Josh Blount: The corporate image of the bride, one bride, and then the individual members. Blessed are those who are invited. So in one sense we are the bride, in another sense we’re invited to participate. And I think part of the way that functions is it is guaranteed that Christ will have a bride faithful without spot or blemish. Her future reality, known by faith is a reality. That day is coming.
[music]
David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music, where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church and encourage those who plan, lead and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week.
DZ: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast, my name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name’s Bob Kauflin. That was a very, that’s a great intro right there.
DZ: Thank you.
BK: The way you said your name. Normally, it’s just kind of flat.
DZ: It’s taken me like six seasons to nail it.
[laughter]
DZ: We have a very special returning guest, Josh Blount is with us for a second podcast. The first podcast was so wonderful, honestly, and if you haven’t listened to it, make sure you go back and listen to it. And so it’s great to have you again, Josh.
BK: Yes, you definitely want to go back and listen to it. This is a hot topic. It’s very much in our cultures face right now, gender, the gospel and our gatherings. That’s what we’re talking about. And last time, Josh, you shared with us why this is so important, how you came to study this, do your dissertation on it, and then just why it matters to us. And you root it in scripture so beautifully, and so thank you for that. And if you haven’t listened to it as David said, please go back and listen. We wanna talk in this podcast about primarily focus on just how this affects our gatherings.
BK: This podcast is aimed at things related to our gatherings, although we do talk about things regarding our life as well ’cause they’re deeply connected. But as you’ve studied this, you’ve thought about it, talked about it, what implications does the fact that God created us, male and female. You mentioned in the last podcast that God is almost well exclusively referred to in masculine roles. He’s likened to a feminine role, but he’s referred to specifically in masculine roles, father, King. What implications might that have for our gatherings? And you mentioned one which I’m gonna ask you to talk about again, just the Lord’s Supper, but I find it best just for us to ask questions and just to give you the floor.
DZ: Yeah. Yes.
BK: That seems to make for the best podcast.
[laughter]
JB: That’s a great question. Yeah. So we referenced last time the Lord’s Supper. I do think that becomes a prime place for thinking about… It becomes a place for thinking about covenant, which is how we are united to Christ and what joins us together. We’re a covenant community and that covenant is revealed in scripture primarily. I say not exclusively, but primarily in marital terms. It is a bond between our husband and the church, his bride, which is an Old Testament paradigm as well. So you think of the picture of the church as, or the Old Testament people of God as an unfaithful wife. One of the ways that the prophets begin to anticipate a coming salvation, which we now participate in, is in marital terms that she who has been sent away will be brought back. Your maker is your husband, Isaiah 54, which is striking. If you think about even in the flow of Isaiah that comes after Isaiah 53, a servant is brought on the stage of Isaiah. His work is progressively revealed. He will be the one who bears the sins of his people, so that Isaiah 54, she who is barren, can now sing again. The people of God are now no longer an unfaithful city. They are now a fruitful bride and mother, which leads into the portrayal of Zion as the fruitful, glorious bride city and the latter half of Isaiah.
JB: So you think of all that operating in the background as we gather and participate in that covenant. When we come to the Lord’s Supper, we are coming, joining our covenant head, our husband, Christ, who has laid down his life that we might be fruitful and sing together and gladly worship him and have table fellowship. And we’re coming there in a way that is, we said last time, it’s not unrelated to our existence as male and female, including our sexuality. There are behaviors that bar you from that table. And a faithful church should say, if you are practicing adultery, if you have broken your marriage vows and are unrepentant, you can’t come here as though that doesn’t matter. And yet as we gather there, there’s another sense in which our identity, even as married couples, is relativized. My wife doesn’t come to the table through me. Lord willing one day as my children are baptized and participate in the church, they don’t come through me as their father. They’re coming there in a way, in a profound way. My sons and daughters are my brothers and sisters at that table as we participate.
JB: I think that’s one way that just that ordinary part of our worship witnesses to that covenant context, which I think also leads to the second main way I think of which is with that picture of Revelation 19, the wedding feast of the Lamb. Our Sunday gatherings are a dress rehearsal for that wedding feast. As we gather, we are anticipating and rehearsing that coming day, which sets a particular shape to our gathering. It’s a controversial topic. Why should only men be ordained? The exegetical arguments about 1 Timothy 2, the other texts that speak of the role of men in the ordained office and how that affects our gathering. That’s a big topic, but here’s a short one reason why it matters. The office of Elder is, to use precise language, it’s eschatologically limited. It has an expiration date. My role as a pastor shepherding the people of God is not something that will continue on into the age to come. I’ll lay that role aside and I will get to participate as a sheep bought by the Good Shepherd as a part of the body of Christ, the bride of Christ.
JB: And now, my role is to serve preparing the church in a limited way related to the ministry of the Word. I don’t have unlicensed authority in that sense. I’m kind of like the friend of the bridegroom that John the Baptist talks about. I’m standing there when I preach. Every faithful pastor is doing that. But we know there’s a day coming and we’ll step aside. There won’t be multiple husbands, there’ll be one husband and all of us get to participate in the bride, in the wedding feast as the bride of Christ. That’s a beautiful picture that we’re anticipating in our Sunday gatherings. It gives a shape to that. It’s why there’s joy even in the midst of sorrow and all the things we bring in on a Sunday, we’re part of that covenant community that is waiting for the return of our covenant head who will make all things well and we will all say blessed are those invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.
BK: Oh, amen. I just wanna read that portion from Revelation 19 just so we get that picture in our head, verse 6, “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peels of thunder, crying out hallelujah for the Lord our God, excuse me, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready”. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
JB: Picture.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And the angel said to me, “Write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb”.
DZ: Yeah.
JB: That was the phrase I was gonna call attention to because it’s a striking interplay between the corporate image of the bride, one bride and then the individual members. Blessed are those who are invited. So at one sense we are the bride, in another sense we’re invited to participate. And I think part of the way that functions is it is guaranteed that Christ will have a bride faithful without spot or blemish. Her future reality, known by faith is a reality. That day is coming. Now, we must conduct ourselves so that we can participate in that. The call comes from this picture of the glorious bride because she’s this way, live so that you also can be a part of that day. The individual were called by that corporate picture to live in a way that’s faithful now so that we can participate then in that gathering.
BK: Yes. So in that acknowledgement or that realization that we are the bride, why wouldn’t that… I think I know your answer to this, but why wouldn’t that cause our meetings to have a feminine feel to them? We are the bride. Jesus is the groom. And so, ’cause I’ve heard that argument made.
DZ: Yeah.
JB: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good question. A couple things that come to mind. One, it would be, I keep using the phrase God reveals us the covenant in primarily but not exclusively marital language. It would be an overstatement to say this is the only theme in scripture. In fact, it’s striking that revelation also takes the theme of sonship and applies Revelation 21, the promise that goes all the way back to the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7, “I will be a father to him, he will be a son to me”. That’s made to each individual Christian. And that day God the Father says, “You will be a son to me”. Picking up that theme. So there’s a sense in which both all people in Christ, male and female are part of the bride of Christ. All people, male and female in Christ are sons of God in that sense of enjoined to the firstborn son inheriting. So at one level it would be an overstatement to say the only thing we’re reflecting is our role as the bride of Christ. I think it also the fact that the way in which that language, the bride of Christ is significant, the reason we know what that looks like is because we are men and women and those are not interchangeable things.
JB: The structure of human marriage, the way that me being a husband, father, dad, all those categories, they are what they are. They’re fixed. That shapes our gathering. So, we’re made up of families. We conduct ourselves as men and women in the household of God. And those gender differences that we learn in the context of family and marriage, they’re at play in the gathering. But it also relativizes in a profoundly helpful way. It prevents us from elevating either sex to a primacy of place before the Lord. There’s not a feminization of the church, but there’s not a masculinization of the church.
BK: You can fill that out.
JB: The Church is the bride of Christ made up of sons and daughters of the living God. And in that sense, our differences together make us what we are in Christ.
BK: So would you say that in the gathering there is a place for masculine roles, male roles and female roles, and it’s the interplay that reflects our relationship not only as men and women, but in some way Christ’s relationship with the church. I wanted you to fill that out.
JB: Yeah, yeah. I think it reflects first the pastoral office. I’ll speak there and then we can expand out that pastoral role of especially in the gathering, standing there and preaching the word of God in an authoritative way. If you could use this language, in a masculine way. I say if you can use, because that’s not to import whatever vision of cultural masculinity you think should be there.
DZ: Right, right.
BK: Yeah.
JB: It’s not a license for Jocko Willink’s masculinity, any fill in the blank. It is defined by how Christ relates to his bride. But it is a role, it’s a non-reversible role. The title of a really bad book on this maybe catches it well…
[laughter]
JB: Trying to make an egalitarian argument. And the title of the book is called, “When Christ Submits to the Church.”
BK: Wow.
JB: And because this author is committed to an egalitarian reading of human marriage, he actually expands that to the relationship between Christ and the church and implies, actually says directly, “Christ submits to his church”. I would suggest that strains the bounds of theology and all lexical data. Christ does not submit to his church. He serves his church, he lays down his life, he washes her, but he does not submit to her.
BK: And you think that’s probably what they were trying to get at badly?
JB: Yep.
[laughter]
JB: Yes. In the role of preaching, there is that authoritative command, you must obey your covenant head, in that sense, if I can use that language, that’s part of that masculine feel of the gathering. That the pulpit is a place in which we don’t. I heard someone say a way that profoundly angered and grieved me. We’re not making suggestions from the Word of God, hints for living when we preach, because the Word of God is binding and our covenant head deserves our obedience. So there’s that aspect of why our gatherings are not primarily feminine nor primarily masculine. There’s also the beautiful way, you think of this in the pastorals, the structure of the family is part of what gives the structure to the household of God. So Paul can write to Timothy, “Here’s the way you’re to relate to one another. Older men, treat them as fathers. Younger men, treat them as brothers. Older women, treat them as mothers. Younger women, treat them as sisters”.
JB: Paul can speak of himself as a father in the faith to Timothy. All those differing ways that our roles are shaped out, they shape our identity in human marriage and family, those are brought into the family of God. I think of 90-year-old, say the couple come to mind in our church, widows whose stature in our church is because of the way they’ve lived as women, wives and mothers for decades. But they occupy a role that’s not interchangeable with our spiritual fathers in the church. Men who have conducted themselves faithfully, all those patterns of the family are mirrored in the household of God. Maybe that’s the best way to say it.
BK: That’s wonderful.
DZ: Praise the Lord that they do. [laughter]
BK: Amen, amen. So in terms of our singing, just another question that has come up. Some have decried or bemoaned the feminization of singing. It’s become all emotional and sentimental and then others have responded by saying, “Yeah, we need to sing more, “A mighty fortress”. I mean, I’d just be curious on your thoughts. I have my own thoughts. David, I’m sure has his own thoughts. But what is that balance that our singing is meant to represent?
DZ: Great.
BK: Obviously Colossians talks about letting the Word of Christ dwell in your richly, teaching and admonishing one another. There is a sense in which we’re teaching and admonishing one another. We’re addressing one another, Ephesians 5:19 says. So what does that look like? How do we think about that? And as for those who are leading… We did a podcast with Jeff Purswell on, A Woman’s Role in Leading Congregational Song. Talked something about that. Where, what are some thoughts that would help guide us in terms of not only leadership, but just singing and what kind of culture we’re trying to cultivate in regards to gender the gospel in our gatherings?
JB: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’ve got several different levels of thoughts that come to mind.
BK: I’m not surprised.
[laughter]
JB: And I’ll begin with the one that’s probably more a pragmatic or an observational. I would push back against the thought that sometimes happens in especially men settings, that singing is not a masculine thing. If you watch in certain gatherings, you see it’s ladies are singing and men who are standing there with their arms folded. I think that’s a place where our cultural standard of masculinity has been imported and it’s a false one. There’s nothing in scripture that locates the act of singing in worship, in lament, in prayer as an exclusive property of one gender over the other. So that’s one way I would want to phrase that. That if we’re not importing a cultural standard of masculinity or femininity, then we shouldn’t allocate the act of singing to one gender at the expense of the other. Then you think just in terms of content, a mighty fortress versus a motive singing, I know Sovereign Grace Music has put out so much material about the way the content of our songs must be theologically informed, Christ-centered.
JB: I would just commend listeners to all the ways that you guys have tried to model how do we think about the content. It doesn’t need to be a false dichotomy between a masculine type song or an emotive song. I just say, look at the breadth of how the covenant people of God, which is part of what we’re talking, the theological category is how do people in covenant with God express themselves, including in song, the breadth of things that the psalms, that the saints in the redeemed and revelation, the things they sing about is as wide as our human experience. So, I’d push back against taking masculine and feminine as the primary boxes we put those different things in and say, “It’s a broader picture than that”, based on how people in covenant with God sing in scripture.
BK: And I would even add to that, or maybe this is what you’re saying, it’s not a matter of doing a masculine song then a feminine song and kind of trying to find the right balance. I think in our singing, we are relating to God as, men and women, as sons of God in Christ. And it is the truths, the realities that we are proclaiming, that we are bearing witness to that affect all of us in Christ. And yes, as a man, I’ll be affected one way. As a woman, I’ll be affected another way, but there’s not this hard dichotomy that we wanna create. It’s not a oatmeal, it’s not porridge, it’s not grits. It’s not everything thrown together.
DZ: [chuckle] Yeah.
BK: It is… There are distinctions, but in the way we think about it, it would be what truths has God revealed to us about Christ and who He is and what He’s done and our relationship with Him that we can as a people sing about to Him.
DZ: Yeah. Yeah, and you made a really helpful distinction Josh, in the first podcast we did, just about that it’s not all one thing, it’s the harmony of things coming together. And I think that’s not only harmony in our songs, but literal harmony in our singing. It’s like all these parts are working together. It could just be… We don’t wanna level the field and it all be the same equally. And I thought that was really helpful.
BK: Do you think, Josh, there would be a time when a woman would be singing a song and thinking, this is a courageous song, and be thinking, “Okay, this isn’t quite where I’m at, but I need this”. And a guy would be singing a song that expresses Psalm 63 affection, Psalm 84 affection, and say you know what, this is a part of my life that needs to be addressed. I need to have these affections for God. Do you see that as being perhaps one of the benefits of singing, aims of singing? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
JB: Yeah, I think so. One of the ways in which singing shapes us more to reflect who we’re meant to be in Christ. And there’s sometimes the idea of dividing courage being a masculine trait, emotiveness being a feminine trait. I think a better way to say it is our distinctions as men and women persist, but women need courage in a womanly way and men need tenderness in a masculine way, because all of those are reflections of growing up into the image of Christ. But they’re reflections that don’t erase that distinction between male and female. It’s hard to hold the balance of saying, yes, there are distinctions that matter, but we can’t lop one half of the Christian life into a masculine box and another half into a feminine and say, “I only get to pick those”. Men are growing up into the image of Christ in all the ways that men are to reflect the image of Christ. Women likewise. So in that singing example, yeah, I could see places where each part of the congregation, men and women are saying, I’m being pulled in the direction that my tendencies would not take me. And that’s part of growing up in Christ. I’d also add that given the controversy about this topic, we can tend to think of it as oppositional male or female, but think of the way to that pastoral epistle language, how age and different season of life also reflects this.
JB: There’s something beautiful in a Sunday gathering. I know you guys have experienced this leading worship. When you look out and we don’t just see a monolithic here’s what the men are doing, here’s what the women are doing. Here’s what that dear woman who’s 10 years without her husband, here’s how she’s worshiping. Here’s this young child who doesn’t really know, here’s how they’re worshiping. And you see that in all those different places or situations in life reflected in together we’re singing the same thing because we worship the same covenant Lord. That’s back to that harmony rather than mere equality. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s one of the ways that the Sunday gathering shapes and affects us, I think, the most.
DZ: Totally.
BK: One of the things I love, we love about the way you speak about this topic, Josh, is that you point us to the beauty of God’s design. It’s not a contentious argument. It is, this is superior. This is absolutely beautiful. And it’s meant to point to something eternal. What God has given us here in marriage, male and female, it points to something eternal, which represents Christ’s relationship with his bride. Okay, what encouragement would you give… Actually I have two questions. I’m sorry, I got so many questions.
DZ: Yeah, same.
BK: Before I ask that question I was about to ask, which no one knows what it is. We’ve talked about the way God designed male and female to be a picture of Christ, especially his husband and wife, Christ in the church. What’s going on with all the polygamous marriages in the Old Testament?
[laughter]
BK: Like you start off with Adam and Eve, and then David got Bathsheba, Michal, Abigail. David. He’s like King David.
DZ: Man after God’s own heart.
BK: Yes, what? Yeah, tell us what’s going on there, and then I have one more question.
JB: Sometimes that question gets raised, and how do we know what the Bible actually says about the shape of marriage? Look at all these examples. You have to distinguish between what the Bible describes and what it commends. I think when you read the unfolding narrative of the Old Testament from Genesis onward, there’s a standard by which to judge all the subsequent marriages that occur in the text, and that standard is Genesis 2. It’s striking that so quickly marriage becomes one of the places in which our unfaithfulness is shown. And in fact, one of the places where it’s obvious even in Genesis, that we’re going to need a divine redeemer, a new covenant if the covenant line is going to be secured. Abraham, by the way he treats his bride, calls into question the promises. From a human perspective, he puts everything at jeopardy by putting his wife in such risk by lying about her, all those repeated patterns. So in one sense, the polygamy of the Old Testament is an early indication we’re waiting for a new and better covenant. And you can think of all those centuries as a living illustration meant to show us the significance of what happens when at the right time in history, the final redeemer comes. The one who can say, “It was written about me in the scroll of the book, behold, I have come”. The weight of that moment lands on us because of all those past unfaithfulness, including but not limited to our marital context.
DZ: Yeah, yes.
BK: That’s very helpful. Okay, I know that you have both as a pastor and as just an individual had to deal with this topic of gender confusion, pushback, egalitarianism, these distinctions don’t matter. What counsel would you give both to leaders and to maybe individuals in the church about what our tone and content should be?
JB: Yeah, that’s a great question. And having taught on this in differing context it’s a sobering privilege in this sense that everywhere I go and teach on something related to gender, the kinds of issues that people come to tell me about afterwards are heartbreaking and pervasive. I’m more and more convinced that there’s no one who escapes this. There’s no pocket of Western culture, at least, in which we’re not affected by these kinds of things, and not in an abstract way, but often in a deeply personal familial way. My son now says he’s my daughter and I have to tell my grandchildren how we now relate to someone who was once a man and now he says he’s a woman. What do we do with that? The kind of carnage that comes from that. If you’re listening and you’re in those circumstances, my heart goes out to you. I know the pain that that kind of thing causes. It’s part of what makes us long for that day when God makes everything right again.
JB: And the challenge I think we face in how you relate to that kind of thing when it lands on us personally, there’s a number of challenges. But one way that’s helped me conceptualize that is realizing that there, I don’t get to pick between tone and content or compassion and courage. I’m required by God to have both, and I have to know myself well enough to know which particular one is my native tongue and which one seems harder for me but not so that I can pick and choose which way I’m gonna respond because I have to bring both to the conversation. Maybe a brief personal odyssey in this. As I began reading, I referenced last time about an eight or 10 year period of reading on this topic sexuality, same-sex attraction, those sort of things. I found myself, my initial response was compassion, a sense of I wanna understand what it’s like to walk with this struggle. I’ve not walked with that personally, but I want to know what’s it like? How can I care for brothers and sisters with that struggle? Then I began reading transgender theory and especially a book that’s hidden on the top of my shelf over there, transgender children’s books aimed at five and six-year-olds. And I began to read this and then picture what would happen if someone trusted and older sat down with my kids and began reading them this ideology. It would destroy their life.
JB: The chaos that it would reap for decades in the way they relate to themselves, their bodies sexuality. It would destroy them. I began to feel anger in my heart and a sense of this has to be stopped. Then at some point, I began to reflect and realize I can’t pick one of those over the other. I’m called to embody both. I have to know myself, my tendencies, have to know in a particular conversation which one am I gonna be more inclined to? If you’re a particular bit. I can imagine the scenario in which to a stranger, the courage and the clarity of speaking bold words regardless of the consequences comes easy, but what about when it’s someone in your family? Is the temptation there to say, “Well, I just don’t want to talk about that because Thanksgiving is going to be really awkward?” Does the clarity get compromised to avoid hard topics? That can’t happen. There’s wisdom. It requires a lot of thought and prayer and other people and community to know, okay, how do I talk about this? But if you compromise on the Bible standards we have no life-giving hope to offer.
JB: And it’s like someone, if you can picture someone trying to give CPR in a zero-gravity environment, you’re in space, you’re trying to provide enough force to bring life, but every time you push, you just drift off in opposite directions. Lacking truth, we can’t bring life to the conversation. But truth alone wielded without compassion is not a faithful image of Christ. He weeps over Jerusalem and condemns them for their sins and calls them clearly to repent. We have to know that both of those need to be part of the way we engage this topic, especially the more personally it lands on us.
DZ: Yes, yes. Yes.
JB: And it’s just a hard balance to walk. There is no magic answer. That’s been helpful to me thinking about it, realizing.
BK: That is very helpful.
JB: I think you can seek counsel thinking if I get the right advice, there’ll be this golden path that threads all the possible minefields. It doesn’t exist. You’ll step on some of the mines, relationships will be strained, feelings will be hurt, but we can make it our aim to model love and speak wise and truthful words. And that’s really the only way forward into a good and lasting future. Compromise doesn’t get you there, harsh rejection doesn’t get you there only the painful path of saying, I’m going to love and I’m not gonna change what the Bible says leads us for that long journey towards, we pray, fruitfulness for that person that’s affected by it.
BK: That is excellent.
DZ: Wonderful. Wonderful.
BK: With an awareness that it’s God’s Spirit who’s working through us. We’re not the Savior, Jesus is.
DZ: Yes, yes. Amen.
BK: And that’s as good as answers any I’ve ever heard.
DZ: [chuckle] Yeah.
BK: Josh, we’re not gonna ask you now, but if there are any resources that would benefit people, we’re gonna list those under the notes of this podcast. We cannot thank you enough for sharing your thoughts with us. I’m very much looking forward to Worship God, July 24th-27th in Louisville, Kentucky.
DZ: Yes, yes.
BK: So thank you for joining us there. And I’m just gonna pray briefly. I just had this burden. Father, if there are any who are listening to this, who are in the middle of this conversation, we ask with others and burdened by this, pray that you would, by your Spirit, by your Word bring clarity, bring peace, bring trust in you, Lord, that as Josh was sharing, they would not compromise either on compassion or courage, that they would seek to glorify you, that they would seek to follow you in your Word, and they would trust that your Spirit would work through them. And whether they’re fighting this sin or around others who are fighting this, Lord, give us your wisdom. You said you’d give wisdom to all who ask without reproach. And so we trust you for these things. And may Jesus be glorified through this conversation, and his name we pray. Amen.
DZ: Amen.
BK: Well, thank you for joining us, Josh.
DZ: Thank you Josh.
BK: And for those who are listening thank you for joining us. We hope you’ll join us next time.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Thank you for listening to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music. Sovereign Grace Music exists to produce Christ-exalting songs and training for the church from our local churches. For more information, free sheet music, translations and training resources, you can visit us at sovereigngracemusic.com
