Do gender roles apply beyond marriage? I think most of us would confirm that biological differences play a specific place in defining the roles of husbands and wives within the marriage covenant, but what about gender distinctions in broader society and in the workplace? It's a question from an anonymous young woman who asks this.

Hello, Pastor John. My question is whether gender alone should affect the way a Christian views his or her identity, and should gender alone change the way he or she behaves, even outside of marriage? If so, how and why? It seems most questions of this type get answered related to gender roles within the family and not at the level of mere gender alone, even among singles.

Pastor John, what would you say to her? Well, the answer is yes. Gender alone—that is, our sexual maleness or femaleness alone—is an essential part of our God-given identity, whether we're married or not. You are who you are, everywhere you are, and with whomever you are. Your core identity as male or female does not change according to your audience or your relationships.

You have God-given stability, constancy in who you are. You're not a chameleon in your sexual personhood. Your sexuality is rooted in your biological and anatomical identity, and more than that, it's rooted, as we are discovering more and more every day in sociological and psychological research, it's rooted in the distinct workings of the male and female brain and the psychological outworkings of those distinctions in all of life.

Just go to YouTube and type in almost anything like, "Are men and women different?" or "Are men and women brains?" And you'll get all kinds of amazing documented research about how different men and women are in their very biological, psychological natures. Now, as Christians, we believe that the brain and the soul are not identical but are interrelated in mysterious ways that have profound correspondence.

All Christians agree that we are responsible morally before God for our thoughts and our feelings, even though our brains, that organ inside our skull, our brains and our hormones are involved in what we think and feel. The mystery of how the brain and the supraphysical soul are related is probably incomprehensible to finite people.

That'd be my guess. I don't think we'll ever comprehend fully this mystery. But we know that what the brain does in thinking and desiring reflects reality in the personhood. I mean a personhood that is more than physical, the personhood that will exist after death when we go to be with Christ before the resurrection.

In other words, we are persons in the presence of Christ enjoying Christ as far better, Paul says, even though we don't have bodies. The brain is down there rotting in the grave, and our soul, our personhood, is in heaven with Christ. And the differences that exist in general between men's and women's brains, along with the innate differences that mark our lives, are profoundly woven together with the supraphysical personhood.

So my answer is yes, our sexual identity as male and female is part of our true God-given, body-based, brain-based, soul-based identity, whether we are married or single. It is relevant for all our relationships, not just one of them. And when we are spiritually and physically and psychologically whole and healthy, this will manifest itself with scarcely any self-consciousness.

A mature, healthy woman does not consciously try to be a woman. She just is what she is, and so with a mature, healthy man. Now let me come at it one other way. Let's come at it from Ephesians 5 like this. Paul gave us a picture of distinct manhood and womanhood in marriage, a picture that is relevant, I'm going to argue, relevant for men and women outside marriage.

Here's what he wrote. This is Ephesians 5:22 following. "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands." Therefore, that's the dynamic of leadership and glad support for that leadership of the husband.

The husband's leadership, the wife's glad support for that leadership. Now keep reading. "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Now there's the dynamic of protection. Christ dies to save her, dies to rescue her, dies to protect her from the devil and from sin and from hell in the analogy with the church.

And so husbands are willing to die to rescue, die to save, die to protect her in every kind of way she may need it. "He who loves his wife loves himself." We're at verse 29 now. "For no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church." Now there's the third element.

So first we saw leadership, then we saw protection. Now here's the dynamic of provision. A husband feels a special God-given responsibility. I say special, not soul God-given responsibility, but a special, unique responsibility in the family to be a nourisher, a cherisher, a provider for his wife and the family.

So in my little book, What's the Difference?, I define manhood or masculinity like this. At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's different relationships. And I define, accordingly, womanhood or femaleness or femininity like this.

At the heart of mature womanhood or femaleness or femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships. Now you can hear in each of those definitions that a man's manhood and a woman's womanhood are relevant to all their relationships, but in differing ways.

And this follows from the fact that there is nothing magical about a wedding ceremony that turns a man into a man or a woman into a woman. What a woman has been becoming all her life is what she will be in marriage. What a man has been becoming all his life, he will be in marriage.

They can't turn on manhood and they can't turn on womanhood like a switch on their honeymoon. When a woman contemplates marrying a man, she doesn't have to do it blindfolded. She can watch the man for a year or two years. She can be involved in dating relationships or an engagement relationship.

And during all that time, a discerning woman can see the evidences of whether a man's instincts and inclinations revealed a deep-seated sense of benevolent responsibility to lead and provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to his different relationships. She can see the trajectory of his life and what kind of leader and provider and protector he will be in marriage.

Neither he nor she suddenly becomes a biblical man or woman on the day they are married. So for these reasons, my answer to her is yes. Inside and outside marriage, our sexual identity as male and female are wonderful, inescapable parts of who we are in every relationship. And the best way to become the kind of men and women we ought to be in all the relationships of life is to immerse ourselves gladly in all of Scripture, absorbing all of its implications for manhood and womanhood, and then fix our eyes on men and women who walk in the most biblically mature way.

That's beautiful. Thank you, Pastor John. And I should say here that Pastor John has written and edited a 600-page book on these themes, which is titled Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and then also a 100-page book version of that called 50 Crucial Questions. You can download both of those books entirely for free at desiringgod.org/books.

Yes, the whole thing entirely free times two. Thanks for listening to the podcast over at our online home. Explore about 1300 of our past episodes, scan a list of our most popular ones, and read full transcripts. If you have a question that you may have of your own, go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

How can God be good and sovereign over all things and also allow intense personal suffering into people's lives? It's a heavy and important question from the real world, and it's one we get a lot. And it's a question in the inbox for Monday on the other side of the weekend.

We'll address that question. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.