My wife and I knew we were different when we got married, even though public school hadn’t helped us much on that front. Our 1990s and early 2000s society tried to take the edge off our sense of difference, but still we knew.
Clearly our bodies, as male and female, were different. And our instincts, while complementary, plainly differed. Of course, we had differing life experiences and families of origin, and so we exhibited the typical variances between any two humans. But the main differences, the ones that mattered most, and had the most potential, corresponded to one simple yet complex reality: I am a man, and she is a woman. We knew this.
However, looking back now, twenty years later, I’m not sure we yet knew how different we were — on the outside, yes, but even more on the inside, the things you can’t see at a glance. We were not yet deeply aware of the complementary differences God had sown deep into our masculine and feminine souls.
We Know Deep Down
Two decades of adult life have taught us much about God’s powerful dynamic in our human similarities and our male-female differences. As co-heirs in Christ, we stand, side by side, on equal footing before God and at the foot of the cross. Together, as man and wife, we are created, fallen, and redeemed. Oh, what glorious equalities we share as humans and Christians!
And we are clearly different — profoundly different — as male and female, as husband and wife, as head and helper. These differences are features, not bugs. They are not drawbacks to be covered over or collapsed into each other. There is the majesty of the sun and the splendor of the moon. One glory of day, another of night. We need both. Neither is better than the other; both are essential. And these differences — glorious complementary differences — go far beyond emotional intuition, native aggressiveness, how much sleep we need, and how long we can bear up under trying circumstances.
People know that men and women are different. All of us know. Sure, sinners suppress the truth (Romans 1:18–23). Doubtless, many have been deeply deceived, perhaps even choosing the deception one moment at a time for years on end. But we all know. Being male or female, like being made in God’s image, is basic enough, foundational enough, plain enough to the very nature of our world and our own human lives, that we know.
Still, as societal confusion and controversy continue to blur the sense of our God-given complementary differences as men and women, it can be helpful to point out, with the objectivity of Scripture, the traces of what’s been clear from the beginning.
God’s Creative Order
Genesis chapter 2 zooms in on day 6, that climactic day of the creation week, and we learn about how God made man, and find a two-stage sequence: God first forms the man from the ground, then distinctly, at a later time, he builds the woman from the man.
God chooses to create with a plain order. He calls our race “man.” He forms the man first and orients him toward the ground from which he came, to work the garden and keep it (2:15). And God gives him the ground rules:
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (2:16–17)
At this point, then, God introduces man’s need for a “helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18) — and God apparently takes his time. Not only does this create anticipation in the man for this helper; it also teaches a lesson. Then God forms the woman second, orienting her toward the man from which she came (2:22), to help him in God’s calling. The man names her Woman (2:23). They stand equal before God as human (Genesis 1:27–28). And God orders them in marriage as head and helper (2:20).
In 1 Timothy 2:13, the apostle Paul points to this ordered sequence in Genesis 2 as the first half of his reason for why mature Christian men are to be the pastor-elders and authoritatively teach the gathered church: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” God created these equals with an order. They are not the same but different — and these differences are God-designed complements.
Here an exhaustive list of the differences between the man and the woman (and men and women in general) is not necessary or relevant. God has his reasons for these differences — many of which are obvious, many that become plainer the longer we live, and many that remain subconscious for most in this life. But God’s design is intentional, and his order endures. And when we follow his order, we find that a lifetime of happy, even thrilling, discoveries await us. When you walk in light of the truth, lights go on everywhere. But that’s only part of the story.
Disorder in the Fall
Paul gives the second half of his answer (for why pastor-elders should be qualified men) in 1 Timothy 2:14: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Now sin and Genesis 3 come into view.
Paul’s full explanation includes not just the order of creation, but also the (dis)order of the fall. God laid down an order; the serpent subverted it. The word deceive draws in the language of Genesis 3:13, where the woman says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Paul’s point is not that women are more gullible than men, or more prone to deception. The point is the order: The serpent did not deceive the man. He went to the woman. Satan intentionally undermined God’s order, and the fall was the direct result.
Yet even though the fall of man (and woman) brought God’s righteous curse upon the world, it did not overturn his order. After Adam too has eaten, God comes knocking and asks for the man (3:9), not for his wife, who handed him the fruit (3:6). God again operates according to his order, not according to the serpent’s scheme.
Even through the curse itself, God’s order persists. His curse directed toward the man relates to the ground and his labor. It will take his sweat and overcoming many barriers to be fruitful. Meanwhile, the curse directed toward the woman relates to childbearing and childrearing, to the domestic sphere and the labor of multiplying the race to fulfill God’s mandate. Greater still, the curse will include the sinful desire in woman to control the man, and that he will, in turn, be sinfully domineering toward her (this is the meaning of “desire” and “rule over” in Genesis 3:16; compare with Genesis 4:7). Sin always seeks to destroy God’s order.
Order Restored and Glorified
Remarkably, when we rush forward to the coming redemption — to God himself coming to rescue his people in Christ — his created order is not abandoned in the church age but endures. Not only is the original order restored through Christ’s redemptive work in the church, but now it is glorified, exalted to a new register through life in Christ by his indwelling Spirit.
As man and wife stood before God as equals in Eden, so we stand together, side by side, at Calvary and in the congregation of the church. Among those who have “put on Christ” through faith, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Men and women stand together before Christ, as co-heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7) — glorious equals. Neither man nor woman has any inside track with Jesus.
Yet that does not mean that our God-designed differences go away in Christ. Rather, they are rescued, restored, and glorified. “The husband is the head of the wife,” as he always has been, yet now, he finds his model in Christ: “. . . even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Ephesians 5:23). Whereas sin may lead a husband to lord his authority over his wife, husbands in Christ love their wives and are not harsh with them (Colossians 3:19). As household head, a man owes his wife a special kind of care. Wives, in Christ, take the part of the church: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24; Colossians 3:18).
This brings us back to Paul’s authoritative commentary on Genesis 2–3 for the church age. A team of mature Christian men serve the whole congregation as its pastor-teachers, according to God’s order in creation, now restored in Christ. And the glorious dance of our equality as humans and our differences as men and women, now rescued in Christ, not only gives order to our households and God’s household but also gives life and energy, beauty and power, to all of life, wherever we go and grow as those who image Christ in his world.
As my wife and I, and countless others, have discovered, our differences as man and woman are not less than they appear; they are even deeper. And that’s good. The more we are the same, the less rich an arrangement marriage is. But the more complementary we are, the more marriage becomes a strong and beautiful dance for making much of our God and his Son.
What’s the Difference?
This month at Desiring God, we are celebrating afresh the beauty and power of God’s design for men and women. We believe that sexual complementarity influences every realm of our lives — and we’re happy about how God chose to do it. Thin, narrow, and minimalist are not the adjectives for our complementarity at Desiring God. We love the God-designed differences in men and women, from the beginning, found in our households, celebrated in our churches, and displayed as a diamond next to the dull monotony of the world. We are thick, broad, and maximalist. We don’t stomach God’s design. We delight in it and hope you will too.
To that end, we’ve developed a new series of articles under the banner “What’s the Difference?” In this series, we’ll move through a sequence from our households, to our churches, to society, as we seek to celebrate God’s good design by pointing out what’s the difference — or more precisely, what are some of the countless differences we discern in our world and in ourselves and in Scripture.
