Current Issues: The Gender of God

<p>For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ <a href="https://www.douglasjacoby.com/godgendermp3/"><strong>website</strong></a>.</p><p><strong>Scriptures </strong>read or referred to in the podcast:</p><ul><li>Matthew 6:9 -- "Our Father..."</li><li>Matthew 23:37 -- Jesus compares himself to a hen.</li><li>Isaiah 66:13 -- God compares himself to a mother.</li><li>Ephesians 5:22-32 -- We all stand <i>corporately</i> in a femine relationship to Christ as our bridegroom.</li><li>1 Thessalonians 2:6-12 -- Paul, his relationship to the Thessalonians, thinks of himself as a nurse, a mother, and a father.</li><li>John 15:8, Luke 8:11, James 1:21 -- his seed is planted in us, and we are to bear fruit. This is a strongly feminine metaphor.</li><li>God as husband -- meaning spiritual unfaithfulness is adultery -- is a common biblical metaphor (as in Jeremiah, Hosea, Ephesians, James, Revelation).</li><li>Genesis 1:26-27 -- God's image is reflected in mankind, both male and female (and even better when the two are together).</li><li>Nowhere does the Bible tell us to address God as "mother."</li></ul><p><strong>Conclusions</strong><br />1. God is not lonely. He does not need a consort. (Note: in ancient religions, it was common for a god to have a goddess as a wife/consort. The worship of Yahweh strenuously rejects such thinking.) Among the persons of the Trinity there has always been love.<br />2. God is not sexual. He's neither male nor female, though he created us in his image as males and females. And yet...<br />3. God is personal, and therefore we have no choice but to relate to the Lord in a personal way.<br />4. God is analogically (not biologically) masculine. Nor will he be held captive by a pronoun ("he" or "she").<br />5. One suspects that what really bothers some critics of Christianity is the Lord's sovereign claim over their lives.</p>