Pastor John, if you're up for it, give us a theology of biblical womanhood in five minutes. I would start with where God starts in Genesis 1, where he says that God created man, male and female, in the image of God. He created them, not just the man. And so I would start with the massive, and I mean immeasurably massive truth, that men and women, and we're talking about women here, are created in the image of the Creator of the universe.

This is simply stunning. It means that every woman you look at on the street, or every woman you relate to in any way, is a potential queen of heaven, because she's created in the imago dei. She's in the image of God in the same way that the man is in the image of God, having a human nature which mirrors the very nature of God.

That's where I'd start. Secondly, I would draw attention to the fact that her worth, therefore, when you talk in terms of dignity or worth, is the same as man's. In fact, I would say both male and female are essential to the full revelation of God's glory. He didn't just create man.

When you get to the second part of the story, where man is created first, which I think is significant, and then woman is created, it says it wasn't good. It just wasn't finished. It wasn't good, until this woman who came from his side. No animal would do, because no animal was created in the image of God.

She must be of his nature, and thus of the nature of God. So she's of an equal worth, and both together, then, are the fuller revelation of God's glory. And then I would say that she has unique, special capacities, both physically, mentally, emotionally, that are different from men. And we should celebrate the differences between manhood and womanhood, and stress that those differences are meant that when we're together, both as singles, I would argue, there are cultural dynamics for people who are not married, and then there's cultural dynamics for people who are married.

When you're together, something more beautiful is shown of God than if we were all in our little silos of individuality. And the last thing I would do is draw attention to what we mean by complementarity, and say that one of the unique things about women is that they are ordained by God, called by God, to receive honor, I mean, to receive from man, and honor man, and support the leadership, and the protection, and the provision of godly men according to those appropriate roles.

And the reason I say that last little phrase is that as a woman navigates her life, if she's married, she's got a husband, she's got a pastor, she's got male friends who are the husbands of her female friends, she's got maybe colleagues at work, she's got the mailman who comes to the front door, perhaps, she has the mechanic at the precision tune, and so on.

All these males fulfill very different roles in her lives, and I don't mean that she receives and honors and supports leadership, protection, and provision from all of them in the same way. It's the dynamic and the dance of gender relations are different for every relationship, but there is something that God has put, I think, into men to be leaders and protectors and providers, and women to love that, delight in that, honor that, come alongside that, use all their manifold gifts to advance the cause of Christ through that, so that when they're together, they are complementing each other and the beauty of God is displayed more fully.

Do you suspect that gender role differences will carry over into eternity? Yes. Yes, because I think, even though the Bible says there'll be no marriage or giving in marriage, we won't have children in the age to come, I think that our personhood is so wrapped around our gender, or you could say our gender is wrapped around our personhood, that if we were stripped of our maleness or femaleness, we would be unrecognizable.

I think Jesus is a man today in heaven. He is Jesus Christ, the same as He was here, well, He was glorified, and I don't think we should think of Him in some androgynous way up there, or ourselves, entering into a kind of existence that has no correlation to the male and female that we had here, and it's going to be utterly, utterly beautiful.

There, all the sinful dimensions of manhood and womanhood will be taken away. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your questions to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name in your hometown. You can find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at desiringgod.org.

I'm your host, Tony Rehnke. Thanks for listening.