We live in an egalitarian era, a time of great impudence, when our surrounding culture wants to flatten everything. This is done in the name of lifting up the lowly and oppressed, but like all humanistic devices, it actually winds up tearing down instead of lifting up. If you hate the inequality between rich and poor, it is not really a solution to make everyone poor.
This mania has even come to afflict the life between the sexes, and it is the task of Christians to hold the biblical line. God is the Creator, and He created us in His image, and that image is comprised of male and female. We are told this in the first chapter of the Bible. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27). This is the way it was on page one of human history, and it is the way it is going to be when the last page of human history is turned. This status is no more negotiable than the fact of gravity. As it turns out, reality is not optional. As much as our modern influencers might desire it to be otherwise, realities cannot be obtained from boutique shops or from niche marketers.
So the differences between men and women are God-given and fixed. These differences extend into everything. We live in a time that wants to deny even the most obvious of them, those differences being physiological. Our culture is even at war with that. Christians ought not to defend that distinction in a last ditch effort, but rather return to a full-orbed Christian understanding of life between the sexes—in all areas.
I said a moment ago that reality is not optional. This includes the reality of sin. The creational nature of man and woman is a fixed given, and we do not have the strength or the power to erase that.
But let us consider this under the form of a musical metaphor. God made men to sing a G note, and women are built to sing a C. Taken together this is a rudimentary chord, and it is quite beautiful and pleasant to the ear.
The presence of sin can distort this, but all our sexual tinkerers and engineers cannot transform a G into a C, or a C into a G. What can sin do then? How far can the distortion go? Well, sin is capable of making us sing flat and sharp. We can distort things that far. We can mess it up that much.
When a man is being both masculine and on pitch, and his wife is being both feminine and on pitch, there are few things in this world that can compare to it for glory.
But when a man is singing masculine, but flat, and the woman is singing feminine, but sharp, there are few things on earth that can compare to it for sheer auditory insult. It is enough to make you stop and stare. It makes us want to echo the disciples’ response to Jesus. “It is not good to marry” (Matt. 19:10). And that is true, as far as it goes. If that is the way it is going to be, it is far better not to marry.
But the point of the vows that are going to be exchanged in just a moment is addressing just this problem. When a man and woman are taking these vows, they are promising, by the grace of God, not to do this—not to sing flat or sharp. They are promising to live out what God created them to be—masculine or feminine, as the case may be. And they are also promising not to sing their part in the discordant way that the devil is tempting them to do.
Always remember that a sinning man and a sinning woman is a truly terrible combination. Terrible, terrible. What we want is a singing man and a singing woman, making harmonious music as the Spirit leads.
The Spirit will never try to create a false peace, where the man and the woman take the lazy way out and sing something really boring in unison. That happens when a blustering man demands that his wife sing his part along with him, or more frequently, as in these our times, when the woman insists that he sing the Longhouse Blues along with her.
A moment ago, I referred to the grace of God. Apart from the grace of God a person would have to be out of his mind to take these vows. With the promise of God’s grace hovering over you, right above the two of you, taking such vows is the most natural thing in the world.
Hayden, the masculine role assigned to you is that you must provide and protect. That is your central calling here. But in line with what I have been saying earlier, you must do so on pitch. Masculinity that is on pitch is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. You must provide without resentment. You must protect—to the extent of laying down your life—gladly and willingly. A man comes into marriage in order to die. Not to wilt, but rather to die. You will then discover the glory of resurrection.
Danis, your assigned feminine role is gladly to receive what your husband gives you, responsively and submissively, and then to glorify it as you give it back. He gives you money for flour and you give him a pie. Scripture says that a man who loves his wife loves himself, and this is how it all works—thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold. A godly woman does all this without begrudging. She does it without sullenness or resentment. She does what she does on pitch.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.