Beauty and the Beast

As we spend time in Titus 2 it is my prayer that you will come to see the breathtaking beauty of God's design for women. But the beauty I speak of is a beauty which is not of ourselves. By God's grace we are not like the feminist of the 60s who brashly shouted, "I am woman hear me roar" Or the "third wave" feminist of the 90s who (to this day) have as their goal not equality with men but rather dominance over men. Somehow these women seem to miss the fact that their tone and manner lacks beauty (or maybe that is precisely what they desire). Neither are we desperately grasping for men's attention with every diet, exercise and beauty tip that comes down the pike.

The beauty of which I speak is the beauty that comes from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we are to rightly understand God's design for us we must first embrace the Gospel given to us. This is foundational. Without the Gospel all our efforts are worthless before God and will seem pointless to us. And so, as we proceed in the weeks and months ahead you will often hear us referring back to the Gospel for this is our only hope for eternal life and true living today.

The book of Titus is only 46 verses long. It can easily be read in 10 minutes. Within those verses there are 6 uses of the word Savior and 4 times Jesus Christ is mentioned. Salvation words like: justified, grace, mercy, hope, redeemed, washed, etc. permeate the 3 short chapters (another 10 times). That totals 24 references to God's saving mercy in 46 verses. Why is this? I believe it is so that as we read Paul's words for how we are to live our lives, we will not wander into moralism or legalism. Also,the repeated reference to the Gospel gives us powerful motivation for Titus 2 living. Though God's ways are good, they are not always easy. And so we see, the Gospel not only makes us beautiful, it also gives us the motivation to live beautifully.

When I was 10 I was a verbal bully. I was extremely mean to people I was jealous of, or just didn't like. Imagine I lived in a town that was governed by a very righteous judge. Everyone in my town was well cared for. But I did not appreciate that care and was indifferent to this judge and his family. One day I verbally abused a kid in my school. Others heard me and reported me. I was brought before the judge. Turns out, the kid was the son of the judge. Turns out it was the judge's only son. The judge told me the penalty for this kind of abuse was death. I was guilty and sentenced.

The judge and his son spoke to one another, then the son approached me and told me, "I know what you did against me. I know you deserve to die. I want you to know I forgive you. I want you to go free. So here's what we are going to do. My father and I have agreed that I will take your punishment. The crime you committed will be my crime. I will die in your place. My father has always loved you and knew this day would eventually come. He now stands ready to adopt you and to bring you into his loving care. The details have all been worked out. All that is mine is yours.

And so the son, the one I had sinned against was sentenced and died in my place. And just as the son had promised, the father gave me everything that belonged to his son.

That seems too good to be true doesn't it? Well, the part of the story that is true is that I (the beast) really was a verbal bully and worse. But it wasn't only a classmate I sinned against. In truth it was against a Holy God (Beauty). I'm sure you can connect the dots and understand how excited I get when I think about the Gospel. I do not have to look back to when I was 10 years old to see sin in need of Christ's forgiveness. Every day I (the beast) return to the cross (Beauty) where I find mercy and grace to help me (the beast) in my battle against my pride, self-righteousness, lurking anger and more.

Do you see yourself in the book of Titus? And do you see your Savior? What does this do for you? It makes me exclaim along with Paul the excellencies of Christ in Ephesians 1:3-14, and humbly pray along with Mary, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).

Postponed

In light of the fact WBD readers from TFC won't be able to get our first book, Dug Down Deep, from the bookstore today since church is cancelled, we'll have to postpone our first day of reading to next Monday, February 15.

On the Lighter Side

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program on its first installment to bring you something completely different. In preparation for tomorrow's Super Bowl, we'd like to offer an article in praise of the "Tim Tebow ad," oddly enough written by a pro-choice woman named Sally Jenkins. Here's a snippet:

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

...Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

You can read the article in its entirety here.

Feminist Confessions: 1) I hate men! 2) I want to be one.

In 21st-century America, women are told that the way to freedom is to gain authority over men in the home and the workplace, to freely and openly express their sexuality, and to abandon the 'oppressive' duties of motherhood.

So I want to know...has this promise of freedom and happiness delivered???

No. It never will. Just like the Victorian ideal, the Shakespearean notion, and the Grecian 'goddess' mentality, all failed to deliver on their promises to women. Same lie, different twist.

The problem is not one of gender, but one of sin. And the problem is not a modern one; rather, it is an ancient one which began with the very first husband and wife.

Let's go back to the Garden of Eden. There was a man and there was a woman. They were both made in the image of God. They were both assigned duties and responsibilities. They both enjoyed communion with God. They were perfectly happy with life and with each other.

John Piper elaborates:

This is the way God meant it to be before there was any sin in the world: sinless man, full of love, in his tender, strong, moral leadership in relation to woman; and sinless woman, full of love, in her joyful, responsive support for man's leadership. No belittling from the man, no groveling from the woman. Two intelligent, humble, God-entranced beings living out, in beautiful harmony, their unique and different responsibilities.

Now Satan knows that this is a beautiful arrangement. He knows that God's pattern of life is designed for man's good. But Satan hates God and he hates man. He is a liar and a killer from the beginning.

Why did he approach the woman in Genesis 3:1? Why did he draw her into discussion first and make her the spokesman for the couple? Why did he lure her into being the moral guardian of the garden? Was it because she was easier prey? Is woman more gullible than man? Or could the answer be: Satan drew the woman in first, and made her the spokesman and the moral guardian, because that is exactly what should not have been done? And Satan laughs to himself and says, "Now I have created such a confusion of roles they will never sort this out... they will never get to the root of the problem."

But in Genesis 3:17 God goes right to the root of the problem. He says to the man, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you." In other words, "Adam, you were listening when you should have been leading." God is not confused about what Satan did.

And he doesn't want us to be confused either. He created man first; he gave him the moral pattern of the garden first; he held him accountable for failure first; and he punished him for falling right in line with God's archenemy when Satan lured man and woman into a great role reversal at the fall.

Femininity has been out of sync since the Fall. In God's curse upon Eve, He declares that she (and all her offspring) will desire the authority of man (Gen. 3:16). Has it not proven to be our curse!!

Women struggle with the nature of womanhood because of sin... our sin. Our sin.

I am not happy with the nature and role of womanhood, not because of its inherent nature and role, but because my sin nature rebels against and hates God's design.

If your definition of being a truly happy, free, unoppressed, unopposed person is spelled M-A-N, you have believed the lie. The lie that God's design is stifling, chauvinistic, repressive... He is a 'He,' isn't He?... He doesn't care about women. He made them as an after-thought. He kept all the desirable human functions for men. He watches women be crushed and repressed and dismissed by men without a care...

LIES.

We must do what we do with all sin that the Spirit lovingly convicts us of: repent.

Perhaps we might commit to practice the following:
1) Rejoice in the fact that God created me as an image-bearer of Himself. This ensures that I am an eternal soul with unspeakable dignity, worth, and value.

2) Confess my sin of unbelief in the wisdom of God in creating men and women with distinguishable roles and His goodness in doing so for His glory and my joy.

3) Determine to a) fill my mind with God's perspective and truth and b) avoid any and all environments, relationships, television programs, books, magazines, music, hobbies, education, clothing, and any other thing that attacks the Biblical understanding of womanhood. (This is understood to be in the spirit of a 1 Cor. 5 'purging from among us,' not a call to cut ourselves off from unbelievers. We will inevitably be 'in' the world...but we must not be 'of' the world.)

I am self-deceived and blind. God is perfectly wise and perfectly good. If my perceptions, feelings, and inclinations oppose what God says, I must, MUST repent of my unbelief and trust Him Who loves me. And God's love is manifested in this way: He sent His Son to bear my sin.

The answer is not that Christ sets us free from the bondage of womanhood. Christ sets us free from the bondage of sin, enabling us to love and live in the way God designed us to be.

Let us ponder the glory of Christ more and the difficulties of womanhood less. For one is eternal and the other temporal. I think we will find that the latter fades into the distance as the former comes into view.

Anything you can do, I can do better!!

Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you!

I always liked being a girl. I also liked coming in first place, and I liked coming in first place as a girl. In high school I played more than my share of pranks, and I enjoyed never even being suspected because I was a good girl. As a girl I enjoyed winning back-to-back championships; don't even ask how bad the boys' basketball team was. In college I was a Criminal Justice major, which meant that as a girl, I was in a teeny-tiny minority. I enjoyed listening to a hundred beefy guys all around me brag on themselves for four years, knowing full well my private intention of graduating first in the class. And I did. In high heels. Anything you can do, I can do better.

Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."

The modern feminist movement wants us to enjoy and exploit our cleverness. We are supposed to think and act in a way that shows our ability to, as girls, out-smart, out-run, out-work, out-hustle the guys, and to do it all with ease, grinding their faces into the dirt with our Italian pink silk high heels.

The truth is, that is all disgusting pride. God designed us as women to share certain characteristics and traits, which is a good and appropriate thing. But before we start excusing our feminist behavior as natural, let's investigate to the motives beneath our behavior. Does self-sufficient pride lead to conceit and vanity? Does pride lead to a general belief in the incompetency of man? Does pride lead to a loud, abrasive, "I can do anything better than you! Yes, I can, YES, I CAN!!"

Our big pile of accomplishments, carefully and lovingly and angrily accumulated in our own cleverness and wiles, is our own indictment. And the judgment? "If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned."

Ladies, some of us, and I'm the biggest one here, have inner-feminists. This isn't the holy fruit that God intends us to bear; it's the result of carefully-nurtured pride. Left to ourselves, we will bring forth pride and conceit and vanity and death. The only solution is to look to Jesus: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."

May God gives us much grace and enable us to bring forth much fruit and prove to be His disciples, women who intentionally and perseveringly live according to HIS design! (John 15:1-8)