God's Design for MenSample

Created Men

I have a daughter and a son, and when they were babies growing into toddlerhood, I was amazed at how early they began to notice and comment on the physical distinctions between boys and girls.

They noticed it when they shared a bath or were getting changed (or sometimes when they were just running around the house naked for no reason). “We have different parts!” my 2-year-old son shouted at me one day as I walked in the door to see two nude toddlers run giggling down the hallway.

We do indeed, son.

My wife and I never went out of our way at that young age to talk about gender differences, but the kids started asking questions all the same.

In today’s passage, God’s Creation story wraps up with His crowning achievement, mankind—made in His own image, the pinnacle and most important part of His Creation, and clearly divided into two distinctly different versions:

Male and female.

We believe that God has created us as two genders on purpose. We are equally made in God's image, equally honored and loved by Him, yet uniquely distinct from one another. These two genders join their differences together in marriage and procreation, as God uses this union of two distinct partners as His means to create more life.

As we begin digging into God’s design for men, we need to start here:

God created you as a man on purpose.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made as a man (Psalm 139:14). Your masculinity is a crucial part of who you are, and in the beginning, God created men as men and women as women and called it all “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Jesus, the perfect Man, lived out His masculinity without issue and shows us the best possible version of what God’s created man can look like.

Men are at their best when they celebrate and lean into this part of how God created them, without apology and with understanding that God’s original creation was good.

God’s design for men is to be the men that He made us to be, trusting that the masculinity that He created is, in itself, very good, and following the example of the perfect Man who shows us the right way to live it out.

Prayer: Father, thank You for creating me to be a man and for everything this involves. I know not everything men do is good, but I trust that Your design for men is good and that I will grow in goodness as I follow Your Word and the way of Jesus. Help me to live out Your good design. Amen.

Reflection: Why do you think God chose to design humanity with two genders? How do the two genders, at their best, work together for good?