I posted last month a quote on biblical womanhood from John Piper’s recent book, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence. To balance things off, I thought it’d be appropriate to post a quote on biblical manhood.  I couldn’t find a shorter, more succinct quote, so this will do.

Piper spends two whole chapters addressing men (ch.6 and 7).  He explains the biblical foundations in ch.6,  practical implications in ch.7, and contends that biblical manhood first entails leadership in spiritual provision.  However, I’d like to highlight a couple things that we might overlook:

2. Leadership in Physical Provision

The husband bears the primary responsibility to put bread on the table.  Again the word primary is important.  Both husbands and wives work.  In all of history this has been the case — both the man and the woman work.  But their normal spheres of work are man: breadwinner; wife: domestic manager, designer, nurturer.

That never has meant there are not seasons in life when a wife cannot work outside the home or that the husband cannot share the domestic burdens.  But it does mean that a man compromises his own soul and sends the wrong message to his wife and children when he does not position himself as the one who lays down his life to put bread on the table.  He may be disabled and unable to do what his heart longs to do.  He may be temporarily in school while she supports the family.  But in any case his heart — and, if possible, his body — is moving toward the use of his mind and his hands to provide physically for his wife and children. (89-90)

Piper goes on to assert leadership in spiritual protection in his third point.  But in the fourth point, he continues:

4. Leadership in Physical Protection

This is too obvious to need illustration — I wish.  If there is a sound downstairs during the night and it might be a burglar, you don’t say to her, “This is an egalitarian marriage, so it’s your turn to go check it out.  I went last time.”  And I mean that — even if your wife has a black belt in karate.  After you’ve tried to deter him, she may finish off the burglar with one good kick to the solar plexus.  But you’d better be unconscious on the floor, or you’re no man.  That’s written on your soul, brother, by God Almighty.  Big or little, strong or weak, night or day, you go up against the enemy first.  Woe to the husbands — and woe to the nation — that send their women to fight their battles. (91-92)

This Momentary Marriage is probably the best book on courtship/marriage/singleness I have ever read.  I highly recommend it: for men and women, married and those not.

Warning: This was written in one sitting in Starbucks after a lot of caffeine.  Editing may be needed.

Back in 2005, I was not yet fully Reformed in my soteriology, I was not Baptist in my ecclesiology, I was not yet charismatic in my pneumatology, nor was I complimentarian in my understanding of gender roles.  I knew little about what genuine church growth looked like, nor how true discipleship was done.  And in that time between my junior and senior year of college (a.k.a. “3rd and 4th year of university” for you Canadians reading this), I had my first real dating relationship.  I was 21 going on 22, and I knew little about how or what I should be doing in such a thing.  Nor did my local church teach me much about biblical betrothal or what Christian courtship looked like.  In short, I was ignorant, stupid, and young.

Yes, I was young and stupid; and ignorance is no excuse.  I should have known better.  For the sake of the relationship, I had no mentor couple, nor did I have pastors who would encourage me to pursue biblical manhood, nor did I have church elders (same thing, imho, as “pastor”) who exhorted me to take the initiative, step up, take the lead, and pursue a girl (who was pursuing biblical womanhood).  I soon found myself to be 22 years old, with no godly influence in my life to tell me to stop messing around, and just grow up, and get married.  I certainly knew I was a born-again Christian, but you might as well call me one of those former “carnal” Christians who was trying to discern the post-breakup crisis moment in my life.   I was just waiting for a Divine epiphany to wake me up from my slomber, fill me with spiritual power and an ability to maintain purity of heart.  For the most part, this could all be attributed to my spiritual upbringing.

I am not a believer in love at first sight.  For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth but in its wrinkled maturity.

Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion–one of loyalty and divine friendship.  Agape.  And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time–while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing

–Richard Paul Evans, The Letter.

Life Together:

Their fellowship is founded solely upon Jesus Christ and this “alien righteousness.” All we can say, therefore, is: the community of Christians springs solely from the biblical and Reformation message of the justification of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of the longing of Christians for one another. (12)

Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship. (26–27)

Letters and Papers from Prison:

Over the destiny of woman and of man lies the dark shadow of a word of God’s wrath, a burden from God, which they must carry. The woman must bear her children in pain, and in providing for his family the man must reap many thorns and thistles, and labor in the sweat of his brow. This burden should cause both man and wife to call on God, and should remind them of their eternal destiny in his kingdom. Earthly society is only the beginning of the heavenly society, the earthly home an image of the heavenly home, the earthly family a symbol of the fatherhood of God. [...]

In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. (31)

The Cost of Discipleship:

Thus it begins; the cross is not a terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us  at the beginning of our communion with Christ.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. . . .

“Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.” There shall the poor be seen in the halls of joy.  With his own hand God wipes away the tears from the eyes  of those who had mourned upon the earth.  He feeds the hungry at his Banquet. There stand the  scarred bodies of the martyrs, now glorified and clothed  in the white robes of eternal righteousness instead of the  rags of sin and repentance. The echoes of this joy reach  the little flock below as it stands beneath the cross,  and they hear Jesus saying: “Blessed are ye!” (99, 128)

Dietrich Beonhoeffer, as quoted in John Piper, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence (Crossway, 2009).

People say that many things in life that is like riding a bike. You may not have done it in a long, long time, but despite the hiatus from that activity, you would still remember how to do it–how to balance and pedal once you get back on that bike for a ride.

Is it really true for all things in life? That because you have done it in the past, you will definitely remember how to do it today?… And you can just resume that activity, as if you never forgot how to, like you never even had that long hiatus?

I am a personal testimony to the fact that it is not always possible to just get back on the bike and start riding. After two years, (hypothetically speaking) I still have trouble getting back on the bicycle. It’s been so long of not cycling that I have a tremendous fear of falling, of slipping and sliding, of crashing and burning.