Conversations about sex and gender are front and center this month. Consequently, our children and teens. . . and even ourselves. . . are swimming in a directive cultural soup that maps out what to believe about sex gender, along with how to live our understanding of sex and gender. Is the culture getting it right? Sadly, not usually.
As parents and youth workers, we must use our voices to teach our children and teens what God really did say if we hope to help them find their way through the cultural narrative’s lies on sex and gender. At the very minimum, there are 10 truths on sex and gender God’s Word we must continually teach and talk about with our children and teens. While not exhaustive on the matter of sex and gender, they are foundational to setting our kids on a lifetime journey of glorifying God through knowing and doing His will for sex and gender. Over the course of the coming couple of weeks, I will be stating these truths one-at-a-time as a brief sentence. The descriptions that follow each are included to help you unpack and explain God’s revealed will on sex and gender. Here are truths #3, #4, and #5. . .
God has given us His order and design for sex and gender at Creation. God’s order and design for human sexuality, marriage, and gender is clearly stated in the Creation narrative (Genesis 1 & 2), reflected in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and is maintained consistently throughout the Bible. Genesis gives us God’s master plan for sexuality, marriage, and gender. . . a plan that is consistently affirmed by Jesus Christ (Matthew 19:4-6) and throughout the rest of Scripture. This order and design serves as our pattern for living today.
Human sin has corrupted everything, including sex and gender. Because of humankind’s rebellion against God and fall into sin, everything and everyone are broken. The disobedience of our first parents in the Garden of Eden has corrupted and poisoned our human nature, and our default setting is to rebel against God in our thoughts, our words, and our actions (Romans 3:10, 23; Romans 5:12, 18-19). We are all natural born sinners. Just like he did with our first parents in the Garden of Eden, the wrecker of this world (Satan) comes to us desiring to keep us from understanding and pursuing things as they are supposed to be. Satan wants us to cooperate with him in the destruction of God’s good order and design wherever that exists. . . including our understanding of sex and gender. And just as he did in Genesis 3:1, Satan continues to get us to question, doubt, and turn from God’s order and design by getting us to distrust God’s authority. He deceives us, getting us to believe and live out lies so that all Creation and our own lives come undone. On gender, sex and everything else Satan poses this doubt-inducing question: “Did God really say. . . ?” Ultimately Satan will do anything he can to convince us to join him in his rebellion against God, including choosing against God’s design for sex and gender.
God’s will and way for gender is clear. God has revealed His grand and glorious plan for humanity in the Creation account which is found in Genesis 1 and 2. If we want to know what it means to be human. . . to be fully human. . . we find that plan and purpose “In the beginning. . .” What is that plan? We need to know that everything God created He stamped as “good!” But when He finished creating human beings He said “very good!” And what He pronounced as “very good!” was male and female, the binary genders He designed and assigned. . . male and female only, that are both fully human and equal in dignity. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were given complementary biological forms and purposes so that they might work together to care for God’s good creation, to be fruitful, and to multiply. God gave each of us sex organs (and even genes in our DNA!) that tell us what gender we are, either male or female. This is the way things are supposed to be. Jesus affirms this in Matthew 19:4 when He says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” Because of this, rejecting God’s design and attempting to alter one’s biological sex as established before birth is a rejection of the image of God within us, and rebellion against God. To do so undermines one’s humanity and diminishes one’s flourishing.
To download a helpful handout, “God’s Plan For Sex and Gender: 10 Teaching Points For Home and Church” , click here.