(upbeat music) Andrea, a podcast listener in Jackson, Mississippi, writes in, "Hello, Pastor John. "Thank you for your books, "and particularly your new book on Providence," she writes. "It has proven to be life-altering for me. "Thank you. "I was wondering if you could take a moment "to address an entirely different topic, "a marriage question, actually.

"I've started to notice an emerging view "of complementarity online and in my own circles "that seems a little off to me. "It's called complementarity and holds to the idea "that the husband and wife should take on "different roles in the home, "roles that mostly don't overlap. "But to me, it often sounds like simply a functional idea.

"So if the wife is a better teacher, "she teaches the children the Bible, "and the husband doesn't. "Or if the wife makes more money, "the husband takes the primary role "in caring for the daily needs of the kids. "It's called complementarity in the sense "that each spouse is not duplicating the role of the other.

"Each complements what the other is doing. "But I don't know what else to call it "except to say it feels like a genderless complementarity. "The husband and wife do not overlap duties "out of efficiency, not from deeper convictions. "In fact, gender rarely, if ever, "is brought in to define which roles the man has "that the woman does not and vice versa.

"Do you see this functional complementarity? "If so, how do you respond "and what roles in the home are most gendered? "I would love your thoughts on this." - I suppose it's inevitable that the longer a label is used like complementarianism or complementarity, the easier it is for the label to replace the reality.

The label complementarian as a designation for how men and women relate to each other has been around for about 35 years. And I would want to stress that labels are only valuable if they capture and communicate reality. So it's the biblical reality that we really care about, not so much the label.

Now, I think Andrea is right that the label today is less clear and less precise in the reality it refers to than it used to be. And she's pointing to a particular use of the label where the reality behind it seems to have more or less vanished. People are calling themselves complementarian without any serious reference to what the essence of manhood and womanhood really are and what that essence calls for in life.

From the beginning in the late '80s, 1980s, the term complementarianism included not just the biblical conviction that men should be the elders or pastors of churches and men should be the heads of their marriages or homes, but also the conviction that underneath these distinctions in roles, there are profound differences in the very nature of manhood and womanhood.

And those differences in the unique essence of manhood and the unique essence of womanhood were designed by God in creation and were the foundation for why God assigned the differing roles that he did. What we are by God's original design in making us male and female has always been the foundation for God's design for how men and women relate to each other and what roles we take.

So I would say it's a fundamental mistake for husbands and wives or men and women in the church or men and women in general to define our roles and how we function in them without any reference to the deeper design of God and who we are as male and female.

So let me try to show what I mean by referring to a couple of Bible passages. For example, 1 Timothy 2, 12 to 14. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. And then he gives a foundation, an argument, a ground that goes all the way back to creation and the ruin of that creation in the fall.

He says, verse 13, for Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. So I take Paul to be arguing something like this. The authoritative teaching role in the church, that is the role of governance and teaching, the role of an elder, is to be filled by spiritually mature and gifted men because God established in the first two chapters of Genesis a peculiar responsibility and leadership for Adam as part of God's design for manhood and what it means to be male in his family and in the world.

Now we can see this design for man's peculiar responsibility in leadership confirmed by the way it falls apart in the moment of Satan's temptation and the way God follows up with Adam and Eve after the fall. Genesis 3, 6 says that Adam was with Eve at the temptation. He didn't show up later, but Satan being subtle and deceptive, totally ignores the person, the man, that God had made responsible for the life of the garden.

The man. Thus Satan attacks at this very crucial moment. He attacks and undermines God's design and turns the woman into the spokesman and the leader and the decision maker for humanity. Now both Adam and Eve fall for this. Adam remains totally silent when he should have stepped in and taken responsibility for this horrifically dangerous moment.

Eve willingly assumes the role of responsible leader and the result is catastrophic. Failure to be obedient to God for both of them. Now when Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, 13, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. I don't think he intends to say Adam is guiltless.

We know that from Romans 5, where Adam's disobedience in fact is the decisive disobedience that brings down the curse on humanity. The point rather of saying Adam was not deceived is that Satan undermined Adam's leadership role by not targeting Adam for deception, but rather the woman. He made her the leader at the moment of deception.

So the point in the context of 1 Timothy is this, when the role of men and women are reversed at the very point where leadership matters most, things go very badly for families and churches and societies. Now God confirms that understanding of what happened by the way he calls the couple to account.

A few verses later, God comes to find them in the garden. Genesis 3, 9 says, "The Lord God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden. "I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself." And he said, "Who told you you were naked?

"Have you eaten of the tree "which I commanded you not to eat?" Now why didn't God seek out the woman first since she ate the forbidden fruit first? Because God made man first and built into him a God-given sense of sacrificial responsibility for leadership and protection and provision. He is responsible for what just happened.

That's the price of leadership, this kind of built-in creation-based leadership for man is confirmed in Genesis 5. This is the second text I'm looking at. Ephesians 5, 23 to 30, "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.

Husbands, love your wives. Yes, Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. So Paul describes the relationship as irreversible. The roles are not interchangeable.

Christ and the church don't get interchanged. They are the meaning of this relationship. How the husband and wife relate is to show the covenant love between Christ and the church, and Christ is the leader, savior, protector, nourisher, provider. And Paul roots those roles in the original pre-fall creation account in Genesis 2, 24, which he quotes now in verse 31.

"A man shall leave his father and mother "and hold fast to his wife, "and the two shall become one flesh." And then he applies it like this. This mystery is profound, and I am saying, it, that is the meaning of manhood and womanhood in marriage, it refers to Christ and the church.

That's the meaning of male and female in marriage. Male and female modeling Christ and the church in roles of headship and submission that cannot be reversed any more than Christ and the church can. So I conclude from these two texts, 1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5 and others that I'm not mentioning, that the very nature of God-designed manhood and womanhood is the foundation of the roles we are given by God.

A complementarianism stripped of its foundation in the God-given essence of manhood and womanhood is a label that has lost its reality. When it comes to the hundreds of activities in the home, and who does them, that will be sorted out best where husband and wife agree biblically that the man bears a special God-given burden of responsibility for leadership, for protection, for provision in the family, all carried out in the pursuit of the amazing model of Christ's love for the church and the church's glad submission to Christ.

- Thank you, Pastor John and Andrea. Thank you for the question. You can ask a question of your own. Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, how do we shepherd small children through the pains of life, particularly when it comes to God's providence over all things, even our trials?

When is a child ready to try and understand these things? And how early is too early? These are tricky questions, important ones for all parents to think through, and that's how we begin next week. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend.

We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)