In a culture that has lost its way on marriage and gender, one of the best ways we can display the Gospel is by embracing what Scripture teaches about them and living lives that display their beauty to the world.  Christians need to take their cues from Scripture and perform the marriage and gender dance that God designed and prescribes so that the world will see the beauty of God’s design. 

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
-Ephesians 5:31-33, ESV
Recently, I observed how the American Church like the Jews of Malachi’s day has lost the fear of God and therefore has a cheapened view of Scripture that has led many American churches to deny what Scripture teaches about who God is, who we are, and how that impacts cultural issues.  One area where this is especially evident is with marriage and gender.  This obviously includes topics like homosexuality and transgenderism, but it also includes a cheapening of marriage in general through an acceptance of our culture’s understanding of no-fault divorce and casual approach to relationships.  But even many churches that do not compromise in these areas struggle with how to interpret the Bible’s teachings on marriage and gender roles.  Generations of feminism have made any view of distinct gender roles ugly to many American Christians, causing them to reject any interpretation of Scripture that would perpetuate what they see as negative historical norms.  If these roles are a result of the Fall, we should seek to leave them behind as we labor to build the Kingdom of God.  But if these roles are part of God’s good Creation before the Fall, we must not abandon them as ugly remnants of sinful patriarchal oppression but instead embrace them as part of God’s beautiful design of who we are that reflects who He is.
But first, I need to address the objection that I as a single man am in no position to write about the topic of marriage. It is true that I lack any experiential qualifications, but that matters little. Saying that only members of a certain demographic are qualified to speak about issues unique to that demographic is a form of ad hominem attack that has no place in healthy debate. In actuality, demographics have little to do with qualifications, and qualifications do not determine the validity of an argument. More importantly, I am writing about what Scripture clearly teaches, not my own opinions. It doesn’t matter what I say but what God says. With that, lets see what God has to say about marriage and gender, starting from the beginning.
Begin at the Beginning
Since the crucial question is whether or not the distinction between genders predated the Fall, we need to go back to the beginning.  We know that all God made was very good (Genesis 1:31), so if we find evidence of the distinction between male and female there, then those distinctions must be very good too.  Here is what we find in Genesis 1:
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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ”
-Genesis 1:26-27, ESV
From this passage, we see that God created mankind as male and female in His own image (verses 26 and 27).  This means that the unity yet distinctness of the persons of the Trinity is reflected by the unity yet distinctness of men and women (more on that here).  Reflecting the ontological equality within the Trinity, men and women are equal in dignity and value.[1]  This is the basis for the high value of women in Christian cultures, and conversely the reason why non-Christian cultures often devalue and mistreat women.[2]  But men and women are also fundamentally different reflecting the economic distinction with the Trinity.  This passage also teaches us that God created mankind as male and female to accomplish a purpose: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it (verse 28), which is known as the Cultural Mandate.    Just as the persons of the Trinity fulfill different roles, men and women image (reflect and represent) God by fulfilling their distinct roles in the Cultural Mandate.  These differences do not change the equality of men and women in value and dignity.[3]  But this equality is not substitutionary: you cannot substitute one for the other and get the same result.  As I already covered when refuting transgenderism, since there are only three persons in the Trinity and they cannot become one another, there are only two genders: men and women, who cannot become one another.  After the Fall, the distinctions between male and female are sometimes less obvious, but they are still there.  So both the equality in value and distinction in roles of men and women are part of what God made as very good.
Which distinctions predated the Fall?  For this, Genesis 2, gives more detail about how mankind was created on Day 6.  This starts with God forming the man from the dust and breathing life into him (Genesis 2:7) before placing him in the Garden of Eden “to work and keep it” (verse 15), commanding him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (verse 16).  It is at that point that God declares (before sin) that something is not good: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18).  The man cannot keep the Garden or fulfill the Cultural Mandate without help, so God begins the process of creating a helper suitable for the man.  As a quick but important side note, the term “helper” is often used of God (e.g. Exodus 18:4, Deuteronomy 33:26,29, Psalm 33:20, 115:9-10, Hosea 13:9), so it is not denigrating in the slightest.[4]  God brings the animals to the man to name (Genesis 2:19-20a), both to show his authority over them and to prove to him that no animal existed that could provide the help he needed (Genesis 2:20b).[5]  God then created the woman from the man’s rib (verses 21 and 22) and brought her to the man, thus instituting marriage as the lifelong union between one man and one woman (verse 24). Upon seeing the woman for the first time, the man immediately recognizes her as the perfect partner for him and joyously declares: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23).  From this, we can see that the man was created first and given both a mission and the authority to accomplish that mission.  The woman was then created to help him in that mission, so gender roles are not some distortion of God’s very good creation but part of it.
The Distortion of the Fall
God’s very good design was greatly tarnished by the Fall in Genesis 3.  I cover the Fall more generally elsewhere, but for now recall that the first sin goes far beyond a poor diet choice.  Satan usurped the created order by addressing Eve rather than Adam (Genesis 3:1).  As head of his family, Adam then failed to both reinforce right doctrine to Eve and protect her from spiritual assault, instead standing by passively as Eve was tempted (verse 6b).  As far as we can tell, she engaged with Satan and then ate the fruit without looking to him for spiritual leadership (verses 2 to 6a).  But Adam’s passivity indicates that he too was rebelling against God in his heart and waiting to see if any harm came to her before he ate.  Therefore, he abandoned his calling to protect and provide for his wife, instead risking her well-being for his own pleasure.  As a result, they both sinned and then both immediately realized that their ideal world had been shattered (verse 7).[6]  God then calls out to Adam, showing that He still holds him responsible as head of his family.  Adam tries to blame Eve (even blaming God in the process), and Eve then tries to blame Satan (verses 9 to 13).
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Trusting God means acting on the knowledge that he knows what he’s talking about, even when his commands don’t make sense to me. Even before I see God’s provision. Even when provision looks impossible. Even when obedience is costly. Even if God doesn’t provide in the ways I think he should. Trusting God means being willing to get my feet wet, knowing that God’s promises will hold, and that in his own way, God’s hand will provide what is needed for the next step.

In 1998, Eva Cassidy recorded an old spiritual called “Wade in the water”. I was listening to her sing it in my car just recently:
Wade in the waterWade in the water, childrenWade in the waterGod’s gonna trouble the water
The lyrics are simple, but this water runs deep. As you’d expect from a spiritual, the reference is biblical. The rest of the song speaks of the children of Israel on the banks of the Jordan river, ready to cross into the promised land. In Joshua chapter 3, God tells the priests of Israel to carry the ark of the covenant, the symbol of his relationship with his people and presence with them, to the edge of the flooded river and stand in the water. They obeyed, and as soon as their feet got wet, God began to stop the flow of a mighty river and clear a path for his people to walk across on dry land.
Dry land—but the feet of the priests were still wet. They were wet because they had to “wade in the water” before God “troubled the water” for them. They had to obey before they saw the provision. They had to take a very literal step of faith into what was entirely impossible for them, trusting that God would keep his promise to take them across. It would have looked pretty silly for them to stand on the edge of the river if God never parted it. But he did.
The same dynamic plays out over and over again in the life of God’s people: we are often faced with situations where we must choose if we will trust God’s promises of provision, or turn away from where he is leading us in order to blaze our own path, by our own means. We like the sound of God’s promises for his children.
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Each day, we must proclaim the gospel to ourselves and others. We must defend the faith against those who assault it. We must commit ourselves to Christ and, by his grace, keep striving towards maturity and Christ-likeness in him. Most importantly, we mustn’t permit ourselves to stagnate or wallow in laziness. Like Paul, we “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

There is a quote often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill, but whose origins appear to be lost, that says, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” There is a great truth to it. It reminds one of the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 3:13–14: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Past accomplishments should not and cannot dictate our futures. Failures must not determine our ends. Faith, courage, and hope firmly rooted in Christ, ultimately, are what count as we strain towards the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We who are in Christ must press ever onward, toward the goal ahead of us, that we might finish the course of this life with joy and gladness.
Of course, we ought never forget that our justification by faith alone is the very means of our security in Christ. We are in no danger of losing our salvation. We need not work to stay saved. However, this does not excuse us from actively living out our faith in practical obedience to the Lord; the one who is saved will work as the indication that they have been saved (cf. Eph 2:10; Jas 2:17). This means that our personal development and spiritual growth is essential. We are to never stop growing as Christians. Even elders in the church must strive toward spiritual growth. There’s always more Bible to learn, more habits to improve, more sin to kill, more souls to evangelize, more saints to disciple, and more to be done. If ever we find ourselves thinking that we have made it, or perfected our faith, then we will know that we have missed the mark.
Consider pastoral leadership. A pastor who stops spiritually growing will eventually stop leading. A pastor cannot expect his people to continue to spiritually grow if he himself has stopped growing. After all, if he has stopped growing, one of two things will happen: either his people will stop caring to grow themselves and thus stagnate in the faith, or they will surpass and leave him behind.
Yes, pastors must strive toward spiritual growth. But so too must all other Christians. Stagnation is never a positive thing. If a man is running a marathon and decides that he is comfortable where he is, but only ran half the marathon, then the race will remain incomplete. If a mountain climber says that they’re happy to have climbed only three-quarters of the way up the mountain, and now they’re content to stay where they are, then they will likely freeze to death.
So, too, the Christian cannot be content with their current spiritual growth. While we find perfect joy and contentment in Christ alone, we must simultaneously see the many improvements we must make in our walk with Christ and strive to push ever ahead. What then are we to do to forget what’s behind and reach towards what’s ahead?
Our spiritual Growth Depends on Our Partaking of the Ordinary Means of Grace.
The very first step to take towards spiritual growth is profoundly simple, yet also the most important. In fact, this step ought to be repeated, to various degrees, daily. It holds true for elders, deacons, kitchen cleaners, sound system operators, janitors, children, elderly, and everyone else in between.
Spiritual growth requires the ordinary means of grace. This means that studying the Scriptures, praying without ceasing, attending church, fellowshipping with the saints, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper are all simple, yet highly effective means of grace that God has gifted us with to mature us in Christ.
Many miss these ordinary means of grace, though. Some are so busy seeking the next “big thing” that they miss what is lying right before them. They seek thrills and highs, hoping for miracles and revivals, while ignoring the biblical habits that are necessary to shape us into the image of Christ. They spend so much time seeking spiritual highs that they miss the seemingly ordinary things of this life that are actually quite extraordinary. It may seem a small thing to pick up the Bible and study it, and it may even appear to be impossible that doing so would cause any amount of spiritual growth to transpire. Yet, that is exactly what we’re called to do. “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). That isn’t a trick, some sort of nasty deception, or a promise contingent upon spiritual elitism. No, the one who puts forth the diligence, effort, and hard work needed to study the Bible will be one who has no need of shame because they can rightly handle the Word. That’s a mark of spiritual maturity.
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