http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14769962/how-do-saints-build-the-body
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The Lie All Satanic Power Serves: 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12, Part 2
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15981886/the-lie-all-satanic-power-serves
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Is Complementarity Merely Functional?
Audio Transcript
Andrea, a podcast listener in Jackson, Mississippi, writes in. “Hello, Pastor John! Thank you for your books and particularly your new book on providence. It has proven to be life-altering for me. Thank you! I was wondering if you could take a moment to address an entirely different topic — a marriage question. I have started to notice an emerging view of ‘complementarity’ online, and in my own circles, which seems a little off to me. It’s called complementarity and holds to the idea that the husband and wife take on different roles in the home, roles that mostly do not overlap. But to me it often sounds like simply a functional idea. So if the wife is a better teacher, she teaches the children the Bible and the husband doesn’t. Or if the wife makes more money, the husband takes the primary role in
caring for the daily needs of the kids.“It’s called complementarity in the sense that each spouse is not duplicating the role of the other. Each complements what the other is doing. But I don’t know what else to call it except to say it feels like a genderless complementarity. The husband and wife do not overlap duties out of efficiency, not from deeper convictions. In fact, gender, rarely, if ever, is brought in to define which roles the man has that the woman does not, and vice versa. Do you see this functional ‘complementarity’? If so, how do you respond? And what roles in the home are most gendered? I would love your thoughts on this.”
I suppose it’s inevitable that the longer a label is used — like complementarianism or complementarity — the easier it is for the label to replace the reality. The label complementarian, as a designation for how men and women relate to each other, has been around for about 35 years. I would want to stress that labels are only valuable if they capture and communicate reality. It’s the biblical reality that we really care about, not so much the label.
Distinct by Deep Design
Now, I think Andrea is right that the label today is less clear and less precise in the reality it refers to than it used to be. She’s pointing to a particular use of the label where the reality behind it seems to have more or less vanished. People are calling themselves complementarian without any serious reference to what the essence of manhood and womanhood really are and what that essence calls for in life.
“Underneath these distinctions in roles are profound differences in the very nature of manhood and womanhood.”
From the beginning, in the late 1980s, the term complementarianism included, not just the biblical conviction that men should be the elders or pastors of churches and that men should be the heads of their marriages or homes, but also the conviction that underneath these distinctions in roles there are profound differences in the very nature of manhood and womanhood. Those differences in the unique essence of manhood and the unique essence of womanhood were designed by God in creation and were the foundation for why God assigned the differing roles that he did. What we are by God’s original design in making us male and female has always been the foundation for God’s design for how men and women relate to each other and what roles we take.
So, I would say it’s a fundamental mistake for husbands and wives, or men and women in the church, or men and women in general, to define our roles and how we function in them without any reference to the deeper design of God and who we are as male and female.
Male and Female in the Beginning
Let me try to show what I mean by referring to a couple of Bible passages. For example, 1 Timothy 2:12–14: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”
Then he gives a foundation, an argument, a ground, that goes all the way back to creation and the ruin of that creation in the fall. He says in verses 13–14, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”
I take Paul to be arguing something like this: the authoritative teaching role in the church — that is, the role of governance and teaching, the role of an elder — is to be filled by spiritually mature and gifted men because God established, in the first two chapters of Genesis, a peculiar responsibility and leadership for Adam as part of God’s design for manhood and what it means to be male in his family and in the world.
Deceiving Eve
Now, we can see this design for man’s peculiar responsibility in leadership confirmed by the way it falls apart in the moment of Satan’s temptation and the way God follows up with Adam and Eve after the fall. Genesis 3:6 says that Adam was with Eve at the temptation; he didn’t show up later. But Satan, being subtle and deceptive, totally ignores the person that God had made responsible for the life of the garden — the man. Thus, Satan attacks at this very crucial moment. He attacks and undermines God’s design and turns the woman into the spokesman and the leader and the decision-maker for humanity.
Now both Adam and Eve fall for this. Adam remained totally silent when he should have stepped in and taken responsibility for this horrifically dangerous moment. Eve willingly assumes the role of responsible leader, and the result is a catastrophic failure to be obedient to God for both of them.
Now when Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:13, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor,” I don’t think he intends to say Adam is guiltless. We know that from Romans 5, where Adam’s disobedience in fact is the decisive disobedience that brings down the curse on humanity. The point, rather, of saying “Adam was not deceived” is that Satan undermined Adam’s leadership role by not targeting Adam for deception, but rather the woman. He made her the leader at the moment of deception. The point, in the context of 1 Timothy, is this: when the roles of men and women are reversed, at the very point where leadership matters most, things go very badly for families and churches and societies.
Where Is Adam?
Now God confirms that understanding of what happened by the way he calls the couple to account. A few verses later, God comes to find them in the garden. Genesis 3:9–11 says,
The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?”
Now, why didn’t God seek out the woman first since she ate the forbidden fruit first? Because God made man first and built into him a God-given sense of sacrificial responsibility for leadership and protection and provision. He is responsible for what just happened. That’s the price of leadership.
Male and Female in Marriage
This kind of built-in, creation-based leadership for man is confirmed in Ephesians 5. This is the second text I’m looking at: Ephesians 5:23–25, 28–29.
The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. . . . He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.
“How the husband and wife relate is to show the covenant love between Christ and the church.”
Paul describes the relationship as irreversible. The roles are not interchangeable. Christ and the church don’t get interchanged. They are the meaning of this relationship. How the husband and wife relate is to show the covenant love between Christ and the church, and Christ as the leader, savior, protector, nourisher, provider.
Paul roots those roles in the original pre-fall creation account in Genesis 2:24, which he quotes now in verse 31: “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Then he applies it like this: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it [that is, the meaning of manhood and womanhood in marriage] refers to Christ and the church.”
That’s the meaning of male and female in marriage: male and female modeling Christ and the church in roles of headship and submission that cannot be reversed any more than Christ and the church can be.
Restoring the Foundation
I conclude from these two texts — 1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5 and others that I’m not mentioning — that the very nature of God-designed manhood and womanhood is the foundation of the roles we are given by God. A complementarianism stripped of its foundation in the God-given essence of manhood and womanhood is a label that has lost its reality.
When it comes to the hundreds of activities in the home and who does them, that will be sorted out best where husband and wife agree biblically that the man bears a special God-given burden of responsibility for leadership, for protection, for provision in the family — all carried out in the pursuit of the amazing model of Christ’s love for the church and the church’s glad submission to Christ.
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Trembling Before God on Sunday
Audio Transcript
On Monday we looked at humor. In what ways is a humorous personality a liability? That was APJ 1813. The answer there was that humor can be stewarded well. The key is developing sober-mindedness — an awareness that doesn’t abolish humor, but puts humor in its place and protects things that are greater and more glorious. To be sober-minded, as we saw, is to cultivate a “demeanor that corresponds to the weight of the great things of life.” Which means we must avoid being “obsessed” with humor to the point that we become “incapable of serious moments” and “allergic” to them to the point that we become quick to break serious moments with injected humor. In other words, we must learn to tremble before God. This word is especially relevant to the tone of our Sunday gatherings together.
And that brings us to today. In the presence of God, everything trembles. The earth trembles, according to Psalm 114:7: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” The psalmist trembles in Psalm 119:120: “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” Indeed, the one who trembles at God’s word, that person catches God’s attention, according to what he tells us in Isaiah 66:2: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” And in the New Testament, Paul calls us in Philippians 2:12 —Christians — to “work out” our salvation “with fear and trembling.”
So why do Christians tremble? Here’s Pastor John to explain, from a 2005 sermon.
Here’s Revelation 19:15: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword [now, this is describing Jesus at his second coming] with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” Now, that last sentence is exceedingly terrible. “He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”
Almighty Fury
Just make four observations:
1. God is “Almighty.” We are not dealing here with a mere president of the United States, the mere premier of China. We’re dealing here with the person whose power includes all the power of the political realm, and all the power of the electromagnetic realm, and all the power of the atomic realm, and all the power of the gravitational pull of the biggest stars in the universe, and all the power that upholds the universe by the word of his might. We are dealing here with what’s called Almighty — omnipotence, absolute sovereignty — and he is angry.
2. The second observation is that this Almighty God is about to pour out his wrath. So, he is a God of love (the Bible is clear about that) and he is also a God of justice and holiness and wrath (the Bible is very clear about that). We need to know God as he is, not as we make him up to be.
3. The third observation is that this wrath is full of fury — “the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” It’s not a cool opposition. It’s not emotionally indifferent. It is a furiously angry wrath.
4. The fourth observation, and it’s the most terrible, is that it is like Christ treading a winepress in which the unbelieving are under his feet, and their blood flows like wine from the winepress.
That’s the image of the beloved apostle John, among others. And my point today is this should produce a certain appropriate emotional response in us.
Favor for the Trembling
Psalm 114:7: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” Psalm 119:120: “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” That’s a very godly man talking. Isaiah 66:2: “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble [this is God talking] and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” God’s countenance shines with favorable grace upon trembling people.
“God’s countenance shines with favorable grace upon trembling people.”
Or here’s the New Testament testimony that we should all heed. Philippians 2:12: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” To all believers, the Bible says, “Get on the road that leads to life. And if necessary, cut off your hands to stay there; gouge out your eyes to stay there. This is war, all the way to heaven. And as you go, let there be fear and trembling upon this road.”
This is not something you grow out of as you get more mature as a Christian. “Oh, maybe you start afraid, and then later on there’s no fear and trembling.” This is something that immature Christians must necessarily grow into, not something you grow out of.
Our Dread and Sanctuary
To which you should perhaps respond, “But doesn’t the Bible teach, ‘Fear not,’ dozens of places? Doesn’t it say, ‘Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God’ (Isaiah 41:10)? So, what are you saying about the ‘fear not’ passages if you’re calling us to experience normal Christianity as fear and trembling?”
What does “fear not” mean? It means two things:
It means fear God, not man.
It means don’t fear God as your enemy; fear him as one who was your enemy, and who is very great.Let me give you a text for each of those. Fear God, not man: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). This is the way I would put it: “Fear distrusting God; don’t fear displeasing men.” Let it be a terrifying prospect to you to distrust your God, but don’t let it be at all a terrifying prospect to you to displease your enemy who might cut off your head. That’s all they can do: cut off your head. But God, after the head has been cut off, can cast the soul into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear distrusting God. Fear turning away from God.
“Don’t fear God as your enemy; fear him as one who was your enemy, and who is very great.”
Isaiah 8:12 puts it this way — this is a paradoxical verse: “Do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts . . . let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary” (Isaiah 8:12–14).
It’s like when my son Karsten visited Dick Teagan at age six. There was this big German shepherd who met him eye to eye in the doorway at age six. And he was very much afraid. And Dick said, “Don’t be afraid; she’s very friendly.” We sent Karsten to the car to get something we’d forgotten, and he went trotting out to the car, and this dog comes loping up behind him with a deep rumble in her voice. It did not look like this dog was safe. And Dick hollered out to him, “Oh, Karsten, better not run away from her. She doesn’t like people to run away from her.”
And I took mental note: “That’s going into a sermon, because that’s exactly the way God is.” He’s a very friendly God. He just doesn’t like people to run away from him. And he will lope after you with a deep rumble in his voice. And if you don’t heed that rumble and turn and hug his neck, you’re going to be history forever.