(upbeat music) - Happy Friday, I hope you had a wonderful week. As you might've noticed, we've been picking on men recently on the podcast, talking about how a man's anger destroys the home, or how a man's lust wreaks havoc on his marriage. We looked at the major fallout of one man's decision to abandon his wife and daughters, and we've addressed unbelieving men twice in recent episodes.

So what about women? We end this week with an international question, which I love, because our international listeners are willing to ask questions that don't get asked by anyone here in the States. We take it, we pose it, we answer it, and we publish it. And very often those episodes prove interesting to international listeners and to our local listeners as well.

I could give you some very specific examples of how this has played out in the past on interracial marriage episodes, for example, but instead, let's just get into today's question from an international listener, a woman, who writes this, "Pastor John, hello. I have been hearing from Christians around me that women are more sinful than men.

I know from my daily ungodly thoughts and actions how sinful I am, but as a mother of boys and girls, does the Bible teach that I should teach my girls they are more sinful than boys? I know the Bible says we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but Eve, Delilah, Samson's wives, Solomon's wives, Potiphar's wife, these have been listed to me as proof that women are more evil than men are.

Is it true?" - I think it would be a huge mistake to raise our children with the assumption that our daughters are by nature more sinful or more prone to sin than our sons. Now, let me give you at least six reasons why that would be both misleading and harmful.

First, in response to the argument that Eve, Delilah, Solomon's wives, Potiphar's wife, prove that women are more sinful than men, consider how utterly lopsided that observation is. When, for example, there were far more wicked kings in the Old Testament than wicked queens, and all the Pharisees and Sadducees and high priests and scribes that Jesus indicted with such deep sinfulness were all men, all of them.

And if you were to make a list of especially wicked people in the Bible, my goodness, the number of men on that list would far outnumber the number of women on that list. So even if you should focus on those relationships where the woman sins, especially pointed out, there's no evidence, for example, that Potiphar was any less sinful than his wife in the way he treated Joseph, or that Samson was any less of a sinful dupe than Delilah was devious.

So any attempt to argue for the greater sinfulness of women statistically from the Bible is doomed to failure. That's first argument. Number two, if someone wants to use statistics against males and females, oh my goodness, they've got this to contend with. In America today, 93% of everyone who's in prison is a man.

93% of all prisoners are men. Of all the people arrested each year, 73% are men. Of all those convicted of violent crimes, 80% are men. Of all the rapes that are reported, the one forcing the other is 99% of the time a man. Of all the homicides that are committed, 89% are committed by men.

Of all those arrested for robbery, 87% are men. Of all those arrested for arson, 83% are men. This is devastating, right? Yeah, yeah. I feel horrible just saying it. If statistics are going to prove anything, we're gonna be hard put to say that women are more sinful than men.

My goodness. Third observation, third argument. When you look at the principal statements about human depravity in the Bible, what you find is that human beings without distinction between male and female are said to be under the power of sin. For example, Romans 3, Paul sums up his indictment of the human race in chapters one to three by saying, "I have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, "are under sin as it is written, "none is righteous, no, not one." And verse 23, "All have sinned "and fall short of the glory of God." In Romans 5.12, 5.18, "As sin came into the world "through one man," man, by the way, not Eve, man, "and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, "so all have sinned.

"One trespass led to condemnation for all men." That is all persons. There is no effort in any of this to say that the corruption we inherited from Adam, not Eve, is worse in women. Fourth, maybe the most commonly cited text to ascribe to woman a greater sinfulness or proneness to sin is the role of Eve that she played in the fall in Genesis 3 and what Paul says about it in 1 Timothy 2.12 and 13.

He says, "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 two reasons for why he says that. One, "For Adam was created, was formed first, then Eve." That's number one. Number two, "Adam was not deceived, "but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." Here's what I think Paul means.

Adam was formed first means that there are at least seven or eight pointers, exegetical pointers, in the first couple of chapters of Genesis that, like this one here, temporal priority, Adam first, Eve second, these pointers that man was meant by God to bear a special kind of responsibility and leadership in relation to the woman.

Paul infers, therefore, that giving the role of an elder or overseer to men accords with God's design. That's his first argument. And then the reference to Eve being deceived, not Adam, is, I think, a reference to the fact that Satan assaulted and undermined the God-given leadership role of Adam by snubbing him, ignoring him, as he stood there with his wife during the temptation.

And Genesis 3, 6 makes it very clear he was standing with her as Satan was interacting with her and bringing down the relationship. He was there with her. So Satan was ignoring the leader, snubbing him, and instead speaking to the woman who was to be protected by the leader if he had been stepping up to do what he ought to do.

And the point of the text, I think, is that the disaster that followed is owing to this assault on the God-given roles of man and woman as Eve was made the spokesman and Adam abdicated his role as protector and leader. Now, which of those sins, hers or his, is worse?

The text doesn't say. There was a peculiar sense in which Satan targeted her in the face of him for deception, and they both bought it. He passively, she actively. Fifth, when Paul does describe unnatural female sin, he does it in perfect parallel with unnatural male sin. For example, Romans 1, 26 to 27, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and parallel. Their men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error. We don't come away from this text thinking that Paul saw in men or women a greater bent to sin, even a sin that's against nature.

Sixth, my last reason for saying we should not raise our kids with the assumption that our daughters are, by nature, more sinful or more prone to sin than our sons is that there's a better way. There's a better way to prepare them for the peculiar male temptations to sin and the peculiar female temptations to sin.

The better way is to teach them what it means for sons to grow up and be godly men and not women and for the daughters to grow up and be godly women and not men, and then to show them that manhood and womanhood really are beset because of our fallen nature with temptations that are peculiar to being a man, peculiar to being a woman, and we need to prepare our kids for this.

They need to know what's peculiar about a man, what's peculiar about a woman, and then what temptations might touch them peculiarly different from the opposite sex. For example, you might say that each has sexual longings, men and women, the man's superior strength might tempt him to use that force to get what he wants sinfully, called rape, instead of using his strength to protect and to care for the woman, and the woman being the weaker vessel, as Peter describes it, might tempt her.

Her temptation might be peculiar to that weakness in that she's more subtle and manipulative to get what she wants. So there are differences between male and female, and there are therefore different temptations that they might face. Or you might say that because man has a special responsibility to be the sacrificial loving leader, he might be tempted to neglect that responsibility and be passive, a couch potato, and the woman might be tempted to grasp after that leadership and become domineering.

Or you might say that since the husband is designed by God to be a father and the wife is designed by God to be a mother, he might be tempted to sinfully father his wife as a daughter, and she might be sinfully tempted to mother her husband as a son, and thus both of them demean and offend the other in different ways.

In other words, yes, we teach our children that they are sinners, and yes, we teach them that there are peculiar temptations to sin that come differently to men and women, and they are not always the same, but it does no good to try to tally up somehow who has the deeper depravity.

It is so deep in both of us that we have plenty of work to do without claiming that we are better or worse because of being a man or a woman, and we can be thankful that if we trust him, Jesus has died for us and covers all of our sins, the ones that are the same and the ones that are peculiar to us.

- Thank you, Pastor John, and international listeners, those of you outside the United States, thank you for sending your questions to us. You see the world very differently than we see it, so we need you to keep asking great questions and sending them in to us, which you can do right now through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

We now break for the weekend. I am your host, Tony Reike, and Pastor John, and I will see you back here on Monday. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)