Act Like Men: 1 Cor 16:13-16

The Crisis of Feminist and Gender-Confused Thinking

It is an honor to come before you this morning to present the Word of God, what God has for us. What I have to say today outside this church would probably be considered controversial. In fact, it might even be considered that way a little bit to even some people in this church just because of how much we are, I think, inculcated with feminist thinking and gender neutral thinking, androgynous thinking.

And one of the things that's been on my heart, though, and I think this needs to be said, is that young men especially in not just our country, I would say, I would extend that even to within the church, even within this church to some extent, I think young men are struggling with a lot of confusion.

And I'm not really that old, but even in ways that surprise me sometimes, things that I didn't have to think about when I was growing up. And when I look around and see this confusion, I think, well, if men were men, this wouldn't be a problem or that wouldn't be a problem.

We wouldn't have maybe the crime or the family breakdown, marriages that dissolve. All the things that we see around us that we know are causing so many issues in our society and don't think those issues don't sometimes affect us in the church would be solved if men were men, if they took charge, if they did the right thing, right?

And so I have a burden for young men especially who are trying to navigate a world where now they're told that gender is not even a real thing or if you are a man and consider yourself to be a man, you're toxic, these kinds of things.

You shouldn't be taking charge. You shouldn't be leading. And so the message I have this morning is for them, is for men in general. But I think it's for everyone. And the reality is we all need mothers and fathers.

The world needs husbands and wives, men and women, right? We need both of those things. But under attack for the last hundred years really has been men primarily. And so I want to talk about what the Bible has to say about this.

I was just notified right before coming up here that my dad who's in the Dominican Republic right now hosted 40 people, 40 pastors at a hermeneutics lecture yesterday to teach them how to study the Word of God, right?

And apparently three quarters of the people in attendance were women, were female pastors, right? So this just highlights the problem and I'm grateful they were there. That's good. I think once they get to certain sections in Scripture and they apply those principles, they'll realize they probably should find a man to fill that role because that's what the Bible has given that role to men, to pastor.

So this confusion is all around us. I probably don't need to give you a lot of examples of it. But as women who are listening to this message, you're not on the sidelines at all of this. You can encourage the men that you know in your life.

In fact, some of these things are applicable to you as well. I think of even the video which was very, we weren't planning this because I'm going to be talking about chivalry and knighthood a little bit which is interesting that that was the video.

But even in the video, you saw it was a female putting on the full armor of God. There are some of these commands, these analogies that are masculine that in a spiritual sense apply to both of us. So we might talk about some of that as well.

The Call for Men to Lead with Courage and Responsibility

The passage though, the main passage, we're going to be jumping around a bit and I'll tell you where we're going to be going. But the main one I would say is 1 Corinthians 16. If you want to turn there, keep your finger there.

We're not going to go there first but that's the main passage. 1 Corinthians chapter 16 verses 13 through 16. Paul's final words to the Corinthian church in his first letter. And we're going to be talking about why we need men, why the Corinthians needed men, real men, right?

The challenges to being a real man, the threats that real men face. And then how to be a man, just getting practical about this. So increasingly what I've noticed and this is part of my burden is many young people are leaving the workforce, retreating into digital fantasy and failing to take responsibility.

There's a Christian senator, Josh Hawley, who recently said, many men in this country are in crisis. And that's not just a crisis for men, that's a crisis for the American Republic. And I'd like to suggest it's also a crisis for the church.

Without shepherds, the sheep scatter. This makes them more vulnerable to wolves, willing to fill the leadership vacuum that's left behind. And so we need strong, virtuous men more today than perhaps we ever have.

Now, we've actually always needed men, right? God created men. A frequently quoted proverb states, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Some may ask whether men who do nothing are actually good though, right?

If you see something and you don't say something or do something about it and it's something that's evil, right, are you actually, are you good? And I think the obvious answer is maybe not. Maybe you'd have to question that.

But according to modern standards, maybe you are good. Male passivity is reinforced. It's championed. But it was not this way through most of human history and it should not be this way today. Even pagan societies recognized that in order to survive, they needed a form of masculine strength, though it was incomplete and marred by sin.

And I want to give you an example of that. So you have your finger in 1 Corinthians 16. If you'd like to follow along, you can turn to 1 Samuel chapter 4. I'm going to be reading 1 Samuel chapter 4 verses 8 through 9.

You see that during Israel's war with the Philistines in 1 Samuel chapter 4 verses 8 through 9, the record shows the way the Israeli soldiers paraded the Ark of the Covenant in battle. You remember this story, maybe, with the hope that God would reverse their defeat.

So they're being defeated by the Philistines and they think, well, what used to work? Well, we brought the Ark of the Covenant and it brought down the walls of Jericho and maybe God will be with us and maybe this will be the rallying cry.

And it states in verse 5, so before verse 8 and 9, verse 5, it says that as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout so that the earth resounded. Some translations say that the earth shook and some commentators have concluded that a literal earthquake took place.

So if you can picture the scene, Israel goes out, they've been defeated, but now they're going to win. They're rallying the troops. They have the Ark of God with them. God's going to be their strength.

And they shout and the earth shakes. I mean, if you're a Philistine, right, if you're up against this army, that may put some fear in you and it sure enough did with the Philistines. This struck fear in their minds that they knew they couldn't defeat Israel because they had defeated Israel, but they had little confidence they would be successful against the God who it says smote the Egyptians.

So they're remembering. They know. They've heard the stories about what happened in times past when God got involved in these battles. Now, in order to persuade themselves to fight, this is what they said.

Take courage and be men, O Philistines, or you will become slaves to the Hebrews. As they have been slaves to you, therefore be men and fight. Verse 8 and 4 through 9. So what's the charge the Philistines make?

This isn't Israel. This isn't the people of God. These are the pagans, right? What are they telling themselves? Be a man. We've got to be tough here. We've got to remember who we are. And it's linked.

Manhood is linked here to fighting, to courage. And we see the same kind of language in other places, even outside the Bible. We see this, if anyone's read the play or seen, probably more likely, the movie Henry V, William Shakespeare's play, Henry V.

There's the St. Crispin's Day speech, right? And you also have things like Winston Churchill's finest hour speech, right? Many are familiar with that speech before the Battle of Britain. And in a small way, some of these kinds of almost pep talks you can see at sporting events, right?

You watch sporting movies or you'll see the locker room, right? They're all getting ready and they're going to go win. And they're reminding themselves about who they are. So, be a man, right? This is kind of understood naturally.

People should at least understand that there's something about being a man that's linked to strength, to courage, to being able to fight, protect. The words translated men in 1 Samuel 4 is directly linked to courage and fight.

And the people naturally recognize that one of the most important features a man possesses involves strength, both physically and emotionally. When properly channeled, men use this strength to protect themselves and the ones they love.

And this means that in addition to their spiritual worth, God designed men with a temporal purpose as part of their nature. I think that's very important to say for men today that you have a place, you have a purpose.

The toxic masculinity you're told that you have actually has a function. It serves, it's not toxic, it serves a function. And that function is to use that strength to do the right thing, right? Not to be a bully, not to abuse people, but to protect people from bullies and people who abuse, right?

That's why God gave you that, in part. So, this means in addition to spiritual worth, you have, because everyone has spiritual worth, we're all made in the image of God, but you have a function. You perform.

You have a purpose. Keep and cultivate the garden, right? That's what God told Adam. Hard work. And, of course, it got harder after, it got really hard after the curse of sin with the toil that comes from working to provide.

So, throughout Scripture, we find God often responds to threats facing his people by commanding men to be men. I'll give you a few examples of that. Paul's final exhortation in his first letter to the Corinthians is the first one, and we'll probably spend more time on this.

It says, and this is in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, or 16 rather, verses 13 through 16, chapter 16 verses 13 through 16. He says in this section, verse 13, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

The phrase translated act like men in the New American Standard Bible appears in other translations as quit you like men. It's Old English, that's King James. Be men, do manfully, play the man, be brave, be valiant, and be courageous.

These are all ways that other translations have tried to correctly give us the Greek grammar here. The root word implies sexual differentiation. In other words, don't be like women, be like men for this particular task, for this particular thing that you're facing.

It occurs in a group of commands associated with military action during a time of great confusion. The specific situation the Corinthian church found themselves in demanded male fortitude more than feminine nurturing.

Let me just walk through a few things that the Corinthians were facing. We have problems in the modern West with all kinds of things, but the Corinthians had their own problems. They faced a spiritual crisis, they had a leadership vacuum, they fractured over allegiance to various teachers, they tolerated, it says, sexual sin, they harbored dysfunctional marriages, they dishonored the Lord's Supper, and competed with each other for recognition in the church.

These are all things Paul is correcting in the letter to the Corinthians, the first letter. Paul warned them against participating in things, now get this, as basic as temple prostitution. Don't visit the prostitutes in the temple.

That was part of the pagan rituals. Don't do that. Suing each other in secular courts. They had a problem with that apparently. Taking each other to the court, not working it out as Christians. And even, this one might hit home a little, confusing gender roles.

That was part of Paul's correction to them as well. Part of the pagan rituals that confused gender roles. Now, in order to climb out of their spiritual slump and restore order, Paul instructed them to cultivate traits associated with masculinity.

And so, these traits, this is where it's generally applicable for all of us. On a spiritual level, he's telling the whole church that for the times that you're undergoing, this is what you all need corporately.

You need to cultivate this strength. In verse 13, he extols different facets of vigilance. He tells them to continuously guard against threats. To make their defensive position on the high ground of faith.

To draw upon manly instincts and exercise strength. This is kind of like the speeches you'll hear before a great battle. Or the locker room, kind of like, let's go get them, right? This is this rallying cry.

He then reminds them in the next verse why they fight. Let all that you do be done in love. And the chief problem I would suggest afflicting the Corinthian church was an overall failure to prefer each other over themselves.

They fell to love. They didn't love each other. And that's why Paul devoted an entire chapter, the love chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, to this root issue. Instead, they were to sacrifice. Instead of being selfish, they were to sacrifice their personal desires in battle for the sake of their fellow brothers and sisters.

Finally, in verse 15 through 18, Paul instructs them to form ranks behind men committed to ministry. So the Corinthian church needed more vigilance, love, and leadership to avoid destruction. And Paul does talk about, he uses that word in 1 Corinthians 10, 9 through 10.

He talks about the dangers of literally destruction. That the devil's targeting you. You have sin. You have the threats from the world. Don't be destroyed. And so the thing he tells them, the last instructions before he ends the letter is you need vigilance, you need love, you need leadership.

And I'd like to suggest that those are all things we need as well, right? I'm grateful here at Grace Bible, we have men who, you just saw all the men participating in this service, who have taken positions of leadership.

And you don't even have to have the title to be a leader. A leader is someone who leads, right? I don't know how many of you on the workforce have experienced that where you might have someone above you who has the title, but they're really not the one taking initiative.

And so maybe you take initiative or someone else takes initiative and they end up getting the respect. They end up being the leader. They're actually exercising that kind of masculine virtue that is being commended here by Paul.

And so if you're someone who's sitting here this morning and as you're listening to the scripture, as you're listening to my words, you're thinking to yourself, you know, maybe there's things I should be doing.

Maybe there's responsibilities I should be taking on or responsibilities I have that I'm not fulfilling or maybe places that I need to go. Maybe I need to go to the fair and maybe that's something that scares me, but I need to go and be a man about it, right?

I need to be strong in that. This is the hope even for people in this church that I have. So we have threats today. We have threats and these are things that I've just seen. I jotted this down last night.

These are just things in the past I've seen in the church, including this church, that have caused problems that threaten the existence of the church. Gossip is one of those things. Lack of hospitality can be one of those things.

Not using your spiritual gifts can be one of those things. Heresies that come in. Marital strife, selfishness, pride, and of course the list can go on and on. These are all things that threaten us as believers, right?

And so we might not be as bad as the Corinthian church. That's very true. They were in a very steep decline at the time Paul wrote to them, but it doesn't mean that out of the woods, that those things aren't a threat to us.

Biblical Examples of Men Acting Strongly

The early church recognized the same language that Paul uses here from some Old Testament passages found in the Greek Septuagint translation. You'll remember the Greek Septuagint is the translation that the early church used.

Jesus used it. It is the translation of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament, into Greek. And so this same phrase is used in that translation during the conquest of Canaan. It's used actually a few times when both Joshua and the people of Israel were instructed multiple times to be strong and courageous.

Be strong and courageous as they're entering to conquest, to defeat the Canaanites, to colonize Canaan, the land that God had given them. They're told this. Likewise, King David told his son Solomon, be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man.

So if you're looking for references, this is from Deuteronomy 31, Joshua 1, and then 1 Kings 2 is where you'll find this reference to Solomon. Be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man. Now these commands reveal a shared understanding of what being a man meant to their original audiences.

In other words, he didn't have to spell it out in detail. He didn't have to take you through an itemized list of here is what a man is. A, B, C, D. They already knew. They understood what being a man was.

When he said, be a man, it was just, okay, I know what that is. And that's actually, that's a very, I think, important point that I'll hopefully be making a little later in this as well. That we often, I think, assume that the authors of scripture on every topic, they're giving us exhaustive information.

In other words, they are, in other words, when you want to look up being a man, which is what we're doing this morning, they're going to give you an itemized, here's the exhaustive list of what it means to be a man.

But oftentimes, you'll see, they assumed things from natural revelation. Of course, in the Old Testament, we don't even have the Pauline instructions that I was just reading to you from 1 Corinthians.

We don't have the example of Jesus yet, right? But yet people knew kind of generally what that meant. And I think that's what's missing today, in a way. That basic instinct of understanding what taking charge is, what being a man is, is kind of, it's under attack.

And we need to regain that, because it is so fundamental. It really is so basic. Today, as our world challenges gender norms, some self-proclaimed Christians, unfortunately, have joined the confusion by suggesting that modern evangelicals are, quote, a cult of masculinity.

This is from a popular book, a New York Times bestseller called Jesus and John Wayne. Kristen Dumas, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University. Some of you might have read this. It's actually a very popular book.

And she suggested in her book that Christian men who think patriarchal power, masculine aggression, and sexual desire are biblically justified contribute to sexual abuse. And this is a very, very common idea now.

In fact, there was just a documentary. I didn't see it. But I know people who did on the Duggars, I believe. And it makes the same point, basically, that what's to blame for some of the abuse stories and dysfunction and so forth?

Well, it's this masculinity. That's got to be it. That's got to be the thing that we can use to blame. And so the suggestion is, if we got away from masculinity, right, then we wouldn't have these problems.

What she, though, and others, I think, fail to realize is that these features are inescapably part of God's design, whether they are explicitly endorsed in scripture or not. All men possess certain attributes, but not all of them are good.

If good men suppress their strength while evil men encourage theirs, there will be no one to protect the victims of so-called toxic masculinity. So in other words, God made men stronger in general. There's obviously exceptions to some of these things.

But in general, that's what God's designed for men, that he made them physically stronger. They do dominate more. They do have more aggression. They have this thing called testosterone. God made that.

It's not an evil thing. But if good men, if men who are influenced by the word of God, who want to do the right thing and they're motivated out of love, fail to actually take on masculine responsibilities, then something is going to fill that gap.

That's where you get dictators. That's where you get people who oppress. And that's where you get problems. Biblical authors understood this. They did not sense the need to justify fundamental male traits.

Instead, they simply recognized God's design from creation and encouraged men to use their more aggressive natures for good. This is why the Apostle Peter, and this is in 1 Peter 3, verse 7, the Apostle Peter instructed husbands to live with their wives, it says, in an understanding way as with someone weaker since she is a woman.

Peter would be canceled today. I'm just saying. Those words alone, he would not have a political future. He would probably not have any future. But this is the word of God, right? He's just recognizing a basic truth that was obvious even a few decades ago.

Up until recently, people universally recognized this fact, which is part of the reason only men filled roles that involve things like soldiering or police work, all right? Now, let me be clear on this.

Scripture uses the analogy of spiritual warfare, like we just saw in the video, and applies it to men and women. So in a spiritual sense, we're to be doing these things. That's the visual he gives you.

He's drawing on something that's in their world that they would have understood, and he's saying, follow that when it comes to spiritual war. Do something like those Roman soldiers. But when it comes to actually being a soldier, right, a physical soldier in the temporal world here, fighting bad guys physically, when it comes to being a police officer in general, up until very recently, these roles were reserved for men.

These weren't roles that women could enter in some places, in some police departments, in some, well, you even see this today, somewhat in the military. There were physical standards you even had to match.

I was reading, maybe it was two weeks ago, my grandfather's letters from World War II, so 1943, and he's talking about his training, and even in his training, he says that the men over 40 just couldn't, you know, they couldn't hack it.

They were getting pushed out of the military, because even though they needed men to go fight in the World War II, they couldn't use men who couldn't keep up physically. So we've always had this kind of standard, right, until recently, now that it's kind of deteriorating.

I saw, was it last, maybe a few days ago, I think Joe Biden just appointed the first commander of the Navy as a woman now, which, I mean, it's sad to me in a way. This is a military position. You would think that there would be a lot of men who, and this is an aggressive thing, going to war, but this is where we're heading.

Women in Political Roles and the Judgment of God

So Jesus, if you look in scripture, if you're not offended already, you will be now. Jesus chose 12 men to be apostles. God limited the office and function of pastor to men. The biblical authors were men, as were the Levitical priests, who also decided legal cases.

The biblical authors did not forbid women from performing political duties, but they did assume the responsibility to lead in the home, church, and government belonged to men. When women fulfilled political roles, it was either out of necessity or a sign of judgment.

I'll give you examples of this. This isn't my opinion, just so you know. These are all, this is all backed up in scripture. Judges chapter four, you might want to turn there. Judges chapter four, there's an example here, verse nine.

The prophetess Deborah, okay, told Barak, God commanded him to lead an army against the Canaanite king, Sisera. Okay, so we're back to Israel and the Canaanites again, right? We were just talking about that, now we're back to that.

This is actually, this is actually before the story we just read. Okay, so they're fighting the Canaanites and he says, go lead this army of Israel against King Sisera. With the guarantee, she said, that Israel would achieve victory.

However, Barak would only do so if Deborah went with him. Because of this weakness, this is what Deborah says in Judges 4, 9. I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the honor shall not be yours on the journey that you are about to take.

It's really encouraging, right? You're not going to have any honor from this, Barak. For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman. Okay, this is a woman saying this. There's not going to be any honor for you, so there's going to be dishonor really, because you're not going to actually defeat Sisera, because you're a coward.

That's what she's saying, you're a coward. If you need me to hold your hand, you know, to be your mom, you're not going to get any glory from this. Put your big boy pants on and do it without me. He wouldn't do it.

So what happened is, after the Canaanites' defeat in battle, Sisera escaped and sought refuge in an Israeli tent where Jael, the wife of Heber, killed him by driving a tent peg through his head. No one said the Bible was rated G. Deborah and Barak praised Jael for defeating Sisera, but this did not erase the fact that it was Barak who should have defeated him.

In other words, it was really good that Jael did what she did, that she obeyed. She should have done that. That was the right thing to do, to love her people, to defeat the enemy. But it really didn't, that responsibility did not belong to her.

That should have been filled by someone else. So she wasn't in sin, she didn't do anything wrong, but Barak did. Likewise, the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 3, verse 12, lamented that during his time, during his time, that Judah's oppressors were children and rulers were women.

That's what he says. Their oppressors are children, their rulers are women. And that's a negative thing. That's, that means it's a sign of judgment. Now this may be shocking to some of you, and I debated whether even to include this, but I figured it's actually a good shock, in a way, to think about this, to ponder this for a moment.

And don't get mad until I finish, because at one time, in the not-so-distant past, people thought even the idea of women voting in political elections was unbecoming. Can you believe that? So cavemen, right?

Consider that in 1895, less than 4 of women in Massachusetts, that bastion of conservatism, right, voted in a non-binding referendum to support women's suffrage. This is over 100 years ago, and that was the mass popular opinion among women was that this wasn't appropriate.

Now why was that? Today, of course, in women's studies departments and history departments, this is all viewed as women were trained to hate themselves, and that's how they psychologize it, kind of. There's really not evidence for that, though.

The Atlantic, right, another bastion of conservatism right there, right, the Atlantic publication, I'm being facetious, it's a very progressive outlet. In 1903, they ran a piece that claimed the reason for this lack of popular support was that women understood they were suited to nurture, not coerce.

Participating in government directly meant entering a political war where policy decisions forced people into compliance. So you're not the police officer or the guy with the gun in the military, but you're making the decisions indirectly for what they're going to do.

Okay, that's the idea, that you're involved in this in some way. The author of the piece in the Atlantic, a theologian named Lyman Abbott, insinuated that voting was beneath the higher work given to women.

Can you believe that? It was too dirty, it was too beneath them. There was something they were called to that was much higher and more important and more influential. Hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, right?

That's an old saying. This higher work included nurturing through things like caring, education, keeping home, and charity. Women carried out the ministry of life that men, using the machinery of government, were charged to protect.

So what are men fighting for? What do men make decisions for? They're preserving their home life. They're preserving what their women are doing. They're protecting them. It's precious to them, and that's why they get involved in these things that are considered dirty.

Now this does not mean, I have to say this, this does not mean that women should not vote, okay, please vote, when given the opportunity. Or fill some positions that men normally hold in the absence of virtuous men.

If there's not a virtuous man, then you don't have a choice, right? I wonder whether it's, I'm sure it's probably that way to some extent in the Dominican Republic right now, where, and well it's not just there, it's this country too, where sometimes females will step up and they will take leadership positions, even in the church, because there's no men around.

This is just, this is the part of living in a sinful broken world. In a way, I think, and I appreciate the work greatly. We have, I don't know where she is, Sarah, but we have someone here who's representative of Moms for Liberty, right?

And I appreciate the work that they do very much, and there are men even involved in that particular effort. But I wonder sometimes, where are the men? Where are the Dads for Liberty? Why isn't there not an organization called the Dads for Liberty?

If you think about it, scripture places the responsibility to educate and discipline children chiefly with fathers. And it would seem that public schools who have violated their trust should receive pushback from them before their wives.

Not saying wives shouldn't push back. I'm saying, though, it really should be the men at the forefront of this effort. I watched, a few months ago, in the Midwest somewhere, I think it was Michigan, a school district that was public, but it was controlled by Muslims.

In that area, it might have been Dearborn, but they had a lot of Muslim immigrants, refugees, and so forth that had settled in that area. And they tried to do all this nonsense, right? This pornography books, and gender stuff, and all the stuff that you're hearing about in the headlines.

And you know what happened? They didn't get too far. The school board meeting met, and guess who showed up? Yeah, there weren't any women there. It was angry men with beards, okay? They showed up, and they wouldn't even let the school board talk.

I mean, they were so outraged about what their kids were being fed. Why does, now I'm not saying we should be jerks, but why does that, the scenes I see from Christian areas, or from more conservative Christian-leaning people, how come the videos that are coming out of this are hardly ever men?

It's always a woman on the forefront who's making the case why their kids shouldn't be groomed. That makes no sense, right? Where are the dads? Begs that question, right? I don't know if you've ever wondered that.

The answer, of course, is, and this is, I'm going to tell you where it's my opinion. This is my opinion, this next sentence. The answer, of course, I believe, is that men are increasingly conditioned to regulate their masculinity to common boyhood activities.

So you can be a man when it comes to sports and games. So you can be a man in that arena, but you are not to have the confidence to live up to the potential that you have and to take hold of the mature responsibilities that accompany manhood.

That's the no-no. Paul condemns this penchant for taking the path of least resistance in 1 Corinthians 6, 9. This is what he states, 1 Corinthians 6, 9. Again, letter to the Corinthian church, we've been talking about this.

Do not be deceived, he says, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

These aren't people who had a moment of cowardice. These are people characterized by it. That's not what a Christian is. Christians aren't characterized by cowardice. They're not characterized by drunkard, being drunk.

They're not characterized by all of these things on this vice list. Some translations, like the ESV, combine the Greek word malakos, which is the word here translated effeminate, with arsenikoites, which is translated homosexuals, into this.

So, if you have an ESV Bible, you might wonder, hey, where's that word effeminate? Well, your ESV says men who practice homosexuality. They're combining the terms. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to say that this designates Paul's condemnation of homosexuality, not just the active participant, but the passive participant.

So, both of those people involved in that homosexual act he is condemning here. And so, they're taking effeminate, or malakos, the Greek word, to mean this passive partner in a homosexual relationship.

But I want to point out something. These are two separate words in the text, all right? So, I don't think the ESV should have done that. In Matthew 11, 8, this same word is used by Jesus, the same word malakos, to describe a man dressed in soft clothing, who lives in king's palaces, right?

So, John the Baptist wasn't like that. He wasn't a man dressed in soft clothing. So, Jesus uses this same term. And he's not talking about a passive sexual partner in a homosexual relationship there. Outside of Scripture, we also see contemporary historians applying this term to men with an easy life, or cowards who refuse to fight.

They're malakos. They're not real men, really. I mean, that's what he's saying. It's kind of an insult. So, it is reasonable to conclude that Paul was actually condemning male passivity here in the strongest possible terms.

And this also contrasts with his later command that we just read earlier, to act like men, right? So, he's saying you ought to act like men. And in the same letter, he's condemning men who don't do that.

Paul believed manhood was intrinsically tied to a certain kind of forcefulness. In 1 Corinthians 13, 11, he says, being a man means doing away with childish things and embracing the duties of manhood, okay?

So, God equips men with the capacity for physical labor and mental fortitude needed to protect, provide, and prosper. Real men harmonize their lives with a pre-written mold God wired into creation. The highest expression of this is found in Jesus Christ, who perfectly executed his purposes, masculine and otherwise.