(upbeat music) - We're in a season here in the States faced with an incredible number of powerful men getting exposed for making unwanted and unwarranted sexual advances on women. Of the alleged perpetrators, the list includes names like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Al Franken, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O'Reilly, and Garrison Keillor.

It's on the left and on the right. It's liberals and conservatives, it's politicians and entertainers from Hollywood to Minneapolis to DC and to New York City. It seems like what makes these stories especially tragic, Pastor John, is not merely that these are powerful men who took advantage of less powerful women.

It's especially tragic because as men, that they are called by God to demonstrate sacrificial care for women beyond what women are called to offer men. You've written on this in a recent article, Pastor John. Here, simply debrief for us your thoughts, and especially now as you see the news of all these allegations.

- My point in that article and in this podcast is that the egalitarian assumptions in our culture and to a huge degree in the church as well, have muted, silenced, nullified one of the means that God has designed for the protection and the flourishing of women, namely that men as men, by virtue of their created God-given maleness, apart from any practical competencies that they have or don't have, that men as men have special responsibility to care for and protect and honor women that is different from the care and protection and honor that women owe men.

That's my thesis. That's my point. Now, it seems to me that for decades, Christian and non-Christian egalitarians have argued, have assumed, have modeled that peculiar roles and responsibilities among men and women in the home, in the church, in the culture should emerge only from competencies rather than from a deeper reality rooted in who we are differently as male and female.

Whereas complementarians believe that while competencies may shape the details of how our differing roles and responsibilities are worked out, nevertheless, God has built in to male and female profound and wonderful, even mysterious differences that carry different burdens and different responsibilities. Let me put it another way. If your nine-year-old son asks you, "Daddy, what does it mean to grow up "and be a man and not a woman?" Or your daughter asks, "Mommy, what does it mean "to grow up and be a woman and not a man?" It won't do to answer, and I've read dozens of articles that try to answer, it won't do to answer, "Well, it means "that when you grow up, you will have maturity "and wisdom and courage and sacrifice "and humility and patience and kindness "and strength and self-control and purity and faith "and hope and love," et cetera, because that doesn't answer the question.

Those traits are absolutely right, but they belong to both men and women. And the question was, what does it mean to grow up and be a man and not a woman? What does it mean to grow up and be a woman and not a man? Is there, mommy and daddy, a God-given, profound, beautiful meaning to manhood and womanhood?

Kids don't say it like that, but that's what they wanna know eventually, is there a difference beyond mere anatomy? Are there built-in responsibilities that I have simply because I'm a male or a female human being? There is a pervasive, egalitarian disinclination to say yes to that question. The egalitarian inclination is to define all our relationships by competencies.

And my suggestion or my contention is, this is hurting us, this refusal to answer that question or be burdened by it is hurting us. It confuses everyone, especially the children, and this confusion is hurting people. It has moved way beyond confusion. It's a firm conviction of most of our egalitarian culture that men as men do not owe women a special kind of care and protection and honor that women do not owe men.

I believe they do, and I believe 50 years of denying it is one of the seeds, there are others in our culture, but one of the seeds that is bearing very bad fruit, including all those sexual abuses you talked about in your question. So let me just point to a few biblical evidences for believing men as men have special, God-intended, God-designed responsibilities for care and protection and honor toward women that women do not have toward men.

And lest I be misunderstood, of course, there are many situations in which women have responsibilities to care for, protect, and honor men. I'm simply saying that these are not the same. Men have a special, God-given responsibility that comes with being a man, as a man, not because of practical competency.

So here are, I think I've got three jotted down here, three pointers in the Bible. They each take a big article to flesh out, but here they are. Number one, when Satan tempted Eve, it says in Genesis 3, 6, that Adam, quote, "was with her." In view of everything else that I see in Genesis 1 to 4, and in view of the way Paul handles this issue, this text in 1 Timothy 2, 12 following, I think the author, the author of Genesis, Moses, wants us to see that part of the collapse of God's beautiful order in the garden was the failure of Adam to speak up and to take some initiative and deal with the devil and be the leader and protector that God had designed him to be.

He failed, and he's been failing ever since. And one reason Jesus came into the world was to destroy that failure and cause Adam to own up to the fact that he's got a special burden, a special responsibility to bear in protecting and caring for and honoring this woman. That's number one.

Number two, in Colossians 3, 19, the apostle Paul told husbands, "Love your wives and do not be harsh with them." Now, that is not the same as saying, "Neither of you should be harsh." It is a special restraint on typical sinful, male harshness and roughness and cruelty that's gone on for thousands of years.

And its positive counterpart is spelled out stunningly, stunningly, beautifully, counter-culturally, I would argue, in every culture on the planet, counter-culturally in Ephesians 5, 22 to 33. There's nothing like it in any culture in the world that's not rooted in this text, where leadership like Jesus and protection like Jesus and provision and cherishing and nourishing like Jesus are laid on the man as a man, not because he's more competent, but because he's a man, not interchangeable with a woman any more than Christ and the church are interchangeable.

And I would argue from scripture, like the creation account and other places, that this special burden put on man, this special responsibility toward women for honor and care and protection does not evaporate when he walks out the door of his home as though it were a matter of geography or a matter of marriage alone.

Manhood does not cease to be manhood outside the home. That's number two. Here's the last one. 1 Peter 3, 7, "Husbands are told to dwell with their wives according to knowledge." And then that dwelling according to knowledge is defined two ways. And the first one is the one I'm concerned with because it's the one that applies whether you're Christian or not.

The first one is based on natural differences. The second one, fellow heirs of the grace of life, is based on spiritual uniqueness of Christians. Peter says, "Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel." Now, there are ways, of course, that women are stronger than men and ways a woman are weaker than men.

And Peter is focusing on that and asking, "How shall a man relate to a woman if she is weaker, more vulnerable to his power?" And the answer is honor, honor, honor. And my point is that this is a peculiar, a special honor and a kind of honor God has built into the man as the stronger.

This is not merely mutual honor. This is a special honor flowing from the stronger to the weaker, the honor of a man toward a woman precisely because he's a man. And in general, men are in the position of physical power and strength over women. And God inserts between them in that relationship a special duty, a special responsibility that a man has.

And my point, Tony, in this article, in this podcast, is that this divine design for men, as men, to show us a special care, protection, honor to women is essential for good families, churches, society, and for women in particular. Millions of people in our day would rather sacrifice this peculiar biblical mandate given for the good of women, they would rather sacrifice it than betray any hint of compromise with egalitarian assumptions.

So what I'm arguing is that we have forfeited both a great God-ordained restraint upon male vice and male power, and we have forfeited a great God-ordained incentive for male valor because we refuse to even think in terms of maleness and femaleness as they are created by God carrying distinct and unique responsibilities and burdens.

We have put our hope in the myth that the summons to generic human virtue with no attention to the peculiar virtues required of manhood and womanhood would be sufficient to create a beautiful society of mutual respect. It isn't working. Men need to be taught from the time that they are little boys that part of their manhood is to feel a special responsibility for the care and protection and honoring of women just because they are men.

- God's design is profound, and these suggestions are significant. Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast as we address controversial issues like this one, hopefully with grace and with care, and hopefully in an understandable way for our audience. And let us know how we're doing.

Let us know if you have follow-up questions. You can stay current with our episodes through your favorite podcast app, of course, and every episode is now also published in YouTube. That's right, every episode now is published in YouTube. You can go to our feed at youtube.com/desiringgod and subscribe there.

And if you already knew that, if you're listening to this through YouTube, be sure to subscribe to the channel for the latest from Desiring God. And if you have a question for Pastor John, send it to us through our podcast homepage at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, we're gonna break for the weekend and return with an interesting topic because Pastor John will occasionally allude to a dark season he faced in his early 40s.

It was a midlife crisis that was very strong. But Pastor John, you haven't talked a lot about it. Next time I'm gonna ask you to go back into this dark season and for you to offer counsel to men who are facing these midlife years who are 40 or close to 40.

It should be a really important episode. I'm looking forward to it. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)