My wife and I are blessed with nine children, five of whom
are boys. As I write this chapter, my oldest son just turned twenty-one, and my
next oldest son is heading off to college. So, when I think about this book,
and my chapter in particular, I can’t help but think of the young men in my own
household. The thought in my mind is not just “What do I want men to know about
serving in the church,” but “What do I want
my sons to know
about serving in the church?”
Before talking about anything else, I want my sons (and
every other man for that matter) to notice four words in the title of this
chapter.
The first word is “redeemed.” As Christian parents, I trust
that we pray for more than morally decent, responsible, respectful,
hard-working adult children. We must pray that our children would be genuine,
born-again, blood-bought Christians. Every man reading this book must endeavor
to know his own soul and be sure that he is, first and foremost, a redeemed
man.
The second word is “church.” It isn’t enough for the
Christian man to read his Bible and pray, or to be a part of a Bible study
during the week, or to get involved in a campus ministry while in college, or
to read good theology books, or to listen to good Christian podcasts, or to
listen to good sermons while he’s driving in the car. The redeemed man must be
involved in a church. In one of the last books that he wrote before he died,
John Stott said this about the importance of the church: “I trust that none of
my readers is that grotesque anomaly, an unchurched Christian. The New
Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very
centre of the eternal purpose of God.”1 Stott was right. An unchurched Christian is a
contradiction in terms.
The third word is “his.” I understand that some people don’t
like putting a possessive pronoun before the word “church.” The argument is
that we shouldn’t speak of “my” church, “their” church, or “pastor so-and-so’s
church” because the church belongs to Christ and not to us. While I appreciate
the caution, it seems to me there is something healthy about referring to “my”
church or speaking about the Christian man and “his” church. The possessive
pronoun reminds us that the Christian isn’t merely a member of the universal
church; he must belong to a specific local church—a body of believers that
meets in a specific place, at a specific time, under the leadership of specific
men. The word “his” also underscores that we don’t need more church hoppers.
The mature man doesn’t float from church to church, flitting in and out of
different congregations as his mood (and his weekend schedule) dictates. God
calls men to belong to a local church and to be in that church every Sunday
unless providentially hindered (such as by illness, death, emergency) or unless
necessary travel (such as family vacation or essential work commitments) means
he will worship in a different church.
The fourth word is “serving.” I almost missed this word
myself. I started to write about the three words that I want my sons to notice,
and then I came back and realized I had skipped what may be the most important
word in the title. The goal is not simply to have redeemed men who join a good
church and sit in the pew Sunday after Sunday. All of that is foundational and
indispensable. But the call of God is more than signing up and showing up. The
call of God is to serve in the church. This call may mean
serving in church office as an elder or deacon. This may mean, for an even
smaller subset of men, serving as a pastor or staff member in the church. But
those are just the most obvious ways to serve. Whether a man ever holds
ecclesiastical office or not, he is still called to be a serving member of the
church. He must be more than a consumer of fine preaching, quality programs, or
excellent music. Certainly, his church involvement must consist of more than
making good business connections, making himself look good in the eyes of
others, or simply making his wife happy. The redeemed man is in his church in
order to serve his church, because in serving the body of Christ he serves
Christ Himself.
Set Apart to Serve
When I think about redeemed men serving in the church, my
mind goes immediately to the many fine elders I have served with. I know too
many pastors have horror stories of the immature, untaught, sometimes even
unconverted men they have had to serve with on the session (the governing elder
board). By God’s grace, I don’t have those stories. With very few exceptions,
the men I’ve served with have been sincere, hard-working, and eager to do God’s
work in His ways.
I could talk about many such men, but I’ll just mention one.
I’ll call him Tom, so as not to embarrass him if he ever reads this book. Tom
was one of those pillars in the church, the kind of unflashy, but stalwart
individuals that every church needs. For decades, he worked a blue-collar job—a
tough, monotonous, on-your-feet-all-day kind of job that, in my opinion,
sounded harder than being a pastor. Although he was often tired, I didn’t hear
him complain. He worked his normal job, and then gave hours and hours after
that to the church. I’m pretty sure he didn’t make a lot of money, but I know
he gave consistently and generously. He showed up every Sunday morning and
evening. He and his godly wife raised four children, all of whom are walking
with the Lord. He liked to read history especially. He took seriously his
responsibility to care for the members in his elder district. He volunteered
for committees. He discipled younger men. He and his wife welcomed people in
their home. He read his Bible every morning. And often, when he shook my hand
after church, he’d look me in the eye and say, “I want you to know I pray for
you every day.”
Tom would be the first (and last) to tell you that he wasn’t
perfect. He’d list the gifts he didn’t have in abundance. He’d tell you what he
wasn’t good at. He’d demur, without any false humility, that he wasn’t sure he
was qualified to be an elder. But he was a great elder. Better yet, he was (and
is) a great Christian. And that’s crucial, because there is no being a truly
great elder or a great pastor or a great man in the church without first being
a great Christian. “Be thou an example of the believers,” Paul exhorted
Timothy, “in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity”
(1 Tim.
4:12). That’s a lot of ground to cover, but that’s what my friend Tom was
like, and that’s what godly manhood looks like—to be exemplary in what we say
with our mouths, where we go with our feet, what we do with our hands, what we
believe in our heads, and what we do with our sexual thoughts and sexual parts.
After more than twenty years in ministry, I still find 1
Timothy 4:12 challenging, convicting, and inspiring.
When the church in Jerusalem was struggling to minister to
the widows in Acts 6, the answer was to find godly men to address the
problem. The situation was volatile. Some women were being overlooked in the
daily distribution, and the oversight looked like ethnic prejudice to boot (v.
1). The apostles knew they couldn’t ignore the problem, but they also knew they
were not the ones to directly fix the problem. Their God-given priorities were
prayer and the ministry of the word (v. 4). The God-given solution was to find
“seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may
appoint over this business” (v. 3). Not just any old warm bodies, but men they
could trust, men who were good with people, men who were spiritual in the
deepest sense of the word.
We know that women also served in the early church (Rom. 16:1),
no doubt in integral and invaluable ways (see, for example, all the women
mentioned in the rest of Romans 16). But the spiritual temperature of the church
will always have a hard time rising higher than the spiritual temperature of
the men in the church. That’s not a statement of comparative worth between the
sexes. It’s a statement about reality—the way God made human beings and the way
He made the church. Godly women flourish when they have godly men in the church
to serve and to lead. It was a judgment upon ancient Israel when they had women
to rule over them (Isa. 3:12), not because every man is apt to be a better
ruler than every woman, but because it is a sign of spiritual declension when
strong, wise, just, compassionate men—to govern and to rule—are nowhere to be
found.
Older Men
The New Testament says more about what men should be like in
the church than what men specifically should be doing in the church (other than
possibly serving as officers). That makes sense because no amount of competence
can make up for a lack of character. If we don’t want to be “barren” or
“unfruitful” in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must be growing in
godliness (2 Peter 1:5–8). One of the few character texts addressed
specifically to men is found in Titus 2. There
Paul tells Titus what particularly he ought to tell the older men, the older
women, the younger women, and the younger men. Let’s look at the first and last
of those categories.
In Titus 2:2, Paul admonishes “the aged men” to be marked by
six qualities: sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in peace.”
(1) Sober may have reference to alcohol,
but the term means more than that. To be sober is to be balanced. The problem
with alcohol isn’t alcohol per se; the problem is with imbalanced intake of
alcohol. God is telling older men to be measured, even-keeled, and balanced.
After walking with the Lord for many years, older men should be less inclined
to get tipped over to one side or the other. They don’t fly off the handle with
anger. They hear both sides. They are consistent. Godly men are calm,
clear-headed, not governed by the mob, not willing to give in to negative peer
pressure. Older Christian men should be anchors.
(2) Older men should also be grave. This doesn’t
mean dour, grim, and joyless. Think of the word gravitas. It
suggests someone who is dignified, serious about the right things, and worthy
of respect. We live in a society where people are famous for being famous. The
digital age promises instant notoriety, instant influence, and
insta-everything. The church, on the other hand, needs men who know how to love
and care for their wives for decade after decade, men who know how to raise
godly children, men who prioritize substance over sizzle.
(3) Older men must also be temperate. We
sometimes laugh at cranky old men, but irritability and rage are not fruits of
the Spirit. To be temperate is to be self-controlled. Older men ought to have a
measure of discipline in their lives—in prayer, in the word, in conversation,
in what they eat, in what they watch, in how they spend their time.
(4) Older men are to be sound in faith. This
does not mean that the older man has every question answered or never has a
single doubt. But it does mean that his life is marked by a profound trust in
God. The older man has been through the highs and lows of life. He should be
able to look back and say,
Hitherto Thy love has blest me;
Thou hast brought me to this place;
And I know Thy hand will bring me
Safely home by Thy good grace.2
(5) Older men should also be sound in charity. I
remember from a previous church an older man I sat next to in the choir. He was
smart, well-educated, funny, and happy. He also had a number of quirks and not
a few, um, senior moments. He was a godly man too. I knew that his wife had
health problems because she never came to church. When I heard that she was in
the hospital again, I asked what it was like to care for her as her health
deteriorated. Without a word of complaint, he rattled off all he had to do for
her, where he had to take her, and how he had to give her pills, change her
clothes, and keep her washed. “Oh,” I said, “It must be hard having to do that
for. . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence, because I didn’t know how long he had
been caring for his invalid wife. Then he filled in the blank: “Twenty-seven
years.” Here was a man sound in charity.
(6) Finally, older men are to be sound in patience.
Oh, how the church needs saints who finish well. Anybody can be impressive at
twenty five, but what about sixty five, seventy five, or eighty five? Too many
Christians fizzle out. They press on at first but end up coasting. The
Christian race takes endurance. If you are a seasoned saint reading this, don’t
put the controls on autopilot. Don’t waste twenty years of your life in
trivialities. Of course, we are bound to slow down. Spending time with
grandkids is good. Hobbies can be pleasing to the Lord. If we live long enough,
we will retire from a job, but we don’t retire from the kingdom. Winston
Churchill lived an amazingly full life, and then he became Prime Minister. The
church needs Christian men who run the race all the way through the tape. After
winning the gold medal in the 1924 Olympics, Eric Liddel was asked the secret
of his success in the 400 meters. Liddel replied, “I run the first 200 meters
as hard as I can. Then, for the second 200 meters, with God’s help, I run
harder.”3
Younger Men
After beginning his exhortations by singling out the older
men, Paul finishes his instructions to Titus by mentioning the younger men.
Somewhat surprisingly, Paul only has one command for the younger men: “be sober
minded” (sōphronein, Titus 2:6).
Verses 7 and 8 apply to the younger men too, but they are strictly speaking
Paul’s instructions for Titus as an example to younger men. There is only one
direct command for the younger men, and it’s not at all original. Closely
related Greek words are used in verse 2 (sōphrōn, translated
“temperate”), verse 5 (sōphrōn, “discreet”), and again in verse 12 (sōphronōs,
“soberly”). So, is Paul going soft on the young men with this one meager
command?
Not at all. Paul issued instructions that were not, by and
large, exclusive to any one group, but addressed that group’s particular
challenge. Take the older men. They are into the second half of their lives, so
God is concerned that they be dignified, worthy of respect, and finish well
with patience and endurance. Older women, without kids in tow, might wander
from house to house, talking more than they should. God is concerned that they
not be slanderers, but examples and teachers for the younger women. On the
other hand, the younger women, for their season of life, need exhortations
regarding the family and the home. In each case, there is some overlap, but the
commands are chosen to fit what that specific group needs to hear.
It seems likely, then, that Paul hits on this characteristic
of godliness because it is the one that young men struggle with most, and
perhaps the type of virtue that young men aspire to least.
Being sensible and disciplined is not what teenage boys and
college-aged men are known for. Harnessed by the Spirit, young men can be bold,
fearless, courageous, and accomplish great things. Ruled by their hormones and
their not-yet-fully-formed brains, young men can push each other to be wild,
foolish, and careless. The ungodly man will not just stumble into a less than
sober minded life; he will look for it. Self-control, for young men, is often
an area of vice not a virtue.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. We mustn’t think that
the only kind of masculinity is toxic masculinity. God made men to be strong,
aggressive, risk-taking, protective, and self-sacrificing. If young men are to
serve well in the church, they must show themselves to be sober minded sexually
(channeling the sex drive into marriage), sober minded emotionally (putting to
death fits of rage), sober minded socially (proving to be responsible,
dependable, and reliable) and sober minded spiritually (pursuing Christian
service and Christian maturity with the same passion that they pursue sports,
career, hobbies, and adventure). Throughout church history, young men have been
catalysts for missionary movements, for reforming the church, for bettering
their homes, and for reaching their neighbors with the gospel. A zealous young
Christian man with wisdom, discernment, and self-control is a holy weapon in
the hand of God.
The Manly Virtue of Magnanimity
We learn another character quality crucial for serving the
church from John Witherspoon, who was the president of Princeton (then called
the College of New Jersey) from 1768, when he arrived from his native Scotland
after a career in pastoral ministry, until he died in 1794. Twice during his
presidency—in 1775 and again in 1787—Witherspoon preached a message before
commencement on a theme we don’t hear a lot about today. “My single purpose
from these words at this time,” he told his all-male students, “is to
explain and recommend magnanimity as a Christian virtue.”4
The heading above calls magnanimity a “manly virtue.” By
that, I don’t mean that magnanimity is unique to men or that women are not also
called to this trait. But I do think magnanimity is a virtue particularly
befitting to manhood, and that manhood bereft of magnanimity is especially
lamentable. When the apostle Paul enjoined the Corinthians to be strong, to
stand firm in the faith, and to “quit you like men” (1 Cor.
16:13), he was calling men and women to courage, but he was also embracing
the notion that fortitude in the face of opposition is what we associate with
manliness.
According to Witherspoon, magnanimity entails five
commitments: (1) “to attempt great and difficult things,” (2) “to aspire after
great and valuable possessions,” (3) to face “dangers with resolution,” (4) “to
struggle against difficulties with perseverance,” and (5) “to bear sufferings
with fortitude and patience.”5 In short, the magnanimous Christian is eager
to attempt great things and willing to endure great hardships.
Witherspoon took for granted that the world approves of
magnanimity. His concern was that some might conclude that calling men (like
his Princeton graduates) to strength and valor and ambition does not fit with
the tenor of the gospel. Christians have often struggled to know how godliness
and manliness mesh. But virtues, Witherspoon insisted, can never be
inconsistent with each other. He noted that while the gospel would have us
mourn for our sin and cultivate a humility of spirit, we are also “called to live
and act for the glory of God and the good of others.”6
Christianity is not opposed to ambition, but ambition will
look different for the Christian. “Everyone must acknowledge,” Witherspoon
said, “that ostentation and love of praise, and whatever is contrary to the
self-denial of the gospel, tarnish the beauty of the greatest actions.”7 True greatness does not lie in self-promotion,
endless bravado, and passing along our own praise.
Likewise, manliness does not mean we must be
larger-than-life gunslingers and gladiators who swagger into town ready to kill
or be killed. There is more than one way to be brave and many ways to be
strong. Not everyone will be gifted with brains or brawn. Not everyone will
have the opportunity for world-altering heroism. “But,” Witherspoon noted,
“that magnanimity which is the fruit of true religion, being indeed the product
of divine grace, is a virtue of the heart and may be attained by persons of mean
talents and narrow possessions and in the very lowest stations of human life.”8
If magnanimity calls us to attempt great things, it also
compels us to endure great suffering. Merriam-Webster defines magnanimity as
“loftiness of spirit enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness
and pettiness, and to display a noble generosity.” Would that our leading
Christian voices, and Christian men in particular, were models of this kind of
magnanimity! While we all should disdain pettiness, there is something
particularly discomfiting when a man feels the need to advertise the offenses
against him and swing at every offender. The magnanimous person does not bear
grudges, does not wallow in self-pity, does not demand penance, and does not
stoop to settle every score.
In the end, the two parts of magnanimity are inseparable,
for the great man is measured not only by what he does but by what he does not
do. We would do well to be more like David pardoning Shimei than the
sons of Zeruiah looking for the next enemy to execute. Bearing burdens,
eschewing meanness, and setting an example of noble generosity is not just a
saner and more effective way to live; it is the way of the cross. For the manly
virtue of magnanimity is the way of the One who accomplished great things by defeating
His foes, even while crying out, “Father forgive them; for they know not
what they do” (Luke 23:34).
The redeemed man who would serve in his church—no matter
what specific tasks, offices, or responsibilities he signs up for—must be a man
we can look up to. He may be ordinary in gifting, in resources, in abilities,
and ordinary in a dozen other things, but he must be exemplary in virtue. The
men in our churches need not make any apologies for being men, but they do need
to keep their eyes on Jesus in order to see what true manhood looks like. We
must press hard after the manly virtue of magnanimity, for such is the Savior
we serve.
This article is Kevin DeYoung's chapter from The Redeemed Man, a book that aims to help men
answer Christ’s call to become a man in His image—the kind of man the world
needs.
Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant
Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina and associate professor of systematic
theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.
