Men, masculinity is defined by God in Scripture. When that is the kind of man you are learning to become, or striving to become, then you have aligned yourself with God’s “very good” vision. Care nothing for what the haters and critics say. Do not apologize for your masculinity, do not be ashamed of it, and do not run from it. Instead, embrace your manly call in Christ and live it out with strength and conviction to the glory of God.

Men, This is Why They Hate You
As society stumbles ever closer toward the cliffs of insanity, speaking the truth has become all the more offensive. But, on the other hand, if you suppress common sense and genetics, dutifully bow the knee like a good boy, and virtue signals the rankest perversions, then you will be perceived as a reasonable man. All you have to do is toe the party line, walk in lockstep with the kind of people who think twelve-year-old boys should be chemically castrated and that men can expose themselves to young girls in lockerrooms, embracing the queerification of America, and then maybe you will go places.
But, if you think Dylan Mulvaney is a groomer, homosexuality and transgenderism are abominations (Biblically defined), that Bud Light wasn’t a real beer in the first place, and that Target should stop selling girls bathing suits with penis pockets, well, then you are a bigot of the highest order. Similarly, if you think education should not be secular indoctrination, that children’s programming should not have lesbian kisses included within it, that pronouns are based upon God’s design of biological sex, and that it should be illegal for drag queens to twerk in front of children in libraries, then you are precisely the kind of rational man, steeped in objective reality, that the rainbow railroad is reeling to run over. They hate you because you love truth and reason, plain and simple.
If that is you, then I want to encourage you with this blog. And I want to equip you for the battle of our lifetimes. Men were made to fight. Not with activism or finger-pointing vitriol that combats hatred with more hatred. No. But also not with a spineless winsomeness popular in the evangelical world that pretends to care about everything but takes a stand for nothing. No, no, no. I want to equip you to fight. Not by wasting your time calling out all of the lies, which at this point are legion. Not in getting angry and going to war with every ideology we, as Christian men, are rightly opposed to.
Today, however, I want to equip you to begin fighting for what you are FOR instead of fighting what you are AGAINST. We should remember that the only way to spot the counterfeit is by knowing exactly what the authentic actually is. With that in mind, I want us to understand Biblical manhood and unapologetically celebrate it. I want us to hold our heads high that God made us men and that being a man is very good!
In the weeks ahead, we will look at how Biblical womanhood is “very good,” how Biblical sexuality alone is “very good,” and how covenant marriage brings all of these “very goods” together into one home. But today, we will be focused on the men. And to do that, we will go back into the pages of Genesis, where we left off last week, speaking about God’s good design of masculinity.
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Why, ultimately, did Paul warn of hell? Because Jesus was too wonderful, too marvelous not to use every righteous means available to “present everyone mature in Christ,” to win people to him and keep people near him. Others needed to know the danger of hell because they needed to know the danger of missing eternal life with him. Warnings were his way of casting us into the arms of Christ, the safest place in all the world.

I stood at a friend’s kitchen sink, surprised and somewhat disturbed. My friend’s wife had taped a notecard on the wall behind the sink with some spiritual reminders. That in itself was nothing new: though still a young believer, I had seen such cards posted to desks, doors, bathroom mirrors, and the like. No, what surprised me was one particular reminder this young woman had chosen to write.
The exact words escape me, but the sense still burns in my memory: “You deserve hell.”
You deserve hell? On the one hand, I had no intellectual objection to the statement. I myself had recently come to see the darkness of my native heart. I had realized that I was not just mistaken or in need of occasional forgiveness, but actually hell-deserving — and hell-destined apart from the grace of Jesus.
But the notecard still disturbed me. Yes, we deserve hell, but should we recall the fact as often as we wash our hands? Should the reality of hell, and the remembrance that we once were headed there, stay warm in our minds?
I can certainly imagine someone thinking too much about hell. The unspeakable sorrow of eternal punishment, dwelt on overmuch, could overwhelm the sense of joy pulsing through the New Testament. But a recent survey of Paul’s letters leads me to think my friend’s wife was closer to his apostolic heart than my instinct to recoil.
We may not post reminders above our sinks, but somehow the thought needs to become more than passing and occasional. We deserve hell, and only one thing stands between us and that outer darkness: Jesus.
Remember Hell
When we turn to Paul’s letters, we actually notice something even more startling than the notecard over my friend’s sink. Regularly throughout his writings, the apostle not only reminds the churches of their formerly hopeless state; he also warns them of their ongoing danger should they drift from Christ. He says not only, “You deserve hell,” but also, “Make sure you don’t end up there.”
Consider just a few of Paul’s bracing warnings to the churches:

“If you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13).
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Corinthians 6:9).
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).
“Put to death . . . what is earthly in you. . . . On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6).
“The Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:6).

The situation becomes even more surprising when we consider Paul’s overall posture toward the believers in these churches. Paul was “satisfied” that the Romans were “full of goodness” (Romans 15:14). He was confident the Corinthians were “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2). He saw the Ephesians as already seated with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–6); he rejoiced in the firmness of the Colossians’ faith (Colossians 2:5); he knew God had chosen the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:4).
And yet he warned. In fact, Paul places his warnings near the heart of his apostolic calling: “[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). So, amid his encouragements, and throughout his doctrinal instruction, and even as he exulted in the hope of glory, he would sometimes grow solemn and still, lower his tone, and turn his ink black.
“Dear brothers,” he would write in effect, “Christ is gloriously yours. But until you see him face to face, don’t imagine yourselves out of danger. Hell still awaits any who forsake him.”
Why Did Paul Warn?
Why did Paul warn his beloved churches, sometimes with unsettling sternness? A closer look at his warnings sheds some light. Among several purposes Paul had, we might consider three in particular that rise to the surface.
These three purposes are not limited to Paul’s apostolic calling, or even to the pastoral calling today. Pastors, as God’s watchmen, may have a special responsibility to blow eternity’s trumpet, but Paul and the other apostles expected all Christians to play their part in admonishing, exhorting, warning (Colossians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Hebrews 3:13).
So, as we consider when and why Paul warned of hell, we (pastors especially, but also all of us) learn when and why we should too.
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 I think it is about time we pick up an old book called the Bible. I have no doubt that old Book will give us the perspective we desperately need.

C. S. Lewis once wrote an essay to a very old book wherein he commended the practice of reading old books. He, as a modern writer, did not want people to stop reading modern books but to generously sprinkle their reading of modern books with old ones.  However, and this gets his point across, he said, “But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.” Now, he gave that advice because he didn’t want the reader being carried away unprotected into modern perspectives. So, Lewis went on to commend the reading of old books. It is an excellent essay and I highly commend it and the practice that Lewis commends in it, that is, intentionally reading old books.
There are a variety of reasons for this practice but I think Lewis sums up an important one in the essay. He writes, “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” I would like to illustrate this principle in this little essay.
But before I tell you about that experience let me give you some cultural background. Our present Western culture has not abandoned morality. It has changed morality. For example, homosexual practice was once viewed as sin (and even illegal).  But the orientation was something that was considered a psychological problem needing to be corrected. If a young man dressed up like a woman he too was considered a candidate for mental health services. In fact, even the church has capitulated to this new morality. Granted, some have not gone as far as mainline liberalism but there are even Reformed churches flirting with the idea of allowing candidates for ministry who identify as gay (as if it were a neutral orientation) but celibate. What is more, criticism of these practices and orientations is considered to be a sin of the worst kind.  Enter an old book.
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