Honorable Christian Manhood (pt 2)
Taigen Joos
God’s people have always been led by God’s men. From Adam, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Peter and Paul, and scores of others, God has historically used men to help lead and guide His people down paths of righteousness and holiness. All of those men were imperfect, and led imperfectly. However, their hearts were bent towards the things of God, exhibited both by their inward faith and their outward manner of living. Throughout church history, God has led men to be the primary leaders of the church in pastoral ministries around the world. Yet the pastors are not the only ones called upon to be honorable in their lives. Every man who claims the name of “Christian” is designed by God to live honorable lives for the glory of God. Yet not all men do.
The Need is Great Because the Attacks are Great
Today, there is an all-out assault on Christian manhood. The one who is leading this destructive assault is Satan Himself. He is the mastermind behind the evil of this world. He launched the first assault against manhood in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) when Adam failed to take the leadership that he was instructed, assigned, and created to have. Satan deceived Eve, who then ate of the forbidden fruit and then gave it to Adam, who also ate. Satan used his deceptive ways to seduce them into disobeying God. Adam failed in his responsibility to lovingly lead his wife, and to humbly submit to God’s only prohibition in the Garden.
Satan still lurks today, much like he did thousands of years ago in the Garden, seeking victims to devour through his deceptive and destructive ways. One of the primary targets of Satan has always been the family, and specifically the Christian family. It is no wonder that churches today are suffering in different ways; the families which make up those churches are falling apart under the pressure from Satanic attacks upon the home.
At the head of those families is the husband/father. Marriage unites one man and one woman before the one true and living God. That marriage is a covenant union before God, which is designed to picture the relationship of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5). As such, the man is to lovingly lead the wife and the wife is to respectfully submit to the husband. Those are beautiful, God-ordained roles given in marriage. Yet those roles have been perverted, attacked, and twisted in many ways. Man’s responsibility to lovingly lead his wife has been twisted into a disjointed and domineering leadership over their wives.
In many Christian homes the young men grow up observing their fathers and, for a variety of reasons, fail to see what it means to be an honorable Christian man. Perhaps their fathers did not learn what it means to be honorable, and therefore they do not know how to be honorable. Perhaps there is no fatherly role model at all, let alone a Christian one. Perhaps they have been dismissed by their parents to live in the virtual world of video games and other portable technological devices and have never had their spiritual senses trained to grow in Christian manhood. Perhaps they have chosen to reject Christianity because of hypocrisy they observe, or because of their own selfish motives. The reasons are many, but they all lead to the same problem: dishonorable Christian men (if even Christian at all). Yes, the assault on manhood is real and multi-faceted.
Satan is cunning in his assault on the home in general, and on manhood specifically. He is the deceiver and destroyer, the father of lies, and a murderer from the beginning. Therefore, his methods of assaulting manhood are deceptive and destructive. If we want to be truly honorable Christian men, we cannot be ignorant of Satan’s devices. We will consider some of those next time.
Taigen Joos is the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Dover, NH. He blogs here, where this article first appeared. It is republished here by permission.