Sex, Gender, and the Image of God

My Identity is in Christ Alone

The ultimate goal is to glorify God by denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Jesus.

Sex, Gender, and the Image of God

There is a growing pressure to affirm transgenderism and fluid gender identities. How should we as Christians respond to cultural trends about sex and gender? A correct response requires a correct understanding of what these terms are and how God views them. By the end of tonight we should be able to explain the difference between sex, gender, and norms and describe what the Bible teaches about being male and female

Defining Sex, Gender and Norms

Sex: Is an objective, binary (2 categories) classification of male or female.

-Objective means something that’s completely independent of personal feelings and self perception.

-Sex is not assigned but observed

Gender: is a subjective, self perception of viewing oneself as male or female.

-up until recently both sex and gender meant the same thing.

-subjective- something that is completely dependent on personal feelings and self perceptions.

-Purely based on what you think. Its being forced on us (What are your pronouns)

-You would think that we would conform to objective truth over subjective but instead the opposite is happening.

Norms: are characteristics culture associates with being masculine or feminine.

-Social norms.

Sex is objective, Gender is self-perception, and norms are cultural.

We are living in a battle of truth. What is truth?

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Romans 12:2 ESV

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

Being male or female is Physical, Spiritual, and Essential to being human.

Genesis 1:27 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

images are created to image.

If you create an image, if you make a sculpture of someone, you do it to display something about that someone. You put it in the square in the middle of town, and you want people to look at it, notice it, think about that person, think something about them — that they were noble or strong or wise or courageous or something.

God’s Image Restored

Now what would it mean if you created seven billion statues of yourself and put them all over the world? It would mean you would want people to notice you. God created us in his image so that we would display or reflect or communicate who he is, how great he is, and what he is like.

Here’s the picture in my mind. I was created like a mirror. And a mirror that was supposed to be 45 degrees with the clear reflective side pointing upward so that as God shone on it at the 45 degree angle, it would bounce off, and it would make a 90 degree turn and be reflected out into the world. And at the fall, Satan persuaded me that my image is more beautiful than God’s image, and so I flip the mirror over. Now the black back side is toward God. It doesn’t reflect anything. Instead, the mirror casts a shadow in the shape of itself on the ground, and I fell in love with the shadow. That is what happened. And we have been loving ourselves ever since.

And in salvation, two things happen. The mirror gets turned around, and we see the glory of God again, and the defilement that had gone over the face of it gets wiped off gradually, and we begin to reflect God. So I think being created in the image of God means that we image God. We reflect God. We live in a way, we think in a way, we feel in a way, we speak in a way that calls attention to the brightness of the glory of God.

So what?

What are you reflecting? If you don’t have an answer then ask a trusted friend or leader what they see in you.

We are called to image God not redefine who He says we are.