Jesus: a man's man - Steve

We've got a discussion going on an RCA evangelical email list group, asking the question: "Where are all the men in the church?" It's coming across pretty clear that we're not too sure what sanctified masculinity looks like. Here's my two cents I threw in...



I believe masculine godliness looks like Jesus in His relationship with His Bride, the Church (Eph 5:25-33). These 3 qualities stick out:

1. Responsibility – Jesus took responsibility for His people’s salvation/well-being. Men should do the same for their families and churches. After the Fall, God asked the man where he was (my read: God assumed the man was responsible for both of them); his first act was to pass responsibility to his wife (Gen 3:9-12). Men should be thinking: “As a family we need to…” and then consulting with his wife about how best to do those things.

2. Initiative - Jesus initiated the relationship with His Church: “we loved because He first loved us… Men should do the same in their families and churches, not waiting for the wife to bring up the spiritual things, but being the first to raise or act on an issue.

3. Effective service – Jesus washed the disciples’ feet; He washes the Church with the Word to present her to Himself on His wedding day. He takes responsibility for His wife’s spiritual well-being and her beauty of holiness. He acts and serves sacrificially toward that end. Men should do the same for their families/churches. Tendencies to sports and other “macho” stuff are not necessarily unhealthy, just expressions of a masculine desire for **effective action**, which Jesus displayed fully on the cross (Heb 12:2, where Jesus is the beginner and completer/perfecter of our faith, on the cross. In modern parlance, there was a job to do, and He "got 'er done.").

These 3, for starters, would have a dramatic effect, if acted out in the church by men. The church cannot make men do this. We don’t draw them in primarily with hunting programs; we teach them these 3 (and other) responsibilities, and pray for the Spirit to work in men’s lives to live it out.

I am a strong believer that we do need something programmatically just for men in the church, because they are called to lead their families. If the church equips men effectively to do this, she has equipped entire households - the whole church. But if we speak in an effeminate, sentimental way (as I believe we have for the past century or so), we speak to only half the congregation, and the other masculine half drops away.