The NT Authors (Almost) Never Talk about Manliness and Masculinity

And why my new book on Christian manhood focuses on the Fruit of the Spirit

In the lead up to my book release later this month, I’ve been having lots of conversations about it with friends and acquaintances, as well as giving some talks and doing podcast interviews. By far the most common question I get goes something like this: “Why did you write a book for men centered on the fruit of the Spirit when those are supposed to be embodied by all believers, not just men? Is there anything different about these character traits for men than there is for women?”

It’s a good question. And there are a few ways I would answer.

The Biblical Data

First, the fact is that there isn’t that much in the New Testament directed specifically at men about their maleness. Jesus never once teaches on the subject of masculinity or manhood, and almost everything we do have comes from the so-called “household codes” of the Pauline epistles. By my count, there are 19 (Edit: 20) verses of exhortation in the New Testament directed to men as men. These are:

• 1 Corinthians 7:3–4, 11. To husbands, don’t deprive your wife of sex. Don’t get divorced because you think it’s holier to be single.

• 1 Corinthians 11:4, 7. To men, don’t pray with your head covered. (Why some learned/practice the tradition of men removing their hats/caps during prayer.)

• Ephesians 5:25–33. To husbands, love your wives as Christ loved and served the church by giving of himself for her good. (By far the longest passage of the bunch.)

• Colossians 3:19, 21. To husbands, love your wives. To fathers, don’t be harsh with your kids.

• Titus 2:2, 6. To older men, be sober, pious, wise/self-controlled, and healthy in faith, love, and endurance. To younger men, be wise/self-controlled.

• 1 Peter 3:7. To husbands, honor your wives because they are equal heirs of eternal life with you. If you don’t, God will ignore your prayers.

• EDIT: 1 Timothy 2:8. To men, pray without being angry or contentious. (Rachael Anne Berglund pointed out that I missed this. Thank you!)

• (Honorable mention: 1 John 2:13–14. This reads to me like encouragement directed in turn at various groups within the community rather than instruction for each group as such.)

That’s everything – literally all the instructions in the entire NT directed specifically at men.

Some may be wondering why I haven’t included the qualifications for overseers in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. I’ve excluded those passages because I’m only thinking about texts directed to all or entire classes of men (husbands/fathers). The elder qualifications include both virtues of godliness and skills such as “managing his household well” and “able to teach.” Surely we wouldn’t say that all men need to be well-organized or teachers of the scriptures.

Others may notice 1 Corinthians 16:13 isn’t on the list. Well, that’s because this verse, rendered in the ESV as “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong,” is not directed specifically at men. Rather, it appears in a list of final exhortations clearly intended for all believers, women and men, in the church. This is not – as many an anon in my X mentions has courageously “well akshually-ied” me – an exhortation for Christian men to be less feminine and more masculine. Rather, it is an exhortation for all believers to be “masculine” in the sense of standing firm and steadfast in their faith. This, of course, has not stopped pastors from publishing books on “biblical manhood” whose titles brazenly pluck this verse out of context.

Evangelical men’s conference organizers when the ESV translation committee renders ἀνδρίζεσθε ‘act like men’ in 1 Cor 16:13

Now a few observations about the verses actually included in the list above. First, most of them are directed at husbands (and/or fathers). There is almost nothing generically addressed to men about a distinct role or form of godliness particular to them as men.

Second, conspicuously absent is any exhortation about role or calls for men to “lead” their wives or families. The basis of so-called complementarianism for men then comes from texts describing husbands as “the head” (1 Cor 11:3, Eph 5:23) or exhorting women/wives to “submit” (Col 3:18, Eph 5:22), or from God’s post-Fall words to Eve that her husband will “rule over” her (Gen 3:16). Some may think I’m splitting hairs, but for my money it’s pretty significant that nowhere in scripture are husbands commanded to “be better leaders” or “lead their wives.” (I wrote a little bit more on this point in this Substack note.)

On the Similarities and Differences between Godly Manhood and Womanhood

So, what are men commanded to do/be in these verses? Well, you could say mostly the same types of things all Christians are exhorted to do throughout the New Testament: honor the weak(er), love others, be self-controlled, look to others’ interests rather than your own, etc.

This brings me to my second response to the lead question of this article: why focus on the fruit of the Spirit for a book on masculinity? Well, because there is much more that makes the calling on godly men similar to the call on godly women than makes those callings different. We are all called to follow Christ. We are all called to exhibit and grow in Christlike character. We are all called to attain to the divine virtue and imitation of God. In the hundreds upon hundreds of verses of moral exhortation in the NT, virtually nowhere are commands towards godliness gendered in any way.

Now, it would simply be untrue to say that the New Testament contains zero distinct teaching about maleness and femaleness. However, it is true to say that Jesus and the apostles’ teaching contain very little of of this sort of thing. Manliness and masculinity were simply not high priorities on the discipleship curriculum Jesus had for his followers. Now, to offer another caveat, this does not mean those couple handfuls of verses (there are far more directed at women than men, by the way) are unimportant or can simply be jettisoned by those who view the Bible as authoritative. Those passages exist and Christians should take them seriously as spoken by the Spirit of God.

However, it is also true that these handful of verses have been discussed and rediscussed and argued about ad nauseam in books, podcasts, seminary classes, etc. People also tend to be pretty entrenched in their opinaions about the NT teaching on gender “roles,” and their interpretive conclusions are fairly predictable given their pre-existing ideological persuasions. I have my opinions about these issues (family life, women’s ordination, etc.), but I had exactly zero interest in writing another book engaging these questions directly. Speaking for myself, I have become less and less interested over the years in dogmatic proclamations about 1) what I understand to be tertiary theological issues that 2) we have limited or under-determined biblical data to discern. Again, I’m not saying these questions are unimportant or don’t have real bearing on people’s lives (especially women’s lives), but I knew when I set out I was not planning to write another book in this vein of discussion.

The question of what it means to be a godly, “biblical” man is certainly an important and urgent one, especially in this moment where so many men and boys are struggling, aimless, and facing very real challenges. But in answering that question, we have a responsibility to place our emphasis where Jesus and the apostles do: on the character traits commended to all believers, men and women. Which brings me finally to Paul’s most famous virtue list.

The Fruit of the Spirit and Christian Manhood

I wrote a book where I’m trying to shift the conversation about what makes for “biblical” masculinity away from questions of role, headship, leadership, primacy in human mission blah blah blah. The cottage industry of books written to “complementarians,” traditionalists, and Christian patriarchs around this is pretty exhausting, as is the cottage industry of books/podcasts for and by mainliners and progressive evangelicals responding to and seeking to refute their arguments. On both “sides,” some of these books are careful, charitable, and bring real value to these conversations. Others (most?), far less so, unfortunately.

To be honest, I am pretty bored by all of it these days. And I have seen the conversation drift easily into unhelpful and ugly territory where we can miss the forest of the New Testament teaching on godly character formation for focusing on a few trees of gender-related controversy.

If we’re wondering what it looks like to be a godly man, let’s start with a conversation about what it means to be godly, then simply apply this to men and boys.

There are many summary definitions of godliness one could choose from scripture. For this book, I chose the “fruit of the Spirit” from Galatians 5:22–23. What does it mean to be a Christian man? Well, fundamentally it means a man indwelled by the Spirit and bearing the fruit that corresponds to that indwelling. The differences in how the fruit of the Spirit are expressed has to do with a variety of factors, including our culture, personality, and gender/sex.

Yes, both women and men are called to embody the Christian virtue of gentleness, for example. But how that looks will be different for a 5’ 4” cautious, protective mother of two compared to a 6’ 3” competitive, single man in his 20s. They must both cultivate all the virtues of godliness, but we will notice gentleness expressed differently. And, yes, I would say their gender/sex is an important part of that difference.

There’s a unique beauty to the way a man enacts the virtue of kindness, to give another example. We learn something about God and about Jesus by watching a woman be kind, to be sure. But we get another angle on that beauty when we see a man living in kindness. We need both.

Men’s size, strength, and many social advantages compared to women give them unique opportunity to express many of the biblical virtues, which is a theme I return to repeatedly throughout the book. So, male embodiment becomes an important part of the conversation on this refraction of godly virtue.

It is also true that our cultural moment and historical context shapes the messages and values of masculinity that boys and men receive from their communities and media. The question of godly masculinity then becomes a dialogue between these character traits of Christ-likeness and the values of masculinity taught by our culture (or by the Christian subculture). What is in keeping with the Spirit of God? What practices and habits and behaviors can we receive as manifestations of the goodness of male embodiment? Which others need to be strongly rejected? How do men live, lead, and love in ways that model Christ-like character?

That’s what Men of Virtue is about. It is an attempt to offer a scripturally grounded answer for this moment and this context as to how Christian boys and men ought to live. The short answer is that they should be men full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

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