Your gender proclaims God’s glory! In love he made you male or female. So to be faithful to God’s design we must wholeheartedly affirm the glory of both genders, retain the differences between the two, and practice what is specific to each.

In our historic moment, the categories of male and female are no longer assumed. What is a man? What is a woman? Neither is there consensus in the church on gender roles and relations.
But to know yourself and glorify God you must live as a gendered person. Kevin DeYoung is right: Humanity “is, always has been, and will be…comprised of two differentiated and complementary sexes…by God’s good design” (14). We may not diminish the differences between men and women; maleness or femaleness is basic to who you are. But neither does gender distinction suggest value hierarchy: men and women harmonize to show the beauty of being human.
DeYoung’s Men and Women in the Church (MWC) faithfully engages Scripture to provide clear and compassionate answers to critical questions of our day before offering concrete application.
What Is a Man? What Is a Woman?
The Old Testament Introduces the Two Genders
Scripture’s first three chapters are foundational. Its most basic teaching on gender is this: God made men and women in his image, equal in glory, to rule jointly over creation. And yet, while gender is inconsequential for salvation (Gal. 3:28), maleness and femaleness is humanity’s most basic distinction. Man was created first (1 Tim. 2:12–13), and in a different way. Man and woman were created in different realms and given different tasks; the man cultivated the earth, the woman cultivated the family. The man—and not the woman—had to name every creature. The man alone, as the other party in covenant with God, was tasked with maintaining the garden’s holiness.
And gender differences are good! Not in spite of their differences but because of them men and women can experience beautiful harmony and unity. The names “man” [ish] and “woman” [ishah] suggest interdependence. The woman must help the man; he must love, protect, and provide for her. In marriage, the man leaves his family and cleaves to his wife. The two came from one flesh and become one flesh, with the man reckoned as the head and representative of the couple. Tragically, sin disrupted this “very good” world; it activated God’s curse which interrupted the relational wholeness between man and woman, who experienced the curse in different, and telling ways (3:16–19).
The rest of the Old Testament clarifies gender roles and responsibilities. DeYoung identifies five patterns.

Men lead. “From start to finish, the leaders among God’s Old Testament people were men” (MWC 36). The few exceptions like Deborah, Miriam, Esther, and Athaliah were highly unusual, not always positive, and only prove the rule.
Women can be heroic. Male leadership doesn’t demand passive women. The Bible gives many examples of “Proverbs 31 women” who were trustworthy, industrious, entrepreneurial, strong, shrewd, determined, generous, brave, dignified, wise, kind, selfless, and respected. Jael’s warrior-like behavior was exceptional, but not her integrity and courage.

Read More
Related Posts:

If God can summon light into existence when there was only darkness, surely He can send His light into the world with assurance of complete success, no matter how impossible the odds. For this is the miracle and the wonder of Christmas: The Light of the world was born in the darkness of night, as the Word of God lay in the manger unable to speak a syllable.

The title of this article is hard to believe, isn’t it?

Doesn’t it seem like every week we hear about wars and rumors of wars, about terrorism or mass shootings, about Christian persecution and cultural degradation? We can look back on this past year and think of loved ones who’ve died, or friends who’ve been diagnosed with cancer. And others who are gripped by addiction or saddled with chronic pain or mired in a depression that will not lift.

In our own lives, there are too many tears, too many unknowns, too many closed doors. It’s not hard to be discouraged, maybe even despair.

And yet, the spoiler is true: the darkness does not win.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).

The symbolism of “light” in John’s Gospel has many layers. Light can refer to Christ (as in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world”), or to obeying the will of God (as in John 3:20, “everyone who does wicked things hates the light”), or to eternal life and the abundant life that can be found only in Christ (which is what verse 4 means by “In him was life, and the life was the light of men”). I think John is being deliberately ambiguous in verse 5. What he is saying is that the entire Light Side is victorious over the entire Dark Side.

Christians will not be overcome by the darkness—either amid our lifetime struggle with sin or in the life of eternal bliss to come—because we belong to the One who is the Light of the World. Darkness, which is John’s way of talking about the fallen world of sin and Satan, will not prove victorious in its long, persistent fight against the light.

Related Posts:

We must continually go to God and men in confession and contrition. We must resist the temptation to give into sin and stop confessing it. Confessing and seeking to forsake sin is one of the means of Christian growth in grace. When we stop doing so, we have begun the first step toward backsliding or apostasy. It doesn’t matter how many times we may fall into the same sin, we must go back to the Lord and back to those against whom we have sinned in order to seek our forgiveness.

My family moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1989 when I was twelve years old. One of the first things that I distinctly remember about that beautiful, little, secluded island was the fact that we could walk into a store, write our name on a ledger, and walk out with just about whatever we wanted in the store. I remember my dad and mom talking about needing to pay off their account at the hardware store every month. The owners and my parents both wanted to keep “short accounts.”
It was a peculiar and fascinating experience for a boy who moved there from a major city in which that would have never happened. The population of the island was small enough at that time for store owners to feel as if they could offer that service. Needless to say, it didn’t last long.
Within a year or two, you could no longer do so. It is somewhat tragic that this practice isn’t part of our culture anymore, because it serves as an illustration of an important aspect of our spiritual life. In the Christian life, we are—as the Puritans used to say—to “keep short accounts with God and men.” So, what do short accounts look like in the Christian life? Here are a few thoughts:
1. Confess your sins.
Believers are people who confess their sin. That is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. If a man or woman, boy or girl, never confesses their sin, they reveal that they do not believe that they are sinners in need of a Savior. A true believer is one who has learned, by the work of the Holy Spirit to say, “Will you please forgive me?” This is true in the vertical dimension of our relationship with God, first and foremost, and it is true in the horizontal relationships we have with others.
If we don’t confess our sin, we evidence that we are not sincere in our profession of faith in Christ. We must first confess our sins to the Lord. We learn this from Psalm 51 where David prays, “‘Against You and You only have I sinned’” (Ps. 51:4). Even though David had sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, both of their families, his family and all of Israel, he viewed his sin, first and foremost, as that which he committed against the Lord. It was sin because he broke God’s law.
We too must first go to the Lord and then to others. When we go to others, but not to the Lord, we functionally act like the man or woman who goes to the priest in the confessional but not to God in heaven.
2. Confess your sins particularly.
The Westminster Confession of Faith has an intriguing statement about this in its chapter on repentance where we read,
Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly. (WCF 15.5)
In short, we must never conclude that it is sufficient to confess that we are generally sinners or that we have generally sinned. When we confess our sin to God and men, we are to confess our sins specifically. We are to own the guilt of the particular sins that we have done. We are to examine our actions against the Law of God (i.e. the Ten Commandments) and confess the particular ways in which we have broken his law.
My wife and I try to teach our boys to do this when they have sinned against one another. We teach them not to say, “I’m sorry.” Instead, we seek to teach them to say, “Will you please forgive me for doing x, y or z?” We also try to do so in our marriage.
Read More
Related Posts: