Reforming FamilyLife & Public Culture: The Quest #17: The Biblical Definition of Manhood Pt 1

We’ve been doing some original research in the book of Genesis, and what that book has been telling us loud and clear is this; that without God and without those original manhood blueprints, our manhood is going to die. We need both of those in order to make it. We’ve been stirring around in those opening chapters, in order to formulate a definition.

Remember at the beginning of the Sessions, I made 5 promises to you and one of those promises was that you would have a specific, clear and compelling definition of manhood, so that from this point on, after next session, you will never, ever hesitate when somebody asks you the question: “What is a man?” At the end of the next session, you’ll be motivated when somebody asks you that question or – even more importantly – if your son asks you that question or as you talk to your son and tell him ‘you need to be a man,’ and he says, ‘well, dad, what is a man?’ You’ll be able to tell him concisely and compellingly and Biblically. That’s what we want to do here today.

Final Thoughts from Genesis

A. Some Key Reminders

1. Genesis tells us that men were created by God to be social and spiritual leaders.

If there’s one thing that Genesis shouts to us – although it does it in subtle ways – it tells us that at the core of masculinity is a unique and special kind of leadership. It has very implicit social and spiritual dimensions attached to it. Genesis warns us in different ways – that we can go out in life and accomplish a lot, and we can be a lot and we can do a lot – but if we fail to incorporate these social and spiritual dimensions of leadership into our masculinity, our manhood will always feel incomplete to ourselves, and we will fall short with others.

Genesis tells us that these two dimensions – the social and the spiritual dimensions – are absolutely critical in a man feeling good about himself throughout his life.

When men abandon this leadership, for whatever reason, when the pursuit of this leadership is somehow taken away from them – you need to know that chaos always ensues.

When men do not accept the leadership that Genesis presents, or when a society (a society like ours) ceases to teach young men this social and spiritual dimension of leadership that we’ve seen in the book of Genesis – or even worse, when a society begins to demean this kind of leadership and say it shouldn’t be a part of a man’s life – then it doesn’t take long before that society quickly becomes troubled. When men cease to embrace the things that we’ve been talking about is that society begins to be “dumbed-down”. Men begin to act like boys on a consistent basis. They shun the things that make them men. They ignore them; they no longer embrace them. They’re no longer honored among their society; they no longer reach up high for their masculinity. They begin to act like boys. In the process, women are forced to do what men won’t do.

We see that In Scripture. When, because of their rebellion, they turned away from God. They didn’t feel like they needed God anymore and they decided to go their own independent way. So God brings a judgment through the prophet Isaiah and he says to the nation: “Because you’ve ignored Me, because you don’t think you need My instruction, My understanding, I’m going to take real men away from you.” Then, as the prophet Isaiah pronounces this judgment, he begins to describe what that society will look like without real men.

Isaiah 3:1-12 “For behold, the Lord God of hosts is going to remove the mighty man and the warrior, the judge, and the prophet, the diviner, and the elder, the captain of the 50; and the honorable man.” So the real men are gone, basically from that society. And here’s what the society begins to look like: “And I will make mere lads (that is, boys) their leaders, and capricious children will rule over them, and the people will be oppressed, each one by another; each one by his neighbor. The youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable. And when a man lays hold of his brother in his father’s house saying, ‘you have a cloak; you shall be our ruler; and these ruins need to be under your charge.’ He will protest on that day saying, ‘I’m not going to be your healer.’” (in other words everybody is saying, ‘somebody, take responsibility for this!’ And everybody’s saying ‘It’s not my problem; I’m not going to take charge of that.’) “For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen. The expression of their faces bear witness against them and they display their sin in this society like Sodom. They do not even conceal it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves, O, my people!”

Their oppressors are children and in this society. Without real men, women have to rule over them. That’s what you see when men – real men are removed; especially the kind of men who would embrace enthusiastically the social and spiritual dimensions of leadership that we see sketched briefly for us, and hinted softly to us in those first three chapters of Genesis.

We See that Today. What we saw in Isaiah’s time, we see in part even in our day as men are more and more, shunning the noble aspects of their masculinity. When you see that happen in Modern culture, you also see the same progression of events.

-Men become confused, directionless, troubled

-And as that happens in men’s lives, then Women suffer and must fight for their equality and protection

-Family life is harmed and children are hurt. Most children today have been abandoned by their dads. In the last years, teenage crime is on the rise. The youth storm against the elder

-Society becomes troubled. It begins to rot from the inside out, because there’s no one who can take the ruins and build them up because real men are missing. Men are MIAs (Missing In Action) in this culture war. A key principle in all we have been talking about is As men go, so goes the life of the society.

Men will always be in every culture. They are the leading social and spiritual indicator of what will come next in a culture. If men become irresponsible, what comes next is all of society becomes irresponsible. If men throw down their honor and their nobility, what comes next is Sodom and Gomorrah in that society. As men go, so goes the life and health of a culture. Genesis tells us that men were created to be social and spiritual leaders.

2. Genesis tells us that The male leadership of Genesis is not natural, but supernatural, with specific responsibilities.

When I say ‘supernatural’ it’s because it’s created by listening to God. And by listening to God, a man accepts some specific responsibilities. I hope that when we went through talking about Adam, you didn’t think ‘man! That requires a real leader! Kind of the ‘take-charge’ type; the Type A – captain of the football team; president of the company; the guy who commands attention; the natural-born leader. Please don’t think that.

A very small percentage of men are natural-born leaders. Genesis is not addressing natural-born leadership. What leadership is being addressed in Genesis is the kind of leadership any man can embrace.

Genesis is about courageous men, who are willing to step forward to initiate and embrace the specific responsibilities God has given them to be a leader. Leadership from the Scriptural standpoint, is a man simply saying, ‘I accept those responsibilities.’

Remember in the Isaiah passage they were saying, ‘Somebody take charge here.’ What Genesis says is that a real man will step forward, saying, “Hey, with God’s help, I’ll accept these responsibilities.” And what we see in Genesis are three specific responsibilities that are at the core of masculinity:

First, A resolve to obey, God’s will.
Secondly, A work to do. That’ll vary in every person’s life. In Adam’s life, he had a significant work to do in the Garden.
Thirdly, A woman to love, to care for, to protect, to watch over and to lead with God’s truth

Any courageous man from teenager on up – can at some point in his life, step in and say, “I’ll take those responsibilities. Give those to me. With God’s help, I’ll fulfill those 3 responsibilities”. By fulfilling those responsibilities, you step into a noble masculinity of leadership.” The kind of masculinity the Scriptures speak about in honor and say God created you to perform. That’s what Genesis speaks to.

B. Some Key Objections

There are some people who’ve looked in Genesis and said this is just religious stuff, and they’ve offered some objections to what I’ve talked about in Genesis.

1. You will have some that will tell you that the male leadership that we talked about in Genesis is cultural not creational. In other words, it is a real myth. It was made up. It’s not true; it’s fictitious. It’s just to put men in an oppressive place of leadership. And men have been able to do that, especially in a more agrarian kind of society through the ages by just being stronger, meaner, and tougher. So it’s kind of more evolutionary that men have had a place of leadership over women, but it’s been because of strength not because that’s the way it ought to be.

In answering that question from a Biblical point of view, I’d simply come at it this way. If male leadership is, in fact, cultural not creational, at least from the pages of the Bible, then why do the writers of the New Testament over and over again use creation to encourage male leadership, rather than correct it?

1 Corinthians 11:3, 8; Paul’s speaking. He says: “I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ.” (They can all get along.)

Then here’s his reasoning for that: “For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man.”

He goes back to creation and says ‘this is the way God designed it.’ It was set up. Not a harsh rulership, but a true, noble, spiritual and social leadership. I also would just simply say when Jesus Christ was on the earth, why did He choose 12 men to lead His church? He was not bound by culture, was He? He transcended culture.

On top of that I want you to know in the 20^th Century, there were 3 major attempts to prove that male leadership was cultural not creational. Did you know that? That male leadership was more evolutionary, rather than by design. Here are the 3 attempts:

a. Communism says ‘we’re going to create a society where everyone holds all things in common. And so for women, in communism, when Marxism first set up the state in eastern Europe, here’s what you had. For women you had the fact that you had universal daycare; religion was outlawed so we’re not going to live by ‘oppressive religion’ anymore. Abortion was made on demand and everyone went in the workplace as an equal. Did you know by the time the walls of Communism came down in our lifetime, the most patriarchal societies on earth were the Communists? The harshest male rule in the world was Communism! The Genesis 3 curse “He shall rule over you (harshly)” was nowhere better pictured than in places like Russia and Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and places like that.

b. In the middle of our century, we had another social experiment. It was called the Israeli kibbutz. On the kibbutz, you had people who came together to do a social experiment to outlaw gender roles. So you had a common place to raise your kids, and then men and women did everything equally. Did you know after just a few years, men began to lead the kibbutz in traditional ways? You know why they started doing that? Because the women wanted them to.

c. And then the third social experiment, experienced in America: Feminism. In feminism, it’s that everybody now is going to be the same; not just equal, but the same. And that’s been going for about a generation. But now women are saying! they want to ‘Have more time for our children. More time for our husbands', to be more involved in the things that make a woman a woman. They want their husbands to take more leadership in the home – both spiritually and socially – and to provide and protect, but their husbands wouldn’t let them! They wanted their husbands to do everything they were doing and then take care of the home and the kids both.

The greatest proponents of sameness today are not women. It’s the husband who refuses to step forward and accept his social and spiritual responsibilities given to him by God. It’s going to have serious implications on the next generation. But those three are social experiments, but they haven’t reversed the trend.

2. Another objection is that some say that the leadership that we see in Genesis is not the result of God’s original design; it’s the result of the fall.

In other words, men became leaders only after sin entered into the world. They cite Galatians 3:38 as proof. Here’s what it says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there’s neither slave nor free man; there’s neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

And they say, That proves it; we’re all the same.’ Go back and look at the context, because this verse does not speak to some kind of gender sameness or rolelessness. This verse is speaking to spiritual sameness. It’s simply saying that, regardless of your socio-economic background, or racial background, or gender background -- all of us have the same salvation offered to us. All of us have the same rights and privileges spiritually with God. But nowhere in the Bible are you going to find sameness for male and female, because when God created male and female, He created them that way to be different, and to have a different interaction, and a different life. Though functionally different, yes, they’re equal – and need to be valued that way. When a man and a woman work together that way, they experience the best of life.

Two Men/Two Masculine Identities

Now, with those sobering words, let’s look at some final thoughts in Genesis and answer the question, what is a man? And to do that we want to press the two captains of humanity together. If there were 2 men that we would look to to help us get a definition of manhood, it would be these two men: the Adam of Genesis and the Adam of the New Testament, Jesus Christ. I want you to know: every man will walk in the shadow of one of those two premier men. They are the captains of all humanity.

A. Adam and Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:45-49)

“So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” 1 Corinthians 15:45-49

“Adam and Christ stand against each other as the two great figures at the entrance of two worlds and two creations: the old and the new. And in their actions and fates lie the decisions for all who belong to them. (and then he makes this statement) because all men are comprehended in them.” ~ Herman Ridderbost

B. They are leaders of two distinct spiritual destinies for all humanity– men and women.

Every one of us shares the heritage of one or both of these men. Here’s the way the book of Romans says it. It kind of sums it up this way: Romans 5:17-19 “For if by the transgression of the one (that is Adam, of the Genesis) death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one. (that is, Jesus Christ). So then, as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men; even so through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience (that is Adam) the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one (that is the Adam of the New Testament, Jesus) the many were made righteous.”

That’s one of the great statements of Scripture to a lost world. Through one man sin entered into the world; through one Man righteousness entered the world. Through one man, masculinity was lost; through one Man masculinity was found. These are the two great captains of the human race.

C. These men also are leaders of two distinct masculine destinies.

Men, by the time your life is over, your life will either reflect the Adam of Genesis or the Adam of the gospels. You will stand in the shadow of one or the light of the other. That’s going to be your choice; but both are being presented to you.

Let’s look at these Adams in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. Here’s what it says: “So it’s written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural – then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second Man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the heavenly.”

When you look at that passage, there are some things that jump out. You see two Adams: you see one earthy – one heavenly. You see one is just a living soul; you see one as a life-giving Spirit, and therein we see these two captains of humanity.

First of all, the first Adam represents a manhood:

Set on a Natural Course. I see that in that 1 Corinthians passage by the word ‘earthy.’ That’s his focus. Earth. And that’s all that there is. His sights go no further than that.
Based on personal instinct, human reason and human reaction. Adam thought he had it figure out and that he didn’t need the revelation of the Word of God. “I can do it! I got this figured out!” So he set his course, based on his own human reason. His manhood was self- made; self-decided; self-willed and self-centered in the end. That’s the shadow of the first Adam.
Draws life from others. Remember in that passage, When Eve was about to sin, Adam was standing, probably what was going through his mind is, ‘If she lives, I win; if she dies, I’m not responsible.’ But what he was doing in that moment by not stepping forward as a real man, he was using his wife for his own ends by not being involved.
Without transcendent meaning. He’s not living for eternity; he’s living for himself, he’s living for now.
A living soul. Nothing more. That’s really what he became. His errant course just reduced him to mere existence.

The Second Adam's manhood

Set on a heavenly course. When you go through the gospels, one of the things you’re going to hear is Jesus declaring ‘Thy kingdom come.’ He lived with His sights up, he wasn’t earthy. His whole life was heavenly. There was more to His life than that and He was headed to this spiritual kingdom that He constantly proclaimed everywhere He went.
Yielded to revelation. ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ His manhood was not based on personal instinct; not what He felt; not human reason; not what He thought; not human reaction; what might have seemed right at the moment. He lived – not by bread alone – but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. That was His manhood. Revelation was at the heart of it.
Empowered others. He told us that when He said, ‘The Son of Man came not to be served; but to serve; and to give (My) life for others.’
Full of transcendent meaning. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world; neither are My values; neither is My way of life. My eyes are up; not down.”
A life-giving Spirit. Wherever He went, Jesus gave life to people. That’s a great image of what real manhood is. Real manhood is when a man walks into a room, or walks into his home, or spends time with his friends and there is energy flowing out of him that’s encouraging others. He’s moving others in a positive direction; building them up; encouraging them; giving them life. The manhood that sucks life out of people is no manhood at all. That’s being a boy. Boys take. Men give life.

D. How these two masculine identities play out practically

Adam’s manhood is what I call “conventional manhood, because manhood is a manhood that’s taught to men in every generation.

And What does conventional manhood focus on?- what a man does, competition with other men, temporal power, personal rewards, self and success. These are all the characteristics of conventional manhood. And conventional manhood is a kind of manhood, that when men embrace it, it works for a while, but usually at about 40 or 45, this manhood begins to burn out; “Suddenly, I’m saturated with self, but it’s left debris in my wake. I’m a success but I don’t feel good about me, why? I’ve competed with men and I’ve wounded a lot of people in the process. My whole life was to win, and before I knew it, it was winning at all costs, and after enough costs, now it’s costing me.”

So somewhere as you go through life, you hit this wall, and you go, “okay, this is the manhood I’ve bought into. But now, I’m not satisfied with it and I don’t know what to do.” And a lot of men find themselves at that place.

Jesus Christ offered a different kind of manhood, Authentic Manhood, because we’re on the quest for Authentic Manhood. I want you to know what it focuses on. It doesn’t totally throw out the conventional side, it’s where the focus is. More than what a man does, the Authentic Manhood focuses on what a man is. It focuses on character; his integrity, his good name so to speak, it’s what he carries inside him – the values that he embodies. That becomes important; that’s what carries him the distance. It’s not just what he does; it’s what he is! Jesus reflects that manhood to all humanity.

It’s the manhood that focuses on community with other men. Competing is a part of life, but competing is not to be the focus of life. Community is to be the focus. It focuses on transcendent purpose, not just temporal power. It focuses on eternal rewards; not just personal rewards. If all there is, is personal reward, that is such a self-saturated life! There’s got to be something higher than me. And certainly there is, and Jesus declared that more than any other.

Authentic manhood is more than self, it’s a manhood that focuses on others - and more than success, it focuses on what’s significant. Throughout the Bible – Old and New Testament – as well as with these two Adams, the first Adam and the second Adam, this is a summary of what the Bible says about masculinity. “I’ve set before you two manhoods.” That’s what it declares - the manhood of Adam and the manhood of Jesus - the manhood of darkness and the manhood of light - the manhood of death, and the manhood of life. You choose. Remember, every man will finish his life in the light or the shadow of one of these two men, because all men are defined in them.

Defining Differences Between Adam and Christ

If we took these two Adams and we pressed them together, four defining components would fall out. These components will make up our definition of manhood. I’m going to give you the first one today. and then we will look at the remaining three in the next session.

1. The first Adam, fell into passivity. The second Adam, that is, Christ, rejected that passivity.

The first Adam, in the moment of his fall -- he reeked of passivity. God gave this Adam three things to do. Three specific responsibilities:

a. A will to obey

b. A work to do, and

c. A woman to love and care for

Yet in the events of Genesis 3 – when we got to that tight-focused moment – where’s Adam? Where is he? Here’s what Genesis 3:6 says in this moment. It says: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes; and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

A lot of people think of the Genesis story as the woman over there all by herself, entertaining this temptation with the enemy. Her husband is off somewhere totally out of sight, doing what he needs to do, but having left her alone – and that’s how people think the sin took place. However, that is not how the sin took place. This tells us how the sin took place.

Adam was there; he was watching the whole event transpire. And when the woman had been thoroughly deceived and seduced, he, being there with her, also took and ate.

The thing that jumps out in this passage is that, rather than doing what masculinity does - -true masculinity – which is DO SOMETHING – Adam is standing there.

He just went flat. He went passive. He didn’t do anything. That’s the problem. It’s what we see happening in homes. Rather than men doing something, men are just standing there! Rather than being involved the way they should be with their children, they’re not doing anything. They’re not doing anything necessarily wrong – they’re just standing there. It’s a passivity that just sweeps over the men in every generation.

In fact, Yale sociologist Steven Clark made this observation as he looked at humanity through time. He said this: “For whatever reason, men have a natural tendency to avoid social responsibility.”

The ‘natural tendency’ comes from the shadow of the first Adam. Men have a natural tendency to wait in regards to significant social and spiritual things. They can’t find whatever it is within – the energy – to move forward and to seize direction, both spiritually and socially in the most critical of settings.

You find a man saying, ‘I’ve made a great living for my family; but when it comes to social and spiritual involvement in the family, all he has done for a generation is just stand there. Just hang around. Watch the TV. Go play some games. And hang.’ But in doing that, he hung his family.

The first Adam fell into passivity and created this inaction and inertia, in every man, to some degree. But the second Adam, Jesus Christ, rejected passivity.

Philippians 2:6-8. says. This is speaking of Jesus in heaven before He became incarnate and then coming to earth. It says: “Although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God (the very thing that Adam wanted – equality with God – Jesus did not regard that equality with God) at thing to be grasped. But He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

In other words - think of a moment in heaven and God is saying as He watches a lost and fallen world, disconnected with God entirely, God the Father asks the question, “Who will stand for humanity? Who will stand up for the human race?” We’ve already seen what happened with the first Adam - he couldn’t even stand up for his wife. But in this moment, Jesus – equal with God in that regal setting, where he had all the rights and privileges of God because He was God – He said, “I’ll do something about it.” That’s the essence of manhood. He said, “I’ll accept responsibility for it; I’ll step forward.” - and in the next instant, Jesus was suddenly in a manger.

What I want you to see is that when you look at Adam in the Garden, he looks like a man, but he’s really a boy. And when you look in the manger of Jesus Christ, He looks like a baby, but He’s the essence of manhood. The reason for that is because He was willing to step forward. That’s what men do - they come through when the situation calls for it.

Real manhood is not hanging out in a self-centered passivity; real manhood is not waiting for Mama or my wife, or my society to tell me what to do. Real manhood is rejecting that passivity and saying, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll step forward, I’ll accept responsibility, and in giving my life for others, and in watching that life spread into my wife, into my girlfriend, into my family, into my community, and into my church, and into the world.’ That’s real manhood. It’s becoming like Jesus – a life-giving Spirit.

So, this is the first defining component of a man. We press these two men together – just for a moment and we’ve asked the question “What is a man?” What has spilled out is the first of 4 very important components.