Majesty, in particular, is emotive, or affective. It indicates greatness in sight or sound that is also wonderful. Bigness that is beautiful. Imposing size that is viewed with delight, imposing power received as attractive. While having significant overlap with divine dominion or lordship, majesty does more. Dominion and lordship are more technical and prosaic; majesty rings more poetic, with the awe of worship.

In 1977, California pastor Jack Hayford and his wife visited England during the Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary) of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne (1952). They were struck by the grandeur of the celebration, and the manifest joy of the people in their monarch. While there, they visited Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill, and famous for the magnitude and stateliness many Americans today know through watching Downton Abbey.
Driving away from the palace, overcome with awe, Hayford found himself reaching for words — language that would transpose the weight of the earthly experience into the key of heaven. As he stretched, the word that seemed most fitting, both to describe the stunning magnificence of the palace, and how it pointed to the superiority of the reigning Christ, was majesty. According to a California newspaper’s retelling of the story,
As the Hayfords pulled themselves from that regal palace and drove away, Dr. Hayford asked his wife to take a notebook and write down some thoughts that were coming to him. He then began to dictate the lyrics, the key, and the timing to a song now being sung by Christians worldwide. (“Story Behind the Song: ‘Majesty,’” St. Augustine Record, August 13, 2015)
Hayford’s impulse to reach for the word majesty, however much he knew it at the time, was profoundly biblical. Majesty is indeed a frequent, and carefully chosen, attribute in Scripture of the living God — a trait often overlooked in studies of the divine attributes, but an important witness of both the prophets and apostles, one that sheds brilliant light on other well-rehearsed attributes, and one that is truly, deeply, wonderfully fit for worship, as Hayford at least intuited:
Majesty! Worship his majesty!Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise.Majesty! Kingdom authority,Flow from his throne, unto his own;His anthem raise!
Purple Mountain Majesties
Those, like Hayford, who reach for the word majesty often find themselves standing before, or remembering, some natural or manmade wonder that is both imposing and, at the same time, attractive. In our language, as in biblical terms, the word captures not only greatness but also goodness, both bigness and beauty, awesome power together with pleasant admiration.
Mountains might be the quintessentially majestic natural feature. Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to God, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.” Alongside the illustrious plain of Sharon, which had its own peculiar glory, Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecy of future flourishing for God’s people hails “the majesty of [Mount] Carmel” (Isaiah 35:2). Yet alongside mountains, we also might attribute majesty to gold, or some precious material or gem, fit for a king, that dazzles the eye with its beauty, as Job 37:22 links God’s “awesome majesty” with “golden splendor.”
Not only natural phenomena, but also the work of human hands, when on a grand scale, might have us reaching for majestic. Lamentations 1:6 mourns the loss of such civic majesty after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and not long after, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, professes to have built his city “by [his] mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of [his] majesty” (Daniel 4:30) — this, just before his great humbling.
How, then, does the common use of majesty for mountains and mansions, gold and cities, relate to attributing majesty to God?
What is Divine Majesty?
In bringing together both greatness and goodness, both strength and beauty (Psalm 96:6), majesty is not only a fitting term for mountain majesties but a particularly appropriate descriptor of God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34).
At a critical juncture in the history of God’s first-covenant people, as they assemble under the leadership of Solomon, to dedicate the temple, the king prays, in his great wisdom, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.” Consider those first three — greatness, power, and glory — often associated with majesty elsewhere, as revealing angles into the attribute of divine majesty.
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To concede that you are a good person is to wave Christ off—no doctor needed. But to bend the knee as sinners is to receive freely the everlasting healing of Christ: forgiveness, justification, and resurrection. Come to Jesus, the only doctor in life and in death, body and soul, for now and forever.

After Jesus calls the tax collector Levi (Matthew) to be his disciple, he goes to dine at Matthew’s house (Mark 2:14-15). The scribes of the Pharisees seize the opportunity to criticize Jesus for eating with immoral people:

And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Mark 2:15-17 (see also Matt. 9:10-13 and Luke 5:29-32)

Why is Jesus the “doctor exception” when it comes to spending lots of time with people who would be a bad influence under normal circumstances?
The scribes saw Jesus as an unworthy teacher.
In Mark 2 the scribes first condemn Jesus for breaking a moral principle of godly wisdom. As Psalm 1 states, you do not sit with scoffers.
Second, this condemnation of Jesus is a rebuke and warning to the disciples. The scribes are saying to them that it is folly to follow Jesus as he is influenced by sinners.
Third, they shame Jesus as being an unworthy teacher. If a teacher of righteousness hangs with sinners, then he does not deserve the title.
Jesus’ target wasn’t moral reform but rather healing people from sin.
Yet, Christ’s first coming was not concerned with the body; he deals with that in the resurrection. Also, Jesus is not a moral philosopher to conduct therapy classes on the virtuous life. Godliness and moral reform may be fruits, but they are not Jesus’ target. Rather, he came as a doctor for sinners. He came to heal us from sin.
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Specific strengths I appreciate about the book: Clary explains how men and women flourish when they live according to God’s good design. This is insightful: “Men are prone to certain vices that are curbed by social relations with women. … Women have the power to help men become the best version of themselves. … Women have a different power than men. A woman’s presence can catalyze male virtue and direct his masculine strength toward her desires. Put simply, masculine virtue can flourish under feminine influence because masculine strength was given for the protection and provision of a woman. Men tend to be at their best when their masculine energy, strength, and independence is channeled for the benefit of the women (and children) who are depending on them” (pp. 227–28).

The author of a new book on human sexuality knows what time it is in our culture. Michael Clary, lead pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the author of God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality (Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion, 2023).
Clary’s Thesis
Clary’s thesis is that God’s design for sex is true, good, and beautiful. Embracing God’s design should delight you, not frighten you.
What is actually frightening is how the world has twisted God’s design by means of Gnosticism (which undergirds the modern idea that a person’s sex and gender may be different), feminism and androgyny (which pressure women to try to act like men), contraception (which encourages casual sex by separating marriage, sex, and childbearing), so-called gay marriage (which reduces marriage to a legal sex contract), and transgenderism (which is the offspring of feminism that is now devouring its mother). “The sexual revolution is like a runaway train that has no breaks” (p. 17). Next up: pedophilia, polygamy, polyamory, and bestiality.
Clary’s Argument
Clary develops his thesis in eleven chapters:
1. The human household is a copy of the cosmic household of God the Father. God reveals himself in Scripture as masculine: “The Bible never describes God’s being with feminine language. God may do things that seem more feminine, but God’s being is never described that way” (p. 34, italics original). “Headship is masculine,” and it’s good for both men and women (p. 38).
2. God beautifully designed men to have male bodies with masculine souls and a masculine nature, and he beautifully designed women to have female bodies with feminine souls and a feminine nature. A woman is a potential mother—physically and expressed in other ways.
3. Stereotypes recognize patterns, and it is wise to recognize that men and women are different. Men are better equipped to lead and provide and protect, and women are better equipped to help and nurture and refine. That doesn’t mean that men don’t help or nurture or refine or that women don’t lead or provide or protect. It simply recognizes that men are better at structuring society and that women are better at domesticating and beautifying. It’s in their DNA. For example, a woman’s “entire body is designed for and oriented towards reproduction. Her brain, hormones, joints, bones, cardiovascular system, immune system, breasts, and reproductive organs are all designed for the bearing and nurturing of children” (pp. 74–75).
4. Modern industrial households are very different from older agrarian ones. In Bible times, a household consisted of several generations living together who worked together within a community. A husband and wife worked as a team with the man tending toward outward “forming” tasks (like subduing the earth) and the woman tending toward inward “filling” tasks (like child-bearing and managing a household, which was no small job). Men can relate to others in the household in four ways—as sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers. And women can relate as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.
5. The way men and women sin and express virtue are not identical. Men sin and express virtue as men, and women sin and express virtue as women. The world (and even some Christians) encourages men to behave in more characteristically feminine ways and encourages women to behave in more characteristically masculine ways. “For example, strong-willed, independent, truth-oriented, and direct-speaking men are often considered arrogant, whereas passive, compliant, and egalitarian men are considered more Christlike” (p. 107). Masculine virtue includes courage, and feminine virtue includes giving life. Masculine vice includes exaggerating masculinity (e.g., using strength to oppress others) and diminishing masculinity (e.g., failing to use strength properly and instead being passive and effeminate). Feminine vice includes exaggerating femininity (e.g., using sexual desirability to manipulate men, immodesty, playing the victim) and diminishing femininity (e.g., grasping for power, lesbianism).
6. Pursuing a common mission is what holds a household together and makes it productive. People in the industrial world typically think of work as something you do away from home, which is a place to retreat and relax. Before the industrial revolution, the household and work were inseparable. We shouldn’t idealize the past as if the Amish way is the godly way, but “it is arrogant to regard the modern world as more advanced, liberated, and enlightened than previous generations” (p. 148).
7. Fathers are critically important to the health of a home. According to modern sociological studies, “The single biggest indicator of adult success is growing up with an intact family” (p. 166). A boy becomes a father by maturing in strength, leadership, courage, and wisdom and by marrying a virtuous woman who will help him accomplish his mission.
8. Our culture conditions us to devalue motherhood and to more highly value a woman who pursues a successful career outside the home. Feminists “asserted that the key to overturning the oppressive family structure was to dismantle marriage, separate sex from procreation, and promote sex as recreation” (p. 194). But nature is a stubborn thing. God designed women to instinctively want to be a mother—physically and metaphorically. That’s why struggles with infertility can be so crushing for a woman. Homemaking is a list of chores that you can outsource, but mothering requires a mother’s nurturing presence. A woman may work outside the home, but home should be her primary domain.
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