God created male and female, boys and girls, men and women. Our bodies are not opposed to our identities but, rather, give objective and biological clarification to who we are. We are not bodiless image bearers. We are embodied creatures because bodies matter. And bodies matter because God made them.

The first time the words “male” and “female” appear in Scripture is on page one. 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” (Gen. 1:26).
God would make image-bearers, and they would exercise dominion over the creation he had made. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
Then God blessed his image-bearers and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).
God made Adam and Eve as embodied creatures (Gen. 2:7, 22–23), and their embodiment had a sexual design because they were capable of procreation. Their maleness and femaleness were not separate from biology but were clarified by it.
Now, of course, in a Genesis 3 world, not every male will father a child, and not every female will deliver one. Reasons for this abound. Nevertheless, we must notice that in Genesis 1:26–28, maleness and femaleness involve sexual complementarity. Moreover, God had told the man, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (2:18).
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When we commit to walking in His truth, we stand out like a sore thumb. We do not take advantage of anyone or any situation. Instead, we walk by faith not by sight. Those in the world who are out for self and self alone will see us as weak and stupid. In fact, they will persecute or take advantage of us.

Aleph1 How blessed are those whose way is blameless,Who walk in the law of Yahweh.2 How blessed are those who observe His testimonies,They seek Him with all their heart.3 They also do not work unrighteousness;They walk in His ways.4 You have commanded us,To keep Your precepts diligently.5 Oh may my ways be establishedTo keep Your statutes!6 Then I shall not be ashamedWhen I look upon all Your commandments.7 I shall give thanks to You with uprightness of heart,When I learn Your righteous judgments.8 I shall keep Your statutes;Do not forsake me utterly! Psalms 119:1-8 (LSB)
Several years ago, before I retired and before I started working from home, I had a discussion at work with a co-worker about the upcoming publication of my book Walking the Walk by Faith and the contract I just received from my publisher for my 2nd book Possessing the Treasure. This co-worker had always been supportive of my writing because she was an avid reader. However, she was also a non-believer even though she did not see things that way. She believed salvation is universal because God loves everyone too much to send anyone to hell. She believed my stance on my Puritan doctrines was silly. When  I tried to explain the attributes of God to her and our part in walking this walk and she laughed as she left my cubicle and went back to her’s. Those of us who are Spirit-led know better…don’t we?
The Spirit-led know there is only one-way to walk this walk. What is it? We must walk in God’s truth. Walking in God’s truth means we must know what it is and we must live by it in all areas of our lives. Where do we find God’s truth? The Word of God is His wonderful gift to us. It reveals God to Man. It shows us plainly who He is and who we are. It shows us we must live our lives in worship of Him. We must live for His glory.
I placed the first stanza of Psalms 119, entitled “Aleph,” at the beginning of this post. Let us go through it one line at a time. We are pursuing Christ-likeness. How do we attain it? God must draw us into the processes that will reshape our hearts into this level of spiritual maturity. When we obey Him in total surrender to His cleansing fires, we grow. Our faith is built up. We grow in Christ. This growth is a work of God not a result of our will power or intelligence. God will use our prayer, obedience, and His Word as the main tools to mature us unto Christ-likeness, therefore, let’s dig.
The first line is, “How blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the law of Yahweh.” The Hebrew word translated “blessed” is an exclamation of how happy someone is. It describes someone who was most happy. For example, “Look how happy they are!” Who is that happy? Those who are blameless, that’s who. The word “blameless” can also mean “undefiled,” “complete,” or “perfect.” The picture the psalmist is giving us is, “Look how blessed the undefiled are!” The Spirit-led understand this very well. Why? A clear conscience is a wonderful part of this walk! No blame, no shame! It is a joyful experience to realize God dynamically loves and blesses us as we seek Him with all we have. When we are defiled, we cannot experience that at that level. The last part of this sentence shows us who are blameless. Who? Those who walk in the law of the LORD are blameless and, therefore, blessed. I like the exclusivity of that statement. I believe we could also turn this statement around and say, “How sad are those who are defiled, who don’t walk in the law of the LORD!” That gives us a different view of it doesn’t it? The psalmist is telling us God blesses to the max those who give up self-focus while surrendering to the Lord in all things, living for His glory and walking according to the Word of God. Why?
1 How blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh,Who walks in His ways.2 When you shall eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands,How blessed will you be and how well will it be for you. Psalms 128:1-2 (LSB) 
We must start by fearing God. It brings us into the proper perspective of our relationship with Him. The self-focused do not understand this concept. Their fear of God is a fear powered by guilt. How could that bless anyone? However, the Spirit-led know the proper fear of God, that which is born of knowledge of God, brings blessedness beyond compare. The proper fear of God generates obedience. When we walk this way, what does God do for us? He blesses our walk. What more could we want? When we walk this way, we are walking for His glory not ours. It is God’s will for us to do this. The Mature Christian walks this way. The maturing Christian is learning to walk this way.
The second line in this stanza is, “How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, They seek Him with all their heart.” The one who can walk blameless is the one who seeks the Lord with their whole heart. This is speaking of our daily walk praying continually and worshipping Him in spirit and in truth. That means we do not give God lip service by singing hymns in Church once a week, instead we make our entire life an act of worship of our Lord. When we do this, we are obedient. This walk keeps our hearts blameless and undefiled. This is a life on the altar.
1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Romans 12:1 (LSB) 
To become a blessing, God must become the focus of our entire being. All of our worship must be God-focused, never Man-focused. Do you want to show the Lord how much you love Him? If you are Spirit-led, you want this more than life itself. To show the Lord how much you love Him then live for His glory and to bless Him should be our heart’s desire.
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Owning Scripture was not only pricey but possession could lead to imprisonment or execution. Fourteenth-century forerunners of the Reformation such as John Wycliffe of England and one of his followers in Bohemia, Jan Hus, were persecuted for providing Bibles in the common language of their people. In the case of Hus, translation work contributed to the heresy case against him resulting in his execution at the stake. In the next century, William Tyndale was hunted down wherever he set up his printing press as he moved from place to place to clandestinely provide Scripture in English. He was eventually caught, strangled, and burned at the stake for publishing the Word in the vernacular.

The Latin sola Scriptura means “Scripture alone,” which is the cornerstone sola because understanding the meaning of “Christ alone,” “Grace alone,” “faith alone,” and “to God’s glory alone” requires harvesting information from Scripture alone. Some of the key personalities of church history such as Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox were all influenced first and foremost by Scripture as it revealed justification by faith. For Augustine, it was Romans that confronted him with his promiscuous and sinful life; for Luther, the understanding of the meaning of faith was brought to light using Galatians and Romans; for Calvin, the Psalms were essential because they provide “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul;” and for Knox it is believed his key passage was the Lord’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17. As these reformers read the Word, the Holy Spirit illumined their understanding of its message of grace and justification so they could embrace the gospel and grow in sanctification. Sola Scriptura requires acceptance of the Bible as God’s revealed will through, as the Westminster Confession 1:6 would say in a century, “the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word.”
In the nineteen seventies All in the Family was a popular television situation comedy. Inevitably at some point during each episode politically conservative Archie would become involved in an argument with his politically liberal son-in-law, Michael. In one program the two were wrangling over a theological issue when nebulously Christian Archie looked to the top of the television for the Bible, but it was not there. He asked his infinitely patient but shrill voiced wife Edith where she put the Bible. She informed him that it had been moved to the top of the refrigerator. Location of the Bible on top of these important home devices may have been intended to show that the Word held some relative importance, but it instead shows that even though nearly every household in the United States had at least one Bible at the time, they were items of decoration more than books to be read.
The common availability of Bibles currently would have been appreciated at the time of the Reformation because Bibles and books in general were scarce. The movable type printing press had been available for less than a century, so publishing was expensive and purchasing a New Testament or whole Bible was a pricey undertaking. Some historians estimate that a tradesman in England in the sixteenth century might have to spend a month’s wages for a New Testament.
Owning Scripture was not only pricey but possession could lead to imprisonment or execution. Fourteenth-century forerunners of the Reformation such as John Wycliffe of England and one of his followers in Bohemia, Jan Hus, were persecuted for providing Bibles in the common language of their people. In the case of Hus, translation work contributed to the heresy case against him resulting in his execution at the stake. In the next century, William Tyndale was hunted down wherever he set up his printing press as he moved from place to place to clandestinely provide Scripture in English. He was eventually caught, strangled, and burned at the stake for publishing the Word in the vernacular. Lives were sacrificed for the translation and distribution of Scripture. If Wycliffe, Hus, and Tyndale could return to visit their homelands today they would likely be encouraged by the availability of the Word, especially with digital Bibles accessible on a variety of devices, but they would also be discouraged by the common indifference to and ignorance of Scripture.
This Reformation Day would be a good time to establish a plan for reading Scripture. The Bible can be read in a year and there are reading schedules available for such a method, but maybe it would be better to read it through in two to allow for better understanding. The book of Proverbs lends itself to daily reading with its thirty-one chapters working out to one a day for a thirty-one-day month; some individuals read Proverbs every month in addition to their other daily Bible passages. However, familiarity with Proverbs may lead to friends avoiding you because every time something proverbial happens you say a verse or two of Solomonic wisdom addressing the situation. Generally, it is better to read the books consecutively and many of the books in the Bible are not only consecutive but chronological, however Acts may make more sense when it is preceded by the reading of Luke. Luke and Acts are a set that tell the history of Jesus and the post-ascension Apostolic ministries.
Avoid what R.C. Sproul described in his book, Knowing Scripture, as “lucky dipping,” which involves closing your eyes, flipping the Bible open randomly, planting your finger on a page, and then opening your eyes to read the verse touched. Scripture is not a pious Ouija Board for guidance mysteriously directed by the Holy Spirit. Some would say that lucky dipping provides God’s special message for the day, or a revelation of the Divine will for a particular problem, but most likely many dips would be required to get a message that made any sense and its interpretation would be subjective and forced. Systematic Bible reading provides the opportunity for the Spirit to speak through the passages read daily while prayer for guidance can address the particular concerns you have at the moment.
Commentaries and study guides have their place and can be very helpful for understanding Scripture, after all, the Ethiopian eunuch needed Philip as his commentator-preacher to explain Christ from Isaiah 53:7, but unless you are well disciplined with a good chunk of time for your study, simply read God’s Word. As you become more familiar with the Bible, you can study it better after accumulating data from your reading.
One of the reasons Catholicism has kept the Bible in Latin for centuries is because its leadership believes Scripture is too difficult for the average person to understand and interpretation is required. Reading Scripture can be intimidating especially as one ventures through genealogies, Levitical law, and the challenges of prophetic imagery, but remember the Word is God’s revelation, not his concealment. The vast majority of Scripture is plainly understandable; the theological term is the perspicuity of Scripture—Scripture is clear, lucid.
If you are just beginning your Bible reading program and do not know where to start, then begin with the Gospels. For brevity start with Mark; for beauty and detail read Luke; for the particularly Jewish aspects such as fulfillment of prophecy read Matthew; and for detailed information about the passion of Christ read John. However, any of the gospels is straight forward in its message, after all they are the good news and clear language facilitates conveying the Gospel message.
Read to see the forest, not the trees. Do not get bogged down with, “Why did he say that?” or “How much value in dollars is a drachma?” or “Why are Paul’s sentences so long?” Read the passage through and write your questions in the margins of your Bible—some Bibles have enlarged margins and digital ones have note recording features—when your read the passage months or years down the road your accumulated data from the intervening time of Bible reading could provide the answer to your earlier inquiry. When you can answer your own questions after further reading, it shows that you are learning the Word. Remember too that repetition is the mother of memory, so the continued practice of reading the Bible through contributes to better understanding.
The Bible should not be taken for granted, nor should it be left on the television for the appearance of piety, nor on top of the refrigerator for storage. Over the years many have suffered and died to provide the Scripture to successive generations. The Bible is God’s revealed written will and it is necessary for knowledge of Him and understanding His expectations for His people. The Bible not only teaches all that is needed for knowing, glorifying, and enjoying God, but it also testifies to itself—“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105); “Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth” (John 17:17); “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8); and “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4).
Dr. Barry Waugh attends Fellowhip PCA in Greer, SC.
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