I am currently teaching a five-week series entitled Strength Through Knowing God, based on Daniel 11:32b where the prophet writes, "Those who know their God will be strong and take action." Last Sunday's message revolved around the biblical revelation that God is spirit (John 4:24) and is not gendered. To pray "Our Father who art in heaven" no more means that God is a man than to hear God say, "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you" (Isaiah 66:13) means God is a woman. Scripture explicitly states that God is spirit, but possesses both masculine and feminine attributes. This is why when God created adam (the Hebrew word for "man"), He created both the male and the female in His image, and called them both adam (see Genesis 1:27). In fact, in the process of creation, the only thing that was not good was when the male was created without the female. It is only in the male and the female that the full-orbed image of God is revealed. Men and women are God's image-bearers and both genders must be seen, treated and respected as equal representatives of the character of God. As John Calvin writes in his commentary on Isaiah 46:3, "God has chosen to liken himself to a female and we are the fruit of his womb." Only a person well versed in the biblical revelation of God would be able to make such a statement about the feminine character and attributes of the spirit Creator.
In some evangelical Christian churches, there has been a tendency among Christian men to emphasize God's image as only male. It's as if some American Christian men view God as drinking Red Bull, attending stock car races, growing His beard like Duck Dynasty men, and sitting on His throne like a king who orders his women servants to do his bidding. Some Christian men often see themselves as leading their families and churches like they view God leads the universe. These men see Christian women as 'helpers,' given to them by God so that the women can follow the man's authoritative reign. Sadly, this emphasis on male god-like authority has placed Christian women in a similar status to that of Islamic women. It may seem bizarre for some to compare an aberrant evangelical Christian view of women to fundamentalist Islamic views of women, but the belief that women are designed by Allah (God) to be helpers of men and the object of a man's sexual desires, is a common belief shared by both. It is a belief, however, that is not supported by the biblical revelation.
Scripture reveals God as both masculine and femine in character. His attributes included feminine and masculine attributes. I am spending five weeks on a Sunday morning to prove this truth from the inspired and infallible Scriptures. God's word never hesitates to compare God to a Mother and a Father, to a husband and a wife, and to a man and a woman. He is none of the above, because He is spirit, but He is like all the above, because of His eternal character and attributes. When God created adam, He placed His image in both the male and the female. Though the man and the woman are different physically, they are equal in possessing the temperament, character, and attributes of the Creator (i.e. "His image"), qualities that the spirit God has possessed from eternity. This Sunday I will show how in Jesus the Anointed One, "all the fullness of the Deity lives" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus Christ is the perfect human being, displaying the full-orbed character and attributes of God during His ministry on earth. Both men and women learn how to live life to its fullest by imitating Christ.
Therefore, men, when you seek to dominate a woman (or vice-versa), you are rebelling against God. When you use a woman as an object to fulfill your sexual desire--rather than as a person of equal personhood with whom you enter into covenant--then you break covenant with God. Whatever a man does to or against a woman, he does to or against his God.
MSN reported this morning that in the country of Egypt "...male sex mobs are targeting women because men have no fear of being caught."
Let me write a better headline that applies to the world: "Male sex mobs are targeting women because men have no fear of God when it comes to His image in women."
Men mistreat women because they don't know their God; that's true in Egypt, and that's true in America-even in our churches. I am hopeful that my five-week December series will give to Christians at Emmanuel the proper view of God and give us strength to take action when women are treated as if they are servants to men instead of image-bearers of God.