Mark Reese’s Reviews > The Manliness of Christ > Status Update

“David overcoming and beheading Goliath––the enemy of God’s Old Testament people––was an image of the coming Messiah who would overcome and behead the serpent of sin…In the same way that David uses his enemy’s own weapon to decapitate him, Christ would use His enemy’s own weapon (death) to decapitate Satan.”

“Ultimately, the contemporary church has allowed the attributes of Jesus (gentle, tender, and loving) to overpower the identity of Jesus (Victor, Conqueror, and King).”

I finished Chapter 6 (“The Effeminate Church”) and it was good. It focused on the disproportionate amount of women in the church and the doctrinal drift that has occurred due to an improper emphasis on Christ’s gentleness over His kingship.

Chapter 5 speaks on the sin of effeminacy, which typically manifests in softness, luxury (a distortion of man’s job to work), and effeminate/gay behavior.

“The word ‘μαλακοį’ or malakoi is translated into our English word ‘effeminate.’ It’s also a hapax legomena which means it’s a word that only appears once in the entire Bible.
The word is an adjective derived from the Greek word malakos, which means "soft" or "loose." In the context of 1 Corinthians 6:9, ‘malakoi’ refers to men who were morally weak and had a failing will”

“Many think effeminacy is an issue of a person’s nature. That it’s an untaught disposition, and we should not seek to reform its characteristics. This, of course, is built upon the idea that effeminacy is a morally neutral characteristic among men. But it’s not…he [Paul in 1 Cor. 6] provides a list of…evil individuals…in his list, he includes…’the effeminate.’”

Chapter 4 was on the masculinity of Christ, which Dale summarizes in 5 points, which any good Christian man should emulate: His Boldness, Fearlessness, Intensity, Love, and Resolve.

“In short, love is not based on superficial feelings but on sacrificial commitment. We cannot accept culture’s fraudulent substitutes. Jesus in John 10:11 says, ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ At the core of love, we see sacrifice. But at the core of sacrifice, we see true masculinity”

“For many decades, emotionalism has crept into the church, taking weak-minded Christians captive. They believe that the love of Christ is not seen in the hatred of evil. However, they are unaware of Proverbs 8:13, which specifically says, ‘The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.’”

“Men must primarily learn masculinity from Jesus. For this reason, I perform a short evening catechism with my boys.
I often include two questions: What do men do? My oldest sons (whose names are Honor and Valor) both respond ‘They protect and provide!’ Next, I ask: Who is the only perfect man? ‘Jesus Christ!’ they yell.”

Chapter 3 focuses on a biblical refutation of the idea that Christ had some weird dual-gender thing going on. Primarily it does this by focusing on the hypostatic union and the need for Christ’s man nature to be a man’s nature and nothing else.