God doesn’t need to conform to our feelings, or our biological ability to mutilate our bodies. God has made and declared what is good. It is good for men to be manly, and good for women to be womanly. Each culture WILL look slightly different, but that doesn’t change the created order of God, and sometimes even cultures (like Western hyper-sexuality culture) as a whole can reject these created distinct categories that God has made of male and female.

Social Media Statement
This post is in response to a conversation that was started on social media.
Person #1: “If God made you a male, that’s not a mistake. If God made you a female, that’s not a mistake. Saying any different is insulting a perfect creator. Read your word.”
Person #2: “God made you a brunette, yet you are now a blonde. God gave you bad vision, yet you fixed it with glasses. God gave you crooked teeth, yet you straightened them with braces. Trans people change the outside to match the inside like you do. Sit down. Jesus said to.”
Response
Both of these are appeals to the individual in the present and are divorced from the Biblical arguments for male and female creational order.
Adam and Eve in their created state were individuals, each made with distinct roles, responsibilities, and relational unique attributes. This is all pointed to clearly in Genesis 1-2, and reinforced in the failure of both in their roles, responsibilities, and relationships in Genesis 3.
I’m not a male because of my inside, or my outside in a vacuum of my own understanding or interpretation of my feelings. I’m male for the same reason my wife is female. God has made humanity as male and female. This created order is specific and God-ordained. Boys are boys, and girls are girls. This is not a result of any desire, perspective, or input from humanity. God’s created order is not changed as a result of the fall. Although the fall has greatly impacted all of humanity, the fall has not somehow changed the created order of the universe. The fall has had tragic consequences, but the fall has not reordered or fundamentally changed how God has made and ordered humanity. We, as humans, are male and female in continuing fashion reflecting the created order of God, albeit now with much suffering and strife due to the fall and our sin (both original sin and our personal individual sin).
After the sin of Adam and Eve, boys are still boys, and girls are still girls. We are now fallen image bearers of God and in need of saving from the utter destruction we bring upon ourselves through sin. By God’s grace, sinful boys and girls can be saved to live forever as redeemed boys and girls. It is God who defines what sin is, God who defines what is needed for restoration from sin, and God who defines the created order of humanity: male and female he created them (Genesis 1-2).
The creator defines the usefulness and purpose of a created thing. Nowhere in the scriptures, by explicit statement, referential idea, or extrapolated consequence has God relinquished His position as creator of humanity. A hairdryer doesn’t have the ability, capacity, or right to say it’s a piano, toaster, or space rocket because it feels that way. The hairdryer was made as a hairdryer for the use, purpose, and pleasure of the maker and owner. God is the maker and owner of humanity. God has created humanity male and female and it is categorically beyond humanity’s ability, capacity, or rights to say otherwise.
To disassociate the pattern of who we are from the created order in Genesis 1-2 is a subtle “unhitching” and disbelief in the continuing pattern of God’s creation in the human race. We are made male and female, anything besides this is a result of the fall – note – that includes varying folks who are born with various physical handicaps, disabilities, or malformations.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, January 26, 2024
More importantly for John is the shape—a perfect cube. We’re meant to think of the Holy of Holies (Exodus 26, 1 Kings 6), the place where Heaven touches Earth. The Church is a holy place, and where Heaven touches Earth. Do we think of what we do when we gather together like that? Do we think of ourselves as a people that embodies heaven touching earth? We should, because we are, and we will be.

In Revelation 21 the church (the ‘bride’) is described as a city, a new Jerusalem, in intricate detail. John is referencing from all over the Bible, he has the later part of Ezekiel and Genesis 2 in particular view, but liberally references elsewhere.
John is at this point in Revelation talking about the future; this is a claim that some will agree with that I’m not going to defend. I don’t think all the book is about the future, but I think these new heavens and new earth here are. But it’s a future that speaks into the church today for two reasons.
Firstly, the new heavens and new earth of the first verse were inaugurated in the resurrection of Jesus, as John is at great pains to make clear in his garden encounters between Jesus and ‘the woman’ Mary. This is, by the by, where an argument that even these last two chapters of Revelation describe the world today would come from. We are stepping into this world, even if John’s account of it in chapters 21 and 22 of his apocalypse are what it will ‘look’ like in its fullness.
Secondly, and really saying the same thing from another angle, if this is what the perfected church looks like in her glory, then our churches should have this in view now. This is the goal that we are growing towards, so our efforts to tend and aid that growth should have this firmly in view.
What I’d like to zoom in on, as the title rather gives away, is three features of the city that can inform our churches today: its shape, its foundations, and its gates.
Shape
The city is a cube, just under 1400 miles in each direction, including up (15-17). Which is about 1392 miles beyond the heights at which we could breathe. This thing is massive. Why are we told this? While I suppose there could be literal Borg cube of a city in the age to come, I think this is missing it a bit.
The dimension given is 12,000 stadia. In Revelation’s language we should read that as 12 x lots, which we should read as Israel x lots. The Church will be enormous, and glorious in our breadth and depth.
More importantly for John is the shape—a perfect cube. We’re meant to think of the Holy of Holies (Exodus 26, 1 Kings 6), the place where Heaven touches Earth. The Church is a holy place, and where Heaven touches Earth. Do we think of what we do when we gather together like that? Do we think of ourselves as a people that embodies heaven touching earth? We should, because we are, and we will be.
Foundation
The foundation of the New Jerusalem has the names of the twelve apostles inscribed on it (14) and is adorned with twelve specific jewels (19-20): Jasper, Sapphire, Agate, Emerald, Onyx, Carnelian, Chrysolite, Beryl, Topaz, Chrysoprase, Jacinth, Amethyst.
Read More
Related Posts:

Christians often give the impression to the watching world that the rules matter the most. We give the impression everyone else should also follow the rules we do, even though they don’t trust in Jesus. That doesn’t make sense and turns people off Christianity. If all outsiders see is restrictions, where is the attraction in that? We need to explain the wonder of being saved and the security from being in God’s family as the primary thing; how we respond to that comes second.

Whenever I ask someone with no experience of church what they think a Christian is, they usually tell me that they think a Christian is someone who tries to be good. Someone who follows a complex set of rules to try and obey their God. It is easy to see why people get that impression. After all, Christians do tend to avoid getting drunk and they do tend to go to church and read their Bibles. There are things Christians do that others do not and things Christians avoid that others think are fine.
Many kids who grow up in church circles might have a similar view to this! After all, their parents are always telling them things they shouldn’t do that their friends are happy to do.
Yet that idea of Christianity as following a set of rules misunderstands things completely. Like most half-truths, it ends up being a whole lie. A Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus as the One who saved them from disaster and rules their life. A Christian is someone who belongs in God’s family, and because of that is secure and blessed. It’s not to do with rules at all.
So why do Christians live differently to those who don’t believe? Well, that is a response to what Jesus has done for us. That sounds kind of abstract, so let me explain it using an important part of Biblical history and an analogy.
At the start of the book of Exodus, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt.
Read More
Related Posts: