Your Gender and Sexuality Tell a Story (Mary Kassian)

Dannah Gresh: It doesn’t take much investigation for us to see lots of confusion these days. Confusion about what it means to be a man or a woman and why it matters. Today, Mary Kassian helps clear up the confusion by viewing it through the lens of Scripture.

Mary Kassian: God created male and female to tell the story of the gospel. That is the main point that we need to grasp if we’re going to understand anything about gender and sexuality, if we’re going to understand anything about marriage and about our moral imperative as created beings.

If we don’t understand this point, we’re going to struggle with it because we’re going to think it’s about us, when it isn’t. It’s actually about God, and it’s about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for June 19, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I don’t think there’s any question that there’s never been a more important time or a more urgent need for clear thinking related to gender and sexuality. Basic terms are now being questioned or redefined or rejected. Never before have state legislatures felt it necessary, for example, to write into their laws definitions of words like male and female. It’s truly an age of confusion that we’re living in.

That’s why Revive Our Hearts hosted an event last fall by that title, “Gender and Sexuality: Clarity in an Age of Confusion.” That was the theme of our preconference in Indianapolis just before True Woman ’22 kicked off. I’ve got to tell you that while that event was going on that afternoon, I was getting text messages from people saying, “This is incredible!”

So all this week and into next week, you’re going to have a chance to hear some of the content that was shared that day. I think you’ll find it really timely, winsome, and wise.

First up today is my dear friend Mary Kassian. Mary is one of the most effective communicators I know on what the Bible teaches on gender and sexuality. She and her husband Brent live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Now, here’s Mary.

Mary: I want to tell you a little bit about my life—a story that my mum has recounted to me about my birth.

I am the fifth of six children, and my mum had boys. So, she had boy number one, and she was happy about that. And she had boy number two, and she was quite happy about that. She had boy number three, and she was happy about that. Then she had boy number four, and she was happy about that. But deep in her heart, she really, really wanted a girl.

My mum was a professional seamstress, and she just could not wait to have a girl and start sewing all those little dresses and the bows and the frills and all kinds of little girlie things.

So she started to pray. She prayed, “Oh Lord, I want a girl.” And she prayed, and she prayed. She petitioned God to have a girl. She’d asked God before, but He didn’t apparently hear, and so she kept asking for a girl.

And then one night (as the story goes), an angel came to her in a dream and said, “If you want a girl, tonight’s the night.” (laughter) So she rolled over and woke up my father, and he was totally disoriented, but she said, “Tonight’s the night, Honey.” And, sure enough, she got pregnant, and I was born nine months later on what we know in Canada as Remembrance Day. (laughter)

And then, just to reinforce that there was this miraculous act of God, she had another boy after that. So, I am a lone girl of five brothers.

My mum had prayed for a girl, but what she failed to pray for was a girlie girl, because I was not one. I didn’t like wearing frilly dresses. I didn’t like the lace. I didn’t like pink. I didn’t like having my hair put up in little cute little things. Eventually, she just had to cut it off because I was constantly climbing trees with my brothers, trying to be just like them, working in the garage with my dad. I was just not a girlie girl.

So, I grew up, not as a girlie girl. I grew up with constant reminders from my mother and father that I was, in fact, a girl. “Mary, you’re a girl. You have to act like a girl. Mary, you’re a girl. Mary, you’re a girl.”

I never really doubted it. I just kind of resented it. I knew that I was a girl, but I resented that fact sometimes because I thought the boys got to do more fun things—like run power tools, which I loved doing.

So, I hit my high school years, and I was still, I mean, I knew I was a girl. I knew that that was my birth identity that God had given to me. And yet, guys were just easier. It was just easier to be with the guys. They said what they meant; they meant what they said. I didn’t have to figure it out.

It wasn’t all the little games that girls sometimes play that I didn’t really understand. My first language was German, and we were immigrants, and I didn’t get it. But, it was just more comfortable.

But somehow, God had shaped my identity, and my parents at that time just kept on reminding me, “Mary, you’re a girl. You’re a girl.” I never really fought against that, but I never really thought that it was a good thing to be a girl.

And so when I hit my university years, I hit those just as feminism was becoming a massive thing on campus, the ideology that everyone was talking about. I was a Christian. I was deeply committed to following Christ. I was committed to sharing the gospel.

I had a small group of women that I was discipling at that time. One of the main issues that they were dealing with was, “Does God like women?”

There was one friend of mine, her name was Sue, and she was reluctant to become a Christian. She hadn’t committed her life to Christ. She said, “I don’t think God really likes women. I’m not going to follow a God like that.”

Now, I was convinced that God likes everyone, but I thought, Okay, in order to explore this issue, we’re going to do a Bible study on everything that the Bible has to say about women.

That’s actually how I got into this topic. If you would have told the eighteen-year-old me or the twenty-year-old me that I would be the one talking about God’s design for women, I would have had a really good laugh, because that just isn’t in my wheelhouse, because I’m not into stereotypes. I’m not into girlie-girl things. And if you are, bless you, that’s good. I have granddaughters who are, and it’s a wonderful thing.

But womanhood is not contained in the externals. It goes far deeper than that. It goes deeper into who God created us to be. We see in our culture that in order to become a woman, you just need to change some externals, change a couple of appliances here, add some on, and just address . . . get your nails done long and wear your hair a certain way, and that’s what it means to be a woman. In fact, you can become “Woman of the Year.”

We’re going to be taking a look at God’s Word today and digging deep into that. If you would turn with me to Romans chapter 1. I’m going to read it, but I’m not going to unpack all of it. The other speakers are going to be touching on this passage as well. But in my talk this afternoon, I just want to address the question, is femaleness good? Is it good?

You see, because it took me a long time to shift in my mind to the idea that not only is it right that I am a woman—I never questioned that because I always believed that God is God, and so He has authority over my life. And so, if He created me to be a woman, if I was born a woman, then obviously He had something to say about that. And what He says in His Word, I just had a firm belief that God’s Word is true, and God’s Word is right.

 

But it took me a long time to move from the conviction that God’s design for womanhood is right to the conviction that God’s design for womanhood is not only right, but it is also good and beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s astonishing, and it’s spectacular. I’m not talking about pink frilly dresses. I’m talking about something that goes far deeper—who we are, identity-wise, at a very deep level.

So, let’s read Romans chapter 1. I’m going to start at verse 16, and we’re going to go all the way to the end of the chapter together. Verse 16:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

For, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind, to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness; they are gossips, flanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.” (vv. 16–32)

Then I want to pick up on the first verse of chapter 2.

Therefore, [because this ties back], you have no excuse, O man, everyone of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

So that just gives us a real dose of humility after that very difficult passage to say, “Hey, we’re not talking about an us/them; those people are the bad guys, and we have it all together.” This is an us. This is the, “I’m in this boat.”

This is the story that we struggle with gender and sexuality and our identity because we’ve been born into a world that is hostile, that has hostile forces toward God. And I am no different. I am no different.

But God gives us some instruction in His Word that helps us understand the battle, and not only helps us understand it but helps us understand His good and beautiful design and helps us understand how we can grab hold of it and find freedom and fullness in Christ and fruitfulness.

So my personal journey from viewing God’s design from right to being beautiful . . . I remember the day, actually, that it hit me like a ton of bricks, “Hey, not only is this right, this is amazing, and it’s astonishing.”

I’m not going to unpack this whole passage. I’m just going to unpack a little bit of it for you, and then the other speakers will dwell on the rest of it. But the first point that I want to pick up is that creation tells the story of God. Creation tells the story of God.

God has shown it to us. God has shown us something about Himself. It says in the Word that He has revealed Himself to us through creation, in verse 20, His eternal power, His divine nature.

So there’s something about God that we learn when we observe creation. And, of course, the epitome of creation is His creation of male and female who are the very last thing He created, and, according to God, the most amazing thing that He created. So, male and female and all the rest of creation tell us something about God. They reveal something about the character of God: that God’s justice and God’s greatness and God’s power and God’s amazing capacity to shape and create the world how He sees fit.

It says in the passage here that these truths are self-evident. Even if somebody has never cracked open a Bible and read the words of the Bible, they’ve seen creation, and there’s truths that are self-evident in creation. It’s self-evident that we are not in the same order of creation as all the rest of the animals. It’s self-evident that there’s a moral imperative that comes alone with being created by God and in the image of God.

Now, people may not know how to put words to that, but they know we’re not like the animals. We can’t run around killing other people. We can’t run around sleeping with whoever we want. We can’t run around hurting others. There’s something wrong about crushing other people to get to be the king of the castle.

So that’s self-evident. Even among someone who has never heard the name of Jesus, there’s a self-evident truth in creation that teaches us about who God is, His power, His right to rule, and that there’s a moral imperative that goes along with being the creature rather than the Creator.

Creation tells the story of God. Everybody by looking at creation can say, “Wow! It’s self-evident.” Now, they don’t, but God says there’s enough information there for everyone. There’s enough information that He has revealed Himself that they know, at some level in their spirit, that they are not God, and that there is a God.

Point Number Two: Male and female tell the story of the gospel.

Dannah recommended True Woman 101, and I recommend it to you as well if you’ve not done that study. It walks through Genesis and takes a look at how right from the very beginning, God created us differently.—not only just in terms of our plumbing, but also in the manner in which we were created, the order in which we were created, and what He directs us to do.

There are things right back in Genesis where He treated men uniquely, and He treated women uniquely as women. And even at the Fall when sin came, He gave the sexes specific judgments on sin because we’re different. We’re different. Male and female are different. There’s so much that’s the same in terms of being made in the image of God, but there are also different things.

Let me ask you this question, and it’s a very simple question. See if you can answer it: Can a dad be a mum? Can a mum be a dad?

Well, a mum can certainly do all the things that a dad does. She can gas up the car. She can clean it. She can vacuum it. She can fix things. She can give her kids the why-for and tell them to pull up their socks. She can take them to their soccer games. She can challenge them. But, can a mum be a dad?

And I’m not just talking about what she does, because a woman can do all the same things that a man can do, but that doesn’t make her a dad.

There’s something deeper and almost intangible that we can hardly wrap our language around because as soon as we try to explain it, we fall short. But we know it intuitively. Nature teaches us this. Nature teaches us even to look at the birds and the bees and the animals and to see that there’s a way that they behave in terms of what they do that falls in line with them being created as a female animal or as a male animal.

And it is magnified, in a sense, in humanity, because God created male and female to tell the story of the gospel. That’s the main point. That is the main point that we need to grasp if we’re going to understand anything about male and female, if we’re going to understand anything about gender and sexuality, if we’re going to understand anything about marriage and about our moral imperative as created beings.

If we don’t understand this point, we’re going to struggle with it because we’re going to think it’s about us, when it isn’t. It’s actually about God, and it’s about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The reason that history opened with a story of a male and a female and a marriage is because history is going to close with a story of a male and a female and a marriage. 

Who’s the male? Jesus Christ.

Who’s the female? The Church.

What’s the marriage? It’s what we’re going to see in eternity in heaven at the union of Christ and His Bride.

We’re not going to have marriage in heaven. Do you know why? Because all of this temporary, earthly stuff points to THE marriage to which we’re all headed and to which we even can participate in even if we do not ever get married on earth.

Male and female tell the story of the gospel. It’s a beautiful love story, and this beautiful love story is God’s greatest masterpiece. Not the male and female and the earthly love story but the heavenly love story. It is His greatest masterpiece.

So is it any wonder, at the time of creation where God created stuff, and God has all His artistic juices flowing, and He goes, “Ohhh, this is good. Ohhh, this is good. Ohhh, wow! Sunset . . . this is good.”

But then He creates the woman, and He looks forward to that time when Christ will die for His Bride. And what does He say? “This is very good. This is very good.” It’s an amazing thing. It’s God's amazing and greatest masterpiece.

Third point: There is a right way and a wrong way to respond. There is a right way and a wrong way to respond.

To respond to what we see in nature, to respond to what natural law instructs us . . . Natural law instructs us that the pieces of who we are, the plumbing of who we are as male and female fit together one way and not another way. That’s the way it is, unless we try and change it and do otherwise.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to respond. Verse 21, “For although they knew God” . . . In other words, this isn’t like a personal knowledge of God, but this is a natural knowledge of God that God gives us through creation and through the observance of nature, natural law. “For although they knew that, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him” (paraphrased). And those are the two necessary responses.

The first one: They did not glorify Him as God. In other words, they didn’t recognize God’s authority. It was the classic, “Shaking the fist at God,” that we’ve seen throughout since the Fall of mankind. It’s saying, “You have no right to tell me. I have the right to tell me. I’m not going to glorify You as God. I’m going to glorify me as god. I’m god of my own self, thank You very much.”

They did not glorify Him as God. They didn’t recognize His authority, and here’s something very interesting. What does it say in this passage? “Nor did they give thanks.”

Okay, what does that mean? Well, you give thanks to things that you appreciate. You give thanks to things that are a gift. You give thanks when you receive a gift. And each one of you in this room, and each one of you listening, have received a gift. You have received an exceedingly precious gift of God. He has knit you together in your mother’s womb, piece by piece.

And even though we live in a culture and a time when it isn’t always easy to be a woman, when we see women degraded and abused and oppressed, and when we see people downtrodden because of their gender, and when we see just the horrendous things that happen because of the presence of sin in our world; even still, God wants us to be thankful for the gift of sexuality and gender. It is His gift to us, and He wants us to be thankful, glorify Him, recognize His authority, and appreciate the beauty.

I came to that point slowly in my life. I think it took probably over a decade from the time I started really looking at God’s Word and what He had to say to me as a woman to the point of, “Yes. This is not only right, it is good, and it is beautiful.”

I know that many of you in this room are wrestling with that, and some of you, perhaps, are not. Maybe you’ve always been glad to be a woman, and you don’t see what the big deal is.

Our culture has tried to mix things up. Since the sixties, we have been taught as women that the best way to be a woman is to become kind of almost like a guy. But we’re not one of the guys, and thank God that we’re not.

Thankful for who we are. Recognize His authority. Glorify Him. God is the God of the universe who created us. He is our Creator. He is the Potter. We are the clay. And we are oh so thankful because His design is not only right, but it is good, and it is beautiful.

Nancy: Amen. What an important reminder from Mary Kassian, speaking in September of 2022 about the story your gender and sexuality tell.

“You’re not your own,” says the apostle Paul. “You’ve been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.”

I mentioned before that Mary is one of the best thinkers and communicators on this subject today. Her insights are captured in a number of books she’s authored, and you’ll find links to them in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Also, all this month we’ve been talking about a book by Dr. Juli Slattery, who we’ll hear from tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts. Juli’s book is called Rethinking Sexuality: God’s Design and Why It Matters.

In this book, she explains how sexuality is rooted in the bigger context of God’s heart and His redeeming work here on earth. This book will help you understand the big picture of sexual challenges we’re facing today, what it means to be sexually whole, and what difference it all makes.

And this month Rethinking Sexuality is our thank-you gift to you for your donation of any size to support the ongoing work of Revive Our Hearts. Be sure to ask for Juli’s book when you contact us with your gift at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’re going to return to that same True Woman 2022 preconference, and we’ll hear from Dr. Juli Slattery who will challenge us to respond to the sexual brokenness all around us with three C’s: compassion, courage, and conviction. I hope you’ll join us tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth helps you see your place in the gospel story. It’s part of your freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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