Biblical Masculinity

Purpose of the Study

As an anxious young man, and as one who didn’t feel he was shown the ropes of manhood, the topic of Biblical Masculinity has always been one close to my heart.

But the issue is not unique to me, many young men struggle with this, and it perhaps even a symptom of unnecessary insecurity in men that they wrestle with this subject so much.

For example, a well-adjusted, well raised young man, doesn’t really feel any anxiety, or confusion around whether or not they are a real man, or biblically masculine. They don’t even really think about it that much, because, what’s there to think about? I remember one time I really badly stubbed my pinky toe, and boy did that thing hurt. I remember afterwards going to put my weight on my foot and that thing just wasn’t going anywhere fast. On a regular basis I was thinking about how my toe hurt, and how I had to hobble. But for all my life before that, the thought never came into my head, ‘Gee my pinky toe is working amazing today isn’t it? Boy am I grateful my pinky toe is working well.’ You don’t think about something usually unless its getting your attention for reasons either good or bad.

So it is with masculinity, guys who don’t have a broken toe don’t think about it, and guys who were well raised and modelled by their fathers often struggle less with any anxiety around this part of their identity. It’s not necessarily true all the time, there are other reasons why this topic can be on a man’s mind. For those who have a sense of masculinity clearly in their mind, sometimes this issue isn’t what is a man, and have I become one yet, sometimes this issue is, I have a picture of being a man, modelled by my father and men I respect, but I’m not measuring up to it. Depression, shame, sense of failure can follow… But the issue there may be either the picture of masculinity they have isn’t actually realistic, or they aren’t approaching it from the right angle.

For me, especially as a young man, it was more of the, what even is a biblical man, and how do I know when I’ve become one and am being one? I wasn’t really directly taught and raised up with a concept in mind, and have had to construct my own one through preachers, books, guys on the internet. Good men who’ve taken me under their wing.

Now, I’m blessed, I’m grateful for how God has fathered me through these years. God has also blessed me with many solid men of God all mucking their way through as well, and so in many ways, with God as my Father, I don’t really need this kind of a sermon anymore. Yet something always naggs away at me inside, that I want to, once and for all, really lay out a biblical picture for my own sake, of what a biblical man is. And so here I am. And here you are, listening, I hope this is helpful to some of you in the room.

Defining Our Terms

For me, when I’m approaching a topic like this, I want to really get the whole biblical picture. But one has to ask, well how do I get the whole biblical picture?

The answer, to me, is obvious from the outset. Surely you want to get every single passage that addresses men, their duties, nature, God’s expectations upon them. How do we do that? Well, where I begin is for the Old Testament finding the Hebrew word for “male”, then tracing that word every single time it appears in the Old Testament with reference to a human male. Then I will find whatever adjacent words there are to refer to men, words like “man”, “boy”, “son”, and trace those too.

That’s the beginning of the picture. Afterwards however, we can’t discount the New Testament, and so then I do the same thing in Greek and for the New Testament.

If I want to be even more thorough, perhaps I can trace the Greek words chosen by the LXX translators through the Greek Old Testament. Nonetheless, the solution is simple, you find every passage relating to men specifically, and you study them and notice the patterns that emerge and the truths that can be verified and found certain.

So for now I will start with the Word for Male.

Zakar “Male”

The word for “Male” in Biblical Hebrew is זָכָר, and it is often accompanied by the female term ‘neqebah’ נְקֵבָה.

It refers to males of all kinds, both of men and of animals.

We’re obviously going to focus on men.

Now what references do we have to Zakar in the Old Testament. Well our first two are the most important starting place there is, the beginning.

Adam, made in the image of God, made male and female

Here are our first and important references...

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The word translated “Man” here is the Hebrew word “Adam”, so whenever you see that word man here, think Adam. If we read this together some things become interesting. Then God said, let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness. And let THEM… We’ll stop there. First thing we notice is, when God creates the Adam, is that they are a group, Adam is a kind of being. Let us make Adam in our image and let them, that is, the Adams, have dominion over the fish and birds etc. Adam, is a group to start with. But verse 27 gives us more detail for our thinking.

So God created Adam in his own image, in the image of God he created him;… Hold on, we’ll stop here again. So first, Adam is a group, a kind of being that God is creating who will have dominion over the world he has just created. Adam is a group, refered to as Them, meaning, the Adams. Yet now, when we get into the detail, we see the order in which he makes Adam, the Adam race. So we see Adam now appear as an individual, So God created Adam in his own image, in the image of God he created HIM, meaning, Adam, is identified primarily my the male pronoun, him. This also matches the creation order we see in the next chapter, it male that God creates first, Adam the man before Eve the woman. But we carry on the last of verse 27, male and female he created them… So that is the order of creation. God creates the universe, then he creates this being called an Adam, and an Adam can be either a male or a female, a Zakar or a Neqebah, but the first individual Adam ever referred to is a male, and the text places Zakar before Neqebah, and the first human in the narrative of Genesis 2 is a Zakar. When it refers to Adam as “Him” in Genesis 1:27, we see the same pattern and order that we see also in a passage like 1 Corinthians 11:1-3 which says,

1 Corinthians 11:1–3 ESV

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

or later down in that passage

1 Corinthians 11:7–12 ESV

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.

We see all of this contained in one Hebrew verse in Genesis. Both male and female are Adam, but Adam is primarily male in his creation, female comes later than male and from male and as his glory whereas he is the glory of God.

So what does this have to do with maleness? Well, our very first port of call is to understand that being male means to be an Adam, an image bearer, and the primary and first made representative.