By Kevin Maxey
Synopsis: Love, understanding, discernment, and correction empower Christians as they engage in the current gender identity debate.
In the name of “enlightened awareness,” leading woke advocates are currently attempting to redefine gender. Gender, clearly defined in the past as male or female, now, according to some, refers to one’s perceived personal identity, regardless of biological sex. In other words, your body no longer identifies your gender, you do. Basing sexual identity on personal feelings instead of scientific and divine biology has unleashed an ever-growing cultural gender dysphoria. (Note: The opposite of euphoria, “dysphoria” signifies a state of profound unease or dissatisfaction, and may lead to depression, anxiety, mania, and maladjustment.)
Repercussions of the gender identity debate are pervasive, affecting public classrooms, government legislation, employment policies, entertainment platforms, operating tables, athletic fields, military standards, and even local bathrooms. Confusion abounds as definitions, names, appearances, pronoun identifiers, rules, and relationships are constantly in flux. People, even young children without parental consent, are encouraged to question sexual attraction, explore gender identity, receive hormone replacement therapy, and even undergo sex-reassignment surgery.
How does God call Christians to respond to society’s ever-growing gender dysphoria? In 2 Timothy 2:22-26 Paul told Timothy how to respond to those ensnared by the lustful passions of his day. Reread this familiar passage in light of the current gender identity debate:
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
Paul affirms that the Lord’s servant may save souls ensnared by the devil through love, understanding, discernment, and correction.
If you are like me, you may be tempted to correct harshly. However, Paul begins by saying, “Pursue. . . love. . . from a pure heart” (v. 22). Correction without love is abhorrent. “If I have. . . all knowledge. . . but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-3). Remember, the goal is not to prove ourselves right and others wrong. Instead, our goal is to save souls ensnared by Satan. What issue more illustrates the need to help souls flee fleshly lusts than current sexual manifestations of gender dysphoria? As you engage in the gender debate, do so in love. See this as an opportunity to help broken souls who, like all sinners, ourselves included, desperately need God’s love, healing, and transformation (Luke 19:10; 1 Tim. 1:15). The gender identity debate provides us with an opportunity to lovingly point people to God for answers (John 3:17). Love instead of sneer. Show compassion instead of disdain. Improper attitudes push souls towards Satan. Prepare yourself, instead, to help neighbors, coworkers, brethren, and even children who are struggling to find answers in God.
As Paul builds towards correction, he next adds kindness and patience, which only come through listening. Be “kind to everyone. . . patiently enduring evil” (v. 24). The unkind, impatient, and quarrelsome do not listen. “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Jas. 1:19). Profitable discussion is impossible when participants misunderstand. Do you understand how the LGBTQ+ community defines words like “gender,” “trans,” “intersex,” “asexual,” “body,” and “questioning”? Why do people experiencing gender dysphoria say things like, “I am a woman trapped in a male body,” “I am not my body,” “I don’t belong,” and “I am a boy but I feel more comfortable doing girl things”? Before you can help someone with a problem, you must should seek to understand the problem.
Next, Paul calls Timothy to discern between “foolish ignorant controversies” and worthy battles, and between the truth of God and the lies of the devil (vv. 22-26). The gender identity debate does not stop with superficial expressions of love and understanding. One must also discern. God’s word, not human wisdom, is the standard for true spiritual discernment (Heb. 5:14; Acts 17:11). C.S. Lewis encourages discernment, stating, “The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They both can’t be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe” (Lewis, 108-9).
Paul charged Timothy with “correcting” those ensnared by the devil, not harshly, but with “gentleness” (v. 25). The purpose of correction is not condemnation, but salvation. Correction is a demonstration of God’s love (Heb. 12:6). The Lord’s servant must teach God’s truth boldly and clearly.
Carefully applying these four steps to the gender identity debate enables us humbly to plead: “I love you (love); I hear you (understanding); I have searched the Scriptures (discernment); I gently correct you (correction). Will you love and hear me?”
Transgender advocates argue: “the body is an accident that has befallen the real me” (O’Donovan, 12); “What does some little bit of flesh between the legs matter?”; “It doesn’t matter what living, meat skeleton you’ve been born in; it’s what you feel that defines you” (“Boy or Girl?”). These statements clearly devalue the human body, subjugating it to subjective feelings. woke advocates contribute to body-hate, feed self-hate, encourage gender dysphoria, value subjective feelings over scientific biology, foster manipulative confusion in children, and deceitfully undermine parental consent.
Sacred Scripture affirms that the human body is fearfully and wonderfully made:
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You (Ps. 139:13-18).
God values the body through creation. The human body is a manifestation of the Creator’s magnificent handiwork. “Male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). The human body is no accident. Your body is so important, God fashioned it for you!
God values the body through divine function. God sets humanity apart from all creation, when He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:26-27). The human body is not to be emasculated or discarded. The human body is not a prison to a confused and fickle self-identity. God made male and female humanity to bear His very image. Your body is so important, God made you to bear His image to the world.
God values the body through marital oneness. Male and female are uniquely different, yet complimentary, as they share in divinely created monogamous union. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24, 18; Prov. 18:22). Jesus values this male and female created order when speaking of the sacred moral order of marriage (Matt. 19:3-6). Your body is so important, God made you to be and to receive a perfect complement in marriage.
God values the body through reproductive function. Even evolutionists agree that body parts have purpose and function. Males and females have different body parts for different functions. Humans are not randomly placed in “meat skeletons” to be dismissed, discarded or emasculated according to discontented human will. Human bodies are uniquely fashioned and intentionally purposed with male and female body parts. God empowers males and female bodies with the majestic ability to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). Your body is so important, God uniquely created you with strengths to be used for His glorious purposes.
God values the body through Christ’s incarnation. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9; 1:19). The very presence of Jesus in the flesh demonstrates the perfect manifestation of the image of God. Your body is so valuable that even Jesus came to walk in a human body. It was not beneath Jesus to walk in a gendered body. Is it beneath you?
God values the body through the Spirit’s indwelling. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19). Paul forbids the Christian from defiling his valuable body in illicit sexual acts based on this truth. God values your body, Satan does not.
God values the body through the crucifixion. “For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20; 1 Pet. 1:19). Your body is so valuable, God paid the highest price possible in order to redeem it.
God values the body through holy living. “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. . . Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:13-18). Throughout Scripture, God elevates humanity to use their bodies in purity and holiness. Males and females are not to dress like the other (Deut. 22:5). Same-sex and animal-sex acts are forbidden (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9; Lev. 18:22-23). Satan degrades the body, God elevates the body. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Rom. 6:12-13). God made your body to be holy, respected, valued and good!
God values the body through the resurrection. God demonstrates the value of the human body through His promise of even raising our bodies from the dead. “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11, 23; 1 Cor. 15:50-58). Your body is so valuable, God promises to resurrect it.
For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. . . “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”. . . But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:52-58).
God values you more than you know. He sent His son to redeem you from your body of sin. Submit your body to the waters of baptism and be washed (Rom. 6:3-4; Acts 22:16). God says to you now, “I love you. I hear you. Will you love and hear me?”
“Boy or Girl?” YouTube video, 1:40, uploaded by BBC The Social, October 24, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udI-Go8KK2Q
Lewis, C.S. “Man or Rabbit?” God in the Dock. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.
O’Donovan, Oliver. Transsexualism and Christian Marriage. Cambridge, UK: Grove Books, 1982, 2007.
