While I often shrink back when I think about future suffering, pain has consistently pulled me into the heart of Christ, an unforgettable place of mystery and wonder. As I share in Christ’s suffering, I find an unusual closeness to Jesus that offers a rare glimpse of his glory.

The apostle Paul talks about sharing in Christ’s sufferings, wanting to know him and the power of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). That is, to know by experience, to know personally and intimately, not merely intellectually. Suffering brings an intimacy with God, a mysterious and sacred fellowship that cannot be captured in words.

Somehow, suffering can transport us into the throne room of God, where we feel the tenderness of his embrace, an otherworldly sense of joy, and a fellowship unlike anything else we’ve ever known. For a moment, an awareness of his presence can so completely envelop and overshadow our pain that we become immersed in fellowship with Jesus, unaware of anything around us. Knowing Christ this way has changed me. It’s impossible to forget that closeness, even after the suffering has passed. It has marked me.

“Suffering brings an intimacy with God, a mysterious and sacred fellowship that cannot be captured in words.”

Admittedly, I still don’t welcome the suffering that draws me that close, often preferring to know about Christ’s sufferings intellectually rather than through experience. Even in the midst of it, I’m begging for relief, wanting the pain to go away. But as I submit to him through suffering, something shifts in me. My heart becomes more aligned with his. My union with Christ, a reality for every believer, melts into sweet communion in my pain.

Meeting Christ in Suffering

Jesus fully understands me, but I can understand only the mere edges of him. Yet as I identify with his suffering and yield more fully to him in my sorrow, I possess more of him.

Whatever you are dealing with, you can find your suffering in Christ’s. He knows what it’s like to hunger and thirst, to endure sleepless nights and exhausting days, to experience agonizing pain, and to pour himself out for others who are hostile in return. His cousin was murdered, his family misunderstood him, his hometown rejected him, and he watched as a sword pierced his mother’s soul. People used Jesus, flattered him, criticized him, lied about him, betrayed him, abandoned him, mocked him, humiliated him, whipped him, and watched him die an excruciating death.

So where can you identify with him in your suffering? If you have ever been betrayed by a friend, someone you loved and trusted, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have ever begged God to remove your anguish, and God denied your desperate request, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering. Or if you have experienced tormenting, all-consuming physical pain with no relief, you can know a little of Christ’s fellowship in suffering.

There is no suffering we can experience that our Lord cannot relate to. And as we experience a portion of what he did and yield to him in it, we find a precious intimacy with him.

When the Worst Pain Comes

Joni Eareckson Tada understands this sacred experience, as she lives with crushing pain on top of her quadriplegia. In her latest inspiring book, Songs of Suffering, she tells of a friend who has become my friend as well. Barbara Brand, who has MS and brain lesions that cause excruciating pain in her head, gets regular injections into her skull and neck (about forty at a time) just to relieve the uncontrollable pain and nausea. Barbara, who is mostly bedridden, says of these injections,

Whenever the needles sink deep into my head, the extreme pain brings into sharp focus Jesus and his crown of thorns. The image calms my heart, but best of all, it binds me to his love. I picture my Savior yielding to the spike-like barbs, wholly embracing his own suffering to rescue me. So when needles plunge into my skull, my heart is cheered knowing that he is beckoning me into a deeper sanctum of sharing in his sufferings. Wonder of wonders, in some small measure, lowly me gets to identify with and enter his grief. The Bible tells me to be an imitator of God, so I get to imitate Jesus and his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s s terrible, yet wonderful, will. It’s the only way I can, through Christ, do everything. Even these awful injections. (115)

“As I submit to him through suffering, something shifts in me. My heart becomes more aligned with his.”

This is sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. We want to know that Jesus understands our suffering, which he does, but there is an even deeper fellowship when we understand a little of his. And when we can, like Barbara, imitate Jesus and his glad willingness to submit to God, we experience a profound kinship with him.

Not Only in Suffering

As we share in Christ’s sufferings, we also share in his comfort (2 Corinthians 1:5), not a thin set of platitudes that make us feel better in the moment, but an explicable fellowship that carries a sturdy peace. The weightier the suffering, the greater the comfort, the richer the fellowship, and ultimately the deeper the joy. And that joy will only increase when his glory is revealed (1 Peter 4:13).

Furthermore, the more we share in Jesus’s sufferings, the more we understand the power of his resurrection, and the more we can see his glory. Suffering can open our eyes to God’s glory — we see and experience it rather than learn what glory means intellectually. And as we behold God’s glory, we are being changed into his image (2 Corinthians 3:18), becoming more like him. Even more mysteriously and astonishingly, sharing in Christ’s sufferings means we will one day share in his glory, a glory that will make today’s sorrows seem light and momentary (Romans 8:17–18; 2 Corinthians 4:17).

If you are in a season of deep pain and loss, you have a particular opportunity to know the Lord Jesus more deeply. To know him by experience and not just academically. While we can know more about Jesus through Bible study, small groups, books, and sermons, some of the richest dimensions of our relationship with him will be forged through suffering. That relationship bound through sorrow offers not only comfort and communion, but also a glimpse of glory that will transform our faith, make us more like him, and prepare us for the unspeakable glories that await in eternity.

Not only do books change lives, but paragraphs do. And not only paragraphs, but even single sentences. “Paragraphs find their way to us through books,” John Piper writes, “and they often gain their peculiar power because of the context they have in the book. But the point remains: One sentence or paragraph may lodge itself so powerfully in our mind that its effect is enormous when all else is forgotten.”

In fact, we might even take it a step further, to particular phrases. That’s my story. It’s been a loaded phrase, but a single phrase nonetheless, penned by Jonathan Edwards and printed in a book by Piper, that has proved life-changing: “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.”

Lionlike Lamb

As a sophomore in college (and with the help of some older students), I was becoming wise to the bigness and sovereignty of God, but I was still naïve about how it all related to Jesus. Help came when Piper published Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ.

At first, I read it too fast, and benefited little. But when I came back to it, and read each chapter devotionally (thirteen chapters plus the intro, so a reading a day for two weeks), it awakened in me a new love for and focus on Jesus.

The most transformative section of the book was chapter 3. The chapter begins like this, landing on the phrase from Edwards that lodged itself so powerfully in my mind:

A lion is admirable for its ferocious strength and imperial appearance. A lamb is admirable for its meekness and servant-like provision of wool for our clothing. But even more admirable is a lionlike lamb and a lamblike lion. What makes Christ glorious, as Jonathan Edwards observed over 250 years ago, is “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” (29)

No One Like Him

The life-changing phrase first appears in a sermon, “The Excellency of Christ,” preached under the banner of Revelation 5:5–6. Edwards says,

There is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ. The lion and the lamb, though very diverse kinds of creatures, yet have each their peculiar excellencies. The lion excels in strength, and in the majesty of his appearance and voice: the lamb excels in meekness and patience, besides the excellent nature of the creature as good for food, and yielding that which is fit for our clothing and being suitable to be offered in sacrifice to God. But we see that Christ is in the text compared to both, because the diverse excellencies of both wonderfully meet in him.

I was captured by the thought, and reality, that Jesus brings together in one person what no other men or angels — or even the Father or the Spirit — unite in one person. Lionlike strength and lamblike gentleness.

“Unless we know Jesus specifically, and in greater detail over time, we will come to know him wrongly.”

What I began to see for myself in those days is that Jesus isn’t just the means for humans to get right with the Father. Christ, the God-man, is also the great end. He is the fullest and deepest revelation of God to mankind. To see him is to see the Father. And the Father means for us to see, and savor, his Son as the great treasure of surpassing value, as the pearl of greatest price.

Fresh and Holy Discontent

What Edwards’s well-crafted phrase, and Piper’s short book, did for me was to woo me into a lifelong hunt for details about Jesus. The line awakened a fresh and holy discontent for the popular vagueness about Christ’s person.

Years ago, I heard from a veteran at a Christian publisher that books on Jesus don’t typically sell well today. People want to read and learn about trending topics and life application. They think they already know about Jesus. Tragically, they are content with little knowledge (and often vague knowledge) about the most fascinating, mindboggling, profound subject in all the universe: God become man.

Edwards was not that way. He didn’t mention Jesus on his way to some other more popular topic; he focused on Jesus. He lingered on Jesus — in the case of this particular sermon, for 15,000 words (roughly two hours).

Seven Diversities in One Son

In the first part of the sermon, Edwards addresses the diversity of Christ’s excellencies: his infinite highness as God and his infinite condescension as man, alongside his infinite justice and infinite grace. Then, in part 2, he speaks to the conjunction of those excellencies, specifically the virtues in Christ which “seem incompatible otherwise in one person.” This is the heart of it — seven “admirable conjunctions” Edwards highlights in Christ:

Infinite glory, and lowest humility;
Infinite majesty, and transcendent meekness;
Deepest reverence toward God, and equality with God;
Infinite worthiness of good, and the greatest patience under sufferings of evil;
An exceeding spirit of obedience, with supreme dominion over heaven and earth;
Absolute sovereignty, and perfect resignation;
Self-sufficiency, and an entire trust and reliance on God.

As just one taste of the feast, consider what Edwards says about Jesus’s humility:

Humility is not properly predicable of God the Father, and the Holy Ghost, that exist only in the divine nature; because it is a proper excellency only of a created nature; for it consists radically in a sense of a comparative lowness and littleness before God, or the great distance between God and the subject of this virtue; but it would be a contradiction to suppose any such thing in God.

Yet in becoming man, Christ, without losing his highness or deity (as if that were possible), gained humanity and the ability to humble himself (Philippians 2:8). Jesus, the God-man, is “above all” as God, “yet lowest of all in humility.” Edwards continues,

There never was so great an instance of this virtue among either men or angels, as Jesus. None ever was so sensible of the distance between God and him, or had a heart so lowly before God, as the man Christ Jesus.

Precise, Extensive Glories

God the Father means for his people to treasure his Son, Jesus, not as a general concept, but through his particular, Scripture-revealed contours. God made us to know his Son in his precise and meticulous and extensive glories, not in mere generalities and nondescript statements. He made us to go further up and further in to the glories of Christ in all their detail and brilliance for all eternity.

If our knowledge of Jesus consists in mere generalities and nondescript statements, then we will be prone to embrace a misguided vision of Jesus. Unless we know him specifically, and in greater detail over time, we will come to know him wrongly. And we will not love the true Jesus deeply and fervently.

Which leads to one final truth about Jesus’s “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” Jesus is not just the right answer to the problem of sin, but in his diverse excellencies, he satisfies the complex longings of the human soul.

He Satisfies the Complex Soul

Paul prays in Ephesians 3:16–19 that God’s people would “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

“Jesus is not just the right answer to the problem of sin, but he satisfies the complex longings of the human soul.”

All the fullness of God is found in this man Jesus. Full humanity and the fullness of deity. We marvel at his bigness and might and omni-relevance, and we melt at his grace and mercy and meekness, and all that comes together in one spectacular person — all the fullness of God in this God-man — whom we will one day see face to face, where we will more fully know and enjoy him without obstruction for all eternity.

So, I finish, then, with one more quote from Seeing and Savoring, and the prayer that God might do for you what he did for me twenty years ago:

This glorious conjunction [of diverse excellencies in Christ] shines all the brighter because it corresponds perfectly with our personal weariness and our longing for greatness. . . . The lamblike gentleness and humility of this Lion woos us in our weariness. And we love him for it. . . . But this quality of meekness alone would not be glorious. The gentleness and humility of the lamblike Lion becomes brilliant alongside the limitless and everlasting authority of the lionlike Lamb. Only this fits our longing for greatness. . . .

We mere mortals are not simple either. We are pitiful, yet we have mighty passions. We are weak, yet we dream of doing wonders. We are transient, but eternity is written on our hearts. The glory of Christ shines all the brighter because the conjunction of his diverse excellencies corresponds perfectly to our complexity. (31–32)

Will male-female complementarity exist in the new heavens and new earth? If so, what can we learn about the continued distinctions between men and women in the new creation?

Scriptural data on the contours of the life to come are limited, so we must admit the speculative nature of our question up front. However, we can draw reasonable inferences from what the Bible does say about life in the resurrection, particularly from how the Bible treats masculinity and femininity in creation, after the fall, and in redemption.

Grace Restores Nature

Before considering complementarity in creation, it is necessary to introduce a theological concept on which the logic of this essay depends. According to Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, a key Reformational principle holds that grace does not destroy nature. What God created in the beginning is natural, and what is natural is good and not undone by God’s redemptive purposes. Rather, grace restores nature. Bavinck explains,

Grace serves, not to take up humans into a supernatural order, but to free them from sin. Grace is opposed not to nature, only to sin. . . . Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle, but it does not add to it any new and heterogeneous constituents. (Reformed Dogmatics, 3:577)

Nature (which in this context is another word for God’s original design) is not inherently bad. Nature is good, but it has been corrupted by sin. In fact, sin is a privation and corruption of a created good. God’s gospel mission in Christ is to rid the world of sin and reform and restore nature in the new creation, taking it “to its highest pinnacle.” Importantly, the restoration of the created order includes God’s complementary design for male and female.

Some theological systems treat natural differences — such as those between men and women — as something bad to overcome. But after God created the world and everything in it, he called all that he had made “good,” and then he said it was “very good” after creating the man and the woman equal yet different in his image (Genesis 1:31). With God, we should confess that complementary difference is “very good,” and woe to those who call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).

Complementarity is creational, good, and part of what God redeems in the gospel.

Complementarity in Creation

Origin stories often provide crucial information for understanding a subject. The early chapters of Genesis are foundational for a properly biblical anthropology, and from these chapters we learn that complementarity — equal value with different callings — is original to and constitutive of humanity.

Genesis 1:26–28 introduces humanity’s form and function, teaching that God made mankind in his image to come in two varieties: male and female. The original Hebrew words for male (zakar) and female (neqebah) in Genesis 1 make subtle etymological references to the natural reproductive differences between men and women. These natural differences (form) ground and point toward their meaning and fulfillment (function) in marriage and procreation.

Jesus taught his disciples this connection between marriage and God’s complementary design in Matthew 19:4–5, where he connects the purpose of marriage in Genesis 2:24 (“Therefore . . .”) with God’s design in Genesis 1:27 (“male and female”):

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”?

Maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, are inherently complementary, meaning not only that we understand one vis-à-vis the other, but also that each bears witness to and complements the other as they both point toward their fulfillment in marriage. How God created “in the beginning” informs God’s purposes for his creation. And in God’s grand design, we learn that God created marriage itself to be a mysterious sign with meaning in the gospel (Ephesians 5:31–32).

So God’s complementary design has both a natural and a supernatural purpose. The natural purpose of male-female complementarity is marriage and procreation — cornerstones of the natural family, which is the bedrock of human society. The supernatural purpose of complementarity is to display the good news that Jesus has given his life for his bride, the church.

Complementarity After the Fall

When sin entered the world, complementarity was affected but not destroyed. We see this clearly in the curses God pronounces over creation in Genesis 3:16. Procreation continues in a fallen world, but it is more difficult. Marriage likewise continues, but it is also more difficult. Strife and conflict afflict the relationship between husband and wife. The wife tends not to willingly submit to her husband, but she has desires contrary to his leadership — or she resigns herself to being a doormat. And the husband tends not to relate to his wife in love as his equal, but with harsh rule — or he resigns himself to being a pushover.

Either way, God’s original complementary design is defaced by sin, but it is not erased. In a fallen world, we continue to bear God’s image as males and females, and marriage and procreation continue as a common grace for the continuance of the human race and as a picture of God’s ongoing activity in the world.

Complementarity in Redemption

God answers sin in the gospel. Not only has Jesus paid the penalty of sin through his substitutionary death on the cross, but he has begun a redemptive work in creation everywhere the gospel takes root.

It is through complementary procreation and childbearing that redemption is both promised and ultimately realized. In the midst of cursing the world on account of mankind’s sin, God promises to raise up an offspring of the woman who will put down the rebellion instigated by the serpent. In Genesis 3:15, God addresses the serpent within earshot of the man and the woman:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,     and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head,     and you shall bruise his heel.

As the biblical genealogies testify, generations of complementary relations between men and women brought this promise to the brink of fulfillment. Then, through the supernatural conception by a betrothed-and-then-married virgin, the promise was finally realized. Jesus is begotten of his heavenly Father and an earthly mother — the God-man come to earth to redeem his bride, the church. Complementarity permeates the gospel.

The New Testament affirms the continued goodness of complementary differences, particularly in marriage and procreation. The apostles exhort all Christians everywhere to faith and good works, affirming male-female equality of value in their redeemed standing before God (Galatians 3:28). But the apostles also give the New Testament churches differing, enduring, sex-specific instructions, including to the unmarried, in places like Titus 2 and in the household codes in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3. Grace does not erase nature but restores it — including our complementary natures and callings.

For instance, in 1 Timothy 2:11–15, Paul instructs women to act differently from men in the covenant community. Just as Adam was created as the covenant head of his wife, men are called to covenant leadership in marriage and in the church, and women are called to embrace their God-given design under the leadership of qualified men in the covenant community. In 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul mentions the archetypically feminine act, childbearing, for women to embrace in faith, love, holiness, and self-control. Many commentators see a reference in this verse to the unique role women played in the history of redemption to bring about the birth of the Savior. It was through childbirth, after all, that Jesus came into the world to bring salvation. Men are instructed to embrace their masculinity and women to embrace their femininity in the eternal life they have in Christ.

We can see how the gospel answers sin and restores nature also in the instructions Paul gives husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:22–33. The sex-specific commands for husbands and wives in this passage directly answer the propensities toward sin listed in the curses of Genesis 3:16. As the redeemed, husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church rather than to rule harshly over them. Wives are commanded to submit to their own husbands rather than to nurse desires contrary to their leadership.

This sampling of passages makes it clear that even as we are made more into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24), we embrace our masculinity and femininity as the God-given way we image him (Genesis 1:27).

Complementarity in the New Creation

The resurrection of Jesus offers an important clue for life in the new creation. The Bible teaches that Jesus rose from the dead as the “firstfruits” of the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). Firstfruits portend not only that more will follow, but also what will follow.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he demonstrated continuity between his bodily existence before and after his death. Jesus was born into the world as a human male, lived a perfect life as a human male, died as a human male, and was resurrected as a human male. Francis Turretin rightly connects Christ’s resurrection to the resurrection believers should anticipate:

When he rose, Christ received the same body he had before and the same flesh which he had assumed and in which he died, for what he once took he never laid aside (Psalm 16:10; John 2:19; Acts 2:31). Hence he significantly says, “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39). Such ought to be our resurrection. Our bodies ought to be no other than those which were deposited in the earth. (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3:572–73)

At the resurrection, all the redeemed will be raised with bodies in the same way that Jesus was raised. Men and women will be reconstituted with imperishable male bodies and female bodies, respectively. In this way, we can affirm that maleness and femaleness, which imply masculinity and femininity, will persist in the new creation.

But what will this masculinity and femininity look like? We find another clue to life in the resurrection from Jesus in Matthew 22. This passage is a hotspot for speculation, and for good reason. In this passage, Jesus answers the Sadducees’ attempt to stump him with a question about a woman who was successively married to seven brothers. To which of the seven brothers would this woman be married in the resurrection? But Jesus is not stumped:

You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:29–32)

Jesus’s reply contains two pieces of information about life in the resurrection: we will not marry or be given in marriage, and we will be like the angels. Mainstream Christian orthodoxy has concluded from Jesus’s teaching that there will no longer be marriage in the new creation. But if marriage and procreation cease, then will maleness and femaleness cease?

This conclusion does not necessarily follow, in part because of the theological logic of resurrection (presented above) and in part because of Jesus’s own words. Indeed, the words Jesus uses in Matthew 22:30 appear to affirm the continuance of differences between the two sexes. The words “marry” and “given in marriage” refer to the uniquely male and female roles in marriage. In other words, the activity will cease, but not the differentiated identities. As Augustine observes,

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30). They shall be equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in flesh, nor in resurrection, which the angels did not need, because they could not die. The Lord then denied that there would be in the resurrection, not women, but marriages; and he uttered this denial in circumstances in which the question mooted would have been more easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex would exist, if this had in truth been foreknown by him. But, indeed, he even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying, They shall not be given in marriage, which can only apply to females; Neither shall they marry, which applies to males. There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed to marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such marriages. (City of God, XXII.17)

In this way, Jesus does not mean to indicate that we will be “like angels” in that we will be non-physical or disembodied. We will have resurrected bodies, which means we will be sexed as Jesus is in his resurrected male body. But we will be “like angels” in that we will be immortal, as Augustine affirms, and we will no longer procreate. The pleasures promised to Christians (Psalm 16:11), both male and female, transcend the mere physical, instead promising spiritual unity with God himself as we enjoy his goodness forever in his presence (Revelation 21).

In sum, masculinity and femininity continue in the new creation because God created us male and female — equal in value yet different in our callings — in the beginning, pronouncing it “very good.” Masculinity and femininity are not erased by the fall but are being redeemed in the gospel. We who are united to Christ by faith will be raised with sexed bodies like his, male or female, which means masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and the new earth. Male-female complementarity originated in the garden, persists in spite of the fall, is redeemed in Christ, and will be fully restored in the new creation.

Male and Female Forever

If we have adequately established that masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and new earth, we may now explore what this might look like. If marriage and procreation are no more, what will masculinity and femininity look like? How will they be distinguished? And for what purpose?

The differences between masculinity and femininity will persist, first and foremost, in our embodied differences. Men and women have similar yet different forms that lend themselves to different but overlapping modes of subsistence. While no longer directed at marriage and procreation, masculinity and femininity will retain their original function in imaging and reflecting the glory of God. And because we are not God, no one of us can image or reflect his glory independently. Male and female together are required to image God sufficiently.

God-created differentiation will continue in the new creation. The new heavens will be distinct from the new earth; angels and cherubim will be distinct from seraphim; trees will be distinct from rivers, and these created realities will be distinct from the men and women who will walk among them, embodied and differentiated as either male or female. Each aspect of God’s new creation will proclaim something about its Creator (Romans 1:20). Because no one created being is equal to God, which includes each of us as male or female, we will continue to experience and benefit from differentiated createdness, which will bear testimony to and give glory to God.

Second, bodily continuity between this age and the age to come points toward spiritual continuity. Masculinity in this age is typified by strength and initiative and leadership. We have reason to think that in the new heavens and new earth, masculinity will continue to typify such. Femininity in this age is typified by beauty and receptivity and nurture, and this also is likely to continue in the age to come. Importantly, one typified attribute is not better than another. Just the opposite: every attribute is good and necessary, as it is created by and participates in God himself. But they are differentiated, and this differentiation will continue in the new creation because maleness and femaleness will continue.

Admittedly, though, we have arrived with C.S. Lewis’s character Ransom at the brink of futility and wonder as we try to fully account for the beauty of complementary difference:

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try — Ransom has tried a hundred times — to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. . . . What Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. (Perelandra, 171)

Complementarity participates in true reality, because it reflects God’s design. Instead of trying to define the scope of masculinity and femininity in the age to come, we should content ourselves with affirming complementary continuity, which means affirming the goodness of male-female difference, while celebrating and anticipating continued complementarity in God’s (re)created order.

God’s creation is beautifully diverse, like a multifaceted diamond, in order to catch and reflect the eternal divine Light (1 John 1:5). It will be similar in the new creation, which is described in similar terms as the first creation (“new heavens and new earth,” Revelation 21:1; “the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1). We serve a God whose Trinitarian love is reflected in and refracted through all of creation, including redeemed humanity. Male-female complementarity is part of God’s original design, and this complementarity will be beautifully restored with the rest of creation, which eagerly awaits God’s redemption (Romans 8:23).

Male-female complementarity will exist in the new heavens and the new earth, and so will masculinity and femininity. As for their eternal complementary purposes, Lord willing, we will have an eternity to appreciate them, and through them the strength and beauty of our God.