Reverend James Lanning, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Part 1 of a three-part series.
Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus was a famous book from the early 1990’s, that attempted to make the “audacious” claim that men and women were, in fact, different. The author, John Gray, wrote it as a book that would help to better communication between the men and women, by pointing out some of the fundemental differences between the sexes. The basic idea of the book was that men and women are different, but if we could each respectively learn how the other sex works, we then we could better our relationships with the opposite sex. Now 
the idea that men and women have fundemental differences in how we think and behave – and in the way we are made for that matter – should not come as a shocker to anyone, but unfortunately, this is a fact that can’t be taken for granted anymore. Today we live in a society that not only denies traditional sex roles, but denies sex differences all together. There are no differences between men and women in the current narrative, in which categories like “sex” are considered to be constructs of society, that are not binding or restrictive, but rather transitory, and up to personal choice. This is a perverted view of reality, which stems from the combination of the 2nd wave feminist view that there are no fundemental differences between men and women, and the neo-Gnostic (referring to ancient Greek mysticism) view of gender fluidity that constitutes the foundation of the LGBTQIA+ narrative. The problem is that there really are differences between male and female human beings, differences that were written into our very creation by God, who created us. These differences were made with purpose and care, and underwrite who we are at a fundemental and essential level; therefore, if we fail or refuse to acknowledge these differences, we do so to our own detriment. The purpose of the paper is to look at these fundemental differences between men and women, to acknowledge that they are indeed there, and explain what this looks like in the Church.
What does God Say?
The most important question for Christians on just about any matter is “what does God say about it?” Now of course there are questions which God does not answer within His Word, but fortunately, this is not the case when it comes to what man and woman are respectively. From the very first pages of Scripture God tells us exactly what man is and what He created man to do, as well as what the woman is and what she was created to do. In Genesis 1, God tells us what man is in verses 26 and 27:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
From this passage we understand that God made אָדָם (adam) man/human in His own image, to be His representative to His creation; God made אָדָם (adam) man/human to be in charge of all the living creatures on earth; and God made אָדָם (adam) man/human to have two different characteristics within man’s nature, namely that אָדָם (adam) man/human is both male and female. The words in Hebrew are distinct and specific: זָכָר (Zah-qar) male and נְקֵבָה (neh-kay-vah) female, referring distinctively to their biological sex. In essence, Chapter 1 shows that what it means to be human is to be made in the image of God, and to be either male or female. God made humans to be equal in one aspect and yet different; as Bruce Ware says in his paper Male and Female Complementarity And The Image of God: “while God did intend to create male and female as equal in their essential nature as human, He also intended to make them different expressions of that essential nature, as male and female reflect different ways, as it were, of being human.” In other words, being man and woman, male and female, is a foundational part of what it means to be human.
Chapter 1, shows us what it means to be human, but what does it mean to be man and woman? For this we look at Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5. In Genesis 2, God creates man and places him over His creation, naming the animals and cultivating the ground; in his task, however, there is no creature suitable to help him, so God creates the woman. There are two things to notice about the creation of the woman in this chapter; the first is that the woman was made from the man. The woman being made from the man is important to understand because it shows that they are an integral and inseparable part of each other, and they are not complete apart from one another; this also shows that the man is the source from which the woman comes, making him the source or the head. The other important thing to notice about the creation of the woman is her title and purpose: she is the עֵ֫זֶר (ezter), the helper. God says “I will make a helper fit for him,” in other words, she is made to be his helper; it is where she fits, and it is fit for her, just as she is fit for the man.
In Genesis 2, God gives us a picture of the first and ideal marriage, with the man as the head and the woman as the helper. In Ephesians 5, Paul expounds on this head/helper dynamic, giving more detail on the relationship between the man and the woman as husband and wife; in particular, it helps define the roles of head and helper. Paul’s explanation of the marriage relationship, and how the two respective sexes should relate to each other are important, because Paul specifically has the order of creation in mind. In fact, Paul even quotes Genesis 2: 24 in his explanation of marriage, which shows how important the order of creation is, especially when he relates marriage to the relationship between Christ and His Church. Paul says that wives are to be in submission to their husbands just as the Church is to be in submission to Christ, and even as Christ submits to the Father (Phillipians 2: 5-8). likewise, husbands are to love their wives and put the needs of their wives above their own. The husband as the head is to love his wife, even to the point of laying down his life for her, and the wife, as helper is to respect, encourage, and help her husband. Paul is looking back to creation at the way God designed human beings to be – man and woman, one as head and one as helper – and affirming that it’s the way we ought to be.
(This concludes part 1 or a 3-part series. The next part will look at some of the scientific evidence for the differences between men and women.)
