The Bible does teach that men have unique God-given responsibilities toward women and women have unique God-given responsibilities toward men. These responsibilities are not identical, and they are not dependent on our gifts. They are based on our manhood and womanhood as God designed us to be.

How many generations of men and women have been raised in this country without a positive vision of what it means to be male or female?

We often hear from many what manhood and womanhood is not.

If all we do is say what manhood and womanhood is NOT, we leave a big void of confusion about what they are. Frustrating, guilt-producing, destructive confusion. And with it a tidal wave of homosexuality, an epidemic of divorce, an increase of violent crime, growing domestic abuse, and tens of thousands of suicides every year, most often of which the majority are men.

No one will criticize you if you poke holes in ugly stereotypes of manhood and womanhood. But hundreds wait to be your judge if you try to develop a positive vision for your daughters of what it means to be feminine, or for your sons of what it means to be masculine.

By and large couples will readily admit that they don’t know whether being male or female implies any special God-given responsibilities. That confusion has horrible implications for the stability of marriage and the way the children will be prepared for life as male and female.

The Mystery of Marriage

In Genesis 2:24, says, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” When the apostle Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 5:31, he says, “This is a great mystery, and I say it refers to Christ and the church.” And, with that as his clue, he unfolds the meaning of marriage: it’s a symbol of Christ’s love for the church represented in the husband’s loving headship toward his wife; and it’s a symbol of the church’s glad submission to Christ represented in the wife’s relation to her husband.

He calls Genesis 2:24 a “mystery” because God did not reveal clearly all his purposes for the marriage of male and female in Genesis. There were hints and pointers in the Old Testament that marriage was like the relation of God and his people. But only when Christ came did the mystery of marriage get spelled out in detail. It is meant to be a portrait of Christ’s covenant with his people, his commitment to the church.

God’s creates man as male and female and then ordaining marriage as the relationship in which a male leaves mother and father and cleaves to his wife in covenant commitment. This act of
creation and this ordinance of marriage seeks the revelation through Christ and his church, and Christianity as the revelation of the mystery.

Christianity completes our comprehension of the marriage covenant.

Christ is coming again to this earth. Even as you saw him go, he will come again, the angels said. So imagine that day. The heavens are opened and the trumpet sounds and the Son of Man appears on the clouds with power and great glory and with tens of thousands of holy angels shining like the sun. He sends them out to gather his elect from the four winds and raises from the dead those who died in Christ. He gives them new and glorious bodies like his own, and transforms the rest of us in the twinkling of an eye to be fit for glory.

The age-long preparation of the bride of Christ (the church) is finally complete and he takes her arm, as it were, and leads her to the table. The marriage supper of the Lamb has come. He stands at the head of the table and a great silence falls over the millions of saints.

And he says, “This, my beloved, was the meaning of marriage. This is what it all pointed toward. This is why I created you male and female and ordained the covenant of marriage. Henceforth there will be no more marriage and giving in marriage, for the final reality has come and the shadow can pass away” Luke 20:34–36.

God created us in his image as male and female, points to Christianity as its completion. You can not have God’s concept of marriage without male and female. And the meaning of marriage is not known in its essence or fullness until we see it as a parable of Christ’s relationship to the church.

So creation as male and female points to marriage and marriage points to Christ and the church. Therefore, the belief that God created us in his image as male and female is not complete without Christianity, without Christ and his saving work for the church.

The main point is that, since Christ’s new covenant with this church is created by and sustained by blood-bought grace, therefore, human marriages are meant to showcase that new-covenant grace. In marriage you live hour by hour in glad dependence on God’s forgiveness and justification and promised future grace, and you live it out toward your spouse hour by hour—as an extension of God’s forgiveness and justification.

We see this in Colossians 3:12–13, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Because there is going to be conflict based on sin, we need to forgive sin and forbear strangeness, and sometimes you won’t even agree on which is which;

Because the hard, rugged work of forgiving and forbearing is what makes it possible for affections to flourish when they seem to have died;

Because God gets glory when two very different and very imperfect people forge a life of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.

Jesus Is Engaged to His Bride the Church

Jesus is an engaged King. His betrothed bride is the people of God—the people who trust him, elect from every race and nation, the church. He came the first time 2,000 years ago to die for his bride—to pay a dowry, as it were, with his own blood. And he will come a second time to marry her and take us his church to be with Him.

What does Jesus want us to do between the betrothal and the marriage?” What does he have to say to us who are the blood-bought bride of Christ?

We find some of the answers in the story in Matthew 25:1–13.

The virgins in Matthew 25 represent the visible church, those who profess to be Christians. They are going out to meet the Bridegroom.

Jesus gave us advance warning that his coming back to get his bride would be delayed.

When the shout goes out that the bridegroom is here, they trim their empty lamps. Still no oil. Just outward form. They trim their empty lamps when the cry rings out! They have neglected the means appointed for doing their duty,

Then they ask the impossible, Give us from your oil. The fact that the five wise virgins won’t give them any oil is not meant to teach selfishness. It’s meant to teach the impossibility of borrowing faith. It’s meant to teach the impossibility of borrowing the power of the Holy Spirit—the impossibility borrowing obedience and faithfulness. It’s too late.

We can’t have faith for you and for us. We can’t have inner spiritual life for you and for us. We can’t give you obedience and the faithful use of God-appointed means. If you neglect them, in this life, we can’t create them for you. Each one bears his own load

Verses 10–12: “And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ”

These are terrifying words at the end of the age when Jesus comes back. “I never new you.” You were part of the church—one of the ten virgins—not part of the world. You had lamps. You had religion. You had form. But you took no care for what was inside. You carried the lamp. You kept it shiny. Others looked at you and assumed you had life, faith, inner reality. And all you had was an empty lamp. And now, you are about to face one who sees right through your lamp, and says, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.”

“Watch” means: Be spiritually awake! Be alive and alert to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that he gives now. Use all the means God has given you to know him and love him and trust him. Be filled with the oil of faith and joy and hope.