Today, we’ll wrap up our series on Biblical manhood and womanhood. I know that for the past four weeks, I’ve encouraged those of you who are single and who might be tempted to think that much of what we’ve learned over the past four weeks really isn’t relevant to you to listen carefully and be patient. And today, I’m going to spend a good portion of our time addressing how all of this applies to you specifically.
That brings ups a whole different potential problem this morning, because now those of you who are married may decide that what I have to share with you this morning really isn’t relevant to you. So this morning I want to encourage you to be patient and listen carefully and bear with me because I think you’ll see that this is indeed relevant for you.
There are over 100 million single people over the age of 18 in the United States – nearly ½ of all adults. Over 60% of those singles have never been married and the rest are either widowed or divorced. I know that we have people who fit into all those categories right here in our body.
As we’ve seen over the past four weeks, Biblical manhood and womanhood is not simply a result of marriage. It is rooted in God’s design at creation. So it is clear that a man does not become a man by getting married nor does a woman become a woman by getting married.
But it is also clear that the way that Biblical manhood and womanhood is expressed and lived out is going to take on different forms based on the varying types of relationships that men and women are engaged in. The way that God’s design for men and women is lived out in the most intimate relationship of marriage is obviously going to be quite different in the way that design impacts relationships in the workplace, for instance.
So here is what I’d like to do this morning. First, I want to show, from Scripture, that Biblical manhood and womanhood are not dependent on marriage. Then we’ll close by seeing if we can’t develop some principles that can help us live out our God ordained roles in the relationships we have outside of the ones we’ve already looked at – family and church.
Before we do that, let’s take one last opportunity to summarize and review what we’ve learned so far.
God’s design:
Men who mobilize men and women for ministry
Men who love by serving like Christ
and Women who love by submitting like the Church
Man is the head; Woman is the helper
Man and Woman have equal worth but different work
Biblical manhood and womanhood for singles
With that foundation in mind, let’s know see how what we’ve learned applies to those of you who are single. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul addresses this issue in quite some detail. Since we don’t have time to read and comment on the entire chapter, I’m going to focus on just a couple short passages:
Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.
(1 Corinthians 7:6-8 ESV)
I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
(1 Corinthians 7:32-35 ESV)
Although there is some disagreement about whether Paul was ever married, there is no doubt that by the time he wrote this letter to the church in Corinth he was single – either he had never married or he was now a widower. It’s instructive that he devotes such a substantial portion of this letter to the whole concept of being single. And if we were to sum up his main point in writing this chapter, we could say that…
Singleness is a blessing, not a curse
Let’s look at just a few of the reasons that is the case:
• Singleness is a gift from God
When Paul calls singleness a “gift” from God in verse 7, he uses the same exact word that he uses in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 when he writes about spiritual gifts.
Last August, as part of our series on the Holy Spirit, we determined some important truths about spiritual gifts that I believe are also relevant to the gift of singleness:
o Spiritual gifts are received, not achieved. God gives those gifts as He desires, not as a result of something we do or because we ask for them. That means that if you are currently single, that is because that is right where God wants you to be.
o The Holy Spirit is capable of giving whatever gift or gifts are needed in order to enable us to carry out His will. That means that some gifts are “seasonal” – they are given to us only for a period of time. So if you are currently single, it does not necessarily mean that is God’s plan for your entire life.
o Spiritual gifts are not designed to operate independently. They are only effective when they are put together with the other gifts that are operating in the body. Their purpose is to benefit the body as a whole, not us individually, although we are often blessed individually when we exercise our gifts. So God desires to use your singleness here at TFC to make our body whole.
God is certainly capable of providing a marriage partner for us. I believe without a doubt that God sovereignly brought Mary into my life to be my wife and I am grateful for that. But I also know, based on what we see in the Bible, that it is often God’s design for some people to remain single – either for a season or possibly even for their entire life here on earth. He does that not to rob anyone of joy or fulfillment in their lives, but rather because He knows that is what is the very best for them.
• Singleness provides great opportunities for ministry
As Paul points out here, someone who is married has responsibilities to his or her family that take time, resources and energy. While there is no doubt that taking care of one’s family serves God as well as the family, those who are free from those responsibilities have opportunities to minister to others that they might not have if they were married.
So if you are single, the question you need to ask God is not “When are You going to send me a spouse?”, but rather, “How do You want me to minister in Your name?”
• Mature manhood and womanhood are not dependent on marriage
As I mentioned earlier we don’t become the men and women God wants us to be by getting married. The Scriptures are full of examples of men and women who lived out their God-designed manhood and womanhood without ever being married.
We’ve already noted that Paul was single, at least by this time in his life. And he certainly lived a fulfilling life that was consistent with the kind of Biblical manhood we have been looking at over the last five weeks. And obviously the best example of someone who lived out His Biblical manhood without ever begin married was Jesus.
So if you are single, remember that is not a curse. So enjoy that blessing in your life. Trust that if God wants you to be married, He will provide the right person at the right time. Some of the most miserable people I have ever known were the ones who were so eager to no longer be single that they ended up marrying the wrong person just for the sake of being married. And believe me, those people had a much harder time living out their Biblical manhood or womanhood than they would have is they had just remained single.
Biblical manhood and womanhood in the community
I’m going to be pretty brief here not because this is not an important topic, but because frankly we just don’t have a whole lot of guidance in this area in the Scriptures. As we’ve seen over the last four weeks, there is some very clear teaching in the Bible when it comes to God’s design for manhood and womanhood and how that is to operate in the home and in the church. And since, as we’ve discussed frequently, there is no Biblical justification whatsoever for us to compartmentalize our lives, then there is no reason to believe that God’s design for manhood and womanhood should not impact every other area of our lives as well.
But at the same time, we must acknowledge that there is not much clear Biblical teaching to guide us in some of these situations. So what we have to do is to take that which is clear and do the very best we can to apply those broad principles in those areas where we don’t have more specific teaching.
In our culture today, the area where we have the most difficulty knowing how to apply God’s design for men and women is the workplace where it is not uncommon for a man to find himself in a position that is subordinate to a female boss. In fact, I know that there are many of you here this morning who are in that exact situation. You are either a female who has male subordinates, or you are a male with a female boss.
I know some would certainly claim that “business is business” and that therefore God’s design for Biblical manhood and womanhood has no relevance whatsoever in the workplace. And there are certainly some, at the other extreme, who would say that women should never work outside the home in the first place. I don’t believe that either of those extremes can be justified by the Scriptures.
I’ll be real honest with you here. I know I don’t have everything figured out when it comes to how our Biblical manhood and womanhood should play a role in these situations and how that works in concert with some of the other clear teaching in the Scriptures in this area. So there are a few things in your sermon outline in your bulletin that I’m not going to be covering this morning because after I finished my sermon earlier this week, I’ve now revised this section of the message two times in order to make sure that I don’t go any further than I can justify with the Bible.
I think one of the issues here is that during Bible times, there just wasn’t a situation that is directly parallel to our current culture. In the slave/master relationship, which most closely matches our current day employee/employer situation, it wasn’t possible for a woman to own a male slave. So when Paul and Peter teach about those relationships their assumption is that the masters are all male. But we can still learn from a couple of passages where both Paul and Peter addressed that situation. Since our time is limited, let me just read a couple passages and make a couple quick comments.
The first is from Ephesians 6. Here Paul shows how the idea of submitting to one another from Ephesians 5:21 is to operate in the master/slave relationship:
Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.
(Ephesians 6:5-9 ESV)
Peter also follows up with his general command to be subject to all authority and applies that concept to the master/slave relationship:
Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.
(1 Peter 2:18 ESV)
The general principle here is clear – a slave is to obey his or her master. And he or she is not just to do that unwillingly, but is to obey as if he or she is obeying Christ Himself. And as Peter makes clear, that is to be the case even if the master is unjust. In other words, slaves are to obey their masters even if their master is not a believer or one who would follow Biblical principles.
Even though both Paul and Peter were dealing with a culture in which it was not possible for women to be masters over a male slave, we can’t use that fact to justify ignoring this teaching or claiming that it is irrelevant. So even though these passages may not seem to apply directly to the modern day workplace, I would say that if you are an employee, regardless of whether your boss is a male or female, you are to work as if working for Jesus Himself by obeying and serving your boss.
Obviously that obedience has a limit. Just like in every other area where the Bible commands obedience to authority, such as governmental authority or the headship of the man in the family, we are never to obey a command that would cause us to violate the clear teaching of Scripture.
I would also suggest that the principle of obeying one’s boss does not mean that God’s design for manhood and womanhood is completely irrelevant in the workplace. That doesn’t mean that it’s not possible for a man to have a woman boss or for a woman to have male subordinates, especially when that relationship is kept at a professional level. But I do think that there are some situations in which the kind of leadership that a woman exercises over a man in a job situation could go to such an extreme that neither party would be able to function effectively.
Let me first give you a personal example. As most of you know I officiate high school basketball. And in our local association we have both male and female basketball referees. And to be honest some of our female officials are actually much better officials than some of the men. But even the very best female officials find it difficult to referee a boys’ basketball game. I’ve heard people give all kinds of opinions about why that is, but I’m convinced that it is because when a female exercised that kind of control over a man it so undermines this innate headship that it doesn’t sit well with either party.
That is why, in spite of a lot of effort on the part of a lot of people to get female football and basketball officials to officiate men’s games at the college and professional level, those efforts have largely failed. The NBA has had only two female referees in their history and only one who currently works games and the NFL has never had a female official with the exception of replacement officials during the officials’ strike a couple years ago. And even at the college level it is rare to see a female official work a men’s football or basketball game.
I am also convinced that this is why it has been so difficult for our military to integrate women into our combat troops. Certainly the kind of leadership that is required on the battlefield is even more dominating than that of an official. And because of how God has designed men and women, it is really difficult for a woman to be effective in leading male troops on the battlefield.
Those are obviously some pretty extreme examples, but I do think they demonstrate how our God given design as men and women certainly can have an impact in the workplace. Since we don’t have a whole lot of guidance in the Bible about exactly what that is to look like in the workplace, however, I think about all I can say is that we need to be aware of those differences and to do all we can to preserve our God-given roles the best we can in each situation while still holding to the clear Biblical teaching regarding our responsibility to submit to authority.
Let me close by briefly addressing other more personal relationships between men and women in our culture – the kind we might see among friends, work colleagues and family members. Obviously I’m going to be very general in my comments here.
So let me talk to the men first, since it has been my observation that most problems in this area tend to be the result of men abdicating their God-ordained roles.
In these personal relationships, you are primarily responsible for leading the relationship in a God glorifying direction. That means that in order to be the man that God has designed you to be, you need to take the initiative to be a servant leader who provides the appropriate defense and protection in that relationship, not take advantage of the woman in order to satisfy your own desires. When you lead like that then you free the woman up to be the kind of woman that God designed her to be.
And women, in those relationships, you can affirm the Biblical manhood of those men by allowing them to exercise their God ordained male headship and by submitting to that leadership appropriately. That certainly does not mean that you are not to have a role in making decisions. But the way you provide your input is the key. You need to do that not by making demands or giving commands, but by respectfully offering your input for consideration. By doing that you free up the man to be the kind of man God designed him to be.
We’ve now spent five weeks on what I believe is one of the most important topics impacting our culture today – the Biblical design for manhood and womanhood. That design has been largely ridiculed and undermined by our culture, but if we’re going to be the men and women God designed us to be, we must recover a Biblical understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman.
As I’ve shared on several occasions during this series, we’re not going to be effective in changing our culture in this area by the political process or in the public arena. We’re going to have to do that by beginning with our own lives and making a commitment to live personally according to what we have learned and then helping our families and our church family to do the same. So let me close with a challenge to all of us.
At the close of chapter 1 of his book, “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”, Pastor John Piper issued a fifteen point challenge to both men and women. I’d like to close this series with just one of those challenges, which I have modified just a bit to be appropriate for our body.
I’ll begin with the men:
Challenge for the men:
That you see the Biblical guidelines for what is appropriate and inappropriate for men and women not as license for domination or bossy passivity, but as a call to servant leadership that thinks in terms of responsibilities not rights; that you see these principles as wise and gracious prescriptions for how to discover the true freedom of God’s ideal of complementarity; that you encourage the fruitful engagement of women in the countless ministry roles that are Biblically appropriate and deeply needed.
Challenge for the women:
That you see the Biblical guidelines for what is appropriate and inappropriate for men and women not as arbitrary constraints on freedom, but as wise and gracious prescriptions for how to discover the true freedom of God’s ideal of complementarity; that you not measure your potential by the few roles withheld, but by the countless roles offered; that you look to the loving God of Scripture and dream about the possibilities of your service to him,
Will you join me in saying “yes” to those challenges?
