The first couple were made in a different order, resulting in an asymmetry of authority and promotion.
“When Mamma Ain’t Happy, Nobody’s Happy.” That is what my fellow church elder said to me many years ago. It describes how a wife, when her will or opinion is defied, has ways of making a husband’s life miserable until she gets her way. Is there a stand against it?
I knew that something had gone down. He came back with that look, that faraway look, like he belonged to another country. I had seen that look before, and those times it meant something crazy was coming.
There are 3,237 characters named in the Bible, a lot of people! Only 188 are women. Why this mathematical difference? The answer isn’t what you think.
You might expect that the funny Greek word that means meekness, πραῢς, (pronounced something like pra-oose’), would appear a lot in the New Testament, since it sounds like such a Christian virtue. Not so. The word only appears four times in the New Testament, three of those times in the gospel of Matthew. (There is a related word, but that …
The Hebrew Scriptures show us three great venues of covenant community leadership. When things got going, leadership resolved into three offices, authoritative ministers to shepherd, supply and save His people: Prophet, King and Priest. One of the glaring asymmetries between guys and gals in the Old Testament is how God called only men to the latter two offices. God’s masculine …
Christ is the Paragon of Femininity
“Wait, what!?” you exclaim. “That doesn’t sound right. We know that Jesus Christ was incarnate as a man, not a woman, so how can He show us femininity?” Well, you are thinking about gender in isolation again, but the Bible teaches us differently…
In relationship to His Church, Jesus Christ demonstrates masculinity in its pure form. The apostle Paul calls forth the excellency of Christ becoming our husband in 2Corinthians 11:2-3, while Ephesians 5:22-33 explains it more fully, two examples among others. So if you want to see a real man, look at Christ in this relationship to His Church. Jesus took …
People of a certain persuasion often refer to Acts 18 to argue that we should make no distinctions between women and men in the church or, at least, that women should authoritatively teach in the church. Consider the verses with me: 1 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native …
Today, another Scenic Overlook on how gender works in the Bible. Can you Bible readers guess who the characters are by the end? He had never felt so energized. At last, a way of understanding so many of those Bible verses he had memorized as a kid. It had happened a year ago. That moment when he felt like he …
A reader writes: “You don’t really tackle the gender of God, why God reveals himself with masculine pronouns.” This is a fantastic question. (My readers are just the best.) It is also a very necessary one. Because the answer to the question confers something desperately needed by about half of the image-bearers of God. Many women grow up with a …
