A Picture of the Gospel

Dannah Gresh: Mary Kassian explains a stick-figure picture her five-year-old son drew for her many years ago.

Mary Kassian: My three sons and myself were in the water, and it was a treacherous situation. We were being overcome with waves. 

On the drawing, you can see that my one son is going under; he has an unhappy look on his face, he’s going “oomph gurgle.” The other son is going under as well, and I am struggling. I have a very unhappy look on my face.

But my son Jonathan has a big smile on his face, and he’s calling out, “Help!” I asked him to explain the picture, and he said, “Well, we’re all drowning.” Oh, and then you see over on the pier Daddy, holding the cat, and Johnny has a big smile on his face because he’s calling out, “Help,” and what Daddy is saying in his little word balloon is, “Here I come, Jon!” So Daddy’s going to save Jonathan.

He looked at me and he said, “Daddy’s going to come save me, because that’s what daddies do.”

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of True Woman 101: Divine Design, for September 15, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: “That’s what daddies do.” Simple words from a child. There was a time when those words would have seemed obvious and true to most everyone. But today, it seems as if a lot of people around us now have very little understanding of what daddies or mommies or men or women should “do.” 

In fact, we live in a day where it’s considered ignorant, wrong-headed, or even hateful to suggest that our differences as men and women are good and beautiful and that those differences are not at all demeaning to either sex. That said, those God-created differences are sometimes twisted by the enemy in some really hurtful  ways. But that’s not how God created things to be. Deep down, we all know that to be true.

Recently, Mary Kassian sat down with our friends from American Family Radio to talk more about what it means to be a man or a woman. Portions of this interview were included in an excellent documentary called “In His Image.” 

So today and tomorrow, Mary will take us to the first pages of the Bible to show us some important lessons about masculinity and femininity as God designed it, and beyond that, how our maleness and femaleness is meant to display the beauty of the gospel. Dannah, why don't you introduce what we are about to hear.

Dannah: Well, Mary Kassian is a dear friend of both of ours. She is also a wife, a mother, now a grandmother. She’s an author and a speaker. And importantly, she’s a careful student of God’s Word. Here’s Mary Kassian. 

Mary: The reason I got into the topic of biblical womanhood was, back in university when feminism was at its peak, it was a discipleship issue question. A lot of my colleagues, my friends who were becoming doctors and lawyers—I was in a medical program—and professional women had questions about what the Bible had to say to women and about women and for women. That’s why I got into the topic. It’s probably not a topic that I would have chosen, but it is one that has been a need, I think, and a real area of questioning for women in this day and age.

Dannah: Mary’s authored several books on the Bible’s perspective on what it means to be a man or a woman, including the Bible study she coauthored with Nancy, titled True Woman 101: Divine Design. She says the concept that God designed men and women with differences and that He gets to make the rules rubs many people the wrong way.

Mary: Culture would say that we have the right to decide who we are, and that "no one has the right to tell me how to live.” That’s quite different than what the Bible says. The Bible says that God has the right to tell us how to live. It is our choice to submit to Him or not submit to Him in that; that is our choice. He does not force us. But there are consequences when we do not live the way that God wants us to live. It says that right up front in the first chapter of Genesis, Genesis 1:27. “So God created [us], male and female He created [us] in His image.” (paraphrased) So it’s God who decides; He’s the one who made us, so He’s the one who decides who we are and what that means.

Dannah: We tend to think living within God’s boundaries will result in a miserable life. But Mary says it’s just the opposite.

Mary: True joy and true freedom and true wholeness come from doing life God’s way. When I step into who God says I am, then I really discover who I am, and I become more me, in a sense, when I see who I am through the lens of what God says.

Now, men and women rebel against God, we rebel against Him in many ways, and I think our gender and sexuality is one of the primary ways we rebel against God. We like to shake our fist at God and say, “Why did You make me this way? I don’t like it. I’m going to define who I am for myself.” 

Isaiah 29:16 speaks to that. The Lord says to us, “You have turned things around as if the potter were the same as the clay. How can what is made say about its maker, ‘He didn’t make me?’ How can what is formed say about the one who formed it, ‘He doesn’t understand what he is doing’?”

God is the Potter; we are the clay. He has a right to make us into the type of vessel that He wants, and to shape us and form us the way that He wants, because He is the Potter. He is God, and we are not God.

Dannah: Mary’s thinking about what it means to be female didn’t come naturally to her. It was more of a journey. Maybe you can relate.

Mary: I was a tomboy, and I had five brothers. I really kicked against womanhood for a long time. I didn’t like to be one of the girls. I wanted to be one of the guys. I have a lot of skills that are not stereotypical women’s skills. I’m really good at building and construction, and I can wire up a house with wiring or build something with all my power saws and power tools. So I’m not stereotypical in terms of what a woman normally would do, and yet I am still a woman. I need to express my womanhood in a way that honors the Lord.

As I became closer to God, as I grew in my Christian walk, I just grew more comfortable in what Scripture was saying to me,and began to embrace it more. As I embraced it more, I began to experience more freedom and more joy and more wholeness. Instead of kicking back and shaking my fist at God and saying, “God, I don’t like that You made me this way; I don’t like what Your Word says to me.” I began to say, “God, I accept what Your Word says to me,” and then I began to say, “I understand it,” and then I began to say, “I delight in it.”

So, I came to the conclusion that God’s design for gender was right long before I came to the conclusion that it was good and wonderful. It took me a while to get from, “Yes, this is right. I’m going to step into it,” to thinking, “Yes, this is not only right, this is amazing. This is incredible. This is the wisdom of God that is far beyond my wisdom. This is for my blessing, for me to flourish. This is helping me flourish.” It took me a while to make that journey, to take the steps along that journey.

I do actually remember the day that I thought to myself, Wow, I’ve really come a long way, and I not only see this as God’s design for gender as being right, it’s amazing! Because God’s design is amazing, and it is meant not only for His glory but for our good. When we step into who He created us to be, we begin to flourish. Is it a struggle? Yes, sometimes it can be a struggle. Is it hard? Yes, sometimes it can be hard, but good things are sometimes really hard—but they’re good. They’re really good, and in the end we look back and we go, “Yes, that was tough, but that was good, and I am much better off and I am in a better place. I am more whole; I am more joyful; I am more settled in my identity than I ever could have been if I was pulling away from God’s design.”

Dannah: Genesis 1:26 and 27:

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.

Mary: Being created in God’s image means that God’s fingerprints are all over us. Who we are as male and female—when God said, “Let us create man in our image,” and then He created male and female, there’s something about the “us-ness” and about the “our” of the inter-Trinitarian relationship; there’s something about that fellowship of God and the way that God relates to God that is imaged in male and female.

The Bible isn’t really specific about what that is, but it does give us a lot of clues and indications, especially in Ephesians 5 when we’re told that there’s a relationship between Christ and the Church that is reflected in the relationship between a husband and a wife. In 1 Corinthians 11 we’re told that there’s a headship, there’s a structure between God the Father and Jesus the Son, and there’s also a structure of relationship between a husband and a wife, a man and a woman. So there’s a lot given to us in terms of insight in terms of what that means.

Now, obviously, being made in the image of God is much more than that. Being made in the image of God means that we have the capacity for fellowship, for relationship, for intimacy; that we have the capacity to love, we have the capacity to make moral decisions. There are all sorts of things that are tied up in being made in the image of God. But I do think that one of the main things is that we are created in the image of God as male and as female, and that that really specifically has some implications.

In Romans 1 we’re told that we can see things about God’s hidden nature and about His character by the things that have been created. Male and female being one of the primary—really, the pinnacle, the epitome of creation—is something that reveals us truths about God. It says because these truths about God are evident in what has been created, we are without excuse. God really can be seen in His creation and in His creation of male and female.

First Corinthians 11:3 says, “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.” There’s a mystery there, obviously. We don’t fully understand the Trinity and how God is one and yet how there are different functions within the Godhead in terms of how God interacts with God. There’s a lot of mystery there. Yet there’s a parallel drawn between the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

In Ephesians 5, the relationship between a husband and wife, there’s a parallel drawn between the relationship between Christ and the Church. It says,

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself his Savior. Wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He may sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own body.

Paul goes on, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” So the mystery of marriage, the mystery of husband and wife, the mystery, by extension, of manhood and womanhood, is a profound mystery, but it has something to do with Christ and the Church. It has something to do with the way Christ loves the Church, dies for the Church, gives Himself for the Church, and is united to the Church; in the same way, the Church respects Christ and is one with Christ. That is to be reflected in who we are as male and female, and to be reflected in the marriage relationship.

History opened up with the creation of man and woman and a marriage, because it will end with a man and a woman and a marriage. Marriage as we know it, the relationship between man and woman as we know it, will end. We will all—when we see Jesus, we are actually going to a marriage. Who’s getting married? We’re getting married, the Church is getting married to Christ. Christ is the Bridegroom, the Church is the Bride. Men and women, so to speak, are going to be the female part of that relationship in the way that we interact and in our union.

It started with a marriage, ends with a marriage. Marriage is temporary, and that’s why 1 Corinthians says, “Don’t worry if you don’t get married; don’t worry if you remain single. That’s also a blessing, because you can still tell the story of Christ and the Church, the story to which every earthly marriage is to point.”

Our marriages, my relationship to my husband is to tell the story of Jesus Christ and the Church. It tells the story of the gospel. It points to something bigger. It’s just momentary. Our marriage is momentary; the marriage of Christ to the Church is eternal. That’s the story that we’re telling. Yhat’s the story we tell through our marriages. That’s the story we also tell through our fidelity when we are single. We tell the story of Christ and the Church.

Dannah: Wow, this view of gender, sexuality, and marriage puts it all into a grander, more glorious, more beautiful perspective, doesn’t it? 

We’re listening to Mary Kassian, in an interview with our friends at American Family Radio. They asked her to comment on what it means to be a man and not a woman, or a woman and not a man. 

Mary: It’s a really good question, because I don’t think that culture has an answer to that question. They would say that the only difference is a physiological one, and that can be changed, that we can even change our physiology and our biology. But Scripture has a different answer to that question. It says that manhood and womanhood, male and female, were created in the image of God to bear witness to the story of God. So, in our maleness, in our femaleness, we glorify God and we uphold the story of the gospel.

That’s a very different perspective, that’s a very different approach to manhood and womanhood than we would see from someone who doesn’t believe in God or from someone who doesn’t uphold the Bible as the Word of God. It’s a very different approach. Because I am saying that as a woman, I have a responsibility to glorify God and to tell the story of the gospel as a woman. I do that differently than a man. Now, we’re telling the same story. We’re both telling the story of the gospel, we’re telling the story of Jesus and the Church, but it’s like we have two different camera angles going on the same story. I tell the story from a woman’s camera angle, and my husband or a man tells the same story from a camera angle that is a male camera angle. Same story, same God, same gospel; and yet we tell it in different ways.

So we bring glory to God. I bring glory to God, as a woman, by being who God wants me to be as a woman, and nurturing those character qualities in my life that God says are particularly important for women in terms of who God created me to be as a relational being, as a woman who has an amenability to relate to men as men. He is a man; I am a woman. That glorifies God. My womanhood, in and of itself, glorifies God. I glorify God by becoming more holy, by becoming more righteous, by becoming more kind, more loving—all of those things that God wants me to be—but I also glorify Him by stepping into who I am as a woman.

Genesis is fascinating, because it has two distinct stories telling us about the creation of male and female. The first one is in Genesis 1; it’s a zoomed-out version. It talks about:

• male and female having dominion over the earth
• the equality of man and woman
• the dignity and honor that God has given to male and female to have dominion over the earth
• the unity of humanity
• and really talks about male and female really as a grouping, as the same.

Then Genesis 2 zooms in. It’s like the sports replay. You saw the big picture, it happened, and then it’s slo-mo replay in Genesis 2. You see the step by step unfolding of who God created man to be and who God created woman to be. There are some distinct differences in Genesis. I think if we want to understand manhood and womanhood, we cannot overlook that God created us differently. He said different things when He created us, He created us in a different manner. There are all sorts of differences that we see in Genesis 2, in the slow-motion, up close replay that we don’t see in Genesis 1.

So, in Genesis 1 we see the equality of male and female; in Genesis 2 we see that there are differences between male and female. There are functional differences between male and female—ontological differences, is what I’ll say, differences in the essence of who we are. The differences are fascinating.

I think that in order to understand the differences between male and female, we need to put it through the New Testament grid of the mystery that male and female, manhood, womanhood, marriage, has to do with the story of Christ and the Church and the gospel story. So, if we take that grid, if we take that story of the New Testament when we look back through the story of creation, then we can understand why there are differences between male and female and what those differences mean.

Dannah: Now, Mary actually has a list of ten differences that we see in Genesis chapter 2. We’ll look at the first five today, and then five more on tomorrow’s episode of Revive Our Hearts.

Mary: Number one: The first thing that we see is that the male was created first. We might think that that is trivial or inconsequential, that doesn’t mean anything, but in the New Testament we’re told that the fact that Adam was created first, the fact that male was created first, is the basis for the responsibility of men in the church community to provide governance and oversight for the church community. Paul didn’t see that as inconsequential, he saw that as highly important, the fact that male was the firstborn. 

The status of firstborn or the position of firstborn is a really important position in Hebrew culture, in the culture of the Old Testament, and I think in the eyes of God it’s a very important position, the firstborn. We’re told that Israel was God’s firstborn son, the first nation that He chose for Himself. When the nation of Israel was being pulled out of the land of Egypt, it was the firstborn sons of the Egyptians that bore the responsibility and the consequences of the sin of the Egyptians. When the angel of death passed over, it was the firstborn son—unless they were covered by the blood of the lambs around the doorpost. You’ll remember that story. 

The firstborn son, the firstborn in a Hebrew family, carries the weight of responsibility for the oversight of the family. My husband is the firstborn, and when his brothers got into trouble his dad took him to wall and said, “Why weren’t you looking after your brothers more?” It’s the same sort of idea, that the firstborn had a sense of responsibility and there was a weight on the shoulders of the firstborn. There was a representative nature to the firstborn when the Israelites were told that they had to make a special sacrifice to redeem the firstborn son of the family.

That position of the firstborn is important because it carries over. Christ was called the firstborn over creation. Several times in the New Testament that term is used of Christ. So when we think of the position of firstborn, it carries headship, it carries a sense of responsibility, an oversight, initiative. There’s something that rests on the firstborn in a special way.

Adam, as a firstborn, the way you see that played out I think in the New Testament is that, even though Eve sinned first, Adam was the one who was held responsible for bringing sin into the world. He was the one who bore the weight of responsibility for the entire human family. Even though Eve sinned first, it was Adam who bore that weight of responsibility, because he was the firstborn. So the position of firstborn is really important. There’s a sense of responsibility that is heavy on the firstborn.

It’s also a representative position, because he represents the rest of the family. That’s why when Christ died as firstborn, He was able to represent. He was able to be the second Adam and represent the human family in terms of redemption. Adam brought the whole human family into sin; Jesus Christ made it possible for the whole human family to choose Christ and be redeemed.

That’s the first difference. Adam as the firstborn; he was created first.

Number two: Another interesting point about the creation of man is that he was created outside of the garden. I found this really fascinating. I had to read Genesis a few times before I picked it up. When I saw it I thought, Wow, that’s really interesting, because the man was created out in the wild, and then he was put in the garden. Now, he wasn’t put in the whole land of Eden, he was put in a garden in the land of Eden, which suggests that there was a boundary. He was given a boundary, a certain sphere of responsibility. When Adam was created, he was put in this sphere of responsibility; it was like he was given a new area to look after.

I think that that image is what happened when Christ came to earth. He came to earth and He left heaven and came and there was a new area of responsibility and authority there that He stepped into.

Number three: Some other phrases in Genesis 2 that are really fascinating is that the man was put into the garden to work. He was to work and to keep. There’s a sense of responsibility to provide and to protect. He had work to do. Right from the very beginning, God gave him an assignment to work and an assignment to keep—again, that means to guard or protect—his sphere of responsibility in the garden. I think this is really, really central to what it means to be a man, because I think that men are hardwired to be providers and to be protectors. When a man is unemployed, it impacts him to the core of his being in a far different way than it impacts a woman.

Now, this isn’t to say that a woman doesn’t work (women obviously do work) or that a woman wouldn’t protect (a woman obviously would protect if her children were threatened). But there’s something hardwired into manhood, that men are connected to that in a different way. If a burglar tries to enter my house at night, it’s not me who’s going to be the first on call, it will be my husband, because that is his sense of responsibility to do that for his family, to be a provider and to be a protector for his family.

It’s also interesting, in Genesis 2, that the whole concept of providing and protecting was tied into—later on, some of the wording is the same sort of wording that’s used of what priests did in the temple, in terms of guarding and protecting. It isn’t just a physical protection, it also extends to a spiritual type of protection that man was given. Again, this is before woman was created, man was given these responsibilities. We see this in Genesis 2.

In Genesis 2 the man was also given spiritual instruction. God instructed him; He told him the rules of the garden. This is fascinating also, because God could have waited until He created woman and given them both instruction and instructed them in the same way. But it seems to be that God instructed the man and then expected the man to pass on those instructions to the woman—not that the woman didn’t have a personal interaction with God, she had a personal relationship with God and was personally accountable and responsible—but there was a spiritual component to what the man was created to do. He was to provide oversight and to provide instruction spiritually, and God created the man to do that right up front.

My five-year-old son drew a picture for me once, and it was a line drawing. It was our whole family out at the cabin at Garner Lake. We were in the water. It was a very cloudy day. My three sons and myself were in the water, and it was a treacherous situation. We were being overcome with waves.

On the drawing, you can see that my one son is going under. He has an unhappy look on his face, he’s going “oomph gurgle.” The other son is going under as well, going under the water, and I am struggling. I have a very unhappy look on my face.

But my son Jonathan has a big smile on his face, and he’s calling out, “Help!” I asked him to explain the picture. He said, “Well, we’re all drowning.” Oh, and then you see over on the pier Daddy, holding the cat, and Johnny has a big smile on his face because he’s calling out, “Help,” and what Daddy is saying in his little word balloon is, “Here I come, Jon!” So Daddy’s going to save Jonathan.

He looked at me and he said, “Daddy’s going to come save me, because that’s what daddies do.”

That was a really fascinating picture to me, because to me it was a sense of Jonathan just understanding the role of a father, of understanding the role of manhood. I’m the better swimmer; I mean, he really should have been looking at me to come save him, because my husband can’t swim nearly as well as I can. But that’s not the point. The point in his little mind was that there was something very special about a daddy, that a daddy would do something for him that a mummy didn’t do in quite the same way. Intuitively, at a very young age, he understood that.

I think that reflects to us the heart of God, that God wants men to be the heroes for their families. He wants them to step up and be men. He wants them to take the initiative, to “man up.” We have that expression, “man up.” That means something. It means something; intuitively, we know that that means something. We don’t have the same sort of expression, “woman up.” That doesn’t mean the same sort of thing, because intuitively we know that being a man means:

• to take initiative
• to man up
• to take responsibility
• to step up to the plate
• to step into who God created you to be as a man
• to serve
• to provide and to protect
• to look after
• to provide spiritual oversight
• to be a man for your family
• to be a hero.

It’s just a beautiful thing when a man steps into that in the way that God created him to.

Number four: Another thing that we see happening before woman was created was the “name the animals” exercise. God takes Adam and parades all the animals before Adam and he has to come up with names. Now, in my mind, if I were God I would have waited, because I think women would have come up with a whole lot more names for animals a lot more easily, but no, God in His wisdom said, “No, this is what I’m going to do; this is what I’m going to have my male do.”

I think, besides serving the purpose of having Adam yearn for a mate or yearn for a soulmate, I think this was a way of God mentoring Adam, to exercise oversight and to teach him what that meant and to do so with humility and with love. It was like God was training him how to be a man, because naming something is really providing leadership and providing headship and oversight for that. So it’s interesting, because later on in Genesis we see that when the woman is brought to the man, that he understands that it’s his responsibility to also name her. He intuitively knows that He is to provide oversight also for her.

Now, obviously, the woman is his equal, flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone; far different than his relationship to the animals. And yet there was something in terms of just who he was, what he was able to bring to the table in their relationship, that he brought that to the table in terms of just wanting to pour out upon her and in her all of what God had given him. So that was interesting also, a very interesting point in Genesis.

Then we see it again after the fall, that man again names woman. There’s some significance to that. We could say, “Well, what’s the big deal?” but I think it is a big deal.

Number five: So the man was firstborn, he was to provide, he was to protect, he was supposed to work; but there was no one to work for. It’s interesting that the word “work” means working for someone or on behalf of someone; that’s what that word means in Genesis. But there was no one to work for. So the man felt, I think, the yearning for a soulmate, felt the yearning for the one who would be the selfsame and yet other, the corresponding creation to him.

What’s interesting is when God puts Adam to sleep and he drops down onto the moss as though he were dead, and then He pierces his side and pulls out, and the woman is created from the side of man, which is very different than the creation of Adam. Adam was created from the dust of the ground, out in the wild. Woman is created in the garden, she’s created from the side of man, drawn out of the side of man. It just is such a beautiful image and picture to me of what happened in redemption, of Christ dying on the cross, pierced in His side, and because of His death and resurrection the Church was created, the Church was born, so to speak. God created the Church, the Bride, for Christ. So it’s a beautiful image, right from the get-go, in the creation of male and female, that we see of the gospel story. Fascinating and beautiful.

Nancy: Mary Kassian has been showing us some of the ways our gender and sexuality (and even the differences between men and women) are designed to paint a vivid, compelling picture of the gospel.

The audio we heard today is taken from a video interview American Family Radio did with Mary as part of a documentary called “In His Image.” 

Dannah: I'm thankful that you and Mary have together coauthored the eight-week Bible study for women to follow up on this important topic. It's called True Woman 101: Divine Design, and this month that study is part of our thank-you packet that we’ll send you for your donation of any amount. True Woman 101 takes a closer look at the ways God designed things to be for men and women. Not the cultural trappings, not pink and blue, or football and sewing. But what principles are at the core of what it means to be male or female, and how can we work at living that out?

I've got to say that this is such a timely discussion, a timely topic. It's perhaps more urgently needed than when Nancy and Mary originally penned this Bible study. Again, the True Woman 101 study is yours as our thank-you gift to you for your donation to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. It’s also packaged together with a 5 x 7 art print that says, “Yes, Lord!” We need to say “Yes, Lord” to His design for us, don’t we? Well, ask about True Woman 101 and the "Yes, Lord!" print when you contact us to make a donation. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

Nancy: Tomorrow Mary Kassian returns, and she’ll continue showing us not only the beauty of God’s design for men and women, but also how we can show the beauty of the gospel through that design. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encourages you to say “Yes, Lord” to God’s design for you. Visit us online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

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