Who’s More Sinful: Men or Women?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday, I hope you had a wonderful week.

00:00:07.280 | As you might've noticed,

00:00:08.720 | we've been picking on men recently on the podcast,

00:00:12.200 | talking about how a man's anger destroys the home,

00:00:15.540 | or how a man's lust wreaks havoc on his marriage.

00:00:18.420 | We looked at the major fallout of one man's decision

00:00:21.040 | to abandon his wife and daughters,

00:00:23.720 | and we've addressed unbelieving men twice in recent episodes.

00:00:27.120 | So what about women?

00:00:29.400 | We end this week with an international question,

00:00:31.920 | which I love, because our international listeners

00:00:34.000 | are willing to ask questions

00:00:35.260 | that don't get asked by anyone here in the States.

00:00:37.740 | We take it, we pose it, we answer it, and we publish it.

00:00:40.560 | And very often those episodes prove interesting

00:00:42.720 | to international listeners

00:00:44.160 | and to our local listeners as well.

00:00:46.640 | I could give you some very specific examples

00:00:48.620 | of how this has played out in the past

00:00:50.120 | on interracial marriage episodes, for example,

00:00:52.640 | but instead, let's just get into today's question

00:00:55.480 | from an international listener, a woman,

00:00:58.480 | who writes this, "Pastor John, hello.

00:00:59.960 | I have been hearing from Christians around me

00:01:01.840 | that women are more sinful than men.

00:01:05.620 | I know from my daily ungodly thoughts and actions

00:01:07.800 | how sinful I am, but as a mother of boys and girls,

00:01:10.440 | does the Bible teach that I should teach my girls

00:01:12.480 | they are more sinful than boys?

00:01:14.320 | I know the Bible says we all have sinned

00:01:16.600 | and come short of the glory of God,

00:01:18.660 | but Eve, Delilah, Samson's wives, Solomon's wives,

00:01:22.400 | Potiphar's wife, these have been listed to me

00:01:25.000 | as proof that women are more evil than men are.

00:01:28.760 | Is it true?"

00:01:30.000 | - I think it would be a huge mistake

00:01:32.720 | to raise our children with the assumption

00:01:37.840 | that our daughters are by nature more sinful

00:01:40.760 | or more prone to sin than our sons.

00:01:44.380 | Now, let me give you at least six reasons

00:01:50.000 | why that would be both misleading and harmful.

00:01:55.360 | First, in response to the argument that Eve, Delilah,

00:02:00.360 | Solomon's wives, Potiphar's wife,

00:02:04.880 | prove that women are more sinful than men,

00:02:09.880 | consider how utterly lopsided that observation is.

00:02:15.060 | When, for example, there were far more wicked kings

00:02:19.500 | in the Old Testament than wicked queens,

00:02:22.140 | and all the Pharisees and Sadducees

00:02:24.320 | and high priests and scribes that Jesus indicted

00:02:26.800 | with such deep sinfulness were all men, all of them.

00:02:30.880 | And if you were to make a list

00:02:33.520 | of especially wicked people in the Bible,

00:02:36.520 | my goodness, the number of men on that list

00:02:39.280 | would far outnumber the number of women on that list.

00:02:44.280 | So even if you should focus on those relationships

00:02:50.400 | where the woman sins, especially pointed out,

00:02:54.320 | there's no evidence, for example,

00:02:55.700 | that Potiphar was any less sinful

00:03:00.100 | than his wife in the way he treated Joseph,

00:03:04.240 | or that Samson was any less of a sinful dupe

00:03:08.240 | than Delilah was devious.

00:03:10.380 | So any attempt to argue for the greater sinfulness

00:03:16.440 | of women statistically from the Bible is doomed to failure.

00:03:21.680 | That's first argument.

00:03:23.120 | Number two, if someone wants to use statistics

00:03:27.000 | against males and females, oh my goodness,

00:03:30.680 | they've got this to contend with.

00:03:32.080 | In America today, 93% of everyone who's in prison is a man.

00:03:37.080 | 93% of all prisoners are men.

00:03:42.280 | Of all the people arrested each year, 73% are men.

00:03:46.440 | Of all those convicted of violent crimes, 80% are men.

00:03:50.600 | Of all the rapes that are reported,

00:03:53.240 | the one forcing the other is 99% of the time a man.

00:03:58.040 | Of all the homicides that are committed,

00:04:00.160 | 89% are committed by men.

00:04:03.040 | Of all those arrested for robbery, 87% are men.

00:04:07.320 | Of all those arrested for arson, 83% are men.

00:04:12.060 | This is devastating, right?

00:04:13.960 | Yeah, yeah.

00:04:15.040 | I feel horrible just saying it.

00:04:17.000 | If statistics are going to prove anything,

00:04:20.920 | we're gonna be hard put to say

00:04:22.600 | that women are more sinful than men.

00:04:24.280 | My goodness.

00:04:26.040 | Third observation, third argument.

00:04:28.020 | When you look at the principal statements

00:04:32.200 | about human depravity in the Bible,

00:04:36.120 | what you find is that human beings without distinction

00:04:41.000 | between male and female are said to be

00:04:45.240 | under the power of sin.

00:04:46.800 | For example, Romans 3, Paul sums up his indictment

00:04:50.760 | of the human race in chapters one to three by saying,

00:04:54.720 | "I have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks,

00:04:59.720 | "are under sin as it is written,

00:05:03.240 | "none is righteous, no, not one."

00:05:06.360 | And verse 23, "All have sinned

00:05:08.460 | "and fall short of the glory of God."

00:05:10.000 | In Romans 5.12, 5.18, "As sin came into the world

00:05:14.480 | "through one man," man, by the way, not Eve, man,

00:05:17.880 | "and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,

00:05:22.440 | "so all have sinned.

00:05:24.300 | "One trespass led to condemnation for all men."

00:05:29.080 | That is all persons.

00:05:30.360 | There is no effort in any of this to say

00:05:34.480 | that the corruption we inherited from Adam, not Eve,

00:05:38.200 | is worse in women.

00:05:41.320 | Fourth, maybe the most commonly cited text

00:05:46.320 | to ascribe to woman a greater sinfulness or proneness to sin

00:05:51.560 | is the role of Eve that she played in the fall in Genesis 3

00:05:57.520 | and what Paul says about it in 1 Timothy 2.12 and 13.

00:06:04.120 | He says, "I do not permit a woman to teach

00:06:07.560 | "or to exercise authority over a man.

00:06:10.320 | "Rather, she is to remain quiet."

00:06:12.320 | And then he gives two reasons for why he says that.

00:06:15.260 | One, "For Adam was created, was formed first, then Eve."

00:06:21.400 | That's number one.

00:06:22.860 | Number two, "Adam was not deceived,

00:06:26.240 | "but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor."

00:06:30.480 | Here's what I think Paul means.

00:06:32.040 | Adam was formed first means that there are

00:06:37.400 | at least seven or eight pointers, exegetical pointers,

00:06:42.400 | in the first couple of chapters of Genesis

00:06:46.400 | that, like this one here, temporal priority,

00:06:49.160 | Adam first, Eve second, these pointers

00:06:52.520 | that man was meant by God to bear a special kind

00:06:57.520 | of responsibility and leadership in relation to the woman.

00:07:01.640 | Paul infers, therefore, that giving the role of an elder

00:07:05.960 | or overseer to men accords with God's design.

00:07:08.800 | That's his first argument.

00:07:10.160 | And then the reference to Eve being deceived, not Adam,

00:07:15.160 | is, I think, a reference to the fact that Satan assaulted

00:07:20.640 | and undermined the God-given leadership role of Adam

00:07:27.600 | by snubbing him, ignoring him, as he stood there

00:07:32.560 | with his wife during the temptation.

00:07:35.360 | And Genesis 3, 6 makes it very clear he was standing

00:07:39.080 | with her as Satan was interacting with her

00:07:42.320 | and bringing down the relationship.

00:07:45.880 | He was there with her.

00:07:47.500 | So Satan was ignoring the leader, snubbing him,

00:07:53.960 | and instead speaking to the woman who was to be protected

00:08:00.160 | by the leader if he had been stepping up

00:08:02.680 | to do what he ought to do.

00:08:05.560 | And the point of the text, I think,

00:08:08.800 | is that the disaster that followed is owing to this assault

00:08:13.800 | on the God-given roles of man and woman

00:08:17.920 | as Eve was made the spokesman and Adam abdicated his role

00:08:22.920 | as protector and leader.

00:08:26.120 | Now, which of those sins, hers or his, is worse?

00:08:31.120 | The text doesn't say.

00:08:33.720 | There was a peculiar sense in which Satan targeted her

00:08:38.720 | in the face of him for deception, and they both bought it.

00:08:44.160 | He passively, she actively.

00:08:47.240 | Fifth, when Paul does describe unnatural female sin,

00:08:52.240 | he does it in perfect parallel with unnatural male sin.

00:08:58.840 | For example, Romans 1, 26 to 27,

00:09:02.520 | God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

00:09:05.800 | Their women exchanged natural relations

00:09:08.960 | for those that are contrary to nature and parallel.

00:09:12.640 | Their men likewise gave up natural relations with women

00:09:17.640 | and were consumed with passion for one another,

00:09:21.560 | men committing shameless acts with men

00:09:23.800 | and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

00:09:28.220 | We don't come away from this text thinking

00:09:30.980 | that Paul saw in men or women a greater bent to sin,

00:09:35.920 | even a sin that's against nature.

00:09:39.880 | Sixth, my last reason for saying we should not raise our kids

00:09:44.880 | with the assumption that our daughters are, by nature,

00:09:50.640 | more sinful or more prone to sin than our sons

00:09:55.080 | is that there's a better way.

00:09:56.880 | There's a better way to prepare them

00:10:00.520 | for the peculiar male temptations to sin

00:10:05.520 | and the peculiar female temptations to sin.

00:10:10.040 | The better way is to teach them what it means

00:10:14.000 | for sons to grow up and be godly men and not women

00:10:18.760 | and for the daughters to grow up

00:10:21.160 | and be godly women and not men,

00:10:24.440 | and then to show them that manhood and womanhood

00:10:28.200 | really are beset because of our fallen nature

00:10:33.200 | with temptations that are peculiar to being a man,

00:10:37.760 | peculiar to being a woman,

00:10:39.880 | and we need to prepare our kids for this.

00:10:42.620 | They need to know what's peculiar about a man,

00:10:44.680 | what's peculiar about a woman,

00:10:46.000 | and then what temptations might touch them

00:10:49.400 | peculiarly different from the opposite sex.

00:10:52.480 | For example, you might say that each has sexual longings,

00:10:57.480 | men and women, the man's superior strength

00:11:03.840 | might tempt him to use that force

00:11:07.840 | to get what he wants sinfully, called rape,

00:11:12.000 | instead of using his strength to protect

00:11:15.200 | and to care for the woman,

00:11:16.600 | and the woman being the weaker vessel,

00:11:18.960 | as Peter describes it, might tempt her.

00:11:23.360 | Her temptation might be peculiar to that weakness

00:11:27.040 | in that she's more subtle and manipulative

00:11:30.160 | to get what she wants.

00:11:32.000 | So there are differences between male and female,

00:11:35.480 | and there are therefore different temptations

00:11:38.160 | that they might face.

00:11:40.140 | Or you might say that because man has

00:11:43.660 | a special responsibility to be

00:11:45.600 | the sacrificial loving leader,

00:11:47.920 | he might be tempted to neglect that responsibility

00:11:50.760 | and be passive, a couch potato,

00:11:54.080 | and the woman might be tempted to grasp

00:11:57.680 | after that leadership and become domineering.

00:12:01.040 | Or you might say that since the husband

00:12:04.080 | is designed by God to be a father

00:12:06.920 | and the wife is designed by God to be a mother,

00:12:10.820 | he might be tempted to sinfully father his wife

00:12:15.240 | as a daughter, and she might be sinfully tempted

00:12:18.840 | to mother her husband as a son,

00:12:22.960 | and thus both of them demean and offend

00:12:26.200 | the other in different ways.

00:12:28.440 | In other words, yes, we teach our children

00:12:32.880 | that they are sinners, and yes,

00:12:35.920 | we teach them that there are peculiar temptations

00:12:40.520 | to sin that come differently to men and women,

00:12:44.520 | and they are not always the same,

00:12:47.040 | but it does no good to try to tally up

00:12:52.040 | somehow who has the deeper depravity.

00:12:56.340 | It is so deep in both of us

00:12:59.400 | that we have plenty of work to do

00:13:02.780 | without claiming that we are better or worse

00:13:06.600 | because of being a man or a woman,

00:13:09.480 | and we can be thankful that if we trust him,

00:13:13.680 | Jesus has died for us and covers all of our sins,

00:13:18.120 | the ones that are the same

00:13:20.240 | and the ones that are peculiar to us.

00:13:23.360 | - Thank you, Pastor John, and international listeners,

00:13:25.880 | those of you outside the United States,

00:13:27.720 | thank you for sending your questions to us.

00:13:30.200 | You see the world very differently than we see it,

00:13:32.240 | so we need you to keep asking great questions

00:13:34.680 | and sending them in to us, which you can do right now

00:13:37.120 | through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:13:42.480 | We now break for the weekend.

00:13:43.840 | I am your host, Tony Reike, and Pastor John,

00:13:46.040 | and I will see you back here on Monday.

00:13:48.800 | Thanks for listening.

00:13:49.840 | (upbeat music)

00:13:52.420 | (upbeat music)

00:13:55.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Who’s More Sinful: Men or Women?

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