suffer real pain. As Christians, we need to recognize that the pain and struggle are real, and we ought to treat trans people as we ought to treat all people – with honor, love, compassion, and grace.

 We also ought to deal with trans people, and all people, in truth. While having compassion, and being welcoming and accepting, we also need to hold onto the truth, which is that there is such a thing as male and female, and those things are biologically hardwired, because God made us that way.

It is not only the Bible that teaches us this. Modern science has made profoundly definitive discoveries about sex differences. Here are only a few of them: male brain tissue is intrinsically different from female brain tissue. Scientists can now discover the sex of an individual simply by looking at a sample of brain tissue, knowing nothing else about the person. Not only that, but female and male brains are organized differently.

Even at a young age, girls and boys literally see the world differently. Girls and women see color distinctions that men are incapable of perceiving. This is not because of socialization – it is the result of different nerve and brain pathways that are hard-wired by the time babies are born. Every step in every neural pathway from the retina to the brain is different between males and females.

Females have more sensitive hearing. This is simply fact. Also, the mechanisms for sensory perception, particularly pain, are different between females and males. To put it another way, men and women experience pain differently, at a cellular level.

Doctor Leonard Sax, a clinical child psychiatrist, puts it like this:

Girls and boys play differently. They learn differently. They fight differently. They see the world differently. They hear differently. When I started graduate school in 1980, most psychologists were insisting that those differences came about because parents raised girls and boys in different ways. Today we know that the truth is the other way around: parents raise girls and boys differently because girls and boys are so different from birth. Girls and boys behave differently because their brains are wired differently

(Why Gender Matters, Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D. Broadway Books, NY, NY. 2006)

All these things affirm the view of the Bible. The differences between men and women are important. We can have compassion on those who struggle with their bodies, while at the same time, not compromising what we know to be true.

Let the Lord speak to you today!

THE BEAUTY OF MALE AND FEMALE, PART 2

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Colossians, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Anastasiya Lobanovskaya on Pexels.com

These instructions to men and women teach us to die to our own self-centeredness, and live for others. They also they point us to the incredible love and sacrifice of Jesus.

COLOSSIANS To listen to the sermon, click the play button: To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Colossians Part 33

Colossians #33  Col 3:18-19 PART B

Last time we looked at Colossians, we considered the fact that God created our genders deliberately, and with a purpose. The Bible teaches us how to work with that fact in loving each other and following Jesus. The latest science decisively confirms that human beings are gendered to the core. However, because we are all made in the image of God, gender is something even deeper than biology. Women and men are made to relate to one another in a way that shows the world something of the glory of God. This happens in all sorts of contexts, not just marriage.

By the way, I want to be sure we acknowledge and recognize that some people have difficulties in coming to terms with their biological gender. As Christians, we must have compassion and grace for people who have these difficulties. Our churches should be safe places for such folks, places where there will be no insults or cruel words. The facts of science and biology do not change the very real emotional struggles that some people have.

At the same time, as Christians, we should not compromise what the bible says. In the case of gender, science is also crystal clear. Our call is to speak the truth, but to do so in love. Simply agreeing with whatever anyone thinks is not loving– often that is actually cowardice. We are afraid of getting flak, or of being seen as hateful, or we want to be “on the right side of history.” But it is when we disagree with someone that true love can be shown. Jesus pointed out that naturally, anyone loves his friends. But real Christian love can occur when we care for people and respect them as human beings even when they disagree with us, even when they make choices that we think are wrong. Real love, deep love, always wants the best for others, even when those others may not recognize or agree with what “the best” means. So it is my ongoing hope and prayer that anyone at all would feel welcomed by our house churches, and also that in our house churches anyone at all would come face to face with the truth of the gospel, which is that we need to repent, turn away from all sin and self-centeredness, and surrender all to Jesus, receiving his grace and forgiveness.

The Bible claims to be God’s special revelation to humankind. It comes through human authors, but it originates with God. In short, it is God’s Word to us. One of the things the bible tells us is that all human beings have sinned, and our thoughts, attitudes and desires are often corrupted by sin. If this is true, it means that the bible will contradict and challenge some of our thoughts, attitudes and desires. Since every human culture was developed by sinful human beings, the Bible will challenge every culture at some point or another.

One of the most difficult things in understanding the Bible is learning to recognize our own cultural biases, and being willing to consider things that challenge our “normal” way of looking at the world.

The culture of Papua New Guinea when I was growing up was one that highly valued both debts and vengeance. The economy of that culture was based upon people owing each other favors, and sometimes people owing each other revenge. For that culture, accepting what the Bible says about forgiveness – especially forgiving and loving enemies – was challenging and difficult.

Texts like ours today in Colossians about men and women present a challenge to 21st Century Western culture. Our culture does not see gender the way the Bible teaches us to see it. In addition, our society encourages us to be highly sensitive about the possibility that someone or something is oppressing women (or, in fact, oppressing any one of several different categories of people). I’m not saying that is always a bad thing to be sensitive to this, but we should be aware of our own biases  when we read a text like this one. In case you think I am wrong, and you believe that our culture is more likely to oppress women than to be worried about oppressing them, let me give an example.

There has been a great deal of awareness raised about the fact that more men than women are involved in Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics (STEM). More men than women get degrees in STEM fields, and work in those types of careers.

A few years ago the Microsoft Windows lock screen was used to raise awareness about the fact that the STEM fields are dominated by men. These days, scholarships, internships and opportunities abound for women interested in STEM education and careers. In addition to all that, there are vast numbers of organizations and foundations which exist to help women especially get both bachelor’s and graduate degrees in all fields. There is constant awareness-raising for women’s education.

However, the truth is, women have far outpaced men in education for more than forty years. Since 1980, far more women than men have gone to college and received degrees at all levels. Women dominate many different academic fields. On average, female college professors make more money than their male counterparts with the same qualifications and experience.

The average male high school senior reads at the same level as the average female eighth-grader. Grade school boys are disciplined and reprimanded more than twice as often as girls. Boys and men have fallen far behind in every academic area except STEM.

So, where are the organizations and foundations trying to create more opportunities for men in the arts and humanities? Where are the endowments for specifically male writers, or the scholarships for men to make up the gap in literature, or sociology or history? Where are the windows lockscreens agonizing over the fact that men don’t even go to college as often as women, let alone graduate with a degree?

I will say it again: our culture is primed to expect women to be oppressed. Am I saying that women are never oppressed? Of course not! But I am saying that when it comes to gender and sexuality, our culture has a chip on its collective shoulder. We are waiting to get angry about gender injustice, even in cases where the facts say there is no issue there. So, take a deep breath. Recognize that we may not be totally objective about gender issues. Try to be conscious of our cultural biases while we deal with these verses.

In order to avoid knocking the chip off our shoulder, I will deal first with what these verses are telling men to do and be. Again, however, I want to make sure that we recognize the cultural biases that make it necessary to take these verses out of order. For you women, as you read, look past these instructions to men, and recognize and remember the great love that Jesus has for you.

With that long introduction, let’s look at this verse, and then one that says the same thing, but with more detail. For our verse today, I provide my own translation:

You husbands, love your wives sacrificially, and do not cause them to be grieved, or make their lives bitter.

And then, the expanded instructions come from Ephesians 5:22-33:

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (ESV, Ephesians 5:22-33)

The New Testament uses three different Greek words for love. There is eros (air-rohs), which is romantic/sexual love; phileo (fil-lay-oh), which is brotherly/friendship love; and agape (uh-gah-pay), which is self-sacrificing love. Husbands are told to agape their wives. Agape is the way God loves us. Jesus provided the ultimate example of agape when he suffered on the cross, died, and suffered hell on our behalf. He did not need to do any of it for himself. It cost him everything to love us this way. This, my dear brothers, is how we husbands must love our wives. We love, even when it costs us dearly, when it costs us our own comfort, our own desires, yes, even if it costs our own well-being.

We men are to sacrifice for our wives. We are to cherish them and nourish them physically, spiritually and emotionally. Jesus is not passive in the way he loves the church. He pursues us. He gently, but purposefully moves into our lives, giving us opportunities to trust him. So we too should relationally pursue our wives, purposefully seeking to deepen and strengthen our connection. As Jesus led through self-sacrifice and service, so we too are called to lead – not by commanding or controlling, but by serving like Jesus did.

Men are often consistent in pursuing their wives sexually, because that is something that we want. But we must also pursue a deep relational and emotional connection with our wives, to seek to meet their needs as diligently and consistently as we seek to meet our own.

Just in case we miss the point, let’s use some concrete examples. You are both tired from a hard day. You sit down together, with no energy, but someone needs to do something about supper. As a husband, loving your wife like Jesus loves the church, what is your response to this situation? I think most often it should be that you, called to love sacrificially, take responsibility for dinner. Now, that doesn’t rule out ordering pizza, but it should mean that you serve your wife by taking care of the thing that nobody wants to deal with.

Or suppose your wife feels the need to talk about something, even perhaps, just how her day went. You are tired, or there is something else you want to do, or maybe even the game is on. Sometimes sacrificial love means giving her time and attention when you really don’t feel like it. By the way it wouldn’t be wrong to ask her if you could have the conversation after the game you want to watch is over, but be sure she’s OK with that, and be sure to follow through.

Sacrificial love for your wife may mean that you get up and deal with your daughter’s nightmare, or the cat’s throw-up. It may mean that you take responsibility for caring for the house, or doing the finances. In our case, Kari wants to be part of handling the bills, but we discuss our finances and make decisions together, and it is understood that if she doesn’t want to work (and is willing to take a hit in our standard of living) she doesn’t have to.

Above all, sacrificial love means you men accept responsibility for your life together as husband and wife. Leaning on Jesus and all of his power, you do your best to make sure that your wife feels loved, safe, and secure, to the extent that you can. I can’t make Kari feel at peace with everything, but I can make sure that her lack of peace isn’t because of me. I can’t make her feel secure, but I can ensure that she isn’t insecure because of me.

One aspect for men of loving sacrificially is that this also encourages men to be actively involved. If we are supposed to love like Jesus, it means we ought to be pursuing our wives, and actively leading our families closer to Jesus. Obviously, we won’t do those things perfectly, but we are to try. Coming home, watching TV and offering up one-syllable responses to your wife’s conversation are not usually consistent with loving your wife sacrificially.

Too many men prefer not to take a stand, or take ownership. Sometimes, we’re afraid of messing up, and we think our wives probably know better than us anyway, so let them do it. But that is not legitimate sacrificial love. Sometimes we don’t really know what to do, and we forget to ask Jesus. Sometimes, we’re just plain lazy, and it’s easier to be passive than to try, and then fail anyway. It feels safe if we don’t have to lead. But we men don’t have that luxury. We are supposed to love our wives to such an extent that they are the ones who feel safe, because they know that we will care for them as much as we care for ourselves, we will love them, even if it means hardship for ourselves.

By the way, women, you don’t get to take these words and taunt your husband with them. These words are not here for you to say: “Hah! You are supposed to love me sacrificially, so here’s my honey-do list, and be sure not to wake me up from my nap when you’re done.” These words are spoken from the Lord to the men, and I think it is meant for men to struggle through what it means to apply them. Your turn will come next.

The biggest threat to any marriage (actually to any relationship at all) is the fact that all of us are deeply self-centered. We are focused on ourselves, on our own needs, what we want, and what it takes to get our wants and needs satisfied. The verses here are meant to destroy our self-centeredness. Men, you don’t get to be passive and coast through life doing as little as necessary. You don’t get to demand whatever you want from your wife. Neither do you get to check out, and ignore your responsibilities. Instead, you die to yourself by loving her sacrificially. You allow the Holy Spirit to put to death your self-centeredness by learning to love your wife selflessly. When you do that, you are doing your part to show the world the glory of God.

The model for men is Jesus Christ. Now of course, husbands, you will never be able to love your wives as well as Jesus loves all of us. However, Jesus invites you to lean on him, and allow Him to work through you and in you, so that you don’t love your wives from your own strength, but from all the resources that Jesus has. Ask him to help you, and lean on him as you love your wives.

For both men and women, our attention is supposed to be directed away from ourselves, and to Jesus. Like a perfect husband, he makes us, his people, secure. We know we are loved, and safe. He has provided all that is needed for forgiveness and a life of eternal joy in Him. He is patient with us, and He loves us, not because of what we do for him, but rather because he has decided to do so, and nothing will sway him from that commitment. He didn’t wait for us to come to come to him – he died for us while we were still enemies of God. Let’s remember God’s grace to us through Jesus, and thank him for it.

COLOSSIANS #32: THE JOY OF MALE AND FEMALE

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Colossians, Podcast, Religion, science, SermonLeave a comment
Photo by Helena Lopes on Pexels.com

God created our genders deliberately, and with a purpose. The Bible teaches us how to work with that fact in loving each other and following Jesus. The latest science decisively confirms that human beings are gendered to the core. However, because we are all made in the image of God, gender is something even deeper than biology. Women and men are made to relate to one another in a way that shows the world something of the glory of God. This happens in all sorts of contexts, not just marriage.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer:
Download Colossians Part 32

COLOSSIANS #32  Colossians 3:17-18

Before we address our specific verses for today, let’s remember the context. Throughout the end of chapter two, Paul was addressing the problem of legalism. Legalism is all about performing well in order to manipulate God into accepting you, and doing what you want him to do. He explained that in Jesus we have died to performing well in order to get God to approve of us. We do not have what it takes to get God to do our bidding. Instead, we throw ourselves on the mercy of God, trusting in what Jesus  Christ did for us, rather than our own efforts. Next, the Holy Spirit, through Paul, detailed several things from which we are free, because of the death of Christ.

Then, in chapter three, he addressed the problem of lawlessness. Because we have died to the things of this world, and because we have already been included spiritually in the resurrection of Jesus, we are called to live a certain way. We are supposed to draw on the life of the Spirit, and avoid the life of our dying flesh, which is incurably self-oriented.

Paul then explained we need to put off our old sinful flesh, and no longer participate in the sins that we used to love, no longer insist on getting our wants and needs met in our way. He moved on in verse 9, and said we have put off the old sinful self and put on the new self, which is being renewed in the image of Jesus.

In verse twelve, he started to tell us what this new life looks like. He explained that the character of Christ wants to shine through us, and what it means to live according to the character of Christ. We considered the several aspects of living that way, like having compassionate hearts, and forgiving each other, and so on.

Last time, we considered that everything we do, all that we say and whatever we’re about, we do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

Now, we are going to get specific. We are still talking about what it looks like to let the character of Christ shine through us. We are still talking about how to do everything in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit through Paul, now begins to explain what all of that looks like for different groups of people: Wives, husbands, children, fathers, servants and masters.

When we understand the context, we realize that these are not just random, isolated instructions that cropped up out of nowhere. These verses are there to help us think about how we do everything in the name of Jesus in different parts of our lives. They are not given to help the Colossians fit in with culture of their city – nothing at all in this letter is about how they can be better citizens of this world. It is all about living this life with an understanding that we are already full citizens in the life to come.

So, with that understanding, I give you our verses for the next several weeks:

You wives, put yourselves under the authority of your husbands, because this is what is right in the Lord.

You husbands, love your wives sacrificially, and do not cause them to be grieved, or make their lives bitter.

(My own “amplified” translation from Greek, Colossians 3:17-18)

The more direct translation of verse 17 is: “wives submit to your husbands…”

I want us to take our time with this subject. These are short sentences in both English and Greek, but they represent something that is very deep and far reaching. “Jesus died for your sins,” is also a short sentence, but it might take years of thought and study to “unpack” all of the meaning in those five words. So, these verses are also short, but they represent the end-product of a deep and important subject.

In our culture today, verse 17 sounds ridiculously old fashioned. To many people, it might seem oppressive, and even perhaps hateful toward women. When we encounter any bible passage that disturbs us, we can take one of three possible approaches:

  1. We can study and pray and press into what the Holy Spirit is saying through such verses. With the faith that God knows best, and wants to speak to us through the Bible, we humbly approach the text to learn from it. We may be surprised by what we find, or we may find what we want or expect, but either way, we let the scripture set the agenda.
  2. We can decide that we don’t like it, and so we study and think and work on ways to make the verses irrelevant or meaningless to our life today. Or, we might try and find ways to show that the meaning of the verse is something other than what it seems to say so obviously. But we start with our own agenda, and try to make the scripture conform to that.
  3. We simply dismiss the verse. We ignore it, or we simply decide that we are not going listen to it, or apply it to our lives. We might even try to say that it shouldn’t be in the Bible.

Because our culture automatically rejects verses like “wives submit to your husbands,” many Christians have taken approaches #2 or #3. They start with the desire to make the Bible conform to 21st century Western cultural ideas about gender. This is a very flawed way to read and understand the bible. Instead of letting the text lead them wherever it goes, they already know where they want it to go, and so they try to make it go there. Or, they find ways to say that we don’t need to pay any attention at all to such teachings. Christians who want to “neutralize” bible verses like this believe that they are champions of gender-equality, and so they call themselves “egalitarians.” Sometimes they also call themselves “evangelical feminists,” or “Christian feminists.”

Christians who read these verses in a basically straightforward way call themselves “complementarians” because they believe that the bible teaches that men and women were created uniquely different in order complement each other. I believe that gender is all about reflecting the image of God to the world, so I call that idea “imagism.”

I have studied the issues surrounding this verse, and the other verses like it, for a long time. In fact, I wrestled with this subject for fifteen years before finally submitting to what I believe the Bible teaches. I desperately wanted to be able to be an egalitarian in good conscience. I did not want to appear to be oppressive to women, and I wanted this subject to be a non-issue. I wanted to fit in with our culture, including a lot of church culture, and not rock the boat.

Unfortunately, what I have learned convinces me that egalitarians are wrong. Even worse, the way they treat the Bible in order to make it conform to their ideals is extremely flawed, and dangerous to true Christianity. If we treated the entire Bible the same way egalitarians treat just these texts about men and women, it would make Christianity meaningless.

Now, of course, I might be the one who is wrong. However, if I am wrong, it is not because I have failed to be truly open to the alternatives. If I am wrong, it’s not because I have a prejudice against women. if I had any prejudice to begin with, it was in favor of feminism. If I am wrong, it is not because I have failed to diligently study what the  Bible says about gender, nor have I failed to study and understand what egalitarians say, and how they interpret the scriptures. If I am wrong, it is not for lack of wrestling in prayer and crying out to the Holy Spirit to speak to me about this subject. In fact, I have prayed numerous times, over a period of years, “Lord, change my heart and my mind! Show me how I can return to being an egalitarian!”

As I say, all of my study and prayer doesn’t automatically make me right, but  I would like to challenge those who disagree with me to put in some significant time and effort on this subject before dismissing what I say, and to have the integrity to let the texts lead you wherever they go, regardless of whether or not that’s what  you want. If you want to learn more about why I think egalitarianism is such a problem, or if you want to discover, in depth, what the Bible says about gender, please get a copy of my book, “In God’s Image,” available on Amazon (kindle version also available). The link will take you there.

Although these are just two simple verses, they represent an understanding of human nature that is rapidly being lost in today’s world. These verses tell us that men and women are different in certain ways, and so as we relate to one another, we should be conscious of those differences, and live accordingly. In short, the Bible teaches that God created human beings in two genders, male and female, and both of the genders are vitally important for human flourishing, and also for showing the world what God is like. Consider Genesis 1:26-27

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, 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 all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

(ESV, Genesis 1:26-27)

You see that God intended human beings to display “his image;” that is, show the world what he is like. It sounds at first like it is only talking about “man,” but verse 27 makes it clear that in order for the image of God to be displayed in the world, both male and female are important and necessary. This comes in the very first chapter of the Bible, and we learn several important things:

  • Human beings are created to display what God is like
  • In order to show the world what God is like, both male and female are necessary
  • Therefore male and female are not the same, and the differences between them are important
  • Since God does not have a body, our gender, to display his image, must be at least partially spiritual.
  • Male and female are therefore equally important, equally valuable.

One of the great weaknesses of egalitarianism is that it confuses “equal” with “the same.” But, if the Bible is true, our masculinity and femininity make us different, and those differences are good and right and important and valuable. We aren’t just androgynous souls poured into either male or female bodies – we are male and female right down to our essence. We are male and female, even spiritually. The way that we relate to each other is supposed to be a reflection of image of God.

I realize that to write this in 2020, I sound like a horrible bigot. This is one of the areas where Western culture has been running away from God at a screamingly-fast pace. Even ten years ago, very few people would have found what I just said to be offensive. Twenty years ago, people would have told me I was crazy if I thought that in the year 2020, people would call me a bigot for saying that the male and female genders were intentionally created by God, and that the differences between the two is profound.

Am I just a bigot? Are Christians crazy to say that men and women are deeply different? Thankfully, whatever the culture says, facts are facts. Today, we know more about the physical facts of being male and female than ever before, and the more we learn, the more it is confirmed that humanity is gendered to the core, and the differences are profound. You can choose to believe the earth is flat, but that does not make it so. You can choose to believe that genders are fluid and there is really no such thing as male and female, but that does not make it so.

Dr. Leonard Sax, a researcher and clinical child-psychiatrist, presented some of the recent research in his 2005 Book, Why Gender Matters. Boys and girls, women and men, are profoundly different at a fundamental, biological level, and the biggest differences are found, not in sex organs, or even hormones, but in our brains. The very tissue of our brains is different, depending upon our sex. Sax writes:

Scientists analyzed thirty samples of human brain tissue collected from different areas of the brain and different individuals. The scientists were not told the sex of the individuals from whom the specimens were taken. But just by analyzing the expression of two different genes in the brain tissue, they were able to correctly identify the sex of every one of the thirty specimens, female versus male. Female brain tissue and male brain tissue are intrinsically different.

Sax cites research that demonstrates that girls and women see color distinctions that boys and men are incapable of perceiving. This is not because of socialization – it is the result of different nerve and brain pathways that are hard-wired by the time babies are born. Every step in every neural pathway from the retina to the brain is different between males and females. That means that men and women literally, physically, see the world differently.

Females have more sensitive hearing. This is simply fact. Also, the mechanisms for sensory perception, particularly pain, are different between females and males. To put it another way, men and women experience pain differently, at a cellular level.

Not only is our brain tissue different, but the brain is organized differently. Men seem to have a distinct division in brain function between the left side of the brain and the right. The left side of the brain, in men, is the center for language. This is not the case for women, who seem to distribute functions equally between each side of the brain.

Dr. Sax, who is both a clinical child-psychiatrist and a scholar, writes:

Girls and boys play differently. They learn differently. They fight differently. They see the world differently. They hear differently. When I started graduate school in 1980, most psychologists were insisting that those differences came about because parents raised girls and boys in different ways. Today we know that the truth is the other way around: parents raise girls and boys differently because girls and boys are so different from birth. Girls and boys behave differently because their brains are wired differently.

Later, he adds:

Human nature is gendered to the core. Work with your child’s nature, work with your child’s innate gender-based propensities, rather than trying to reshape them according to the dictates of late-twentieth-century political correctness.

What is true of boys and girls is, obviously, also true of women and men, perhaps even more so. Our verses today start with that understanding: Women and men are gendered to the core. Therefore, the Bible teaches us how to work with our innate gender-based propensities. In our text today, the instructions to wives are different from the instructions to husbands. God understands our gendered natures – he created them for a purpose! Therefore it should be obvious that men and women need to focus on different things in order love each other well, in order to do all in the name of Jesus.

We have a lot to chew on so far, but we have only just laid the foundation. Don’t worry about the s-word (submit) for now. Instead, for this next week, take time to thoughtfully appreciate the gift of your gender, and also the unique things about the opposite gender. When we do this with an awareness of the Holy Spirit, we can appreciate without either lusting, or wonder without getting frustrated with things we don’t understand.

We are both indispensable to God’s plan to show his glory. Not only that, but each gender needs the other in order to fulfill that purpose. Men cannot display the image of God without women. Women cannot do it without men.

Women: know, and enjoy that God created you to bless the world as a woman. Men: know and enjoy that God created you to bless the world as a man. Both women and men: know that you cannot bless the world the way God intended without your opposite gender.

By the way, when I say that, I don’t mean that everyone has to get married, or they won’t be fulfilling God’s purpose. Jesus himself never married, nor did the apostle Paul, and maybe not Barnabas either. Jesus also taught that some people are called to be single (Matthew 19), and Paul passed on that teaching in 1 Corinthians 7.

When it comes to displaying the image of God through male and female, even single people are usually connected to families, and singles also have friends of the opposite sex. The point is, the way men and women interact with each other in all sorts of different contexts shows the glory of God, if we let Him.