Death comes to us all, and God can and does work through even this for good to those who love him (Romans 8:28), but never lull yourself into the lie that death itself is anything but the terrible wages of our sin, from which we desperately need salvation (Romans 6:23). Remember that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Scripture is abundantly clear that we were never meant for death. And lest we forget, the experience of grief — to borrow from C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain — shouts as with a megaphone to remind us.

“What do you consider a ‘good death’?”
A furrow creased my eyebrows. The interviewer and I had spent the last ninety minutes discussing the intricacies of end-of-life care, delving into hard topics such as life-support measures, hospice, and advance directives. I navigated those delicate subjects with confidence, but this question so troubled me that I lapsed into silence. “I hate that phrase,” I finally answered.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Really? Why?”
While she awaited my reply, a plethora of faces and voices cluttered my mind. I saw swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks. I felt desperate grasps of my arm as loved ones crumpled to the floor in agony. I recalled the questions that hung in the air after the dying drew their last breath. I heard cries of shock and heartbreak echoing on and on, like breakers on a relentless sea.
“Because death is never good,” I said. The memories gripped me, and my voice caught. “Grief testifies to the backwardness of it. That we cry hints at an undoing of God’s created order. He designed us for something different.”
Is Death Ever Good?
The question of a “good death” may seem reasonable, even natural, given shifting views on death in Western countries. In 2021, ten thousand people in Canada died by physician-assisted suicide (PAS), wherein a doctor prescribes a lethal dose of medication for a person to self-administer, ending his own life. Canadian law now permits individuals with mental rather than terminal illness to pursue the practice. In other words, those who are otherwise healthy but suffer from psychological conditions, like depression, can seek medical help to end their own lives. In the United States, the legalization of PAS creeps across more and more states yearly.
Such trends hint at an increasingly prevalent viewpoint that death, rather than a terrible consequence of the fall, is a reasonable option to escape suffering. According to this thinking, death can be “good” if it provides relief from pain. What is more, the movement reflects a culture that upholds self-determination as an ultimate good; we live for ourselves, rather than for God.
Dear friend, when you encounter such ideas, remember that Scripture refers to death not as a phase to celebrate, but as the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death comes to us all, and God can and does work through even this for good to those who love him (Romans 8:28), but never lull yourself into the lie that death itself is anything but the terrible wages of our sin, from which we desperately need salvation (Romans 6:23). Remember that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Scripture is abundantly clear that we were never meant for death. And lest we forget, the experience of grief — to borrow from C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain — shouts as with a megaphone to remind us.
For Now We Groan
God has confronted me with the harsh realities of death and grief more frequently than I ever would choose. As a trauma surgeon, I witnessed deaths both sudden and prolonged, peaceful and traumatic. Many of these losses imprinted on my memory, the tragedies and sorrows burned into my mind as with a branding iron.
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The goal of male sexuality is Biblically defined, joy-filled, fully-satisfying, covenantally faithful, kingdom building enjoyment of one woman, for a lifetime, to the glory of God. That is what it is. And before you exclaim, “Oh wow! Now the Puritanical fun police are back in town to limit all of our freedom”, you must remember that all freedom is limited. You will either live according to the limits God has given in His Word, or you will live within the debased limits of a debauched human society. You will either align yourself with how the creator made you, or give yourself over to a carnal human imagination.

If masculinity were an island, and men its citizens, then attacks would be coming in all directions. Multiple invading armies would be closing in, countless bombs and bullets would be expended, cities would be leveled, leading to the choice of whether or not the men would surrender. This is exactly what happened to Japan in 1945.
In 1945 the US and her allies had all but won the most devastating war ever conducted. Millions of bullets, grenades, tanks, bombers, and blood had been spent trying to defeat the three pronged axis of evil which was comprised of Nazi Germany, Facist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
By 1945 the Allied troops had defeated both Italy and Germany. The autocrat Benito Mussolini had been captured and hanged in the Italian streets on April the 28th. Two days later Adolph Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker in Berlin. And this signaled the end of the war in Europe. But, while the writing on the wall was certainly clear, the island of Japan persisted and refused to surrender. They would fight with valor, glory, and honor even if all of them would perish.
By May, B-52 bombers were torching Japanese cities like Tokyo and others with devastating fire bombs. Maries were capturing various Japanese strongholds, like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, in the pacific theater with massive Japanese casualties. And the United States, who had been secretly developing the weapon to end the war, was moments away from dropping it should the Japanese persist in their opposition.  This is exactly what happened.
On August the 6th of 1945, a new era of warfare was unleashed upon the world when one “Little boy” atomic bomb liquified Hiroshima in seconds. Between the initial blast and the nuclear fall out it is estimated that as many as 135 thousand people were killed with a single blast.  Three days later, with similar devastation, another atomic bomb vaporized Nagasaki, effectively ending World War 2, the bloodiest war in human history. With the Russians closing in on the Western front, and the US able to level entire cities and mass populations with a single bomb, the Japanese had to surrender in order to survive.
While all metaphors break down, and while there is no direct comparison between World War 2 and the attack on men, my point in bringing up this story is to show how some weapons can end wars instantly. They can vaporize your ability to fight. They can poison the population. And they can render the nation morally paralyzed to continue. This is what pornography and abberant sexuality has done to masculinity, and if we have any hope of rebuilding, and creating a healthy culture of men, we need to know full well what the Bible says about male sexuality. We need this so that we can avoid future attacks, raise up faithful and healthy future men, and also so that we can win the war that is being waged and see Christ’s Kingdom advance.
To do that, we will lean on what we have seen in the previous weeks, and will build towards a Biblical sexual ethic. We will look at the God-ordained goal of male sexuality and the God-ordained result of male sexuality. In the end, we will know what the Bible says, so that we can effectively wage war in this generation and beyond. Let’s begin.
Disclaimer, I will speak frankly from this point onward.
The God-Ordained Goal of Male Sexuality
The goal of masculine sexuality is not an a-sexual midnight masturbation session in front of a 4k OLED screen. The goal is not playing hopscotch on the calendar so you do not impregnate the girlfriend you have no intention to marry. The goal is not an endless reel of lustful fantasies about the women you know and work with that you will either indulge in private seedy delight or will carry on with pulverizing shame. The goal of male sexuality is Biblically defined, joy-filled, fully-satisfying, covenantally faithful, kingdom building enjoyment of one woman, for a lifetime, to the glory of God. That is what it is.
And before you exclaim, “Oh wow! Now the Puritanical fun police are back in town to limit all of our freedom”, you must remember that all freedom is limited. You will either live according to the limits God has given in His Word, or you will live within the debased limits of a debauched human society. You will either align yourself with how the creator made you, or give yourself over to a carnal human imagination. One of these limits brings life, the other brings nothing but vulgarity, vexation, and venereal diseases.
True freedom is experienced in limitation, not in unbridled hedonism. Think about it this way, the freest and most joy filled people who will ever exist are the future redeemed people who cannot sin in New Jerusalem. They are the people who are finally free to worship God, without the constant drive and pull to sin. And while they are substantially more limited than we, having no further ability to explore fallen lusts, yet they are infinitely more joyful and free than we.
The mere fact that we are limited does not stifle our ability to experience joy and freedom. What stifles these things is being bound to the wrong standard. As a fish cannot survive in canola oil, so the masculine sexual drive was not designed to live in sexual perversion.
So, what does the Bible say we were designed for? First, we were made to endure a profitable period of abstinence.
A Profitable Abstinence
Before marriage, we were not designed to gratify any sexual desire in any way, with any person, or any thing, at any time lest we invite judgment from God. We see this standard all over the Scripture. For instance, Job tells us in chapter 31:1

I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?

Job is admitting that visual stimulation is a particular struggle for the man, who was designed to be aroused by the naked body of a female. And yet, while this is a God-given design feature that will cause a marriage to flourish, we are not allowed to enjoy this kind of stimulation before marriage. Job argues that we must protect the covenant of marriage and our covenant with God by making a covenant with our own eyes not to lust after a woman. He is saying that the old adage, I can look but not touch, is entirely wrong! It is an egregious sin, and if you indulge it, it will ruin your relationships with women, with your wife or future wife, and with your God.
He is telling us that, before marriage, every woman’s body is off limits to us. Her figure must not even dilate the eyes of our desire. After marriage, that desire is opened to a single woman who will delight our eyes exclusively for a lifetime.
That means, practically speaking, we do not turn our eyes toward the uncovered woman on the television and make excuses that we are only watching for the story. It also means we do not turn our eyes to the covered women at our workplace and think it is innocent because it is just looking. We do not gawk at the women who dress provocatively in public and we do not visualize what is under the clothing of those who adorn themselves with modesty. We do not linger over lingerie ads, stare at the woman on the beach, or navigate 3 clicks past holiness on that website. If we are unmarried, we fight lust, we subdue it, we kill it, and fight so that it would not be awakened until its proper time  (Proverbs 8:4), that being covenant marriage.
If you will fight that fight, in faith, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God, for your own benefit, then you will reap bountiful blessings in your future marriage that will contribute to a lifetime of unfettered pleasure. If you heed your sin, and drown your eyes with oceans full of lustful images, you willingly invite dysfunction upon your own head and sinful decay into your bed.
Paul says in Colossians 3:5

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. – Colossians 3:5

Before we move on, I think it is important to point something out in this passage. Paul does not command mortal combat upon our sexual sin as a way to impress God with our purity. We do not grind out beleaguered holiness, or begrudgingly guard our eyes, minds, and hearts, just to lay at His feet our best, which is filthy, soiled, and polluted rags anyway. If that were the goal, we may as well eat, drink, and give ourselves over to whatever lusts we want because our best would never be pure enough to please Him.
We do not wage war to prove to God who we are, we wage war because we are enamored by who He is.
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Written by Samuel G. Parkison |
Monday, November 22, 2021
The person of Christ is no less than his human nature. That human who lived and died and rose and ascended and will one day return really is Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. He is human, yes, and he is infinitely more. His person is truly human in nature, but his person is not circumscribed by his human nature. Christ exceeds. This is why you should feel absolutely no embarrassment or shame in reading through the gospels while worshiping Jesus Christ, the man—son of Mary, brother to James, cousin to John, eater of fish, drinker of wine. The man who said things and felt things and did things with his hands. You should feel absolutely no embarrassment about longing to hug his resurrected body with your resurrected body—and feel no embarrassment about longing for the day when you can look into his human eyes and say “thank you,” and to watch his human lips curl into a human smile.

In the incarnation, God reveals his Triune beauty for us in language we can understand. He communicates his astonishing beauty with human language, and with skin and bones, and he does this for our benefit. He does this for our worship. I have devoted a rather significant portion of my life considering this idea of Christ revealing divine beauty for our benefit, but for all my attempts to articulate it, nothing I’ve ever written or said holds a candle to this paragraph from fourth century church father, Athanasius:
For since human beings, having rejected the contemplation of God and as though sunk in an abyss with their eyes held downwards, seeking God in creation and things perceptible, setting up for themselves mortal humans and demons as gods, for this reason the lover of human beings and the common Savior of all, takes to himself a body and dwells as human among humans and draws to himself the perceptible senses of all human beings, so that those who think that God is in things corporeal might, from what the Lord wrought through the actions of the body, know the truth and through him might consider the Father.[1]
What exactly is he saying? He’s saying that God, recognizing our inability to lift our gaze up from the created order to heaven, came down from heaven to the created order to stand at our eye level. He’s saying, “Since human beings couldn’t seem to stop worshiping creation instead of the Creator, the Creator became a creature to accommodate their limitations!” This is what I do when I need to get my son’s attention while he is preoccupied with making a mess all over the floor: I drop down to the ground. I stoop to bring myself to his eye level.
That’s what God does for us in the incarnation: he stoops and makes himself available. In this way, he becomes intelligible enough for us to worship him. We can identify this human being—Jesus Christ, the most beautiful human being ever to exist—as the central object of our worship and offer all of our praise to him without the fear of dishonoring God precisely because he is no mere human: he himself is God. He has become man in order to accommodate our limitations in worship. We couldn’t reach up onto the top shelf to get God, so God places himself on the bottom shelf—right within our reach—in the person of Jesus Christ, the carpenter from Nazareth.
“Without Ceasing to Be God”
It is precisely at this point, however, that many well-meaning evangelicals go astray. For they often miss the very central point that while, in the incarnation, God the Son brings himself down to the bottom shelf in one sense, there is another sense in which he stays right where he is. Every Christian agrees that the incarnation—with its doctrinal emphasis on Christ’s two natures, one human and one divine, united in one person—is one of Christianity’s central mysteries. But often, this mystery is neglected for the sake of rhetorical convenience. “Christ was so generous he left behind his divine attributes,” is how this point typically appears. And to be fair, it sounds attractive on the surface. Isn’t this how Christ “sympathizes with our weaknesses” (cf., Heb. 4:15)? Doesn’t he sympathize with our weakness by giving up his divine strength? As shocking as it may sound, I want to say no.
Some might object to a very important section of Scripture that appears to make the very point I intend to reject, however. This passage is Philippians 2:4-8, which says, among other things, that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” There you have it! What else could his “self-emptying” mean but a relinquishing of his divine attributes or divine prerogatives? But the issue is not as simple as that. For one thing, the central phrase of this passage does not provide its own direct object. Christ “empties himself” … of what? To assume that the answer to this question is, “his divine attributes,” or “his divine prerogatives,” is a bridge too far. The passage simply doesn’t make that point. Instead, we see a grammatical tangle, that very intentionally keeps Christ “in the form of God”—wherein he “did not need to grasp for equality with God” because he already had it—and yet, while being in the form of God, he “self-empties.” Paul is very careful with his language precisely to bring us to the very limitations of language itself. Again, we would expect this verb “self-empties” to have a direct object explicitly stated. Instead, we have to look for the direct object from within the context, and the direct object turns out to be a grammatical paradox—which is fitting, given how mysterious the incarnation is. Christ empties himself, not by giving anything up, but specifically by “taking on the form of a servant.” The way Christ “empties himself” is not actually by emptying—how our self-emptying would necessarily work—rather, Christ “empties himself” precisely by adding to himself a human nature: his “self-emptying” is a subtraction by addition!
So, no, Philippians 2:4-8 (and other similar passages) do not teach us that Christ leaves his divine attributes behind when he assumes a human nature. But we can and must reject such a notion not only because it isn’t taught in Scripture, but also because it contradicts important doctrines that are taught in Scripture. Let me conclude this section with two reasons for rejecting the idea that Christ gave up any part of his divine nature or glory in the incarnation.
Chalcedon and the Gospel
First, to say that Christ “gives up his divinity” or “gives up his divine attributes” (or even some of them) in the incarnation is to misunderstand the hypostatic union (i.e., the doctrine that describes how the divine nature and human nature are united in the Person, Jesus Christ). The fifth-century statement on Christology from Chalcedon emphasizes the hypostatic union by describing how Christ is “truly God and truly man.” It goes on to say that Christ is “consubstantial with us according to manhood,” and “begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead.”
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