Is Masculinity a Fruit of the Spirit?

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All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is masculinity a fruit of the

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Spirit? And that might sound like a little bit of a weird question to some, but it seems the reason for that is it seems in our day and age that it's really popular to discourage men from being masculine and really even mock masculinity in a lot of different ways.

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And one of the arguments people use to justify that, even coming from Christian circles, is this idea that masculinity is not a fruit of the

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Spirit, and therefore it is not something men should pursue at all. And they even go as far as to say that masculinity is entirely absent from the

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New Testament. So, you know, they'll reference things like the fact that Jesus willingly died on the cross or, you know, the fact that he told

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Peter to put the sword away. He rebuked Peter after Peter tried to defend Jesus.

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They'll point to the fact that husbands are commanded to love their wives instead of, you know, they'll say love instead of lead.

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You have those kinds of commands. And so it seems really popular to argue that right now.

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And so I'm wondering, I want to hear from you, you know, is masculinity a fruit of the

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Spirit? And if not, then is it important at all? Well, yes, it's important.

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I mean, technically, yeah. I mean, if you read through the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, you're not going to find in there masculinity as a fruit of the

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Spirit, but neither are you going to find femininity a fruit of the Spirit. And so neither one of those are listed in that list.

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But then, you know, as you read through the list, one of the things that's in there is that faithfulness is a fruit of the

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Spirit. So because faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, then that means that the

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Spirit is trying to produce in people faithfulness to all that God has said.

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And then the question becomes, well, is masculinity in men and femininity in women something that God has essentially called us to?

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Is that something that the Spirit is producing? So one way that you can think about this is to ask, you know, is that a command for the

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Christian, like for Christian men to be manly? And I mean, certainly,

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I mean, as you read through the Old Testament and the New Testament over and over and over again, you're going to find the phrase, act like men. So 1

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Corinthians 16, 13, you know, Paul says, you know, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

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So certainly there is this concept of masculinity in the Bible, but then there also is a sense in which masculinity is something that is, you know, it's something that's a created feature of human beings, if that makes sense.

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So masculinity is not something that's unique to Christians, so to speak. Masculinity is just basically just being the kind of creature that God designed you to be.

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So he's made two types of creatures. He's made men and he's made women. And masculinity is just like living up to your design.

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So, I mean, it's not something that's even really supposed to be uniquely Christian. But then as you read, I mean, it's in terms of like, what

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I mean by that is like the Christian God made the world and the Christian God designed the world in a certain way.

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But this is not a concept that is just dependent upon special revelation in order to understand it all.

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So now if you don't have special revelation, one of the things that's going to happen is you're going to distort it. And so we have a lot of distorted views of masculinity in our society, whether or not that's distorted in the way of like machismo kind of uber -masculinity on the one side or just effeminacy on the other side.

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There's distortions of masculinity, but it is a created feature, and it is something the Bible calls us to. Yeah, so it seems like, okay,

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I don't really know anyone who was saying it's a fruit of the Spirit to begin with.

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Right. But it seems like something that you still don't want to ignore. Basically, it sounds like what's being said in an argument like, hey, this isn't a fruit of the

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Spirit, so we shouldn't pursue it. Basically, the only things you should pursue at all are the things listed in that list as fruit, right?

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Yeah, I mean, and this is such a stupid argument, okay? I mean, it's such a stupid argument because the fruit of the

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Spirit is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all that is required, like the whole duty of God to man anyways, right?

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But I mean, when you think about the fruit of the Spirit, like love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control, when you think about that list, that is a good list of the kind of attitudes that the

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Spirit is trying to produce in an individual, right? Yeah, and there's sort of like an umbrella list, right?

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Yeah, it's a list of certain attitudes, but then, I mean, as I said, though, you do have the specific fruit of faithfulness, and faithfulness means the

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Spirit is trying to produce in Christians faithfulness. That means faithfulness to all that God has said, okay?

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So the entirety of God's revelation to man, certainly the fruit of the Spirit is trying to help a man be a faithful man, and part of a man being a faithful man is to not be a woman, okay?

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That's not a fruit of the Spirit, Tim. Yeah, dumb. It doesn't say, and manly.

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Yeah, okay. Dumb argument. Dumb argument. So what about this idea that the

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New Testament is entirely absent of masculinity? Is that true?

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Yeah, so, I mean, 1 Corinthians 16, 13 says, Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men.

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If you search that command all throughout the Bible, one of the things you're going to find is that,

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I mean, over and over and over again in the law, men are told to act like, to be strong, courageous, to have courage, to have strength, courage, to not act like women.

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Yeah, man's glory is his strength. Man's glory is his strength. So God's designed men and women to be two different kinds of creatures, and there are, like, when you act contrary to your design, that would be the sin of effeminacy, as we've talked about in different episodes that we've talked through.

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So part of acting like a man is to have strength and courage.

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I mean, those things are tied to masculinity in a pretty fundamental way. As you read through the

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Old Covenant law, one of the things you're going to find is a man shouldn't wear any garment pertaining to a woman, and a woman shouldn't wear garments pertaining to a man.

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As you continue to read through 1 Corinthians, one of the things you're going to find is that men are not designed to have long hair.

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Women are designed to have long hair for their glory. So you can mix up genders in your dress.

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You can mix up gender in your hairstyles. You can mix up genders in your mannerisms. So the

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Bible has a lot to say about these things, and so it's the kind of person that says that masculinity is totally absent in the

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New Testament. I would just point them to 1 Corinthians 16, 13. But really what they're saying, what's actually happening with these kinds of discussions is you have individuals who basically the only category for manliness they have is kind of the exaggerated, extorted manliness, like the machismo category.

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So in that way, you have basically all of the stereotypical differences between men and women that are sinfully distorted in certain ways.

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Basically, they're just reacting against that machismo kind of category is what they're doing.

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And instead of just you're laughing because I'm using the Mexican term.

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No, I just think it's funny. Yeah, that's what they're reacting against. And then when people get really caught up in this kind of thing, what's happened is we don't have any category for manliness and womanliness anymore.

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We don't even know the difference between a man and a woman, and this is why the transgender delusion has gone so far is because we can't even distinguish between the genders.

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Basically, we just think they're interchangeable parts. They're designed to do the same kind of thing. I mean, you can watch every single

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TV show that you're going to watch or movie that you're going to watch is basically presenting a woman as a man. And we basically undercut all the gender stereotypes, all these generalities related to genders.

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We're living in a society right now that really can't tell the difference between a man and a woman and thinks that they're fundamentally the same thing except they look a little bit different.

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And so when you're living in that kind of society, we've lost all these concepts.

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We don't even know what masculinity is or femininity is anymore. We've lost the concept entirely.

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And then you have individuals who have come along, and I think they're saying something remarkably insightful by basically just defining manliness as being faithful to the

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Bible. But then the problem is that if manliness is faithful to the

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Bible, then manliness is indistinguishable from femininity. So if manliness just means doing just general

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Christian obedience, then women should generally obey too. But really what manliness is is just adopting the traits and the mannerisms and the roles of a man.

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And so if you want to get a good idea of what manliness actually is in the Bible, it's taking up your biblical roles and pursuing your biblical roles and your biblical responsibilities.

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And men have different roles than women. So men are protectors, providers, leaders. Women are designed to follow a man.

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They're to be submissive to their own husbands. And so they're to be known to have a gentle and a quiet spirit.

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They're not to be like lady boss kind of women. And so they're uniquely designed to be homemakers, to care for their children, to love their husbands.

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So we just have different roles here. And women are nurturing and compassionate. Men are strong and courageous.

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We're just mixing up these kind of things. So we're living in a society right now that can't tell the difference, and that's the problem.

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Yeah. When I read the New Testament and I read about Christ being crucified,

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I don't know. That sounds pretty manly. Like knowing what's going to happen to you and then having the courage to do it anyways, right?

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And then not even being afraid of what man is going to do to him. Yeah. And what's happening is you just have individuals who haven't really read the

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Bible too well, and they really don't understand what is actually happening with the crucifixion narrative in general.

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So all the other disciples, the men, when the guards came, they went running, right?

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Right. But then Jesus, one of the things he did was he— when you read through the crucifixion narrative, he instantaneously identifies himself because he wanted all the focus and all the attention to be on him, right?

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Right. So he—like husbands are to love their wives to the Christ of the church and gave himself up for him.

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Like what you're saying is right. I mean, that was a very masculine, manly thing to do. Like he was the only one who didn't go running.

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He identified himself early on. He made the entire focus of all of it. Peter tried to distract, right?

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But I mean, he got the focus right back on him because he was a good shepherd. He was protecting his sheep in that moment, and he was laying down his life for the sheep.

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Like he was playing the man, okay? Right. Like in every conceivable way, he wasn't running.

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He said, no one takes my life. I voluntarily lay down my life for them. And so I think you just have a lot of individuals who really have not read these passages as carefully as they should.

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Yeah, yeah. And even looking at the apostles, I mean, they're all confrontational. They're all laying down their life constantly.

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I mean, I know in the Gospels, they're running a lot, but come Acts, they figure it out, right?

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I mean, Jesus is constantly confronting people, and he does so quickly. And he does it so much more than I think people today do.

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Not even close. Not even close. And I mean, most women are scared of confrontation in that way, but he spends his whole gospel narratives confronting people, turning over tables, right, rebuking people, pronouncing woes upon everyone.

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So he's a model of strength and courage that we can all look up to in that way, and he is a model of masculinity for sure.

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Okay, fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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