The Manly Man

This clip is part of the sermon “The Courageous Man" delivered by Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC on May 18, 2025.

Let me just say, men, before you latch onto the influencer or the politician or that macho guy in the manosphere or even some Christian leaders who encourage you in meanness and pettiness, ask is this man that I’m so eager to follow, does he help me to pursue a loftiness of spirit and display a noble generosity.  Would that this definition of magnanimity would describe more of our political leaders, intellectual leaders, online influencers, and Christian men generally.

Well, we all should disdain pettiness, there is something particularly discomfiting when a man feels the need to constantly advertise his offenses and swing at everyone who has offended him.  Manly magnanimity means you do not bear grudges; you do not wallow in self-pity, you do not demand penance from everyone who upsets you and you do not stoop to settle every score.

And surely, we see real manhood most of all in the person of Jesus Christ.  Of course Jesus took on a human nature that he might save men and women, wasn’t just a male nature to only save men, but He did come as a man, He didn’t come as an androgynous human being, and it had to be that way, not because men are more important than women or somehow ontologically superior, not at all, but He had to come as a man for the story of the Bible to make sense that God the Father would have His image in a son, that there would be for the bride the church a groom, that the first Adam would give way to a second Adam. 

We often think about how Jesus had to come as a human being, but he also had to come as a man, and the man Christ Jesus perfectly embodied all that 1 Corinthians 16:13 and 14 calls us to as men.  Just think of those verses and put Jesus in them.  Jesus was watchful when his friends fell asleep.  Jesus stood firm in the faith when Judas betrayed Him.  Jesus acted like a man when Peter was a coward and denied Him.  Jesus was strong at that very moment on the cross when it seemed that he was weakest and Jesus did all things in love.  That is the calling for us as Christians and especially, so it is the calling for us as men. 

1 Corinthians 16:13–14

[13] Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. [14] Let all that you do be done in love. (ESV)