What is a Woman Part 4
What Is A Woman, Part 4
In the past 3 blogs in this series, I have addressed the ideological issues surrounding womanhood. God’s word in the Bible is always our guide. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” Without looking at God’s word and following it, we are stumbling around in the dark. This is obvious in our world today, as I have tried to make clear. Please read the first 3 posts in this blog series before you read this one. In this one I will begin to discuss practical implications of biblical womanhood.
As I have contemplated over the last few weeks how to address the practical implications of what the Bible says about womanhood, I realize that the first practical issue that I need to address is attitude.
In our culture, we are told repeatedly that we are to “save the world”. This idea is not well defined. The way young people have put it into practice is to be social warriors that are focused on what makes them looked at as heroes, and what makes them feel good about themselves. They often do this with little attention to pesky facts, and often it is done with little thought at all. So, they will attend protests and get mad about things they know very little about, hate people they know nothing about, throw soup on paintings, chain themselves to trees, smash police cars, and chastise people on the internet for not doing the approved things or saying the approved words. They are praised and lauded by the world for doing all this as if they are accomplishing something positive. All the while they are neglecting to make the world they actually have control over a better place. They decline to make their beds, clean their houses, plant gardens, work hard to support their families, care for their children, and work to show kindness to those around them. The focus of the saving the world business is self-aggrandizement and narcissism, and it results in more brokenness because it is the opposite of what God calls us to.
In stark contrast, God calls us to serve selflessly those who we come in contact with. We are not to bow to some vague concept, but we are to serve and worship God, which means being rooted in the truth. He then calls us to show sacrificial love to all humans, because He has made them in His image. Jesus is our example. Philippians 2:3-5 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” This theme of selfless service runs through the entire Bible. Jesus admonished his disciples many times on this theme. Here is one notable passage: Luke 22:24-27 “And there arose a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be the greatest. And He said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors’. But not so with you. But let him who is the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table, or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.’”
You are probably wondering how this relates to biblical womanhood. The very essence of practical biblical womanhood and manhood is service. God created gender specific roles and responsibilities at creation that would allow humans to live in beautiful harmony. At the fall when Adam and Eve sinned, this was shattered. In Genesis 3:16 we see that part of the curse is that men and women will be fighting for control over one another. That is what we see daily in our broken world. Elizabeth Elliott, a missionary who continued her husband’s ministry to a tribe in the Amazon after he had been murdered by them, says this about the effect of the fall into sin of Adam and Eve on gender roles: “God put these two in a perfect place-and you know the rest of the story. They rejected their humanity and used their God bestowed freedom to defy Him, decided they’d rather not be a mere man and woman, but gods, arrogating to themselves the knowledge of good and evil, a burden too heavy for human beings to bear. Eve, in her refusal to accept the will of God, refused her femininity. Adam, in his capitulation to her suggestions, abdicated his masculine responsibility for her. It was the first instance of what we would recognize now as ‘role reversal’. This defiant disobedience ruined the original pattern and things have been in an awful mess ever since.” (from page 397 of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)
Feminists today are defiantly rejecting the original pattern. But if you look at what they call women to do, it is completely selfish. Children are a burden and get in the way of your fun and your career. Men are horrible beasts, and feminists want to only manipulate men by using their feminine wiles to gain a selfish end. The goal of feminism is to satisfy selfish lusts and desires. I think that is why they are obsessed with abortion. The consequence of this selfishness is obvious. Broken families and broken communities.
But if we want to live out what the Bible says about womanhood and manhood, we need to return to the original pre-fall plan of God. The essence is selfless service and voluntary submission to each other. Elizabeth Elliott on the same page I quoted above goes on to say: “The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self abandonment. ‘If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,’ Jesus said, ‘he will find his true self’. A Christian woman’s true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate-humble obedience-but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world, to a place where the God-given differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but celebrated, where our inequalities are seen as essential to the image of God, for it is in male and female, in male as male and female and female, not as two identical and interchangeable halves, that the image is manifested. To gloss over these profundities is to deprive women of the central answer to the cry of their hearts, ‘Who am I?’ No one but the Author of the Story can answer that cry.”
I am going to give a definition of both biblical manhood and womanhood. As you read these definitions, I want you to see that selfless service is inherent in these definitions.
The definitions I am giving are from page 36 and 46 of the book I quoted in an earlier blog in this series, and from which I got the Elizabeth Elliott quotes. (Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by John Piper and Wayne Grudem).
Biblical Manhood:
“At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.”
Biblical Womanhood:
“At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.”
The beauty of true womanhood is that she makes the world a better place by actively and purposefully loving her husband, her children, her church, and her community in ways appropriate to how God designed women to be. The uniquely feminine service to others can be done by both single and married women. Amy Carmichael is a beautiful example of a single woman who gave her life to others while maintaining biblical femininity. She was a missionary to India who rescued many girls from sex trafficking at the temples. Her ambition was only do the will of God. Married women who live out biblical femininity give their lives, their youth, and their looks to nurture and teach their children while loving their husbands and helping them to become all that God wants them to be. Biblical womanhood celebrates biblical manhood and seeks to encourage it in men and in their sons. Biblical womanhood gives its life in service to others, and hears from Jesus when it finally breathes its last, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” And in this self-abandonment women who live out biblical womanhood make their world a better place.
That high calling is what God is calling each of us women to. I hope you will embrace this beautiful high vision of womanhood. In my next blog I am going to focus on what the Bible says about a woman’s role in her home. Until the next blog, I pray you will be living out biblical womanhood.
Verse to memorize in response: Philippians 2:3.
For questions or comments, you can contact me at candice@anastasihome.com