Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we're going to talk about a critical distinctive, one of our distinctives at Church and Family Life, and in our local churches. It's all about manhood and womanhood, and some of this might make you twitch. Hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason, we are under the influence of weapons of mass confusion regarding manhood and womanhood.

Yeah, I think it's true to say that what used to be controversial out there in terms of manhood and womanhood have now become controversial in here, meaning among the professing Christians, among the people of God. Yeah, tragic, tragic outcomes for boys, tragic outcomes for girls, tragic outcomes for marriages, tragic outcomes for the church, because all these things are really flow from man being made in the image of God as male and female, and the roles that flow from that proposition. And I think one of the core things that we want to say is that the Bible is right. Just let that sink in for a second. The Bible is right about manhood and womanhood, and therefore everything that's contradicting the Bible is actually cheating people.

And we want to come and say people are being cheated today by modern views on these things that contradict what scripture says. Yeah, today you have a church where women are leading, you know, women have gifts too, and so, you know, we should give them leadership, positions, and that type of thing in the church. But the problem is we're living in a world of lies about manhood and womanhood. The devil is a liar. It's very, very clear.

He's a liar. He masquerades. He's an angel of light and all kinds of ideas about manhood and womanhood in terms of what the Bible teaches are being controverted. We've actually produced resources here at Church and Family Life that try to address some of this. One book is a book called Feminine by Design, 12 Pillars of Biblical Femininity.

Really written for, you know, basically for teenage girls and maybe even a bit younger, building a God-centered family really focuses in how, how God has established men to be the leaders of their families. The theology of the family, we've got multiple articles on every man or a family life, but manhood and womanhood are addressed in that book as well. So we've got lots of resources. But I think what we want to say is, men act like men. That would happen to be a quote from the Corinthian letter, and women act like women.

And then that's different. There are distinctions there. So where to start? Well, we should start with the Bible starts, and that's in Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis chapter 1 affirms that men and women are both image bearers of God.

So that's worth pausing on for a minute. That's really, really profound implications of both men and women bearing the image of God being a reflection of God that has tremendous applications for how capable men and women both are. But the sum total of the Bible isn't Genesis 1, there's a Genesis 2, and there are other chapters and books and chapters and verses. Genesis chapter 2 verse 18 says, And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

And so this is the Genesis pun intended of women, of females in the world. God recognizing that man being alone was not good. We say a hearty amen to that, and that he needed help in this world, help in this life, and he made the female gender, the female sex, to be a helper to the man in the world and life. Yeah, so we want, We think that that means that men should throw off effeminacy in their manhood and women should throw off their masculinity in their womanhood. Effeminacy is behaving like women.

And the 1828 Webster's dictionary speaks of this word effeminate. The softness, delicacy, and weakness in men which are characteristic of the female sex but which in male roles are deemed a reproach, unmanly, delicacy, womanish softness or weakness. So let's go back to 1828. Yeah, I think that was written in 2024. You're not allowed to write that now.

Yeah, every man needs to learn how to be a man and every woman needs to learn how to be a woman. Men have different muscle groups, men are stronger, they're like 10 percent larger. Men are different, very, very different, and God has created the sexes to be complementary, kind of like what you quoted in Genesis. Yeah, and that's, that shouldn't be controversial, that men and women are different, and it's actually, there's a glory in it, there's a good in it. God designed all these things for good, not to subjugate one to another.

Women are helping men in the world and helping men in life. But Jason, don't you think that men should cultivate their feminine side to be more emotional? Don't you think that men ought to be more romantic, more thoughtful, more like women? You know, I think we should define manliness by the ultimate man, which is Jesus Christ, in which you find all sorts of things that could be described but should not be described as feminine. You find him being compassionate, you find him being tender-hearted, but those aren't uniquely feminine characteristics.

As long as we stick to Jesus as the definition of ultimate manhood, we'll do just fine. Yeah, amen. Yeah. He's the ultimate husband. He's the ultimate father.

He's the ultimate man. So I Let me just pause on that for a minute just to say That should should tell you that we're not advocating for Machoness equals manliness exactly right Yeah, the the macho man of the Westerns is not the kind of manhood that we're arguing for. The manliness and manhood of Jesus Christ is what we're advocating for, because it's what scripture advocates. And, now this is sort of a difficult one to bring up at a moment like this, but women are also to become like Christ, but in their womanhood, in their femininity. So a man becomes like Christ in his masculinity, a woman becomes like Christ in her femininity.

They're regulated by these forces. Mm-hmm. Yes, that's true. But in the Gospels, we see the ultimate man leading, living, speaking, and so in a particular way, this informs men about manhood, Christian men about manhood. Yeah.

So let's talk about five pillars of manhood and womanhood. And we've kind of already talked about the first one. Men are men, and women are women. And you quoted Genesis 2.21 and the passages that really speak to that. So gender is not fluid.

It is not an invention of man, and there are only two of them. And you have them right in the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2. Male and female made in the image of God, male made male by God, female made female by God, very distinct, very obvious. You don't need a psychological test and you don't need to affirm it or not to affirm it, it's biologically defined and biologically obvious. Yeah, on a lot of different levels.

Like for example, men have better depth perception than women. Men are ten times more likely to be colorblind. Women blink twice as much as men. 30 to 40 percent upper body strength is higher than a woman. Shoulders are wider in a man.

The chest is thicker in a man. Women live typically five years longer than men. We haven't even touched on the most obvious differences. Yeah, they say that if you dig up bones that are hundreds of years old or thousands of years old, you can tell this was a man and this was a woman, even long after the flesh is gone. Yeah, I was recently reading about an archeological find where Caiaphas' bones were found, and the author stated that they were the bones of a man.

Okay, that was 2000 years ago. You know, a woman loses fertility in her upper 30s and 40s. A man can have children into his 70s. Men have stronger bones. They have more muscle mass.

Men think differently. We call it being compartmentalized. Isn't it a blessing to have some level of compartmentalization? And a curse. By the way, men can conceive children into their 70s.

Right. I said have children. Yeah, right. In today's age, you have to specify. Thank you very much.

Yes, they can't have children. They can conceive children. So, hey, the first thing that we want to say is, men are men and women are women. Second, men are leaders and women are followers in the Bible, and there's so many places we could go to prove that. Yeah, this is by the design of God.

This really has nothing to do with intellect. It has nothing to do with capability. It has to do with how God has designed and designated things to be, and it couldn't be clearer in Scripture. You can make pragmatic arguments all day long, but it won't reverse what Scripture says. Adam's headship was established before the fall.

You can find that in Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 and 1 Corinthians 11, 7 through 9. Husbands are heads of their wives in Ephesians 5, 22. Yeah, only if they're smarter than their wife, nope. Only if they're more capable than their wife, nope. Only if they're more capable than their wife, nope.

Only if they're more educated than their wife, nope. Only if they earn more money than their wife, nope. In 1st Timothy 2, it actually just simply comes down to creation order. It's creation order. Many women are wiser and smarter than their husbands.

That's very, very, we know that. We know that experientially. And So this is not an argument for inequality. Men and women are equal before God, made in the image of God. But in terms of their lives together, there's order and authority.

And that's why in the Old Testament the men are priests, the men are Levites, never women, the men are civil magistrates, never women with the exception of Deborah, men are elders and deacons. The whole imagery of manhood and fatherhood is that as Christ, so a father is prophet, priest, and king in the Bible. This is the universal testimony of the Bible, of the over 1, 500 years of the books of the Bible being written, men are leaders, and God has given women as followers. And as we live this out in the world, we're actually approximating something that's greater and outside of that, which is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate groom, and as that he leads, and his people, the church, is the ultimate bride, and we follow, respect. And so anyway, as we live out biblical gender roles in the world, it's actually an approximation of something that we're just reflecting.

Gender is rooted in that. Yeah. Yeah. So, men are leaders, women are followers. Third, women are not allowed to teach or exercise authority over men.

1 Timothy 2, 11. I quoted this verse many years ago and caused a revolution in a church. Yes, men lead in church, in local churches. Yeah, men lead in local churches. C.S.

Lewis said, when women fight, it's ugly. Because God actually has appointed men to do the teaching in a local church. That doesn't mean that women can't teach. That doesn't mean that women can't teach their husbands. That doesn't mean that women can't teach their children and teach in other contexts.

But God prohibits women from teaching in the church. Yeah, so in our church we're working through the book of Romans. We're almost at the end. We only have a couple more weeks. We're in Romans 16, and in Romans 16 we meet Aquila and Priscilla.

You meet them for the first time in Acts chapter 18 when Paul goes to Corinth and he finds this tent-making couple, Aquila and Priscilla. They then, in Acts 18, same chapter, they go to Ephesus together. Paul leaves, they stay, and they encounter Apollos, who's this mighty, accurate preacher, but Aquila and Priscilla have been discipled by Paul for more than a year and a half in Corinth, and so they understand more than he does. And they, as a married couple, instruct Apollos together, but it's not in a public setting. It's really clear that the two of them together are instructing Apollos, but it's not a public teaching ministry.

It's a private personal instruction. Yeah, that should happen all the time, in the Church of Jesus Christ. But it's very controversial to say that a woman cannot teach or exercise authority over a man today. And the church actually has embraced a worldly view of womanhood and allows that to take place. I think we want to say the Bible is so clear about it.

You can try to do all kinds of exegetical, hermeneutical, gymnastics, but you can't get around the clarity of this passage. Here's the big problem about hermeneutical or principles of interpretation, gymnastics, the big problem is it dishonors God. But a secondary problem, which is not small, is that when you take liberties with Scripture to advocate for your pet thing, whatever it is, is you're teaching the next group the tricks. Okay, so the interpretive tricks the tricks. So the interpretive tricks played by the egalitarians to try to wipe away gender distinctions are now being used by homosexuals, transgenders, and these egalitarians don't want that to happen, don't want those leaps to be made, but they're just using the same tricks.

Right. Well, The last pillar here, and this is the worst one, this is the most contrary to Christian culture, and that is women are not allowed to speak in church. 1 Corinthians 14.34. You know, Paul says, I do not allow a woman to speak in church for it's shameful for a woman to speak in church. And if she has a question, she should ask her husband at home.

So there are two parts to this prohibition. And the first one is that women should not even be speaking. That doesn't mean they can't sing. That doesn't mean that in the fellowship time they can't speak. They're talking about, you know, when the worship of God is going on in the local church.

Yeah, so 1st Timothy 2 says, let your women learn in silence, for I do not permit a woman to teach. Again, you can find all sorts of people who can tell you why that doesn't mean what it says it means, but the text itself is breathtakingly clear and breathtakingly consistent with what you find from Genesis to Revelation. And again, I'll take us back to what we're approximating in living out our gender roles. In the church, Christ speaks. It's Christ's voice that matters in the church.

And we adore Christ and we follow Christ. So we're simply just approximating the ultimate version of this, which is the life of Jesus and his people. Right. You know, what makes this difficult for the modern church is you can go to almost any church today and you'll find women on the worship team leading singing, you know, making exhortations, actually, you know, speaking in church, making declarations, and things like that. And I think we're here to say that really is contrary to Scripture.

Let your women keep silent in the churches for they're not permitted to speak. That's just very, very controversial. Yeah, this isn't bad. This is good. What God says isn't bad, it's not harming us, it's not holding back the human race, it's actually, we'll advance us if we'll let it.

We should embrace the things of God, and we'll find that it's actually smarter than the spirit of the age. The spirit of the age says, all of these things are ridiculous. We should throw them away immediately. Well, you just understand, you're throwing away the Bible when you throw away these things. The Bible's not bad, it's good.

God's wiser than us all, smarter than us all, and if we'll just comply with His ways, we'll find that they're good ways. All His ways are pleasant and His paths are peace. One of the brilliant things about 1 Corinthians 1434 is that it tells wives what to do if they have a question. They're hearing the preaching, they're involved in the worship of God. If they have a question, what do they do?

Well, ask your husband at home. And what that does is it drives a husband and wife together. It causes a husband to have to answer difficult questions. Wives regularly ask difficult questions. And the prohibition is also a tremendous freedom because it unifies the husband and wife doctrinally.

It brings them together to talk about difficult issues. And in many cases would probably drive both of them into the Word of God to try to find the answer because a wife's question might be challenging to answer. So there's a tremendous blessing in the prohibition at the same time because it promotes marriage. It promotes communication in a marriage. So there you have it, you know, of the pillars of manhood and womanhood.

First, men are men and women are women. Second, men are leaders. Third, women are not allowed to teach or exercise authority in the church. And fourth, women are not allowed to speak in the church. So of course, that's not the entire range of biblical manhood and womanhood.

You have this wonderful, complimentary nature that God has given men and women, and it's such a blessing. God has designed men and women for His own glory, and of course, all of His commands help men and women to function beautifully together in love. So one of the things that I think is so very helpful is, in terms of biblical manhood and womanhood, is Proverbs 31, because it's very centering. It lets us know the tremendous latitude that godly women can have. In Proverbs 31, you find a husband whose heart safely trusts in his wife.

So she's earned his trust, she has his trust, and he trusts her, and you find her having all sorts of latitude. It's not a constrained life in Proverbs 31. So To the extent that Proverbs 31 makes us nervous, we should adjust to Proverbs 31 and not expect the Scriptures or God to adjust to us. The full, glorious, vigorous life of a godly woman is found there. The trust that she enjoys from her husband, a godly man, is found there.

So are there all sorts of violations of this? Yes. But does that invalidate it? No. Here's what I'm trying to say.

Let me clarify what I'm trying to say there. You can find all sorts of accounts of abusive male leadership, but that doesn't invalidate what the Bible says about gender roles. So don't mistake that. If you find a case of abuse, that doesn't mean what the Bible says isn't right. Amen.

Well, as it turns out, all God's ways are pleasant ways. All his paths are peace regarding manhood and womanhood and everything else, no matter what the world tries to distort. The world is telling women, you can have it all. And that's a lie. That's not true at all.

You can't have it all. We all make choices. And by the having of one thing, we're forgoing another thing. That's how it works. It's opportunity cost.

And so when you think you can have it all and you pursue it all, you're actually bypassing other things. Just understand you have to choose. Yeah. So it's not good to have it all. No.

Okay. Well, there you have it. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can join us next time.