Womanhood and Sexuality: The Rock Solid Truth (Part 2)

The rock solid truth about womanhood and sexuality is spelled out word for word in one verse at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1:27.  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  When we dig deep enough into this verse and put other scriptures along side it, we will gain a proper and biblical orientation that will bring clarity to any confusion there might be regarding what it means to be a woman.

In the previous article we ended with the focus on who is doing the creating.  God, the Creator of all the heavens and earth, created man.  Now let’s broaden our focus a bit and examine how he created man.  We can pick up some details in Genesis 2:7.  “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature.”  Up until this point in Creation, God has simply spoken a word and things were made.  But now we see something different.  God formed the man of dust.  He didn’t just speak a word.  He didn’t make man from nothing.  He formed him from dust.  This is a hands-on project.  The word “formed” conveys the idea of a potter fashioning clay into a particular shape.

David, in Psalm 139, sheds more light on this creative process when he uses exquisitely beautiful phrases to describe how God creates us.  David had amazing, Spirit-filled, insight into the making of a child.  He understood that something very intricate, yet powerful, happens in the womb of a pregnant woman.  There is the intimacy of God forming the child, much like in Genesis where God forms the man and then makes the woman.  There is the detail of knitting, stitch by stich, intricately weaving together a baby.  

Yes, our loving Creator God is personally involved in making each human being.  He was hands-on in the beginning and He still is.  

Back to Genesis 1:27, we read that God “created man………he created him; male and female he created them”.   It is helpful to understand that the word “man” is the same word as the original Hebrew word Adam.  This word is what is called a collective noun.  A collective noun is the name of something that indicates one entity made up of two or more parts.  For example, the word “group” is a collective noun.  A group is one entity, but we know that in order to have a group there is more than one member of that group, i.e. a group of people.  Other examples of collective nouns would be “class”, “cohort”, “herd”, “troop”, or “flock”.  

So the Bible says that God created man (Adam) and he created man (Adam), male and female: Same in essence (one flesh); Spiritual singleness (both equally in God’s image); Sexual separation (male and female).  In his book What is the Meaning of Sex? Denny Burk writes, “…we dare not miss that God created sexual differentiation.  The terms male and female are not cultural constructs.  They are not social roles foisted upon mankind by the accretion of culture and tradition.  Male and female designate the fundamental distinction that God has embedded in the very biology of the race.”

Now we ask, what has God embedded in the very biology of male and female?  The answer: chromosomes.  Every human being, male and female, has 23 pairs of chromosomes within each cell of his or her body.  Twenty-two of these pairs match in both males and females.  But in the 23rd pair, the sex determining pair, the chromosomes do not match.  They do not match in the male.  Every female has in each of her cells 23 pairs of matching X chromosomes.  Every male has 22 pairs of matching X chromosomes and one pair (the 23rd) that is an X chromosome and a much smaller Y chromosome.  Think about this!  When God made man, male and female, he made males and females different at the most basic cellular level.  The God who put the stars in place also puts the chromosomes in place!  He determines the X and/or Y chromosomes.

Several years ago Pastor Jonathan wrote an article titled, “More than Body Parts, Indeed.”  Here’s what he said, “You can think yourself female, and you can fool society to see female.  You can even go under the knife and reorder the look of your anatomy.  But you can’t make XY become XX.  You just can’t.  God’s imprint will haunt our every effort to rebel against his handiwork.  And the fact is, when the dust settles, you’ve only suppressed your identity with a surgical procedure and hormone injections.  

But surgery and injections can’t pass for a Creator.  As much as you’d like to believe that these props made you finally become ‘who you should have been,’ there’s one voice still calling.  It’s the voice of the One who made you, the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb.”

Here is the rock solid truth from the Bible.  Our loving God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing by speaking a word.   He then formed man (Adam), male and female, of dust from the ground and personally breathed life into them.  He made male and female equally in His image, with equality of goodness and blessing.  He gave male and female differing chromosomes from which stem differing body structures and differing natures.  God declared each part of the created universe “good” and then, after creating male and female, He “… saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”  (Gen 1:31)