The Biblical Imagery of God's Masculinity
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The Biblical Imagery of God’s Masculinity.
The Biblical Imagery of God’s Masculinity.
Whereas, Deuteronomy 4:15-16 CSB says, “Diligently watch yourselves—because you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you out of the fire at Horeb—so you don’t act corruptly and make an idol for yourselves in the shape of any figure: a male or female form,” warning us from making God either male or female at a human level, and
Whereas, God is not sexually male but he is undeniably masculine in his pronominal revelation of himself to us, being neither a “she” or an “it” but a “he”, a “him” and a “his” and
Whereas, there is not one single reference in Scripture where God is referred to using a feminine pronoun.
Whereas, God’s self-revelation in Scripture is the chosen words God has used to reveal himself to us, not describing himself in his entirety, but describing himself accurately, for Jesus said in John 14:10, 24 NASB “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The WORDS that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works....the WORD which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” Paul said, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16) as the words of God, giving clear and decisive insight to what and how we should live our lives. Paul also said in 1 Corinthians 2:13 “We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people” showing God’s self-revelation as divinely revealed words in Scripture. And the words God uses to describe himself is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” These are God’s words to describe God.
Whereas, the Old Testament name for God is a masculine name, Yahweh, being used over 6,828 times in association with masculine adjectives and masculine verbs, clearly using masculine terminology to describe God; and
Whereas, the Scripture is replete with images and names of God in distinctive masculine form, and more descriptive in nature, calling him God, King, Prince, Lord, Shepherd, Husband, Father. etc
Whereas, the extremely less feminine descriptions of God are primarily metaphor and simile in nature (using “like” and “as”) and not descriptive in nature. Luke 15:8-10; Deuteronomy 32:18; Psalm 22:9-10; 71:6; Isaiah 66:9, 13; 49:15; 42:14; Hosea 11:3-4; 13:8; Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34. (Let it be noted that these are most of the passages that reveal feminine aspects of God, while the lion-share of passages, in an abundant manner, are masculine in nature!) For instance, a man does not become a woman when likened to a woman, any more than God becomes a rock when likened to a rock (Deuteronomy 32:18).
Whereas, in God creating gender (when he could have created genderless and sexless beings), and then representing himself consistently and repeatedly in masculine terminology, God is making a deliberate assertion about his nature being represented in a way that femininity does not do him justice.
Whereas, the presentation of God as masculine is ubiquitous, reinforced many thousand times over throughout the Bible, in contrast to him being portrayed metaphorically in rare and peculiar ways as feminine, shows that his masculinity is a reality and not a simile.
Whereas, metaphors and similes find there force in being rare and peculiar and therefore quit unexpected, and whereas, the term “Father” to describe God is used over 256 times in the Bible (eight times in the Old Testament and 248 times in the New Testament using the ESV concordance) as a proper name, showing the Fatherhood of God as neither rare or peculiar but a fundamental reality
Whereas, Jesus was said to reveal who God is more clearly than ever before as the quite male name of “Father”, as John said in John 1:18 CSB, “No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.” And as Jesus said in Matthew 11:27 CSB, “All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him.” And,
Whereas, knowing God as Father is more intimate and affectionate, and fundamental than knowing him in the more proper name as Yahweh, Jesus has revealed God to us more fundamentally in the strength of his male characteristic as Father! And,
Whereas, Paul is said to show that “Father” is not some “anthropomorphic expression” but is the deeper, prior reality for all earthly fathers, in Ephesians 3:14-15 “For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named;” and whereas, knowing God as Father is the fundamental restored relationship in redemption as in Galatians 4:6-7 “And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir;” and in Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!””
Whereas, the New Testament shows Christ as the leader in masculine terminology, as in the “last Adam”, “second man” and “man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49), and in body imagery as the “head” (see 1 Corinthians 11:3-4; 12:27; Ephesians 1:22-23; 4:15-16; Colossians 1:18; 2:19) and marital imagery as the “husband” (Ephesians 5:21-33), And,
Whereas, the strongest and most repeated term to describe Jesus is some masculine derivative of either “Son”, “The Son,” the “Son of Man,” or the “Son of God,” and, this thoroughly male “Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3 CSB; see also Colossians 1:15) apprenticing the Father!
Whereas, the New Testament is decidedly and copiously infused with the masculine names of “Father” and “Son” to describe God’s eternal and fundamental nature. And, whereas, the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 is not a baptism into a metaphor but into “the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Whereas, the Bible seems to frame this Father/Son relationship from a clear eternal perspective when Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17:5 CSB, “Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.” And when Jesus said in John 5:19-30 that he is simply the envoy of the Father as the Son “sent from” the Father to do all that the Father does. And,
Whereas, to take away the Father/Son language is also to take away the reality of this true eternal relationship and its salvific importance as John 17:24-26 ““Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation. Righteous Father, the world has not known you. However, I have known you, and they have known that you sent me. I made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them.””