Godly Men and Godly Women: The Courageous Man

Oh Lord, we come to you once again and ask for your help. We pray this not simply because sermons usually start with a prayer, but because we need your help, I need your help if I am to preach faithfully and boldly and in your spirit and we need your help if we are to listen and apply these things so we ask that you might give us ears, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

A short text this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 16:13-14. We are in week two of this brief three-week series I am calling Godly Man and Godly Women. Last week we looked at Godly womanhood, this morning what it means to be a Godly man.

1 Corinthians 16:13-14. “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men. Be strong, let all that you do be done in love.” On March 8, 1554, three Evangelical bishops, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were ordered to be taken to a prison in Oxford where they would await trial for heresy. Queen Mary whom we know as Protestants as Bloody Mary because she persecuted the Protestant cause, wanted to make an example of these three bishops in particular so that their fate might be a warning to the other reformers and Protestants in England. When next year their trial commenced in 1555, all three men were intransigent. They were unmoved, they refused to be persuaded by the Catholic prosecutor and when it came for their sentences to be read, they each offered in reply a statement of defiance. Cranmer would not be killed until May7 21, 1556. The deaths of the other two bishops would come sooner. By October 15, 1555, the trials of Latimer and Ridley had come to an end and on October 16 the two men were paraded through Oxford, a smaller city back then, past the city gate, led to a stake in front of Balliol College. Cranmer, he was in prison, not yet to die, but his time would come, was brought out of his prison cell and he was made to watch his friends die as they were burnt at the stake. According to a Catholic commentator, Cranmer was traumatized by what he saw, tore off his cap, fell to his knees, began to wail. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley before they were consumed by the flames, and you can find just a little plaque there in the road for the Oxford Martyrs today, before they were consumed Latimer uttered these famous words, I hope you’ve heard them before, “Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.” The candle of course that would be lit was their own flesh and by God’s grace that candle has never been put out and all of us are in some ways in their debt. 

Now in that famous line, no one has to explain what it means when one man says to the other, “Play the man.” It means be brave, be strong, show courage, don’t give in, don’t give up, let us die like men. Do people still talk that way, are we allowed to still talk that way? We have at least in my lifetime, I think never been in a time where there’s more confusion around what it means to be a man, if there are even differences that we’re allowed to see between men and women. For many of the last number of years the only time you would hear the word masculinity you know what word comes in front of it, toxic, that’s the only kind of masculinity that our world sometimes knows to talk about and yet there has been a reaction, rightfully so, but sometimes an unhealthy reaction against that sort of mindset and there’s a whole manosphere online you may not be familiar with, you can ask your teenagers or 20-somethings, and that manosphere, if it’s moved away from a toxic masculinity, you might say embraces a transgressive masculinity, a hyper-caricatured, maybe exaggerated anti-female, often looking for ways to prove their transgressiveness as they are men. It’s as if the whole world has said you’re not allowed to be men and then they said, you know what, we are gonna be men and we are going to be, some of us, the worst sort of men we can be. So this is a very relevant question and I don’t think that the Church of Jesus Christ has always ventured forth an answer other than perhaps talking about husbands and wives, that’s very important, talking about men as leaders in the church and in the home, but more broadly, it’s of course related to all that, what does it mean to be a man because I think every man deep down resonates with that exhortation, something in you leaps up no matter your personality type, when Latimer says to Ridley, “Play the man.”

We want to be found as Godly men, to live and to die as faithful men whether we are athletic or artistic, brawny or skinny, macho-looking or unassuming, we want to be men. So, this sermon, yes it’s for women, what you might want to look for in a husband. We saw that last week, the flip side with Proverbs 31 in men. It’s also for those who are married, what you ought to encourage and pray for and verbally praise when you see these things in your husband, and it is in particular for young men, but all of us, what does it look like, what does it mean to grow up into a Godly man. Now I’ve already read those two verses in 1 Corinthian 16 and we’re going to land back at those two verses at the end, but I wanna look at some other parts of 1 Corinthians before we land there because surprisingly so 1 Corinthians, I think, is a book, at least in part helping to teach what it means to be a mature man. Now we don’t see that immediately and I hope you’ll see it and don’t think I’m making this up after this sermon. If you’re thinking, where’s the text on Godly women, Proverbs 31, everyone thinks of that. If you’re thinking, where do I go to find instructions on what it means to be a Godly man you probably don’t think of 1 Corinthians, but they’re here. 

So, I want you to turn, first of all to chapter 4 because I want you to understand how Paul is speaking to the Corinthians and how he’s relating to them. Because my argument is that Paul is addressing them as a father to young man and often here in Corinth to immature young men. Now obviously when he says brothers it does include brothers and sisters, the church here would have men and women, but in particular he’s addressing men. Look at what he says 1 Corinthians 4:14, “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” So right there we see he’s taking the position of a parent who is writing to spiritual children, “For though you have guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel”, so explicitly he is thinking of himself as a spiritual father writing to his children and as we’ll see these children have some big problems. I urge you then be imitators of me, that’s what a father should be able to say to his sons as ultimately that’s really the first place to start, where do young men learn what it means to be a man, from their fathers. It is such a deficit to overcome and by God’s grace it can be overcome, but it is such a deficit to overcome when men do not grow up with fathers. They’re meant to see, it is caught as much as it is taught. So Paul says, “I’m a father here and I want you to imitate me.” Verse 17, “That is why I sent you Timothy my beloved and faithful child in the Lord to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power for the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish, shall I come to you with a rod or with love in a spirit of gentleness.”

See here’s the problem. These Corinthians, and as we’ll see the sins that he addresses are sins in particular that the men are committing, these young children in the faith are, as often happens with young men, looking at their father and saying, “Dad you don’t have a clue, you think you’re so tough, you’re a wimp, you’re a weak dad, we want some real strength”. And you see back up in verse 8, already you have all you want, here’s Paul talking, exasperatedly, somewhat sarcastically, “You’ve become rich. Without it you become kings and would that you did reigns we might share rule with you for I think God has exhibited us apostles last of all. Like men sentenced to death we’ve become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ sake.” Now he’s speaking tongue in cheek, he is repeating to them the sort of things, and the sort of attitude they have toward Paul. “We are fools, but you are wise. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.” This is what the Corinthians thought of Paul. They said, “Paul, you’re nothing, you don’t have real power, we like these super apostles, we like these false teachers cuz they come in and they give us all the macho vibes that we like. Not you Paul.” That’s why Paul says at the end of chapter 4, “We’ll see what real power looks like, and I’d like to come gently, but I’ll come with power if that’s what it takes.” So, Paul is addressing the Corinthians as a father speaking to them as boys who need to grow up and be men. 

And what follows in chapters 5 and 6, and we don’t have time, but you could just about go through the whole book and see this, but in particular chapter 5 and 6, and I want you to see four examples that Paul is going to highlight where they are acting like boys instead of men. Number one, chapter 5, Sexual Immorality in the Church. Verse 1, “It is actually reported that here is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife.” This is not the mother, his own mother, that would have been a different word, but this is deliberately the language of Leviticus and it’s referring to a stepmom. It’s not his biological mom, but yet the wife of his biological father. It says, “You have someone who has committed this sexual sin, sleeping with his father’s wife, this is something that even the pagans know is wrong.” Leviticus 18 says that in sleeping with your father’s wife you uncover the shame and nakedness of your father. So, you have to follow the logic here. It’s not only that it’s a sin, obviously you can see its adultery, you shouldn’t be having sex with this person, but it’s more than that, because the father had slept with this woman, for the son to sleep with the same woman is an assault on his father’s manhood. To expose, I’m just gonna use the nontechnical words here, to expose her private parts is to expose his private parts. It is an act of usurpation, it deprives the father of virility, and authority, it is as one commentator puts it, an act of virtual castration. 

Now, if that weren’t bad enough, look at verse 2, “And you are arrogant.” I hope you don’t know young men like this, but young men sometimes are like this. The worse they do the more they boast of the things that they’ve done. “Ought you not rather to mourn. Let him who has done this be removed from you.” So, Paul is speaking to them like wild teenage boys in Corinth who are boastful of this sexual prowess of this offender and Paul says, “You should be ashamed. Real men are not sexual libertines.” That’s his point. And here’s the secondary point, just as important, real men protect other people, real men protect the sanctity of the church. See that’s the scandal here, not just that this man had committed this egregious sin, that’s bad, churches have sinners in them. The real problem is when those sins are not dealt with, when they’re winked at, when they’re overlooked or here in this case, when they’re arrogant and proud of this sin. So, Paul says, “You have been unwilling to deal with the sin in your midst”, that’s why the rest of the chapter is about church discipline, handing over such a man to Satan. Apparently, the woman involved was not even a Christian, that’s why he says, “Who am I to judge outsiders”, he has no words of rebuke for her because the real scandal if what the men have done. Mature manhood means discernment, proper judgement, dealing with sin, serving as guardians of your community. That’s the first example.

Second example, chapter 6. Second example where they’re acting like boys instead of men, they’re going to pagan court. Now it isn’t wrong in every situation to use the courts when the laws of the state are broken then you involve the courts of the state and sometimes you, Paul, will defend his rights and wants to appeal to Cesar so it is not an absolute prohibition against using the secular courts, but here he says, “You have a conflict among yourselves and you apparently are so immature from top to bottom that you have to hand this over to the pagans to settle it for you.”

Look at verse 1, “When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare to go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?” Again, he’s not talking about crimes and statutes of the state that have been broken, but disagreements and they can’t figure it out, or do you not know that the saints will judge the world. If the world is to be judged by you. Are you incompetent to try trivial cases.” Again, he says, “you men in Corinth, you’re arrogant, you’re boasting, but you’re so immature you can’t even muster up the spiritual discernment and courage to settle this disagreement among you.”

Look at verse 1 as translated in the ESV, you see the word dare, “Does he dare to go to law before the unrighteous.” That’s the Greek word tolmao. It normally means, here’s the definition in the leading New Testament lexicon, “To show boldness or resolution in the face of danger, opposition, or a problem.” You see what Paul’s doing? He’s taking this word, tolmao, which is normally used of manly boldness and courage. This is what happens, the world wants to take something that’s good that men are wired because of testosterone and a whole bunch of other things how God made us to often be ready to show boldness and courage and risk and defiance and I don’t care what people think, I’m gonna do it anyways and Paul says, “You dare to bring your case before the secular court. This is not the boldness I’m talking about people, this is not the sort of courage, yeah, you’re showing daring, but you are daring to entrust yourself to pagan courts instead of the saints.” Again, he is faulting the rowdy, arrogant Corinthians from shrinking from their moral leadership. He says no one seems to be mature enough, wise enough, or manly enough to adjudicate disputes within your body. Real manhood means you exercise leadership, and you aren’t afraid to make hard decisions. 

Third example, look at verses 9-11. Third example where the Corinthians are acting like boys instead of men, is that some of them are marked by vice instead of virtue. “Or do you not know”, verse 9, “that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do not be deceived.” And then what follows are 10 vices. Now in the ESV you only see nine of them because two of the Greek words are combined into one and I’ll explain that in just a moment. Ten words in the Greek, nine here in the ESV. So here are the vices that ought not to mark a man. Neither the sexually immoral nor adulators or adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. So, these are sins that can affect everyone, but you can see there, especially with the one about, nor men who practice homosexuality, that Paul is speaking and thinking specifically about men. Now he doesn’t need to prove that these things are bad, there’s no long-protracted argument why these are bad, everyone would have known, yes the list you gave us, these are bad things. They’re interrelated, they show what a decadent gentile, that is idolatrous way of life looks like. And Paul was saying, that’s where some of you came from, that’s not where you should go back. This is what ungodly arrogant men look like.

So let me explain why there’s 10 words in the Greek and there’s 9 vices here in the ESV. The ESV translates two different words into the phrase, men who practice homosexuality. You see that at the end of verse 9, you’re looking in your Bible into verse 9, you see there’s a little footnote and you go down to the bottom, it’s getting harder for me to read that by the week. The two Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts and that is true, this is a fine translation, that’s what in this context these two words put together can refer to malakoi and arsenokoitai are the two Greek words. Let’s talk about that second one, arsenokoitai. It’s a compound word, arson, not like starting a fire, but arsen means man and koitai or koitas, koitai depending on a verb or a noun means bed. So this is literally man bed, it refers to men who sleep with other men and it’s clear that Paul has coined this word, it doesn’t exist elsewhere, that he has coined this word from the Greek translation of Leviticus 18 and 20. We don’t have time to go there, but in the Greek translation the Septuagint of Leviticus 18and 20, you could see it, you don’t have to know any Greek, you could see a transliteration in English of those passages and you would see right there in the same line, in one case right next to each other, those words arsen and koitai, man in bed. So, Paul is taking this prohibition from Leviticus, and he says, this still applies, this is something you ought not to do, this is a vice, arsenokoitai. The other word, let me spend a few more minutes on it, malakoi. I don’t think the ESV is wrong in its translation so long ago as we realize that ESV is giving the sense of the passage, not a strict dictionary definition of the word malikos. You might say that ESV gets the connotation that in this sense malikos and arsenokoitai refer to men, as it says, passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts, but the dictionary definition of malikos is soft. It appears two other times in the New Testament. In Matthew 11:18 and Luke 7:25. Both passages contrast John the Baptist with rich men who wear malikos, soft clothing. Now immediately you’re saying, oh wrong week for silk. It’s not, the concern is not so much with the texture of the fabric, but rather the connection with luxury. 

See in Matthew 11 and John 7, the contrast is John the Baptist models a hard life of self-denial, self-mastery opposed to the rich aristocrats with a soft life of luxury and ease. It’s not an alternate prohibition, an absolute prohibition against having nice things or having fancy things, but the word is used pejoratively in many ancient texts to speak of a man who lacks courage, hard work and self-restraint, he’s soft. Sexual submission to another man is one connotation of the word, but it is not by itself the only meaning of the word. Sometimes the word is translated into English as effeminate. That’s a little bit of a problematic word because we don’t want to think that being feminine, femininity for women is a great gift yet ancient writers both pagan and Christian often warned against men who were effeminate and here we get one sense of what it means to be effeminate, to be soft. It has always been a put down for I imagine all of human history and last I checked on the internet this is still the case. If you want to insult a man you call him girly, soft, effeminate, you some way attack his manhood. And think about it, the insult doesn’t usually work in the other direction. The way for men to put down men is to call their manhood into question. The way for women to insult men is to call their manhood into question. It doesn’t usually work women insult women by saying, well you’re kind of manly. I mean maybe that’s not a great thing but that’s not the way you get at your sister. Even young girls who we call tomboys, that’s often considered a good thing, she is not afraid to get muddy, and she likes sports, and she plays around with the boys, so the insult doesn’t work in the same direction. In fact, think of how women tend to insult other women. They attack, one of two things it seems to me, either their looks or their purity. Even women who aren’t Christians and don’t have a Christian standard of purity and sexual chastity know if you call another women, okay I’m gonna say words you don’t normally hear, a whore, a slut, that’s a very, very harsh insult. No woman wants to be called that. Or you say something offensive about the way she looks. Again, men you don’t insult other men by saying, bro you look ugly today, you picked out that outfit by yourself? Yeah. It doesn’t work that way, and men, if they’re not Christian, if you’ve got Christian men, you don’t attack each other by saying, wow you sleep with a lot of women. If you don’t have the spirit of God you take that as a compliment and you shouldn’t, but you do, so these insults, I think tell us something about human nature in a masculine key and human nature in a feminine key and it’s one of the reasons why I’m arguing in these three weeks that men are wired for the pursuit of true strength, courage, and women are wired for the pursuit of true beauty and God’s Word wants to tell us, okay, that, that’s a good pursuit, that’s a good journey that you’re on, but let God tell you what real strength looks like and real beauty looks like. Soft, malikos, yes here in 1 Corinthian 6 it refers to homosexuality, but more than that, Paul is using a very familiar term in the ancient world to speak of a man who does not display mastery over himself, who cannot command the respect of other people, who does not endure struggle or hardship, who insists on a life of ease instead of a life of discipline, achieving victories and overcoming obstacles. Paul is saying, that’s not what manhood looks like, to be soft.

Here’s a fourth example. In the rest of chapter 6 verses 12-20, Paul talks about union with prostitutes. Again, you have to understand something about Roman culture. Look at verse 15 cuz what Paul is saying is very countercultural, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!” “Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one with her for it is written that to become one flesh.” Here’s what you have to understand about the Roman world, prostitution was ubiquitous and not controversial. It was seen as a proper outlet for a man’s sexual energy. If a man had sex with prostitutes before marriage he could still be counted a virgin. If he had sex with prostitutes during marriage it was not considered adultery. One Christian bishop described Roman sexual policy as “Forbidding adultery is building brothels.” 

In the 4th century, several centuries later, had no fewer than 45 public brothels. See the way in which it was a complete double standard, the way sexuality worked, there were certain things that women had to do and you needed to keep yourself pure until marriage, but men if you had sex with boys, slaves, or prostitutes it didn’t even count, it was just considered that men had all this sexual energy and of course they needed an outlet so they did believe that adultery was a serious sin, adultery being you had sex with a free Roman woman or with a married Roman woman. Boys, prostitutes, slaves didn’t even count so Paul is saying something very different, least you think that, well prostitution is just a natural outlet for a man’s overflowing sexual energy. He says no, remember what Genesis says, “You become one flesh”, so he’s understanding that they all would have thought, well yeah, we do prostitutes, that’s dirty, but something simply necessary for some men, that was the Roman way. Paul says, “Don’t you understand, men if you have sex with prostitutes, you become one with her.” These sexual escapades, contrary to the Roman way of thinking, which said, as long as they’re not with married women they’re inconsequential. Paul is saying something radically different. If you have sex with a prostitute her body, which you consider dirty and shameful, becomes your body and in fact, here’s the irony, you belong to her, now you have joined with her in one flesh so that this act which you took to be a great expression of your sexual freedom has actually made you a sexual slave. You have abandoned your body for her body, and you have become less of a man, not more of a man. That’s what we see in these four examples in chapter 5 and chapter 6. You might summarize it like this, Paul is saying, to be a man, a Godly man not a boy, is to demonstrate a life of sexual chastity, self-restraint, to protect and guard your community, to show a willingness to make hard decisions, to work hard, that you do not look for a life of ease, but you are willing to take on a life of challenges for the good of others. You notice there is nothing here about your hobbies or your physique, or whether you have facial hair or not, or how many muscles you have, some of you have muscles on your muscles, these are all the muscles I can get. 

Now we could trace, once you know what to look for, you could go to chapter 7, well that’s gonna talk about it’s better to marry than to burn. It’s gonna talk to men and women, it’s gonna talk about marriage and divorce. That’s gonna give you stuff on what it means to be a true man. You can go to chapter 11, that’s where Paul says let not nature itself teach you that for man to dress and look like a woman is shameful. That too has to do with manhood. Chapter 12, chapter 13, remember that great love chapter which says we put childish things away, we grew up, we’re not adults. Chapter 14 which has to do with men and women in the public assembly. So much of this book is Paul, the spiritual father instructing the Corinthians and in particular the mean to grow up and be real Godly men.

So go back to the place we started at the end of the book, chapter 16. Paul issues five exhortations, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love and all of those need to come together men. Let me hasten to add, he’s writing to the whole church so there’s certainly a way in which women are called to be courageous; to play the man and the Bible has many examples of strong, courageous, triumphant women. Here Paul is using a word which was familiar in that day, andrizsista, the word andrizomai translated as be courageous or be brave or here act like men, other translations do manfully, or in the King James, quit you like men which start quit, but it sounds really good, quit you like men. Everyone agrees that Paul is using this word andrizomai, and you can hear our word like andro meaning man. He uses this word to tell the Corinthians to be brave and courageous, but it also tells us something about being a man because he is borrowing on ancient notions of manly courage and bravery so we’re right to see that this is not just courage, but he’s communicating something about manhood. John Calvin says the command is about “manly fortitude.” Matthew Henry understands the exhortation to mean “Christians should be manly and firm in defending their faith.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown one of Spurgeon’s favorite commentaries, says Paul says, “Watch ye”, because the Corinthians were slumbering, “Stand”, because they were tottering, “And quit you like men” because they were effeminate. Chrysostom, the church father argues that watch was a caution against deceivers, stand was a caution against those who plot against us, and quit you like men was a caution, “against those who make parties and endeavor to distract.” Yeah, he’s thinking of soft, those who pursue nothing but a life of ease and luxury. For Chrysostom this word, andritsomai, was the manly antidote to the cowardice that comes when you are led astray by a femoral thing, that’s what the great Greek preacher Chrysostom is saying, that this is speaking to those men who might be lured and tempted into a life of ease and profligacy and endless parties. He said that’s not a life of a real man. 

Now we should not load too much theology onto one ordinary Greek word, and it is a command for both men and women, but it does say something about what we are called to in particular as men. We act like men when we show ourselves to be strong, when that strength is under control, when we do not shrink back from our duty, when we gird up our loins, as it were, and do what is right. We should remember that this is not just manly as opposed to womanly, but even more so it’s manly as opposed to childish. Paul gives this command, least we think masculinity means just a rash bravado, look pastor said be a man, Paul wants us to just show courage. Well courage with wisdom, fortitude with prudence, he did not want them to be childish. 

A good word, and here we’ll bring this to a close, a good word to introduce into your vocabulary that I think gets that what Paul is saying is the word magnanimity. It’s hard to say, practice it later. Magnanimity. Twice as the president or Princeton in the 1770s and 1780s, John Witherspoon gave a commencement address on magnanimity and there he was speaking cuz in those days it was only men in college, he was speaking to men. I think of the address as an address on manly magnanimity. Here’s what Witherspoon says in that sermon, he says to be a magnanimous man entails five commitments. One, attempting great and difficult things. Two, aspiring after great invaluable possessions. Three, facing dangers with resolution. Four, struggling against difficulties with perseverance, and five, barring sufferings with fortitude and patience. In short, the magnanimous man is eager to attempt great things and willing to endure great hardships. It compels us and it calls us, you notice there Witherspoon says the acquisition of great possessions, and he goes on the sermon to explain what that means in a heavenly key. What were the greatest possessions, a good name, the health of the church, our family, but he is calling these young men, as I believe God calls all of us as men, to attempt great things and endure great hardships. Even the dictionary points us in the right direction. Magnanimity, it says, is a loftiness of spirit, enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and pettiness and to display a noble generosity. 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 discomforting 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 androgenous 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. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, give us grace that we may see in Christ not only our example, but we may find in Him forgiveness, we may find from Him power in the Holy Spirit that we might grow into these things, help every young woman here to look for men like this, help every wife here to encourage and recognize in her husband where these things exist, help every man here to pursue and grow into this that we might be like the God man Christ Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen.