Prayer
Gracious God and Father, we praise and thank you for your mercies to us and for your word. As we open your word now, may your spirit enlighten the eyes of our hearts. May you show us the glory of Christ and reform and remake us into your image through him. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Reading
Genesis 2:18-20.
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
Meditation
Masculinity is Christological. “Christological” is not a word that gets typically dropped in every day conversation, but it is a word nevertheless well worth learning. It is a mighty word. Dare I say it, it’s a very manly word. Christology is the study of Christ, and if something is “Christological” that means it pertains to the study of Christ. If a thing is Christological, it means that it fundamentally relates to Christ, that it says something about Christ. It means that it is basically about Christ. With that in mind, I’ll say it again: masculinity is Christological.
Let me put this another way. As we focus in on the topic of masculinity in these studies, just as our text focuses in on the creation of the man, we’re not here to grandstand the male ego. We’re here to exalt Christ. We’re here to begin gazing upon the face of the bridegroom as his bride comes toward him – that’s the reality that the marriage in the garden points toward. But the question remains to be answered: Why do I say that masculinity is Christological? That’s what we’re going to begin unpacking in this meditation, and so a few observations on this.
Firstly, we should note that God himself is masculine. If we’re going to understand masculinity, and God’s purposes in making men, then this is fundamental: God is masculine. In anticipating an objection, I’m not saying that feminine identity is ungodly or irrelevant. Feminine identity, as with all things, finds its origin in the person and character of God. God has bound up wonderful, incredible, and beautiful mysteries in feminine identity – which I trust we’ll start to see in later studies. Men and women are made in God’s image, and are in union with one another (more mysteries of glory!). Nevertheless, as a starting point we need to see this: that God reveals himself as fundamentally masculine. He is not our Heavenly Mother, but our Heavenly Father. God did not send his only daughter into the world, he sent his only Son. God is not a man, but he is masculine.
Let me try and express this from another angle: man is the analogy, or image, of God’s masculinity. When we think of masculinity, we tend to think of men don’t we? We think of beards, muscles, and beer. But here is a fundamental shift that we need to make in our thinking here. Masculinity is not actually man-focused, it’s God-focused. Man is the copy, God is the original. Every earthly father is supposed to be a shadow of our Heavenly Father. Every earthly son is supposed to be a shadow of the Son of God. Every earthly husband is supposed to be a shadow of Christ the husband of his bride the Church. Masculine identity, then, is fundamentally a reflection of something that exists in God.
Here’s the next thing I want to point out: Christ’s manhood was eternally planned. God created the man before he made the woman, but there was something else that he did even before that. Before God created man, he planned for Christ’s incarnation. This is very important to realise. Before men or women were made, or the earth was established, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were convened in divine counsel with this eternal purpose: that God the Son, in the fullness of time, would be born as a man so that he could save a people, his bride, for himself.
Consider what Ephesians 1:3 has to say on this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Do you see it here? This is why I say that masculinity is Christological, because the very reason that men were created was so that Christ could become a man. Christ is the telos of manhood. Adam was not an end in himself, he was ground work for the Incarnation of our Saviour. What this means is that we are all, both men and women, playing second fiddle to THE man.
People sometimes say: “Who’s the man?” There is only one man – Jesus Christ the righteous, the firstborn over all creation. So then, when God made the man first, he wasn’t saying that men were superior. He was pointing forward to the fact that Christ is preeminent and the purpose of creation. The woman was made for the man, and creation was made for Christ. God’s redeemed people are represented as the Bride of Christ – the woman, us, were all made for Christ, the man. Christ is the firstborn.
Be ye doers of the word…
Now this insight has profound implications for how you understand the idea of masculinity. What is the point of manhood? We live in a generation of men who have lost sight of what it means to be a man. As Michael Foster put it, this is a generation of “clueless bastards.” Not in the crass sense, but in the sense that the rising generation of men are fatherless – whether literally, or because their fathers have not guided their sons into manhood.
Where can a young man go to become a man? He must go to Christ. Without Christ, he will never be a true man, he will – at best – become a pale, broken, fractured shadow of something that might have been. Manhood in general exists to exalt the manhood of Christ, and that must be the driving paradigm for all men who would seek to be men indeed. The little images of manhood that exist in men everywhere, the men you see walking around in this world, they are designed to tell out and point toward the glory of Christ’s incarnation as the Son of Man.
Do you know Christ? Are you following him? And when you meet a clueless young man with no direction, do you direct him to Christ? In Christ alone, our hope is found. SDG.
Prayer of Confession & Consecration
Gracious God, we confess we have had such an impoverished view of man and manhood.
And Lord, this has become an opportunity for ourselves to grandstand ourselves and
So much harm has been done because of that idolatry.
Lord, please help us to keep this vision before our minds.
Help us to see every man and see your vision that this man is a potential signpost
to that great man above all men.
And may we exalt Christ, we pray.
Those of us who are husbands and fathers and men,
Lord, help us to become Christ-like men.
And for all of us with sons, may you help us to raise them to be Christ-like men.
We pray that you would help us in these things.
And may we all,
men and women,
increasingly reflect the glorious image of that man above all men,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And in his name we pray.
Amen.
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