Minister: Pst. Laide Olaniyan
What Satan has arranged against us is the strength of our gender. God is both Male and Female. In God, two genders exist. God is not a hermaphrodite, but in His nature, these two expressions exist.
This is why, in a home, it takes both male and female to mirror God. When a man is able to mirror God in his expression, and the woman expresses God in her expression, they become one. That is what it means to be a man.
God made us as men to mirror God. Our masculinity is a soul expression given to us by God for a unique and definite purpose.
1 Corinthians 11:7 KJV: For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
The man is the image and glory of God. One of the evil things Satan has done is to make men oblivious to their purpose and to what God has called them to express. Today, there is a gender crisis as society tries to define who a man is. However, the Bible clearly defines the male as the image and glory of God. When God made man in Genesis, He first formed the man. Even though Eve existed in the body of Adam, this reflects that the male is the bearer of the image.
Genesis 1:27 KJV: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
We see here that God created “him,” the male man, in His own image.
Genesis 5:1–2 KJV: This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; [2] Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
There is the creation of the male man. When God made man, man is what is called image. This shows that the masculine man has a divine ordination to show God. Then, the man, as the image that he has become, will cast that image to the woman. This is why Scripture says the glory of the woman is the man.
The problems in society today are a man problem, not a woman problem. If men take their place, everything will take its place.
This is why Satan fights the man, because there is a divine ordination on the male man. God’s plan for the woman is to mirror the work done in the man.
Satan attacked the man so much that, because men are not showing Jesus, women are now being forced to look unto Jesus by themselves, whereas they ought to look to the Man to see the person of Jesus. Every man in the house should look like a clear representation of Jesus without ambiguity.
The measure of a man should be the measure of the fullness of Christ. Satan fights us as men to make this purpose the secondary pursuit of our lives, with what to eat and other natural pursuits becoming primary. Masculinity is not just about muscles. The primary objective in the heart of God when creating man is for man to become a template for the image. Due to the fall and the spread of evil, man is now measured by his net worth and bank accounts, and not by how much he is able to mirror the image of Jesus and the weight of the glory he carries.
The responsibility of any man is to be in the image and likeness of God, and a male should be raised in that responsibility from childhood.
If a man is not raised to carry image and glory, he will fail in other endeavours. But if the image is well formed, he will excel in every other thing in life. This is because it is the inner workings in a man that he will use to bear rule. Rule is government, and the stature of God’s image is needed to bear it. You cannot put government on the shoulders of a boy. As men, we are image carriers. Not just any image, but the image of God. That is what makes us men. To know the measure of a man, he must measure up to God’s stature in image and glory.
Part of the corruption and decay we see in the world is that man will not be in the image of God. In our homes, God wants us to be the primary bearer of the image. It is our responsibility to let the light of God shine through us to our wives and children.
It is not in God’s order for the husband to learn from the wife. It is an anomaly, because God designed the man to be the saviour of the body, which is the wife. That is why, as men, we must be a model in prayer, in being given to doctrine, and a pattern of good works in every area of our lives.
We see this in Abraham and Sarah. Sarah learned to believe and trust God from the stability of life in Abraham. Initially, she was in doubt Genesis 18:12, but as she journeyed, she drew strength from the steadfastness of Abraham’s faith and was able to conceive. Romans 4:18-22
Hebrews 11:11 ‘Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
The pattern of obeying God was learned by Sarah from Abraham. What Christ is to the Church is what a man should be to his own household.
Satan’s lie is to make man think that his only problem is lack of money and that his only need is more money. However, money does not define a man. We saw Nabal, who was described as wealthy and rich, yet he was a fool (1 Samuel 25:25). Satan uses money to distract man and place him on a race of greed and many lusts, which in turn pierce his own soul with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:9–10 “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. [10] For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
Our aspiration shouldn’t be to get a better-paying job, but more importantly, to mirror God more than we did yesterday.
There is something in the curriculum of image and glory that instructs us in every other thing in life. God did not make man to pursue ephemeral things, even as basic as what to eat or what to wear. We were clothed with image and glory. It is a foreign knowledge from Satan that made us begin to find our way for sustenance. It is Satan who redefined man’s need.
God will not be able to change society if men are not changed, even if the woman changes to God’s image. This is because God will not break the order He has set. It is God’s agenda to recover the male man wholly. As men, it is time for us to rise to God’s purpose.
For so long, we have borne the image of the earthly, but God wants us to bear the image of the heavenly. The kind of men God is raising are heavenly men. This is a man indeed, one who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person (Hebrews 1:3).
One of the ministries the man has been called into is the ministry of laying down his life, or dying (Ephesians 5:25)
This is important because we mostly think that the position of the man is to rule the house. But to be the head is to serve. It is in service that a man expresses his love and headship. A male man is raised in the place of service. We cannot separate service from masculinity. Service is not the life path to the top; rather, it is the life of the top.
So, 1 Corinthians 11:8–9 KJV says:
For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. [9] Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
This does not mean men are superior, but that they are called to be low and serve. The male man is a servant at his core. In doing service, a man dies and dies again until he becomes a standard of man under God.