One of the ways the heresies of egalitarianism and feminism have seeped into the church has been in our assumptions about what piety and repentance look like. Frequently, we have made feminine piety and feminine repentance the rule for what real piety and repentance are. And if a man or a boy doesn’t look like a woman or a girl while repenting, we tend to be doubtful. But when men and women put off the old man and put on the new man in Christ, they ought to do so as men and women, male and female.
Of course repentance is fundamentally just complete humility before God and so don’t overthink it. But for example, when a man humbles himself before God and repents, he begins taking responsibility for himself and others, which in some ways will make him more assertive than he was before. Humility doesn’t mean mousiness. When a woman humbles herself before God and repents, she begins caring more about true Christian beauty and hospitality than before. But of course, you might mistake the responsible assertiveness as pride in the man, and you might mistake the concern for beauty and hospitality as vanity in the woman. Of course it could be.
But for a husband who repents, putting on Christ will mean loving his wife more like Christ loves, which is truly sacrificial and efficacious, but isn’t necessarily doing whatever his wife prefers. Likewise, when a wife repents, putting on Christ means that she respects her husband, looks up to him, admires him, praises him, and maybe when it would appear to some close friends that not a lot has changed with him. But virtue and piety and repentance are not dependent on other people changing. Putting on Christ is something each individual does before God, as a man, as a woman and so you become what God created you to be, a man, a woman, male and female in His glorious image. There certainly are common elements to repentance: true hatred of sin, true sorrow over sin, real zeal for change and new obedience. But those realities will often look different in men and women, boys and girls. As God renews His image in us, He is not renewing a sexless, androgynous image. He is renewing something radically more feminine, radically more masculine than any of us can imagine.
Toby Sumpter – February 11, 2024
