Jesus: The Manliest Man

Introduction: Manly Men

Hey guys, I’m so excited to be sharing in this retreat with you all and talking about how to “Act Like Men.” First off I want to ask you guys to name the manliest men you can think of, real or fictional. You know, besides Chuck Norris.

What if I got more specific, what if I asked you to name the manliest man in the Bible? Who comes to mind?

Is it Jesus? I’d say a lot of us don’t really think of Jesus right away when we’re picturing a “manly man.” I mean, just think about the images and paintings that you’ve seen of Jesus. What does He look like?

The first painting I think of when I think of stereotypical paintings of Jesus is that painting of Him where He’s got a big glowing heart and He’s got long smooth hair and shimmering eyes. Not exaclty the picture of masculinity. Or that one of Him snuggling with a sheep.

Nowadays there’s a lot of talk about toxic masculinity, but I think we’ve often thrown out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to masculinity, where we are turning men more feminine instead of more virtuous. Those of us who want to be more like Jesus don’t need to lose our masculinity in the trade. In fact for a man that’s following jesus we’re following the manliest man in all of history. That’s even considering some of the more shallow definitions of manliness. Jesus was not some weak academic pale and ineffective. He was a tradesman. A carpenter like His father until He was 33. Probably started working when He was a young boy. And even during His years of ministry he wasn’t a pushover. Consider the famous moment when Jesus turned tables in the temple. They were likely large heavy wooden tables, guarded by the money changers and probably by actually armed guards. Yet Jesus single handedly chased those money changers out with a whip and flipped those tables. Premeditated action by the way, the Scriptures say that He saw what was happening, left to go make a whip and then came back to chase them out. He also regularly stood up to those in power and wasn’t afraid to insult religious authorities. He called the Pharisees white washed tombs for example.

Well what if we go deeper and take a look at the more important qualities of what makes a man a man. Let’s consider for a moment the traditionally masculine virtues. These are the 9 classic greek masculine virtues that are considered the pinacle of what it means to be a good man. They are:

Courage

Loyalty

Industry

Resiliency

Resolution

Personal Responsibility

Self-Reliance

Integrity

Sacrifice

Does Jesus exemplify these virtues?

Courage

Courage is defined as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty” according to Mirriam-webster, where we’ll be taking the rest of our defintions from as well. Well was Jesus willing to confront those things? Certainly He was. The most obvious example being His willingness to endure the cross. Remember that He didn’t need to suffer and die. He could have easily summoned the armies of God to take Him off that cross and overthrow the corrupt governments that had put Him there. We can see from the garden of Gethsemene that He was afraid of what was going to happen, but He faced it anyway. Even before then Jesus was bold and brash and spoke truth despite knowing that the Pharisees and others like them would hate Him for it. Multiple times He had to leave places because people were trying to have Him killed for what He was saying. Even still He pressed on and never shied back from saying what was true.

Loyalty

Loyalty is: unswerving in allegiance: such as faithful in allegiance to one's lawful sovereign or government, faithful to a private person to whom faithfulness is due or faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution, or product. Jesus also passes this requirement with flying colours. In fact no one in all of human history has been as loyal as Jesus. Jesus was the only man who ever completely kept the Law of God and never sinned against Him. Jesus was with Israel throughout their history before they even knew Him, and He preached the gospel to them first out of loyalty to them as God’s chosen people, despite their sinfulness and betrayal of God’s Law. He chose His disciples and stuck with them and promised to stay with them even until the end of the age. And to us He is unfailingly loyal, promising to never leave us or forsake us, and in Romans Paul tells us that nothing can seperate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Industry

Industry when speaking of human virtue is “diligence in an employment or pursuit especially : steady or habitual effort.” Now we don’t read anything much about Jesus’ work ethic when He was working as a carpenter. One can probably assume though, as the perfect Son of God, that He was probably never lazy. He didn’t cut corners or work less than was needed. And we do know how hard Jesus worked as an itinerant preacher. He wasn’t flown or driven around to preach to the masses. Jesus walked mile after mile after mile all over the land of Israel preaching the good news of the Kingdom. He fasted for 40 days in preperation to begin His ministry, which I don’t think I would be capable of doing. 40 Days is a long time to go without eating. He also kept up a diligent prayer life alongside a busy schedule packed with healing all sorts of sicknesses and casting out demons on top of preaching moving sermons.

Resiliency

Resiliency is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” Now this one is low hanging fruit. Who was more resilient than Jesus? The man endured not one but three seperate beatings on His way to the cross, and despite that pressed on. Plus he recovered more than any man before or since. They nailed Him to a cross and killed Him and He got back up again. Jesus endured more than I ever could for my sake so that I could be made new and restored to relationship with Him and the Father.

Resolution

According to Benjamin Franklin Resolution as a virtue is “Resolve to perform what you ought or to perform without fail what you resolve” In other words to do what you say you will do. To keep your word. Who is more accomplished in this than Jesus? Jesus who from the first sin resolved to save mankind and then made good on his resolution. The man who again, kept every law of God just as He resolved to do by being born in Israel under the Old Covenant. In fact Jesus keeps His word so well that He is the Word. Sorry, lame pun. But seriously, this is the man who would speak to sickness and it would leave, whose very words stilled the storm. Nothing He said was in vain and every promise He made He has kept. He is the only man that you can count on to always follow through.

Personal Responsibility

Personal responsibility is an interesting one, because it’s the quality of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. There’s an implication here of never avoiding fault for the things that you’ve done wrong. Now Jesus didn’t do anything wrong, so in a sense He also never took personal responsibility for His wrong doing since… Well He didn’t need to. But Jesus outdoes this virtue entirely by taking responsibility not for His wrong doings and failings, but for the wrong doings of all mankind. He shoulders the burden that every single one of us has earned for himself. He takes personal responsibility for the sins of all of mankind onto Himself on that cross and pays the penalty for all of mankind as representative of mankind.

Self-Reliance

Here we come to the only virtue that Jesus doesn’t epitomize. Why? Because it’s the most unchristian of the classic Greek virtues. See we as disciples of Jesus and citizens of the Kingdom of God don’t rely only on ourselves, but primarily on God and on others. We look out for each other leaning wholly on God. Who did a better job of that than Christ? So while He might not be the picture of self-reliance, you better believe that He’s an exemplar of God-reliance. Despite being God Himself, He prayed constantly to the Father and did nothing that wasn’t the will of the Father. Despite being God He condescended to become a man and put Himself willingly under the full authority of God the Father. So in the sense of working to take care of our needs and the needs of our family we should be dilligent, but we shouldn’t be self-relient. We should be God relient like our Master Jesus.

Integrity

Integrity is “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY.” That final word says it all. Men are corruptible. The long history of wars and injustices that have spanned our time as a species are testiment to that. Jesus, however, is not corruptible. He is the only man who, though tempted in every way as we are yet remained without sin. He lived in this same sinful world and was raised by sinful parents in a sinful town and oppressed by sinful leaders, yet firmly adhered to the true God and kept His commandments perfectly, loved perfectly, submitted perfectly and generally was a better human being than any of us could hope to be.

Sacrifice

The best for last, and the most obviously true of Jesus for last. Jesus said that the greatest act of love is to lay down your life for another, and then He lived and died and lived again that example. He despite being perfectly innocent and the Beloved Son of God endured pain and death on our behalf to satisfy the wrath and justice of God. In fact it’s this sacrifice of Jesus that Paul says should serve as our example as men that we should be self-sacrificing husbands. If we follow after Jesus than we put our own safety desires and ambitions below those of the ones that we love. And the true Christian virtue is to be self-sacrificing even for the sake of strangers and enemies.