What Is a Woman?
It’s no secret that we live in a confused culture, a lying culture, and increasingly a tyrannical culture. Nowhere is this more evident than in our culture’s orientation to womanhood. For all its vaunted talk of celebrating and empowering women, our culture despises womanhood. Just in the last few weeks, a mentally deranged man, serving as the Assistant Secretary of Health, was nominated as one of USA Today’s “Women of the Year.” Another confused and opportunistic man was celebrated for defeating female swimmers and breaking their records. And this week a Supreme Court nominee was unable to define when a human being obtains legal protection under our laws, nor what a woman is.
Our culture despises women, and would love to erase all that makes women distinct and glorious.
So what is a woman?
A woman is a member of the human species with XX chromosomes. A woman is made in God’s image, sent on God’s mission, for his glory. Every woman is a daughter of human parents. She is a potential mother and sister, even if because of the brokenness of this world she doesn’t ever bear biological children or have biological siblings. She carries this maternal and sisterly nature into all of her relationships.
The Bible tells us that Woman was taken out of man and made for man, thus making her the glory of man. Fundamentally, she receives in order to give more. She is the life-bringer and life-bearer. Her body was designed to nourish and nurture, to feed and console. She is a garden, designed to receive seed and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. This is what women do: receive in order to give more. Receive and glorify. Receive and beautify. Receive and amplify.
She has unimaginable influence on those around her–parents, siblings, husband, children, and friends. Though she is the weaker vessel, the power she wields–for good or ill–is remarkable. It’s why Solomon looked upon his bride and declared, “Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?”
Obviously more could be said. But this is an exhortation and I have yet to exhort. I’ve simply tried (in a brief way) to describe the glory of womanhood. So here’s the exhortation: love that God made the world this way. Ladies, love that God made you a woman. Embrace and celebrate your femininity, in all of the forms and different personalities and vocations that God calls you to. In a culture that is confused and full of lifes, love the truth that God made you to be daughters, sisters, mothers, in your homes, in this church, and in the world. You are image-bearers of God and the glory of man.
Men, celebrate both the common nature that we share with our sisters as well as the distinctive glory of femininity. Revel in the fact that your wife is not like you, and your daughters are not like your sons, and your sisters bring different strengths to the table than you do. Just love it. Be happy about it. Show honor to your sisters as weaker vessels and as co-heirs with you of the grace of life. In a culture that is confused and full of lies, speak the truth and guard the dignity and glory of women.
This reminds us of our need to confess our sins.
Confession
Our Father and God, our culture is at war with womanhood because it is at war with you. It despises the complementarity of the sexes because your wisdom and power and glory are displayed in that complementarity. Because we have not honored you as God, nor given thanks for the goodness of manhood and womanhood, you have given us up to folly and confusion, to dishonorable passions, to the unnatural and the absurd. And because the world you have made resists our sinful efforts to twist and distort it, we become more violent in our tyranny, dismembering our children, mutilating our daughters, castrating our sons, and shouting down any who would object. Lord, we confess that this is a great evil.
Father, as your covenant people, we too have failed to glory in womanhood. As Christian husbands, we have not loved our wives like Jesus, nor shown honor to them as the weaker vessels. Our prayers have been hindered because we have not lived with our wives in an understanding way. We have passively followed in the footsteps of our culture, grumbling along the way. But we have not guarded the garden from the dragon’s lies. Forgive us, we pray, for we are miserable offenders.
We know that if we in the church regard sin in our own midst, our prayers will be ineffectual, so we confess our individual sins to you now.
Lord, we thank you for your great mercy, which you have given us in Jesus. We ask that you now renew us in holiness and righteousness after the image of our Creator. Clothe us with Christ’s righteousness, and then help us to walk in a manner worthy of him. In Jesus name, Amen.