Masculinity,Gods Strength And Love

Marriage was instituted by God as the foundational institution of society, the place where God’s love for His people and His people’s reverence and love for God would be on display every day in the example of the love and respect between a husband and wife.  The husband is to represent the love and servant leadership of Christ and the wife is to represent the adoration, devotion and submission of the church to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33). Marriage is where children learn about relationships, love, God, life, manhood, womanhood, family and learn to become godly people themselves.

Strength

At its core, masculinity is about strength of body/mind/spirit. God designed husbands to represent the powerful, extravagantly generous, self-sacrificing love of Christ to their wives (and children).

Husbands are clearly not deity, they are fallen, sinful men, but their role in the parable of marriage is to portray Christ. Christ is powerful and strong on every level. Christ is the Head of the church. He is the Leader. He is the sole Provider of everything His people need. He is the Protector of His flock. He is the One Who gave His life up that His beloved might live – the ultimate love story of a brave Prince rescuing His princess so that they might live happily ever after together.

And masculinity is also about being fierce when necessary to fight for what is right, to defend the weak and to protect those he loves from danger.  It is about being a hero.

Steadfast Love

The love of God for us does not change. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Men tend to have a basically unchanging love for their wives, even if they don’t verbalize it. Men tend to think of their love as being constant and not something that could be easily lost.  They are often baffled that their wives need constant reassurance of their love.  To them, they married us – they are here – so that means they love us and they don’t plan for that to change.  I believe that is why God built men to generally be so emotionally and spiritually stable and largely unchanging – contrasted with the  wives who represent God’s people.

Creativity

Just as God is the Creator of the universe and the world, He put into the hearts and minds of men His spark of creativity and desire to build. Think of the civilizations that have been built by the power, strength, intelligence, creativity and problem-solving skills of men.

Gentleness/Tenderness

The combination of God’s unlimited and terrifying power and His identity as being Love Itself is the essence of God’s design for manhood. Raw muscle and strength meets tender love and compassion – that is the grandeur of manhood, the design that God has in mind for His men.

Yes, He designed them to be leaders, but not to lord their power over their wives or families but to be gentle, humble, servant-leaders like Christ. This is where the real power is for men in marriage! Godly masculinity is about self-sacrifice for the good of the marriage, for the good of the wife, for the good of the family.

Self Sacrifice

God designed men to represent the sacrificial love of Jesus for His bride, the church.  When men feel respected and know their wives believe in them and have total faith  in them – God wired them to want to respond to that honor by serving.  Respect fuels a man’s desire to give of himself to protect others.  He is often at his very best when he knows that his wife and family are depending on him and feels the daily affirmation, encouragement and appreciation from his wife in particular.

A Different Perspective on Life

God gave men a different kind of brain than He gave women. A man’s brain is much less complex (in that there are millions less connections between the two halves of the brain) and it is streamlined to focus on one thing at a time and to generally see the big picture and not be bogged down in intricate details.

A man is designed by God to be able to handle more weight physically, emotionally and spiritually than women are.

He Needs to Lead and Know His Wife Trusts and Believes Him

A man is built to need respect in order to thrive. Without his wife’s faith in him, life can seem like torture.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 6:11) and without faith in our men, it is impossible for them to become all they are meant to be and impossible for us to have the intimacy we long for in our marriages.

Masculinity is so beautifully designed by God to be a reflection of His character – it is not a perfect reflection (because of sin), but a godly man’s patience, tendency not to hold grudges, quickness to forgive, generosity, drive to be the provider and breadwinner, motivation to be the protector, tender love and affection towards his wife, attraction for her, and the desire to make his wife happy – these are all qualities of Christ towards us!

We dare not tamper with the mystery of Christ and the church by demanding that husbands become more feminine or by declaring that masculinity is “wrong.”  Men are DIFFERENT from women.  That’s a good thing!  It’s something to be celebrated.  They are not wrong to be men(God's handwork).