I Timothy 2:8-9

This passage assumes that we already have a grasp on God’s purpose for men and women. Paul assumes that is basic and elementary, but in our society today, unfortunately for many this is not the case.

Paul refers back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3 — so, there is something that we need to know from Genesis before we can make sense of 1 Timothy. With this sermon, we are going to go back to the basics and seek to give a concise theology of the sexes. I am using the word “sexes” intentionally because I am trying to get at the normal, natural, biological reality of men and women. 

Now, we are called to honor God’s design in an Age of Confusion.We are living in a day where the world has lost its mind. The culture we see around us is not just confused—it is in open rebellion against the God of the universe.

It has forsaken truth, rejected creation, and shaken its fist at the Almighty. One of the clearest battlegrounds of that rebellion is the denial of God’s design for men and women.

• The world hates distinction.
• It hates the order of creation.
• It hates the headship of man.
• It hates the beauty of biblical womanhood.

And it will shout down, cancel, and destroy anyone who dares to stand against its radical self-destruction. And yet, stand, we must!

• We must not compromise.
• We must not waver.
• We must not shrink back in fear.

Because this is not about personal preference or cultural tradition—this is about God’s glory. This is about obedience to His Word. This is about whether we will bow to the spirit of this age or whether we will submit to the unchanging and holy authority of Scripture.

God’s Design is Not Up for Debate

• There are only two sexes.
• There are only two genders.

Male and female created He them. That is not a cultural construct. That is not outdated theology. That is Genesis 1:27—“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

The world may scream that gender is a social construct—but that is a lie straight from the pit of hell. God created the sexes. He designed them. And He assigned them distinct roles and purposes for His glory.

And listen—this is not a minor issue. If we reject God’s design for men and women, we are not just rejecting roles—we are rejecting God Himself. We are telling Him that we know better than He does. And if we do that, we do not stand on neutral ground—we stand with the devil.

So, this is A Call to Men

Men, you were made to lead. That is not toxic masculinity. That is biblical reality. You are the head of your home. You are the protector. You are the provider.

And yet—look around! Weak men fill and lead so many so-called churches today. Passive. Effeminate. Cowards. Is what they are! Standing by as their families and churches are devoured by the enemy.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:8, “I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.” In other words—men, rise up!

• Lead in prayer.
• Lead in holiness.
• Lead in conviction.

Stop being absent. Stop letting the world shape your manhood. Get on your knees before God and be the man He has called you to be!

This is also a Call to Women

Ladies, you were made to help – made to be a helpmeet. That is not oppression. That is glory. That is God’s perfect design. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:9, “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.”

Listen, the culture will lie to you and tell you that submission is weakness, that womanhood is bondage, that the home is a prison.

• But God calls it beauty.
• God calls it glory.
• God calls it good.

True womanhood is not found in rebellion but in joyful submission to God’s design.

And let me tell you—if we do not teach this in church, in this church, the world will teach our daughters something else. And what the world is teaching is destruction.

We Will Not Bow!

I know what the world thinks or will think of this message. I know what the culture says about biblical manhood and womanhood.

• I know that they would call this bigotry.
• I know that they would call this hate speech.
• I know that they would demand we change our views to fit the times.

But We Will Not!

We will not change. We will not compromise. We will not conform. Because we do not answer to the culture. We answer to the King of kings. We answer to the Lord of lords. We answer to the God who made us male and female for His glory!

This is His design. This is His Word. And this is where we stand.

But before we dig in anymore, I want to lay down some foundational points, and then we’ll get back to digging into all of this.

WHAT IS THEOLOGY?

Psalm 143:10

I know we have all heard the word theology before. I preached on that specific subject last year, and we have had several sermons on theology and will continue to do so. So, theology simply means the “study of God.”

But what do we mean when we say something like “a theology of [blank]”? — a theology of the body, a theology of marriage, or a theology of the sexes. What do we mean by saying the study of God on a particular topic? 

It means, and this is a very important statement, it means, we want to know what God thinks about that topic, and we want to know what God thinks about particular topics – why? – because we want to live in congruence to His will.

Psalm 143:10 is a helpful prayer when it comes to theology. David says there, “Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.”

Look at the first half of that verse again, “Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God…” Because God is God, because He is our God, we want to know His ways. We want Him to teach us His will. We want Him to teach us what He thinks about a subject. We then want to live by what He has taught us – or we should want that.

And that means we go to the Bible because the Bible is where we go to know God’s thoughts – or what He thinks about a subject. God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible. We know God through His Word. 

The Bible is relevant to every part of who we are.  Now, if we have a question that the Bible does not answer directly, we are to never assume that the question is free game for us to figure out on our own. That kind of mindset leads to weak, frail, pathetic, and unbiblical theology, and we do not want to do that.   

Instead, we want a robust theology. We want to take everything the Bible says about a topic, and we want to build an understanding of that topic that fits in with the whole testimony of Scripture.

All of what the Scripture says about a subject must agree, and if it appears it does not agree – we have a wrong view or wrong interpretation somewhere – because God cannot disagree with Himself.

We want a vision for reality that is ordered by God’s design and gracious restoration through Jesus Christ. That is what we want to know when it comes to men and women.

We want a theology of the sexes – one that agrees with what the Bible teaches as a whole on this subject, and one that does not twist some Scripture, ignore some Scripture, or do interpretive murder to Scripture by saying it means the exact opposite of what it clearly teaches.

So that is the first point, we want to make sure we are doing correct biblical theology and not trying to make theology fit our point of view, instead we are to put our points of view into submission to God’s Word.

NEXT, WHAT IS OUR SOCIETAL MOMENT?

When it comes to the question of who men and women are, we are in a very unique time historically. In fact, the world has never had to face the kind of issues that we are facing today. And the best explanation I have heard is that we now live in a post-Christian society.

We live in a very different world, with a very different worldview than our parents and grandparents grew up in. I have also heard some people say we live in a neopagan society. That we have cycled back to a new form or style of paganism.

We define society to mean the whole of all realities of life in a certain time and place that cooperate or live side by side with some form of order. And in a broad sense, that includes both values and institutions.

Society then would include both culture and government, the general values and norms of the day.  

So, we must be aware of the societal moment we now live in with the unbiblical unnatural, and antiscientific teaching out there about the sexes, saying things like there are more than two genders, I read somewhere they were saying there are 72 genders.

We know the anti-bible and anti-science teaching about transgenderism that is poisoning the minds of our young people, causing depression, suicidal feelings, and for some resulting in permanent physical damage to their bodies.

And since we are working toward this theology of the sexes, I am going to try to describe it in a theological summary.

• Men and women are created in the image of God
• Men and women are all called to the single mission of extending the knowledge of God’s glory on the earth
• And the fulfillment of that mission is one to which men and women contribute in distinctive ways.

THE IDENTITY OF THE SEXES

Genesis 1:26-31

To understand the identity of the sexes we go back to Genesis 1, which was the sixth day, because that is the day that God made man, and in the context of the whole chapter, there is something similar and different going on here. 

Now Genesis 1:26-27 says, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

• God created man in His own image
• God created man – male and female
• He created mankind with two different unique and complimentary sexes

God has been doing a lot of speaking and creating and making in verses 1–25, but verse 26 is the first time that He has referenced Himself in the creating. On the sixth day, the last day of God’s creative work, at the pinnacle of God’s creation, He says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”

And that has implications for us. So often we think of ourselves as individuals. The word individual has become another way to say person.

We think of ourselves as self-supportive entities that simply exist, but the Bible shows us that actually humans are part of a larger work of God’s creation, and we are the highest point of that creation. We are connected to everything that God has made, but we have a different, special connection to Him and the rest of the world. 

Everything that God made in Days 1 to 5 are meant to communicate to us who God is. We know this from the poetical books like Job and the Psalms. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” (Psalm 19:1).

Everything in the world is meant to communicate who God is, but then mankind was created in that world as the foremost communication of who God is because we are the only part of creation said to be like God.

God Himself said that we are like Him. We are made in the likeness of Him. We serve as His special representatives in His world. We are made by God, we are made like God, and we are made for God as men and women. 

There is Nothing More Fundamental

It is critically important that we see in verse 27 this sort of summary statement about mankind. This is a comprehensive kind of statement found in that verse in three parts. Look at verse 27 again with me, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

• “God created man in his own image” – this is mankind, the species of man.
• “in the image of God he created him” – note the “him” this species has a head, who is Adam.
• “male and female he created them” – this is a distinction. Man has two sexes, male and female, two genders, male and female – that is it – just two.

Mankind is created in the image of God in two distinct types or sexes: they are called male and female. And this is at the root of what it means to be human. There is no other way to be human. We are either male or we are female.

We might think that our humanness is somehow more fundamental than our maleness or femaleness, but that is not what Genesis tells us. Instead, we are only human in the image of God as male and female. There is no deeper identity than that.

That is what it means to be created in God’s image — male and female he created them. Male or female, all the way down, not as an accessory added at the end but from the very beginning, “male and female created he them.”

This is Very Important When It Comes to Identity

Identity is how we talk about who we really are, and then how we project ourselves. And in our society, we think of identity as self-expression. And because we have reduced humans down to mere individuals disconnected from God’s creative work, that self-expression has come to include our sex.

It is what our society has come to call gender. So as a society, our gender has become part of our self-expression. We have made it a self-selected part of our personal brand. 

But the Bible Says Something Very Different

The Bible shows us that we are humans created in the image of God as male and female, and that is our identity — and it is not about self-expression, it is about God-expression.

Keep that little phrase in mind – not self-expression – but God-expression – that is what our identity is about. We are made in His image to glorify Him in all that we do. So again, not self-expression – God-expression.

Just like with Night and Day, and Heaven and Earth, and Sun and Moon, God has made us male and female to communicate something about Himself. This means God communicates who He is through disjunction and interplay or through differences and connections.

We as men and women fit into the pattern of creation, except only more so because we are in the image of God, male and female. That is the identity of the sexes. 

Some people want to say that the fall into sin is what created these distinctions between men and women, but that is not what the Bible shows us. The curse of sin exploited our distinctions and created conflict, but the distinctions rightly ordered, in harmony, produce human flourishing — and that is what gets us on mission.

THE MISSION FOR THE SEXES

Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

So not only are men and women created in the image of God, but the meaning of that imaging work is filled out with this mission in verse 28. There is a five-fold action that men and women are called to do: Be fruitful, multiply, replenish or fill, subdue, and have dominion. 

This five-fold action has an effect – It is to extend the knowledge of God’s glory on the earth. It is that simple. That is our mission. That is the mission of mankind to extend the knowledge of God’s glory on the earth.

• So, we believe that men and women are created in the image of God, and 
• called to the single mission of extending the knowledge of God’s glory on the earth. And that mission is the mission of imaging.

So What is Imaging?

If humans as male and female image God — if they resemble and reflect God — and then God tells them to reproduce and inhabit the whole earth, then that means the whole earth will eventually be entirely populated with the image of God. 

And if the image of God, the reflection of God, is everywhere on the earth, it means that the knowledge of God’s glory is extended everywhere all over the earth. And we know that is God’s plan because He tells us just that. 

• In Numbers 14:21, God says this purpose is as certain as Himself — “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.” 
  • And then there is Isaiah in Isaiah 11:9, “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” 
  • And then there is Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”

That is what God is doing. God intends to saturate the entire earth with the knowledge of His glory.  And in the end, that is exactly what He does.

That is what we see in Revelation 21–22 in the new heavens and new earth. God is making a new earth and His glory will be its light. That is where we are headed, and it all starts in Genesis 1. It is the mission given to men and women.

We, as men and women, have a single mission. Men and women are bound together in this calling. And that is important because it means that manhood and womanhood are not things that we pursue directly as an end in themselves, but instead, they emerge as we pursue God’s mission as men and women.

Let me say that again, manhood and womanhood are not things that we pursue directly as an end in themselves, but instead they emerge as we pursue God’s mission as men and women.

In other words, my goal is not ultimately to be a man, but it’s to fulfill God’s mission as a man. The goal of a woman is not to be a woman, but it’s to fulfill God’s mission as a woman. We all, as men and women, are working together for the same mission.

This brings us to…

The Cultural Mandate to Great Commission

This mission in Genesis 1:28 is often referred to by many theologians as the Cultural Mandate — which is to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion. That is the Cultural Mandate, and it is still happening today.

Except now, because of Jesus, the Cultural Mandate is amplified with a more focused mandate called the Great Commission in Matthew 28. That commission is to make disciples of Jesus from all nations. And we can see how this is an amplification of the cultural mandate.

The Cultural Mandate was about extending the knowledge of God’s glory on the earth by multiplying the image of God through people. Well, Jesus is the perfect image of God, and so the Great Commission is about multiplying the image of Jesus through disciple making by fulfilling the Great Commission.

Matthew 28:19-20 “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Colossians 1:13-15 speaks to this Cultural Mandate to Great Commission as well, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.”

The Cultural Mandate is about earthly life in the present age. The Great Commission is about eternal life in the age to come. It is a greater and deeper reality, and it is a mission given to the whole church, men and women. Both men and women, as image bearers of God, are absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of that mission. 

Just as men and women are indispensable and vital for the Cultural Mandate, so they are for the Great Commission. Men and women have the same mission, even as our fulfillment of that mission is expressed in distinctive ways.

THE FULFILLMENT BY THE SEXES

Even without the Bible, we know that men and women are different. Commonsense tells you men and women are different. Science tells you men and women are different.

Most of the time the Bible just assumes the differences that nature reveals. We see those differences right away in Genesis and throughout the rest of Scripture.

This is getting back to the disjunction and interplay of God’s creative design — these are differences that connect. Nature and the Bible give us several examples of how men and women are bound together in this way. 

We see in the Bible right away that man is incomplete without woman — Genesis 2:18, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

“It is not good that the man should be alone”  – then later in the New Testament, Paul reflects on this, and he describes the mutual dependence of men and women — woman was made out of man, and then man is born from woman.

1 Corinthians 11:8–12 “For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.  Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.”

So there is this combination of priority and necessity. A husband is the head of his wife, but there would be no husbands if not for wives because men are born from women … for which they need men … who need women … who need men … who need women — do you see?

It is all connected, all needed, all complimentary – but all ordered in a specific way by God in the Bible.

That’s the interplay! There is a mutuality! We need one another! At every level, men and women are bound together. And there is music here in how our differences connect. There is beauty in this connection – this connection glorifies the God who made this connection.  

Distinctive Contributions to Our Shared Mission

Men and women contribute to our mission in distinctive ways — and of course, there are all kinds of overlaps, but it is important that we understand the distinctive contributions.

And right away, I’m going to assume that when we hear the word “contribution” we instantly try to compare and evaluate. We want to know who has the most to contribute, and which is more important.

We want a division of labor, and we want to know whether it is equal. But that is our modern societal setting and thinking that has bled into us. The Bible does not make those kind of measurements. It just describes what is.

For example, in the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1:28, there is asymmetry that the Bible does not qualify, but just states. The five-fold action is to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion.

Of these five actions, the first three require more of women than men: fruitful, multiply, and fill or replenish. Nature shows us this, and the rest of Scripture bears this out.

When it comes to multiplying, men have a necessary part in that, but it is a relatively small part compared to nine months of gestation, then childbirth, and then all the time afterward where the woman is still giving from her body for the sustenance of the child. 

Women are the ones who have the more weighted part in inhabiting the earth, and every woman has this maternal instinct whether or not they have kids, and it gets played out in wisdom.

I have been convinced that one of the most under-appreciated contributions of women to our mission is their power to influence through wise counsel. For instance, what does the Bible personify wisdom as in the book of Proverbs?

Proverbs 1:20-21 says, “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying,”

Proverbs 8:1-3 says, “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.”

Now Proverbs 9:1-6 says, “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars: She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled. Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.”

And as a personal testimony – just from my personal experience, in whatever ways I have grown in wisdom over the last 26 years, it is in large part because of Melissa. She gives me wise counsel. And although I am the head, and she submits to my leadership, I have learned to cherish her wise counsel. 

Every woman — whether single or married, with or without kids — every woman has a distinctive potential to be a wise counselor. The wise counsel of women is a distinctive way that women contribute to the fulfillment of our shared mission. 

Now when it comes to the subduing and having dominion on the earth, of the Genesis 1:28 Cultural Mandate, those are manly actions that require all the traits that are naturally associated with men — things like assertiveness and risk — and the Bible assumes these differences that exist in nature.

For example, the Bible does not explain to us why men, not women, go to battle. That is just the way it is. Men are the more dispensable sex who are called to risk and sacrifice their lives for the protection of their communities.

That is why it’s women and children who get in the lifeboats first. This is nature, and it is right. Men are the more dispensable sex who are meant to protect the vulnerable. Men are meant to protect women and children.

On Display in My Home

And I really enjoy seeing these differences play out in our children. The risk factor with our two boys was and is undeniably different than with our girl — and thinking back to my own youth it is truly amazing that boys make it to adulthood.

Girls are different. Ava is so different than Michael and Adrian. Girls love to nurture, to cultivate warmth and wisdom. That is what they are doing with dolls. They are simulating relationships. Meanwhile, the boys are competing in a game of dodgeball, or they are picking up dead salamanders outside.

Adrian leads with adventure, but Ava when she is with him usually keeps him from going too far, unless she is mad at him, and when they are together, as the lines intersect, they learn from each other — the girls learn to be tougher and the boys hopefully learn to be tender, both as girls and boys, and they are going to do good in this world. 

There is a complementary asymmetry and mutuality. This is disjunction and interplay. Big words that basically mean that men and women are different, and we are bound together in the fulfillment of our single mission in distinctive ways.

That is true in the Cultural Mandate, and it is true in the Great Commission. And understanding this is foundational to all the other discussions we could have on the “roles of men and women.”

A SUMMATION OF THE BIBLICAL ROLES OF MEN & WOMAN

The Bible teaches that men and women are equal in worth and dignity before God but have distinct roles that complement each other in the home and the church. This is rooted in the order of creation and upheld all throughout Scripture.

The Bible Teaches Equality in Value and Distinction in Roles – Men and women are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) but are assigned different roles.

The Bible Teaches Male Leadership in the Home – The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33).

The Bible Teaches Male Leadership in the Church – Only qualified men may serve as pastors/elders (1 Timothy 2:12-14; Titus 1:5-9).

The Bible Teaches Different yet Complementing Roles – Men are called to lead, provide, and protect; women are called to nurture, support, and help (Genesis 2:18).

We see all this demonstrated in:

• Creation Order – Adam was created first, then Eve, indicating a divine order (1 Timothy 2:13).
• The Fall and Leadership – Eve was deceived, reinforcing the need for male headship (1 Timothy 2:14).
• Marriage Structure – Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24), and husbands to love their wives sacrificially (Ephesians 5:25-33).
• Church Leadership – Paul explicitly restricts pastoral roles to men (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6).
• Jesus and the Apostles – Jesus appointed only men as His apostles, and the early church followed this pattern.

The Bible is not unclear on what it teaches and examples of all this. The Bible clearly upholds male leadership while affirming the value of women in God’s design. This is the historic and unequivocally clear biblical position.

CONCLUSION

This is where we stand. The world may rage. The culture may mock. The spirit of this age may tell us that God’s design is oppressive, outdated, and irrelevant. But we do not answer to them! We answer to the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God who formed us from the dust and breathed life into us!

We have seen it clearly—God created them male and female (Genesis 1:27). Not interchangeable. Not fluid. Not a social construct. But divinely designed, purposefully distinct, gloriously complementary! This is not an opinion to be debated.

This is not an option to be reconsidered. This is the unshakable, unchangeable, invincible Word of the Living God!

And now the question is before us: Will we stand, or will we bow?

Men—rise up! Lead with strength and humility. Love your wives as Christ loved the Church. Fight for holiness. Defend the truth. Be protectors. Pray. Serve. Teach. Take dominion. Step into the role that God has given you, for the glory of His name!

Women—rejoice! You were not made for oppression but for glory! You are not a mistake. Your role is not second-class. Your calling is vital! Be the wise counselor, the faithful nurturer, the strong and fearless helper that God has ordained you to be.

Embrace true beauty—not the cheap, fading beauty of the world, but the imperishable, unfading beauty of a heart submitted to God!

And for all of us—we must not waver! We must not flinch in the face of pressure. We must not let the lies of this world redefine what God has already made clear. We must stand.

• We will not compromise.
• We will not be silent.
• We will not conform to this world.

For this is the truth: “For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth” (Psalm 33:4).

And this is our banner: “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).

And this is our battle cry: “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).

So go. Live boldly. Lead courageously. Submit joyfully. Honor God’s design. And let the world see—not the weakness of cultural compromise, but the radiant beauty of a people standing firm in the glory of their Creator!