I’m here to talk about the beauty of complementarianism. I’m going to take it for granted that at the Gospel Coalition National Conference, that there is more or less a shared understanding that complementarianism is a good thing. It may not be a shared understanding when it comes to the particulars of what that looks like in the church or in the home, but I’m going to take it as a shared understanding that this is a talk and a conversation among friends—among people who recognize that God has made men and women, and He’s made men and women differently, and He’s given to them different roles and functions to fulfill within the church and in the home. Hopefully that much we can agree on, and if we agree on that much that’s an awful lot.
I’m also going to take it as a base-level sort of assumption that part of being complementarians is an understanding that men—qualified, gifted, called men—are to be in the ordained leadership of the church, in particular as pastors and elders (perhaps there’s differences among us on the role of deacons or deaconesses). But what I want to help us to see from the Scriptures, I hope, is that biblical manhood and womanhood—though it is that—is more than that. Some people have begun to use the language of “narrow” or “broad” complementarianism. A narrow complementarianism might say that, “Yes, we see that there are differences between men and women, but those are rather narrowly constrained and confined; and the husband is to be the head of the household from Ephesians 5, and that women ought not to be elders and pastors from 1 Timothy chapter 2. Beyond that and beyond the specific realms of those leadership dynamics within the house and within the church, there isn’t much else that we dare to say.” That would be a narrow complementarianism. A broad complementarianism would be one that says, “While those things are true and fundamentally true and perhaps fundamentally clear, there are other things in Scripture which indicate to us that being a man and being a woman cannot be simply defined according to a few rules in the church and in the home. In other words, there is a broader conception of what God means when He creates us as male and female.”
I want to argue for the second of those categories. Not an infinite (there are stereotypes that we want to avoid—and I’ll talk about those along the way), but for a broad complementarianism that says God created man—male and female—in the garden; He created it good; He created them good; and He created them uniquely, that they might show forth the image of God. And part of that is to show forth the image of God in their differences.
Explaining Men and Women to Boys and Girls
I have eight kids. I’m amazed he got their names right—most days I don’t remember all of their names. I have five boys and I have three girls, and they are different—different in the sort of ways that you might imagine. These stereotypes aren’t always true, but stereotypes are there for a reason sometimes because they often are true. I have a son who sleeps with a small arsenal of knives and weapons under his pillow at night. If I ever have to move him or move his pillow, it makes a loud clunking metallic sound. Like good parents, we just let him have Swiss army knives in his pillow case under his bed. He has airsoft guns—not loaded (we’re good parents); various weapons in case bad guys would come into the house; he’s ready to do them serious harm.
And we have daughters, and they love many of the things that girls love to play with; and they are the people we hope will be taking care of us when we’re old. One time, not too long ago, we were in the car driving and I, with my wife, turned around and I just said, “Kids, who’s going to take care of your mom and dad when we’re old?” And without a beat, Jacob said, “Elsie will.” Very helpful. Probably that would be a better bet, that she might do a good job.
As they get older—they’re now ages three months through 15 years old—they keep doing new things, trying new things, learning new things, hearing new words, wondering what they mean; they have questions—lots of questions. And here is the central question that I want us to consider in our next 40 minutes together: What would you say—to an aunt or an uncle, or a mom or a dad—what would you say if your little boy says, “Daddy, what does it mean to be a man?” What would you say if your little girl comes up to you: “Mommy, Mommy! What does it mean to be a woman?” Hopefully we would have something more to say than, “You’re a boy: you can be a pastor.” What else might we say? Hopefully, you would say more than, “Well, nothing,” or “It’s simply a construct,” or “It means nothing at all, it’s whatever you want it to be.”
Now here’s what we should start by saying: “The first thing you need to know—son, daughter—is that you were made in the image of God. You are meant to show what God is like in the world; to be His little living image icon, representing Him, living like Him, speaking of Him, pointing to Him. That’s true for all boys and girls as they grow up into men and women.” And then I’d want to say to my son or daughter, “The next thing you need to realize is that you belong to Christ, and there are benefits of Christ and our position in Christ, and we want to grow into the person that we are in Christ.” In other words, I’d want to start with my son or daughter with these two doctrinal foundations in place: the image of God and our union with Christ. And actually, well before this point in my speech, my kids would be punching each other and they would be grabbing for Skittles or running out the door—so don’t think that any speech actually goes like that in my house. The kids know it often happens in the car or around the dinner table, I’ll say “Everyone quiet down, I have a Dad speech.” “Oh, a Dad speech again?” I give good Dad speeches. They don’t make it through, but they have good intent.
After attempting to lay these foundations—and you see what I’m doing there? Before we talk about what it means to be a man or a woman, and how those things are different, we do need to indicate how they are wonderfully the same. There is a sameness, in that we’re both made in the image of God called to bear forth that image in the world; and, if believers, we have union with Christ, growing into our fellowship with Christ. That’s what we want people to hear, whether you are a little boy or a little girl. But if they were still able to listen, I would want to talk to them about five categories: five ways men and women are different according to God’s good design. And I worked really hard to try to get these five points in some sort of mechanism whereby you can understand them, so A, B, C, D, and E. Pretty good.
A: “appearance”;
B: “body”;
C: “character”;
D: “demeanor”;
and E: (I had to cheat a little bit) “eager posture”.
Appearance, body, character, demeanor, eager posture—A, B, C, D, E.
Eager Posture
Rather than taking them in alphabetical order however, I want to take them in the order as they are revealed to us in Scripture, and that means we start with the E: “eager posture.” “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man shall be alone. I will make a helper fit for him” [Gen. 2:18]. A helper: this is, as we know, not a demeaning role to be a helper. Yahweh is often described as the helper of His people in the Old Testament, so to be a helper does not imply inferiority. But by design, according to the order of creation, the woman is to help her husband. That is her eager posture. And the man’s posture is to lead. We see that he was created first. We see in verses 19 and 20, he was charged with naming the animals. We see in verses 16 and 17, he was given the probationary command. And we see that—even though the record in Genesis 3 is that Eve took of the fruit and then gave some to her husband to eat—in Romans chapter 5, who is held responsible for that first sin? It’s a sin in Adam. So, we see Adam is the one held responsible for the transgression. 1 Corinthians 11:3: “The head of the wife is her husband.”
I use the word “posture” deliberately. Look, I know that the passage (verse 18 in particular) is talking about Eve—who will be the [wife] of Adam; and I’m speaking more broadly about the roles of men and women in biblical manhood and womanhood—but, the text that we see, especially related to the man, not all of them [are] specifically about his relationship to Eve, but rather about his posture as one who is given to be a leader.
Posture—think about posture. I use the word intentionally. You can slouch; you can sit very upright; you can be casual; you can be prim and proper; you can be formal. I use the word “posture” because we’re not talking here about an inflexible office, but rather an eager posture. It would be wrong—it would be sinful—for a husband to say to his wife, “You’re the helper; I don’t help you.” No, that would be wrong. This is not the same in every situation; it does not mean that men lead to the exclusion of helping; or the women help and they never are able to exercise leadership. We’re talking about what you are intentional to find and eager to accept. The wife is willing to be led, and the husband is eager to take the sacrificial initiative to lead. This has more to do, I think, with what men ought to be doing than what women should not be doing. The most important exhortation in complementarianism is not for women to sit down, but for men to stand up. That is the most important exhortation: for men to act like men; for their eager posture that we see hints of already here in the garden—that the man and the woman are created with a unique design: to be a helper, to be a leader.
Body
Second, then: “body”. So, A, B, C, D, E, but we’re moving out of order as we go through Scripture. Eager posture, and then body. The text I have here I’ll just read it to you. Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman”—that’s Leviticus 18. In Leviticus chapter 20, it gives a similar prohibition; and in 1 Corinthians 6 and then in 1 Timothy 1, Paul—in making the prohibition against homosexuality—uses this word “arsenokoitês,” “arsenokoitês.” And all the scholars agree that this is the first time the word has been used; Paul made up a word. It’s harder to know what it means when Paul made it up, but it’s actually quite clear what it means because Paul—being steeped in the Old Testament—was clearly drawing from Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, which if you could read in the Septuagint—that’s the Greek translation that Paul would’ve been familiar with—it uses those two words: “arsen,” meaning “man;” “koitai” meaning “bed” or “to take someone to bed.” The man shall not bed a man as he would a woman—that’s the prohibition [in] Leviticus 18 and 20, and that’s the word that then Paul puts together in 1 Timothy 1 and in 1 Corinthians 6.
The world says orientation is more essential than gender. The world says gender is a construct, and actions should correspond to our self-authenticated desires. The Bible suggests that gender carries with it its own oughtness; and that actions should correspond to divinely created identity. So, Paul takes “arsen” and “koitai” to say what Leviticus 18 and 20 said—namely, that as a man you have a body, and that body is uniquely fit together—this one flesh union—with a woman. It is not designed to be fit together in a one-flesh union with another man. There is an oughtness to gender; there is an oughtness to the body that you have been given by God.
I just gave a faculty forum at RTS last week, and I was going through this very fascinating book by Kyle Harper. He’s a professor at the University of Oklahoma. I don’t even know what his religious affiliation is, if any, but it’s on the sexual transformation from late-Roman antiquity into the Christian era. And if that doesn’t get you, I don’t know what will. But it’s fascinating, and one of the points that he makes—and his understanding of ancient Roman sources is phenomenal—but one of the transformations that took place is that in the Roman sexual economy, sexual deviance was a matter of social standing. That is, at the top of the social hierarchy were free Roman males. And yes—marriage was important; and yes—you were not to commit adultery with another married woman, or a free married woman. But it was understood in the Roman sexual economy that men needed to have sexual outlets. And so, for a man in his early years to have sex with prostitutes was not considered any sort of deviance; he can still be considered a virgin; for a man to have sex with prostitutes or with slaves, even as a married man, because it was considered a lower social status.
Very often, Roman men might have sex with young boys, called “pederasty.” It wasn’t a matter of orientation; it was a matter of—they thought—sexual overflow and needing an outlet for this desire. In fact, one of the early Christian bishops summarized the Roman sexual ethic as outlawing adultery; building brothels. That’s what they did. It was based on your social standing. So, if you were having sex with someone who was younger than you, or someone who was a slave when you were free, or someone who was a prostitute when you were a free Roman, then it was acceptable. And what he explains is the massive social transformation that took place with Christianity. It cut across all of that sexual economy based on social standing, and it made it based now on almost one thing: gender—so that men were for women and women were for men within the context of marriage. And it was revolutionary in the Roman world.
We see Paul has that understanding. You think of Romans chapter 1: there, women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Elsewhere in Romans 1, he uses the language of “what is fitting” or “function.” He’s thinking of Genesis—have you ever noticed in Romans chapter 1 all of the Genesis language that’s there about exchanging the glory of God for created things? For suppressing the image of God for things that are created after the likeness and the image of beasts and animals? This is all Genesis language. And so, when he speaks of “what is fit,” what is appropriate, he’s thinking of the woman made uniquely for the man. She is “Ishah,” for she was taken out of “Ish.” Woman taken out of man; that uniquely the two in their bodies were made to be fit together.
So, I don’t want to be too graphic, but it is something to consider—even from the standpoint of natural theology. Natural theology would tell us—though no one dares to mention it, that when two men are together sexually—the member that is supposed to give life is often placed in the part of the body where decay and death is expelled. Even the body that God gave us, apart from supernatural revelation, suggests that the body was made for a certain purpose. Why is it that the sexual act is so powerful? Why is it that that is the one flesh union? Why not giving somebody a wet willy? Why doesn’t that make you man and wife, by sticking your finger in somebody’s ear? Or just holding hands—isn’t that just your one-flesh? Or linking arms, or doing the Dosey Doe? It’s because, uniquely, in the male/female sexual union, there is that procreative ability to fulfill the creation mandate in Genesis chapter 1: to replenish the earth, to multiply, and to fill the earth—and then to subdue it.
One of the most counter-cultural verses in all the Bible is 1 Corinthians 6:19, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” So often I feel like—with our young people in particular, we teach them the right conclusions but we haven’t taken the time to give them all of the arguments that lead to those conclusions. Not just “Well, sex is between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage,” but why. Well, it has to do with our understanding of the body. The body is not incidental to us as the human person: that we have a God who created physical matter; we have a God who came down and took on human flesh; we have a God who is going to resurrect the body. The body is not an incidental thing to the human person—and what we do with our human bodies is not separate from who we are and how God made us to be. So, we have different bodies.
Appearance
Let’s move on to the third point, the “A.” So “eager posture,” “the body,” and then “appearance.” Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. In that book, Kyle Harper argues that, in late antiquity, it was very common that from puberty onward a woman would keep her hair veiled as a sign of modesty. Now, scholars argue about what the head coverings are here in 1 Corinthians 11, but that’s as good a suggestion as any. As we’ll see, the woman is to cover her hair as a sign of modesty; and though our culture may give different signals to modesty than covering hair—I know some traditions still have a little doily that the woman would wear and I can respect that—but I don’t think that communicates the same thing that the veil would’ve communicated in 1 Corinthians 11. So, the particularities of the veil are not the point, but rather the verses that suggest that men and women are to be different and look different.
Verse 6: “For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short; but since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.” Or then, following the argument down to verse 13: “Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice” that is of being contentious, “nor did the churches of God.”
It’s a complicated argument, but the basic argument is this: the confusion of genders is contrary to nature. There is a crucial principle in chapter 11, one that we need to hear—even if we may not agree on all the particularities of what’s happening here. Men are not women, and when men—seem to be women, or women seem to be men—it is, according to Paul, off-putting and unnatural. This is where we can’t be overly exact with the principle. We know that Samson had long hair and it was a sign of his strength; we’re not looking to take out the tape measure and measure the length of your follicles to see if it—I mean if God wanted to give us those specifics he would have done so, but rather what we have here is this operative principle.
Now this is where it gets tricky, because I think what’s happening in this passage is Paul is saying on the one hand, culture will give you some of those cues, and yet on the other hand as culture gives us those cues, we ought to realize that men should look like men and women should look like women. It would be nice if the argument were, “And here’s what men look like: I got 15 things you should wear.” Okay, and “Here’s what women look like: I have 200 things that you can wear.” But it doesn’t do that, so we have to be careful that we don’t read in our own stereotypes. Let’s be fair; there are hyper-masculine sort of stereotypes. If you’re a real man, you’re William Wallace, hunter-gatherer, pickup truck, Stetson hat. Look, when I lift up the hood for my car, first of all I think, “Wow, I figured that out.” Because 9 times out of 10, I release the parking brake when I’m trying to do that. I look at that thing—and I’ve done that with my wife—and I’m just totally faking it, just like “Is there a Microsoft “Help” button or something in here?” I don’t know anything about that; I don’t hunt, I don’t fish, and if we insist that there are these sort of quintessential American stereotypes of manhood, then we are going to be misreading and reading into the text.
And yet, those sort of stereotypes, in a very clumsy way, may be attempting to recover something important; because when Paul says that nature itself teaches that long hair is a disgrace to men, I don’t think he’s making a universal statement about follicles—but he is making a universal statement about gender. He’s saying essentially two points: (1) It isn’t right for men to look like women; and (2) how this plays out will be somewhat determined by the culture.
So, how might this apply in our day? Well hopefully we might agree with some examples. “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears a dress it is a disgrace for him?”—perhaps Paul would say. And maybe someone from Scotland would say, “Well what about kilts?” So yes, culturally applied. “Does not culture itself tell you that if man puts on lipstick it is a disgrace for him?” You see how when you get to the point of application, then you get “eh”? But yet we have to think through, you know, as pastors, as parents, as leaders in the church. Can real men enjoy musical theater, and ballet, and like to go shopping? Well of course they can. And yet, on the other hand, if you met a guy who told you that his favorite thing in the whole world was shopping for shoes; his favorite show was “Say Yes to the Dress” and he’s got all his news from The View, you’d say “let’s talk.” I’m not making light of it—I’m seriously saying these are things that come up in real life. And we have to be careful on the one hand not to have unfair sort of stereotypes: “you’re just a tomboy; you’re a girly man.” And on the other hand, what does Paul mean? He means that there’s an appearance: “That is a man; That is a woman.” I wish we could draw the line with a big, bold pen; but rather the line has to be drawn with careful strokes and daily discipleship of everyday life.
But let’s be honest: in a day when certain men from pirates to figure skaters to stand-up comedians wear eyeliner, we cannot ignore the question of manhood and womanhood. The Bible does not give us every specific we might want, but, when it comes to defining masculinity and femininity, at least does begin to tell us this essential thing that is no longer obvious in our day—and that is, that it is disgraceful for a man to appear to be a woman and a woman to appear to be a man. Now that is the theology behind it; now as we apply it, we do so with all of the graces that are necessary given the appropriate context. If someone from my church—and I’ve had people who struggle with gender identity issues and gender dysphoria in my churches before—you deal very patiently; you sympathize with real struggles that men and women can have. But this is one of the texts that you point people to—not in a shaming way, but in an instructive way to say: God made men and women to be different, and when we confuse that, we’re confusing what God meant to be uniquely for His glory; and why would we pretend that it is otherwise?
I wrote about this on a blog a few years ago, just thinking about the transgender issues. You know, if somebody came to you, a young woman, and said, “I don’t eat anymore because look at me, I’m so overweight; I’m so fat.” What would you do as a counselor, as a friend, as a parent? You would say, “Look, the way you’re seeing yourself is not accurate. The way you feel about yourself does not conform to reality.” You wouldn’t say, “Well you know what, the most loving thing is if you feel like you’re fat, you’re fat.” I’m not joking—we wouldn’t say that. And, “You know what? You shouldn’t eat. And you know what the best thing for you is to go on a diet because if that’s the way you feel about yourself, then that’s the only thing. In fact, we’re going to tell everyone in this school to do the same thing. No one’s going to say that you’re skinny; no one’s going to say that you’re beautiful because you don’t feel that way to yourself, do you?” Now, don’t we all understand instinctively that is not a way to love one another. The way to love that person in that struggle is to say, “I know you may feel that; I know you may wrestle with that. That’s not the way it really is; that’s not how God sees you; that’s not how God made you. He made us with different bodies, with different appearances.”
Demeanor
Fourth–now we need to move quickly—“demeanor.” I want you to see these passages. I find them very instructive in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Notice in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 7, Paul says, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children: So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you, not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you’ve become very dear to us.” And then look later in verse 11: “For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God.”
Do you see what Paul’s doing there? In the span of a few verses, first: he uses the analogy of a gentle nursing mother. And what’s the picture there? The picture of a mother is one of gentleness, affection, sacrifice, nurture, support—a nursing mother. And then he moves to fatherhood. What does fatherhood speak in his mind? Exhortation, encouragement, spiritual charge, and leadership. Now this is not to suggest that one set of virtues are exclusively feminine, and the other exclusively masculine. Afterall, Paul says, “I was like a nursing mother.” This is why this text is really helpful, because on the one hand it says you can’t just put an absolute stereotype. “Well, if you’re gentle like a mother, then men don’t do that.” Well Paul says I did that. And yet it’s helpful, because Paul clearly has in his mind that there is a difference. When he thinks, “I want to use an example of nurture and affection and gentleness and care and support,” he thinks of a mom. “I want to use an example of exhortation and discipline and charge,” he thinks of a dad.
No matter his own unique personality, there is something about a father that is to be hortatory; and no matter her own unique personality, there is something particularly maternal and feminine about a woman marked by gentleness—which is saying something given the people that most moms work with every day. In Paul’s mind, a mom is not a dad and a dad is not a mom; and they suggest to him certain characteristics.
Character
And then finally, “character.” And by character, I want us to think about, “What is that crowning characteristic of a godly woman and that crowning characteristic of a godly man?” Again, “crown”—I’m using that word intentionally. When I think of a crown, what’s the crown that you wear as a queen; what’s the crown that you wear as a king? Doesn’t say everything about you; it may not even say what is most important about you, but it does say something–that you could [say], “That crown is for a princess; that crown is for a prince.” They are distinct.
So, what is that crowning characteristic for a godly woman and a godly man? 1 Peter chapter 3. If we had time, we could see the similar language—not just for married women, but for all women. (1 Timothy 2, for example). But 1 Peter 3:1–7 says:
Likewise, wives be subject to your own husbands, so if some do not obey the word, then maybe one without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external–the braiding of hair, the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear; but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands; as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel; since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
What do we see about women? They’re enjoying to be respectful, pure, gentle. What do we see about the man? He is to show honor, understanding, exercise leadership.
I think you could suggest that the crowning characteristic of the woman is true beauty and the crowning characteristic of the man is true strength. Is it not telling that so much of the instruction here for the woman is not like that sort of adornment, but this kind of adornment? We see the same thing in 1 Timothy 2: it’s not like this–it’s not with the braiding and it’s not with the hair and it’s not with the jewelry; but it’s of the quiet, gentle spirit of the heart.
Perhaps—this is not universally true, but it is broadly true—perhaps for women, the attention to makeup and dress and hair and the hours in front of the mirror and the times you ask your husband that fateful question: “How does this look?” Ah, run, run, run! Perhaps all of that attention to adornment is telling you something: that you’re wired for beauty. And perhaps men—though this isn’t universally true, it often is—perhaps the time you spend in front of ESPN or war movies or wanting to hunt or to fish in competition; perhaps all of that is telling you something: that you are wired and you have a desire for a true strength. And don’t you find so often in the Bible God is telling us, “Women, don’t settle for lesser beauty;” “Men, don’t settle for a lesser strength”? You are made for this kind of beauty; this is your crowning characteristic. You want to be beautiful as a woman of God.
I think if I only could say one thing to my children—after I talked about the image of God and union with Christ—one thing I would say: “Honey, to be a woman after God’s own heart is to be beautiful as God wants you to be beautiful.” And I’d say to my son, “To be a man after God’s own heart is to be strong in all the ways that God wants you to be strong.”
1 Corinthians 16:13-14: “Be watchful and stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you be done, be done in love.” Now, that’s a command to the church. There again, telling the whole church, “Act like men.” So, these are not rigid offices, but it’s telling, certainly, that when Paul says, “I want to encourage you to strength and bravery”, he uses this verb “andrizomai.” Gordon Fee, the leading egalitarian of the last generation, in his commentary said, “The verb ‘andrizomai’ means to play the role of a man—an idea that was frequent in antiquity as a call to courage in the face of danger.” David says to Solomon in 1 Kings 2:2, “I’m about to go the way of all flesh. Be strong and show yourself a man.”
Conclusion
So, in closing, we don’t want to just perpetuate stereotypes. As soon as you make that the biblical standard, you’re going to have a son or a daughter, or a husband or a wife, or a friend who doesn’t fit all those. And yet, in an effort not to perpetuate stereotypes, some of us go too far and say, “Well the Bible doesn’t really say anything about this, just men are pastors.” No, I hope from these Scriptures—and there are more—we see that there is an oughtness to manhood and womanhood. There is a difference—a difference that should not be eradicated, but celebrated; not confused, but clarified; not shamefully embarrassed, but happily embraced. And yes, the cultural winds are blowing very stiff and very strong against the church when it comes to all of this; and yet the good news is: there is at our back a massive river of divine design that is actually flowing in this direction, because it’s how God made us to be and it’s how we can flourish as men and woman made in His image.
Let’s pray.
Our gracious heavenly Father, we pray that you would help us. For some in this room, it’s perhaps an opportunity to simply learn and think through these issues. For others, we come with very personal hurt, personal questions, persons we love in our heads and hearts that we want to help. Lord, we remember the word you gave to Balaam, to the people, that he must not do anything to add to or to subtract from your Word. That’s our heart’s desire. We don’t want to make manhood and womanhood something that your Word does not say. We don’t want to import our own categories and our own proclivities—and at the same time, we do not want to say less, even if many people would wish for us to say nothing at all. So, help us, Lord, as men and women in your image living for your glory. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
