Gender in the Bible

I promised that we would delve a little deeper into the Bible’s teaching on the family. But let’s start with a quote.

This is what the popular medical website MedlinePlus has to say about gender dysphoria: “Gender dysphoria is the term for a deep sense of unease and distress that may occur when your biological sex does not match your …”

Match you what? Your thoughts, maybe? Your desires, perhaps? Your feelings? Nope, none of those. According to MedlinePlus, the answer is… “your gender identity”.

So the next question is, where does your “gender identity” come from? Well, according to MedlinePlus, your identity comes from your feelings. But according to the Bible, it actually comes from the Creator. And the Bible says, in Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them”. There is no differentiation here between body and mind, or body and feelings. There are simply male and female.

But wait – certainly you can be confused about your body, and gender, and some people are. But the real question is, where should you go to discover your true identity?

Let’s look at the creation in more detail. Genesis 2, starting in verse 18:

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone…

Genesis 2:18a

“It is not good”, in the sense that something isn’t complete. Of course, everything that God creates is good as opposed to bad. But He’s not finished yet. “…I will make him a helper fit for him.”

The man needs help. Well, that’s for sure! (And all the women reading say,”Amen!”) Let’s see what God does next:

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:21-24

So God created two genders, two sexes. Men and women are… well, different! But both equal – both created in the image of God.

And the man and the woman form a family. And notice that this woman doesn’t have a name yet. Her name comes from her special ability to be a mother (even before she was a mother):

The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Genesis 3:20

And God calls the woman a “helper”. This is a beautiful title. And did you know – it is also a title for God?

Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.

Psalm 33:20

So if the woman is a fit helper, what exactly is she helping with? With the instructions that God gave the man:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 1:28

Look, the woman is not to be the slave the satisfies the man’s selfish desires. No. In Genesis 2, the man takes leadership in starting a new family. And the woman is his equal, helping him in the family and in his obedience to God and His commandments.

She is human – equal – and yet she has her own special talents and abilities. Right? For example, the man is designed to be a father, the woman is designed to be a mother.

This doesn’t mean that every man must be a father and every woman a mother. Jesus Himself was not even married! Do you think that He was a “complete person”? Of course! More than any of us.

But here in Genesis we have the design and the pattern of the family. And part of that is how God made the man and the woman different, with their own strengths. In fact, as you read Genesis 1 and 2, you’ll see that a big part of creation was dividing things and making things different.

Right from the beginning, creation was different from God. And yet it seems like it was kind of just a big ball of creation at first. And so God made day and night. Land and sea. Plants of various kinds. Different species of animals. And eventually He created all of us crazy people. Thank God, we’re all different!

In the local church, God wants us to be united – but different!

As we saw last time, Jesus believes that this design of God is both good and intentional. And He points us not just to law, but design.

But the law, of course, says the same thing. There are divisions. Men marry women, they should not marry men. In fact, according to God’s law and design, that’s not marriage.

In fact, how many people really believe in “marriage equality”? Should the law of the land recognize the marriage of a woman and a virus? A baby human with an adult frog? Why do we think we can just change the meaning of any word? Let’s just call frog a woman and a virus a man and *poof* we have marriage! Nope.

And so the Law of Moses explains. You can’t marry your kids, or your sister. But here’s something even more:

A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 22:5

What is an “abomination”? In Scripture, it’s something that God really hates. This is something very serious. There are men, there are women – don’t mix them up.

Now, obviously, every culture is different. Every culture has its own “masculine” and “feminine” styles. Moses doesn’t specify styles here. What’s the point? God made masculine bodies and feminine bodies. Don’t try to make one look like the other.

But the Bible has a lot more to say about men and women, beyond body shape. We’ll keep going next time…

To see the complete series so far, check out the main Biblical Anthropology index here.