Deyoung Men and Women in the Church

A Short, Biblical, Practical Introduction
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6656-1
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

'This is the first book I will recommend to those who want to study what the Scriptures teach about the roles of men and women both in marriage and the church. . . I was amazed at how much wisdom is packed into this short book. Everything in the book is helpful, but the practical application section alone is worth the price of the book.' -Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary A Biblical Primer on Men and Women in the Church There is much at stake in God making humanity male and female. Created for one another yet distinct from each other, a man and a woman are not interchangeable-they are designed to function according to a divine fittedness. But when this design is misunderstood, ignored, or abused, there are dire consequences. Men and women-in marriage especially, but in the rest of life as well-complement one another. And this biblical truth has enduring, cosmic significance. From start to finish, the biblical storyline-and the design of creation itself-depends upon the distinction between male and female. Men and Women in the Church is about the divinely designed complementarity of men and women as it applies to life in general and especially ministry in the church.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. He has written books for children, adults, and academics, including Just Do Something; Impossible Christianity; Daily Doctrine; and The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. Kevin's work can be found on clearlyreformed.org. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Deyoung, Kevin

Leseproben

Introduction

What If? How Come? Where Are We Going?

We get so used to the way things are that we rarely stop to consider how things could have been drastically different.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was the king of Prussia and the last German emperor. Reigning from June 1888 to November 1918, Wilhelm was an ambitious, volatile, and aggressive ruler whose policies in Europe were partly to blame for World War I.

In 1889, when Wilhelm had barely been on the throne for a year, a special event was taking place at Berlin’s Charlottenburg Race Course: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. The show had arrived from America and was touring all over Europe. At one point in the show, Annie Oakley announced that she was going to shoot the ashes off of a cigar with her Colt .45. Then, as was her custom, she asked if anyone from the audience wanted to volunteer to hold the cigar. The question was meant as a joke. People were supposed to laugh, and then, when no one came forward, Annie would have her husband hold the cigar just like he always did.

But this time, at the Berlin race course, after Annie made the humorous announcement, an important man from the royal box walked into the arena and volunteered to hold the cigar. It was Kaiser Wilhelm. Some German policemen tried to stop him, but he waved them off. With a mixture of hubris, courage, and stupidity, Wilhelm insisted on holding the cigar. Annie Oakley couldn’t back out now, so she paced off her usual distance and prepared to shoot.

And what happened next? According to one historian: “Sweating profusely under her buckskin, and regretful that she had consumed more than her usual amount of whiskey the night before, Annie raised her Colt, took aim, and blew away Wilhelm’s ashes.”1 The same historian goes on to wonder how the world might have been different if she had missed the cigar and creased the Kaiser’s head instead. Perhaps an entire world war would have been avoided.

Years later, after the First World War began, Annie Oakley wrote to Wilhelm asking if she could have a second shot. He never replied.

The Way Things Are (and Were Designed to Be)

The story above comes from What If?—an aptly titled book full of counterfactual history. Instead of analyzing what took place and why, in counterfactual history scholars imagine what might have been. What if Alexander the Great had lived to be an old man? What if the Spanish Armada had defeated the English? What if the fog had not rolled in, allowing George Washington’s army to escape Brooklyn after being badly beaten at the Battle of Long Island? What if the Soviets had invaded Japan at the close of World War II? We get so used to the way things are that we rarely consider how things could have been drastically different.

What is true for history is true for life more generally. Is there any one aspect of human life that has affected every other aspect of human life more than being male or female? While my life is certainly not reducible to being a man, everything about my life is shaped by the fact that I am male, not female. My wife’s whole life is shaped by being a woman and not a man. Each of my nine children (yes, we wanted to start our own baseball team) are undeniably and monumentally shaped by being boys or girls. And yet how often do we stop to think that it didn’t have to be this way? God didn’t have to make two different kinds of human being. He didn’t have to make us so that men and women, on average, come in different shapes and sizes and grow hair in different places and often think and feel in different ways. God could have propagated the human race in some other way besides the differentiated pair of male and female. He could have made Adam sufficient without an Eve. Or he could have made Eve without an Adam. But God decided to make not one man or one woman, or a group of men or a group of women; he made a man and a woman. The one feature of human existence that shapes life as much or more than any other—our biological sex—was God’s choice.

In an ultimate sense, of course, the world had to be made the way it was, in accordance with the immutable will of God and as a necessary expression of his character. I’m not suggesting God made Adam and Eve by a roll of the dice. Actually, I’m reminding us of the opposite. This whole wonderful, beautiful, complicated business of a two-sexed humanity was God’s idea. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The whole human race is, always has been, and will be for the rest of time, comprised of two differentiated and complementary sexes. This perpetual bifurcated ordering of humanity is not by accident or by caprice but by God’s good design.

And why? What is at stake in God making us male and female? Nothing less than the gospel, that’s all. The mystery of marriage is profound, Paul says, and it refers to Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32). “Mystery” in the New Testament sense refers to something hidden and then revealed. The Bible is saying that God created men and women—two different sexes—so that he might paint a living picture of the differentiated and complementary union of Christ and the church. Ephesians 5 may be about marriage, but we can’t make sense of the underlying logic unless we note God’s intentions in creating marriage as a gospel-shaped union between a differentiated and complementary pair. Any move to abolish all distinctions between men and women is a move (whether intentionally or not) to tear down the building blocks of redemption itself.

Men and women are not interchangeable. The man and the woman—in marriage especially, but in the rest of life as well—complement each other, meaning they are supposed to function according to a divine fitted-ness. This is in keeping with the ordering of the entire cosmos. Think about the complementary nature of creation itself. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). And that’s not the only pairing in creation. We find other sorts of couples, like the sun and the moon, morning and evening, day and night, the sea and the dry land, and plants and animals, before reaching the climactic couple, a man and a woman. In every pairing, each part belongs with the other, but neither is interchangeable. It makes perfect sense that the coming together of heaven and earth in Revelation 21–22 is preceded by the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19. That God created us male and female has cosmic and enduring significance. From start to finish, the biblical storyline—and design of creation itself—depends upon the distinction between male and female as different from one another yet fitted each for the other.2

Simple Book, Simple Aim

So what is this book about? In simplest terms, this book is about the divinely designed complementarity of men and women as it applies to life in general and especially to ministry in the church.3

You may be thinking, “How can we possibly need another book on this subject?” And it’s true—much has been written on this topic over the last generation, some of it forgettable and some of it quite good.4 You should read the books. I don’t claim mine is the best of the bunch. What I can claim is that this book is shorter than the rest. We need books that give a comprehensive survey of biblical passages about men and women. We need books that engage with history, science, and philosophy as they relate to manhood and womanhood. We need books that deal explicitly with the challenges of gender confusion and toxic masculinity and secular feminism. There is a lot that can be said about sex and gender, and a lot that needs to be said.

This is your fair warning that I’m not trying to say everything, or even a small fraction of a lot.

I have a very specific audience in mind in writing this book: my congregation and others like it. Our church has a book nook in the corner of our main lobby. I have often wished for a book there that explained the Bible’s teaching about men and women in the church in a way that the interested layperson could understand and in a size that he or she could read in a few hours. I have wished for a book that would argue its case without being argumentative; a book I could give to other pastors wrestling with this issue; and a book pastors could give to their elders, deacons, and trustees that they would actually read; a book that displays exegetical integrity with minimal technical jargon; a book weightier than a pamphlet but lighter than a doorstop. You’ll have to decide if I’ve written such a book, but that is the book I set out to write.

A Personal Note and the Plan Ahead

As far as I know my own heart, this is not an axe-to-grind kind of book. Or, if I can mix my metaphors, I’m hoping to give you meat and potatoes, not fire-hot salsa. If you are among those who are looking for an introductory and non-angsty walk through the requisite biblical texts on men and women in the church, with an eye toward clarification and application, then this might be the book for you.

Having said that, I want to speak directly to two types of people. First, I want single people to know this is not a book...