Do Gender Roles Apply Beyond Marriage?
00:00:00.000 | Do gender roles apply beyond marriage?
00:00:07.440 | I think most of us would confirm that biological differences play a specific place in defining
00:00:11.460 | the roles of husbands and wives within the marriage covenant, but what about gender distinctions
00:00:15.740 | in broader society and in the workplace?
00:00:17.940 | It's a question from an anonymous young woman who asks this.
00:00:21.860 | Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:22.860 | My question is whether gender alone should affect the way a Christian views his or her
00:00:26.800 | identity, and should gender alone change the way he or she behaves, even outside of marriage?
00:00:33.320 | If so, how and why?
00:00:35.120 | It seems most questions of this type get answered related to gender roles within the family
00:00:39.280 | and not at the level of mere gender alone, even among singles.
00:00:43.480 | Pastor John, what would you say to her?
00:00:45.320 | Well, the answer is yes.
00:00:49.080 | Gender alone—that is, our sexual maleness or femaleness alone—is an essential part
00:01:01.160 | of our God-given identity, whether we're married or not.
00:01:07.920 | You are who you are, everywhere you are, and with whomever you are.
00:01:16.320 | Your core identity as male or female does not change according to your audience or your
00:01:24.040 | relationships.
00:01:26.040 | You have God-given stability, constancy in who you are.
00:01:33.400 | You're not a chameleon in your sexual personhood.
00:01:37.480 | Your sexuality is rooted in your biological and anatomical identity, and more than that,
00:01:46.080 | it's rooted, as we are discovering more and more every day in sociological and psychological
00:01:51.600 | research, it's rooted in the distinct workings of the male and female brain and the psychological
00:01:59.080 | outworkings of those distinctions in all of life.
00:02:03.360 | Just go to YouTube and type in almost anything like, "Are men and women different?" or
00:02:07.400 | "Are men and women brains?"
00:02:08.400 | And you'll get all kinds of amazing documented research about how different men and women
00:02:15.600 | are in their very biological, psychological natures.
00:02:21.400 | Now, as Christians, we believe that the brain and the soul are not identical but are interrelated
00:02:33.360 | in mysterious ways that have profound correspondence.
00:02:39.600 | All Christians agree that we are responsible morally before God for our thoughts and our
00:02:47.960 | feelings, even though our brains, that organ inside our skull, our brains and our hormones
00:02:57.840 | are involved in what we think and feel.
00:03:02.000 | The mystery of how the brain and the supraphysical soul are related is probably incomprehensible
00:03:13.200 | to finite people.
00:03:14.200 | That'd be my guess.
00:03:15.200 | I don't think we'll ever comprehend fully this mystery.
00:03:19.960 | But we know that what the brain does in thinking and desiring reflects reality in the personhood.
00:03:29.440 | I mean a personhood that is more than physical, the personhood that will exist after death
00:03:36.520 | when we go to be with Christ before the resurrection.
00:03:40.760 | In other words, we are persons in the presence of Christ enjoying Christ as far better, Paul
00:03:46.200 | says, even though we don't have bodies.
00:03:48.280 | The brain is down there rotting in the grave, and our soul, our personhood, is in heaven
00:03:56.600 | with Christ.
00:03:57.600 | And the differences that exist in general between men's and women's brains, along with
00:04:03.440 | the innate differences that mark our lives, are profoundly woven together with the supraphysical
00:04:12.120 | personhood.
00:04:13.680 | So my answer is yes, our sexual identity as male and female is part of our true God-given,
00:04:22.520 | body-based, brain-based, soul-based identity, whether we are married or single.
00:04:29.240 | It is relevant for all our relationships, not just one of them.
00:04:35.080 | And when we are spiritually and physically and psychologically whole and healthy, this
00:04:42.840 | will manifest itself with scarcely any self-consciousness.
00:04:47.400 | A mature, healthy woman does not consciously try to be a woman.
00:04:52.640 | She just is what she is, and so with a mature, healthy man.
00:04:58.520 | Now let me come at it one other way.
00:05:01.640 | Let's come at it from Ephesians 5 like this.
00:05:03.880 | Paul gave us a picture of distinct manhood and womanhood in marriage, a picture that
00:05:09.880 | is relevant, I'm going to argue, relevant for men and women outside marriage.
00:05:16.560 | Here's what he wrote.
00:05:17.920 | This is Ephesians 5:22 following.
00:05:20.720 | "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the
00:05:26.080 | wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
00:05:31.880 | Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their
00:05:38.800 | husbands."
00:05:39.800 | Therefore, that's the dynamic of leadership and glad support for that leadership of the
00:05:48.560 | husband.
00:05:49.560 | The husband's leadership, the wife's glad support for that leadership.
00:05:53.760 | Now keep reading.
00:05:54.920 | "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."
00:06:03.560 | Now there's the dynamic of protection.
00:06:06.720 | Christ dies to save her, dies to rescue her, dies to protect her from the devil and from
00:06:13.080 | sin and from hell in the analogy with the church.
00:06:17.640 | And so husbands are willing to die to rescue, die to save, die to protect her in every kind
00:06:24.300 | of way she may need it.
00:06:26.400 | "He who loves his wife loves himself."
00:06:30.360 | We're at verse 29 now.
00:06:32.040 | "For no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church."
00:06:37.800 | Now there's the third element.
00:06:39.720 | So first we saw leadership, then we saw protection.
00:06:43.200 | Now here's the dynamic of provision.
00:06:46.000 | A husband feels a special God-given responsibility.
00:06:50.680 | I say special, not soul God-given responsibility, but a special, unique responsibility in the
00:06:58.920 | family to be a nourisher, a cherisher, a provider for his wife and the family.
00:07:07.160 | So in my little book, What's the Difference?, I define manhood or masculinity like this.
00:07:15.560 | At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide
00:07:22.160 | for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's different relationships.
00:07:27.560 | And I define, accordingly, womanhood or femaleness or femininity like this.
00:07:35.880 | At the heart of mature womanhood or femaleness or femininity is a freeing disposition to
00:07:43.880 | affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate
00:07:53.000 | to a woman's differing relationships.
00:07:57.080 | Now you can hear in each of those definitions that a man's manhood and a woman's womanhood
00:08:02.920 | are relevant to all their relationships, but in differing ways.
00:08:09.840 | And this follows from the fact that there is nothing magical about a wedding ceremony
00:08:17.400 | that turns a man into a man or a woman into a woman.
00:08:21.680 | What a woman has been becoming all her life is what she will be in marriage.
00:08:27.720 | What a man has been becoming all his life, he will be in marriage.
00:08:33.200 | They can't turn on manhood and they can't turn on womanhood like a switch on their honeymoon.
00:08:40.200 | When a woman contemplates marrying a man, she doesn't have to do it blindfolded.
00:08:46.960 | She can watch the man for a year or two years.
00:08:51.080 | She can be involved in dating relationships or an engagement relationship.
00:08:56.320 | And during all that time, a discerning woman can see the evidences of whether a man's instincts
00:09:04.880 | and inclinations revealed a deep-seated sense of benevolent responsibility to lead and provide
00:09:14.720 | for and protect women in ways appropriate to his different relationships.
00:09:21.480 | She can see the trajectory of his life and what kind of leader and provider and protector
00:09:27.500 | he will be in marriage.
00:09:29.640 | Neither he nor she suddenly becomes a biblical man or woman on the day they are married.
00:09:37.960 | So for these reasons, my answer to her is yes.
00:09:43.720 | Inside and outside marriage, our sexual identity as male and female are wonderful, inescapable
00:09:53.840 | parts of who we are in every relationship.
00:09:59.340 | And the best way to become the kind of men and women we ought to be in all the relationships
00:10:06.160 | of life is to immerse ourselves gladly in all of Scripture, absorbing all of its implications
00:10:15.200 | for manhood and womanhood, and then fix our eyes on men and women who walk in the most
00:10:22.560 | biblically mature way.
00:10:24.840 | That's beautiful.
00:10:25.840 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:27.240 | And I should say here that Pastor John has written and edited a 600-page book on these
00:10:31.440 | themes, which is titled Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and then also a 100-page
00:10:36.400 | book version of that called 50 Crucial Questions.
00:10:41.240 | You can download both of those books entirely for free at desiringgod.org/books.
00:10:45.120 | Yes, the whole thing entirely free times two.
00:10:51.160 | Thanks for listening to the podcast over at our online home.
00:10:54.680 | Explore about 1300 of our past episodes, scan a list of our most popular ones, and read
00:10:58.840 | full transcripts.
00:10:59.840 | If you have a question that you may have of your own, go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:07.600 | How can God be good and sovereign over all things and also allow intense personal suffering
00:11:15.640 | into people's lives?
00:11:16.640 | It's a heavy and important question from the real world, and it's one we get a lot.
00:11:21.120 | And it's a question in the inbox for Monday on the other side of the weekend.
00:11:25.600 | We'll address that question.
00:11:26.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:28.760 | We'll see you then.
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