Gender Role Degeneracy. Romans 1:26-32
It is interesting that the
second stage that we go to in societal and individual corruption and
degradation has to do with the complete breakdown of gender roles and sexual
identity. This is something that we have witnessed in the contemporary history
of the
The divine institutions.
Definition: The term “divine institution” has been used by Christians to speak
of absolute social structures that were embedded by God into the human race. An
institution in this sense is something that is absolute; it is a transcendental
reality that applies equally to all human beings who were descendants from
Adam, because Adam is the designated head of the race. He is created first, the
mandates are given to Adam first, and then God takes the woman from his side
showing that she has her origin from the male; she is not created separately.
So there is an organic unity in the human race. The divine institutions, therefore,
are these social structures that are embedded in creation for the entire human
race, believers and unbelievers alike. Marriage was instituted to be a
framework within which children would be reared, and they were to be reared and
taught by the parents so that values could be passed on generationally.
All of this has its ultimate
roots in understanding the first divine institution, which is called individual
responsibility. When ever we are responsible for something we are responsible to someone. When God gave mandates to Adam in the garden, to whom
was Adam responsible? He was responsible to God. Ultimately every individual is
responsible to God for the revelation that they have been given. This is what
Paul is talking about in Romans 1:20, 21. Every human being is responsible to
God for how they respond to the knowledge of God that is evident in creation
and that God has made evident within them. That is the first divine
institution. It is built on the fact that man was created in the image of God,
to reflect God to creation. Genesis 1:26, 27 NASB “Then God said,
‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule
over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them.” The idea of dominion is the idea of rule, that man has
authority over all creation. Man is distinct from the rest of creation because
he is created in the image of God. He is to rule, and that means he has the
authority to determine how resources are utilized and allocated. In sin he is
going to mess that up, but the position of authority has not been removed from
man. It will not be fulfilled in its perfection until the Son of Man returns,
the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to rule and reign over the kingdom.
“…
male and female He created them.” There is a unity and equality of being
between men and women, male and female; one is not inherently superior to the
other in terms of their possession of the image of God. They have different
roles, different abilities and capabilities, and too often what happens because
of sin is somebody who is a team player covets the other person’s position. As
Paul describes in Romans
Genesis
Genesis 2:19
NASB “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky,
and brought {them} to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the
man called a living creature, that was its name.” These are more domestic
animals, not the broader array of species that populate the planet. When Adam
begins to name them God isn’t saying to go out and name 15,000 families, He is
saying start here with the domestic animals that are in the garden. Adam begins
to recognize that for every male there is a female. God is teaching him to
recognize that he is missing something. In vv. 21, 22 God forms the woman, so
there is organic unity between the male and the female.
In verse 24
there is an editorial application. Remember that Moses is writing this to the
Israelites on the plains of
In Genesis
3:16, in terms of the consequences of sin, God addresses the woman. NASB
“To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In
pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.’” It is not that there would not have been physical
pain—physical pain is just a function of sense; if you don’t have pain you
can’t feel things—there is a certain negativeness to pain that might have been
normal in the garden as sort of a warning. Adam would still have burned his
flesh if he had put it in a fire, so there would have been a need for pain as a
warning that you were doing something wrong but not the kind of pain that comes
in a post-fall world. So the woman would have had a measure of discomfort in
giving birth but now, having had the command to multiply and fill the earth,
that command is going to be tarnished, hindered, become difficult, because now
there is going to be labor involved in the process of childbirth. Then there is
the final statement, “Yet your desire will be for your husband.” The word “desire”
has a very negative connotation, a desire for control, not a passionate or
lustful desire. And, “And he will rule over you.” So he is going to want
control also. This is the beginning of the war of the sexes and it can only be
resolved by following the precepts of Ephesians chapter five.
We have the
first problem here with divine institution # 1 in terms of not being
responsible towards God and rejecting His existence at God consciousness. The
second result that we see from this impacts marriage. Marriage is defined
biblically as between one man and one woman. It came under assault almost
instantly by Satan in the guise of a serpent when he began to divine and
conquer, to separate the woman from the man and to get her away from the man so
that he could entice her into disobedience and then use her to tempt the man
into disobedience. He did it knowing that it was the male’s decision that was
the critical factor. It didn’t affect anybody but Eve when she disobeyed, but
Adam’s decision caused the fall of the human race. There were consequences to
Adam’s decision. Genesis 3:17-19 NASB “Then to Adam He said,
‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the
tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed
is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your
life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the
plants of the field; by the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you
return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to
dust you shall return.’”
Having set
that up we see that there is an assault on marriage, on male and female roles
within marriage, and immediately marriage comes under attack, and by the end of
chapter four there is the introduction of polygamy. God may have permitted
polygamy in the Old Testament but He never validated it. Polygamy is always
presented in a negative light in the Old Testament and it was not God’s
original intention.
The other
problem is the development of homosexuality, and that is one of many sins
against marriage and it attacks the stability of marriage and the possibility
of propagation of the species. If there is a culture that gets to a certain
level of homosexuality then that culture is just going to die off. Those human
beings are not going to propagate.
One of the
problems conservative Christianity has had for centuries is that more women are
interested in spiritual things than men, and because of that some men get the
idea that church is for women. When we get into this issue of gender
distinction and role distinction an important chapter is 1 Timothy chapter two.
At the beginning it is addressing behavior within a church, a local
congregation. The first issue is prayer. 1 Timothy 2:1 NASB “First
of all, then, I urge that entreaties {and} prayers, petitions {and}
thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, [2] for kings and all who are in
authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and
dignity.” We just want to be left alone so that we can witness to people and
grow spiritually. That means that sometimes pastors in this country from the
time of the war for independence at different times have recognized that if
pastors don’t lead their congregation to wake up politically, then in the next
five or ten years it won’t matter because we will lose the freedoms we have. So
there are times when it is necessary to set aside the normal operating
procedures of a pastor to wake people up to the fact that you have to get
involved politically or your freedoms will be gone within another decade. We
can pray all day long in terms of the government but if we don’t let our
representatives know what the issues are what happens is we lose our freedoms
because we have done what we should do as a responsible member and citizen of
the country. It doesn’t have anything to do with being a Christian, it has to
do with being a responsible citizen under the law of the Constitution.
When Paul
says, “thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,” he uses the word anthropos [a)nqrwpoj]. It can mean male and it can just be
more generic for all humanity, which is mankind because all of the human race
came from Adam, a man. 1 Timothy 2:4 NASB “who desires all men
[mankind/humanity] to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. [5]
For there is one God, {and} one mediator also between God and men [anthropos], {the} man [anthropos], Christ Jesus.”
Then in verse
8 Paul starts talking about the roles of males and females. 1 Timothy 2:8 NASB
“Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands,
without wrath and dissension.” The word for “holy” is hosios [o(sioj]
which has to do with “holy, devout, pious,” the fact that you are in
fellowship. But the word for men is aner
[a)nhr]—not mankind but males. It is a real
indictment of any local church whenever there is a prayer meeting and there are
more women than men. The command is to the men to pray everywhere. That doesn’t
mean the women are left out, but that is what it means to be a biblical man.
Then the
women are addressed. The word “women” is the Greek gune [gunh],
which is the female. The men are to pray; the women are to dress in a
non-distracting manner. 1 Timothy 2:9 NASB “Likewise, {I want} women
to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with
braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, [10] but rather by means of
good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.”
Then Paul
gives a command. 1 Timothy
1 Timothy