Some men may speak less, but do a better job at this act of truth-telling. In the life of action, there is a deeper wisdom, than in a life of word without this action. It takes a manly courage and a sense of humility before God to persist in this truth-speaking in the home, in the church, in the work-place. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can persist in speaking the truth in love. Act as men. Speak the truth and speak it in love.

In my last blog post, I spoke about facing giants, and acting like men in doing so. I focused on a lot of personal or internal characteristics of a man who acts like a man in battle: prayer before God and the destruction of idols of the heart (selfishness, pride, self-pity). But what does that look like in the real world? It seems that certain visible skills must be cultivated.
I want to focus on what acting like a man looks like in the realm of truth-telling. This is one of the primary battlefields for the modern Christian man.
There are many issues in the culture, in the church and in the modern family. But how can men in the church begin to effect the change that they want to see in the church and the world? The assembly is under attack. A Biblical and creational understanding of man and woman is under attack. Pornographic material saturates the world and weakens men spiritually and morally. The inherent dependence on government weakens men in their responsibility to work hard and provide for their families. We look to the government and to leaders for solutions, rather than accepting this core truth: I must take responsibility to serve God fearlessly and boldly within my own spheres of influence.
That responsibility begins with speaking the truth to myself and then within my environment.
In I Corinthians 16:13-14, a man is commanded to let all that he does be done in love. The truth is under attack in our culture and in our homes, just as when Satan crept up on Adam and Eve in the Garden: did God really say? Adam as the head of the home bought into the lie, when he should have laid down his life for his wife. Of course, even this truth-speaking must be done in love: “Rather, speaking the truth in love.” (Eph. 4:15)
This is one of the hardest parts of learning to be a man. It is easy to veer into one of two ditches. Either we promote a spineless love that is unmoored from the truth. Or we present the truth in ways that are less than upbuilding. For example, a man must tell his wife the truth and lead his family in truth, but he does so recognizing that she is the weaker vessel, and having patience with the immaturity in his children. He does so to build her up. It is done in selfless love.
I have seen an issue in the “manosphere” that at times when men want to “tell the truth” so to speak, they do it with filthy language and insults. Somehow dropping crass language makes it more courageous. I am not saying that there is no place for strong language. For example, Paul tells the Judaizers in Galatia essentially that they should castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12). But it was well aimed along the lines of their beliefs that that they could only fellowship with those who were circumcised. And so Paul is telling them to just circumcise themselves from the Church if they want to got that far in their practice. But the vast majority of what is arising in our culture is simply filthy language that does not build up but tears down. Much of it does not make sense within context and so it is not truth-telling, but simply filthy language.
Back to the ditches. Fear of consequences, can make a man harsh in telling the truth on one hand, or make him compromise in telling the truth on the other hand. Both responses are a symptom of fear. It takes courage to speak truth in love in a culture where, the consequences might put you in a place where you are without a job.
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God made marriage to reflect the holy, eternal, loving, intimate, joyful, and sacrificial love He has always cherished among the members of the Godhead. In that sense, marriage is not about you but is certainly for you. God has invited you to participate in and imitate His triune love. Perhaps this is why Scripture calls marriage the “mystery of the Gospel” because, unlike any other human relationship or institution, it most clearly and most beautifully pictures the divine. 

Recently I remembered why I had stopped noticing the sounds of war during my deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When we first entered the country, every cell in my body was on heightened alert. My adrenaline was constantly pumping. Every staccatoed rat-tat-tat from a distant AK-47 was enough to make my hair stand on end. Every civilian standing in the crowd could be a suicide bomber. Every vehicle could deliver the IED that would send me home looking forever like Lieutenant Dan. And with every mortar round fired, the reality of going home in a box and my mother receiving a triangle-folded American flag pressed upon my mind. Yet, as the deployment wore on, these sounds melded into a strange kind of normalcy for me.
For instance, every morning around 3 AM, the reverberating rumbles of incoming mortar rounds would agitate the little mud brick house we lived in. Those first nights in theater, I awoke in a great alarm from every blast, alert and ready for combat, frantically putting on my equipment for readiness and protection. But, once I realized that Iraqis with Mortar rounds could not hit the proverbial sand when falling off the fictional camel, I eventually learned to sleep right through the explosions as if nothing strange was happening around me.
The thunderous eruptions, once jarring to me, became the ethereal drum tap in the desert’s lullaby. Time, like an ancient spell, wove its enchantment upon my senses, leaving me unconscious of my surroundings, which is what I believe has happened to the modern church.
In his timeless malice, Satan has assailed the sacred bond of marriage for so long that the sounds and signs of warfare upon her have faded into the cacophony of noises we have become accustomed to. While we have grown numb to the relentless onslaught at the devil’s hand, divorce, infidelity, and broken homes have become the tapestry woven into the threads of our society.
For this reason, it is incumbent upon us to wake from our slumber, recognize the war, and cling to the weapons of warfare our compassionate General has assigned us. For all who call themselves Christians, it is time to rekindle our love for the hallowed Word. As followers of Christ, we must valiantly thwart the adversary’s advances on marriage in general, and our marriages in particular, by embracing God’s designs for us, our marriages, our children, and our homes that are revealed in Holy Scripture.
Today, we begin our series on marriage by traveling back to the genesis of it, seeking solace in the profound wisdom spoken by our God in His Word. In this collection of essays on the topic of marriage, we will lean into what Scripture teaches and glean from our Maker’s timeless intention for marriage that will ever illuminate our path. Today, we begin by speaking about the design of marriage from the first Biblical text on marriage found in Genesis 1:26-28.
The Text

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” – Genesis 1:26-28

The Trinitarian Design of Marriage
The Bible describes the creation of man in marital language. For instance, God did not merely create two distinctly gendered individuals, calling them “very good” in their disconnectedness, but a pair of people who would become one flesh together. In the same way that shoes come in twos and socks come in pairs, God made man as a male and female unit that would join together to become one very glorious thing, which of course, was the “very good” part.
In this, we must also notice that the creation of man was a trinitarian event. God does not create the first domestic community without blueprints. Instead, he patterns it off the divine community that has existed forever. At the height of the creation enterprise, God speaks, saying, “Let Us make mankind in Our image” When God does this, it not only serves as proof for the triunity within the Godhead but the kind of intimacy God intends to be present in the marriage.
The Trinitarian Community
For all eternity, members of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect harmony and self-giving love, an exquisite dance of divine affection. This celestial community lives in exquisite blissful intimacy, lavishly pouring out fragrant love upon one another, heralding each other’s praises in melodious harmonies that echoed across the unformed realms, holding nothing back from one another across eons of affectionate fellowship.
In the embrace of the Father, love emanates as an eternal wellspring, an outpouring of perfect affection towards the Son and the Spirit. The Father’s love, boundless and unchanging, encapsulates the essence of nurturing care and tender compassion. It is a love that delights in the Son’s obedience and wholeheartedly affirms His eternal Sonship, a love that seeks to glorify and honor the Son above all.
The Son, in response, reciprocates this love with perfect devotion and filial obedience. His passion for the Father is marked by complete surrender and an unwavering desire to fulfill the Father’s will. It is a love that willingly steps into the realm of humanity, taking upon Himself the weight of the world’s sin, offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice—a demonstration of love that knows no bounds.
The Holy Spirit, the breath and life within the Trinity, embodies the love that flows between the Father and the Son. It is a love that unites, empowers, and guides. The Spirit’s love is like a gentle wind, constantly moving and animating the divine dance. It is a love that testifies to the unity and oneness of the Godhead, bringing forth the fruit of love in the hearts of believers.
Together, the love within the Trinity is a symphony of self-giving, perfect love. It is a love that transcends time and space, existing in timeless eternity. It is a love that invites us to behold the divine dance and participate in its harmonious rhythms. Through the love of the Trinity, we catch a glimpse of the infinite depth of love and are invited to enter into a transformative relationship with the Triune God, where we, too, can experience the boundless love that unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This, of course, is best pictured in human marriage.
As many scholars and authors attest, when our triune God patterned man according to His image, He was undoubtedly creating individuals with a rational and creative capacity to think, feel, love, and do.
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When you look at yourself, you see a bundle of contradictions, wrong in ways you don’t see, flawed and often failing, and yet you want people to consider you in all your complexity, not put you into a box of “good” or “bad.” So treat others the same way. 

I remember as a fourth grader looking in my NIV Adventure Bible at a chart that listed all the kings of Israel and Judah. It included the dates of each king’s reign and a sentence on their accomplishments. On the right-hand side, each king was rated “good,” “bad,” “mostly good,” or “mostly bad.” Someone like King Asa, for example, would have been in the “mostly good” category. Curious, I’d go back and read the biblical account to learn more about Asa, to see why he was mostly good, and that’s when I’d learn how his relationship with the Lord suffered near the end of his life.
These days, unfortunately, many in our society seem to be reverting to fourth-grade categorizations for just about everyone, and often doing so with the zeal of a crusader for a righteous cause.
As our society becomes increasingly post-Christian, it’s no surprise to see the vanishing of a Christian view of humanity—an understanding that allows for complexity, even expects it.
Instead, we give in to the impulse to divide everyone into categories of “bad” or “good,” and then treat them accordingly.
The result? Fewer and fewer people, even in the church (and we ought to know better!), who are able to distinguish what’s good and bad in the same person, or truth and falsehood in particular causes.
It’s easy to flatten our neighbors, past and present, into rigid categories, without care and consideration, nuance or grace, and thus betray a Christian anthropology. Here’s how we do it.
1. Make everyone and everything “all or nothing.”
Every society must decide what virtues should be represented through monuments we erect and names we engrave on buildings. When I lived in Romania, street names changed on occasion, as people reassessed the appropriateness of showing honor to certain individuals in the past.
Unfortunately, much discussion in recent years about historical figures flattens everyone into that all-or-nothing trap. Suddenly, a statue of Winston Churchill in London is threatened because, regardless of his chivalry and heroism in helping to save Western civilization from the threat of Nazism, some of his racial attitudes and subsequent actions were abominable. Abraham Lincoln comes under fire because at various points his commitment to the Union outstripped his abolitionist sensibilities and he never became a champion for Black equality.
Similar impulses show up in religious discussions. Some progressive Christians refuse to learn from any pastor or theologian—no matter how personally devout, biblically rooted, or theologically beneficial—who don’t line up exactly with the latest theological position or political proposal. Meanwhile, some conservative Christians do the same, dismissing any book or boycotting any conference featuring a well-respected, biblical preacher, because they disagree with the way the pastor has handled questions about racial justice in the past.
I’m reminded of a quote from one of my seminary professors who recommended several books from a theologian from another tradition. When a student complained that the theologian was in the “bad” category, the professor said, “I agree with you that he’s fallible and there are problems with some of his views, and yet he is so very helpful in other areas that to not read him is to impoverish yourselves.”
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