Masculine Faith: The Family

In this episode of the Manhood Tribes show, we dive deep into what it means to be a good Christian. 

Host Don explores the criteria for living a meaningful Christian life that aligns with masculine values—epic, purposeful, and resilient. 

We discuss the importance of forming strong, loving relationships with other followers of Jesus, treating them like family, and how forgiveness, repentance, and seeing others through the lens of Jesus' sacrifice can transform our spiritual maturity. 

Join us in this series as we seek to redefine masculine faith and invite others into a family that embodies true Christian values.

00:00 Introduction: What Defines a Good Christian?
00:52 Manhood Quiz: How Manly Are You?
01:27 Series Overview: The Way of the King
02:14 Challenges of Modern Faith for Men
03:17 Three Pillars of Masculine Faith
05:13 Measuring Spiritual Maturity
07:40 Treating Fellow Christians as Family
12:05 Sacrificial Love in Action
19:28 Forgiveness and Repentance
22:20 Conclusion: Living as a Family in Faith

Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

How would, you know, if someone is a good Christian. We hear that phrase kind of thrown around a lot in the sense that like, everybody just knows what a good Christian looks like, but what's the criteria that you would use to actually determine if someone is living the kind of life that you could call the good Christian life. I think there's probably quite a few ways that we try to define that. And I think most of the ways that we use these days. Or actually not the right ways at all. Let's talk about how we should do that today on the manhood tribe show. Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes.com/manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes.com/manly. Okay, men. Welcome to the manhood tribes show. I'm your host, Don. It's good to be with you as we are continuing the series. And guys, I gotta be honest. I really am loving this series. I know that many of you have asked for more content that will help you be able to figure out what it means to be a man of faith, a Christian man, and how to do those things well. And so I'm really enjoying being able to offer this to you and. I hope it's a help, if it is a help, or if there's questions that I'm not addressing, that you would like me to, that could be helpful. Feel free to shoot me an email@infoatmanhoodtribes.com. And I would love to know what I could address that would be of more help to you. But here in this series, which I am calling the way of the king, I'm trying to talk about what it looks like to develop a masculine faith. Because I think that for most of us, men who have been around the American church in any way, shape or form over the past, you know, 20 to 50 years have probably come in contact with a faith that just doesn't feel very relevant to us. We go to church and it feels like they're not really talking to us in a way that matters to our day-to-day lives. It kind of just feels like an obligation that we're supposed to do. Or maybe even you don't want to go to church because you don't like the people there, you don't like the things that they stand for. You've seen Christians out in public and kind of been offended or just disturbed by them. And so you've just kind of like turned off to this whole idea of faith because you think. That's just not who I am and if that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I'm not sure that I'm interested in any of that either because it bores me to tears or because I find it mildly or maybe significantly offensive. All of those are valid reasons for men these days. I think, to kind of reject what they see in terms of what it means to be a Christian. We are trying to kind of re-establish that, especially for men and say there's a better way. I've said that there's in particular three things that I think help establish what a masculine faith looks like the first is that it needs to be epic. It. It needs to be part of a big story and a grand adventure. Men love these kinds of stories. And if our faith is going to entice us, we need to know that it's bigger than just our own individual lives. Second. It needs to be purposeful. We as men need to have a part to play in the story of our faith and it needs to feel like a manly part. It needs to be something where we can offer strength and courage and skill and feel like we are needed as men. Not just simply as nice guys who do the right thing, but as men who's to have something powerful and significant to contribute. And then thirdly, our faith needs to feel like it is resilient. If it's going to be a masculine faith, it needs to stand up to the hard things in life. It needs to not just fall down at the simple questions in the simple objections, and it needs to not be conquered by the latest suffering that we're encountering in our day-to-day lives. It needs to have answers for all of those things and hold up under the weight of the hard realities of our lives. And if it can do all of that, if it can be epic and purposeful and resilient, then I think as men we can feel like, yeah, this is something that I want to be a part of. And as a man, this feels pretty manly to be doing this. So that's what we're after. That's the kind of faith that we're trying to pursue. And it's my point that I think the Christian faith. Actually is that we just need how we need to learn how to recover it. So that it actually does feel that way in our lives where we live it out. It's my point that the Christian faith actually is all of that. It's just that we haven't been living it that way for a long time. And so we need to try to recover some of those aspects that can help us as men recognize that our faith is actually masculine. Now. I spent the last episode, kind of talking about the idea of what is being a Christian meant to do to a person. And I kind of said that the whole point is not just about going to heaven when you die, but that it's really about being in union with God. That we, as mankind are becoming one with God through Jesus. And in doing that, we are meant to become ever more like him and I, I gave you a whole host of different practices and things that you can do as a way to be able to connect your heart to the heart of God. And hopes of becoming more like Jesus. But the question that I want to ask today is how do you know if it's working? Right. I kind of pose the question at the top of the episode to say, What does it mean to be a good Christian? I think if we say that a good Christian as someone who is becoming more and more like Jesus, Then we have to ask, like, how do we know if that's true? Like, how do we know if the things that we're doing are actually helping us become more like Jesus. If we look at the scriptures, we will pretty often see that there is no better indicator of our spiritual maturity in Christ. Then how we relate to others. Okay, let me say that again, because that's a really big, important statement. There is no better indicator of our spiritual maturity than how we relate to others. Throughout all of the scriptures, but especially in the new Testament and the way that Jesus teaches us, what it means to be a follower of his, it is about loving God and loving others. He says that others will know us by our love for one another. And in other words, they will know that we are Jesus followers because of how we treat each other. This is super important. Jesus is attaching our spiritual maturity. Right. Our measurement of how much we are becoming like him. To the way that we treat other people to our love for one another. So, if we want to know if all the practices that we're doing are helping us become more like Christ, the way that we can figure that out is by looking at. How are we doing in our relationships with other people and in particular and our relationships with other Jesus followers, the scriptures are pretty clear in the new Testament, especially that there are ways that we are meant to treat people who are also followers of Jesus and ways that we are meant to treat people who are not, and there are some differences there there's a lot of overlap, but there are some specific differences there. And so in this episode, I want to speak specifically to how we treat other people who. Who are also followers of Jesus. So, how do we treat those people? In a word like family. There is no bigger metaphor used in the Bible to talk about the people of God who followed Jesus. Then the idea of a family. I love the story in the gospels where Jesus, his biological family, his mother, and his brothers. Come to a house where he is at and somebody comes and lets Jesus know, Hey, you're your mom and your siblings are here to see you. And he looks at the crowd and he says, here is my mother. Here are my brothers. In other words, to be able to say those who are following him are now his family. Now. Uh, in that Jewish world in particular, that was maybe quite a bit offensive to his mom and to his siblings, to be able to say that he had a new family, right. That. Th these people who are following him were now more family to him than his actual biological relatives were. But this is the vision of what it means to be part of what Jesus calls the church. The church is a word and the scriptures that just means called out once. You'll remember from our episode where I talked about the story, that when, uh, God abandoned the nations of the world to rogue spiritual powers, he then decided that he was going to make his own nation. And he did that by calling out one man. A man named Abraham, who we later call Abraham. Too big to begin this new nation that belonged to Yahweh. Ya'll way was going to have his own people that he had called out from the nations. And it was from Abraham that he was making this new nation. And now with the story of Jesus, we see that through Jesus. He is doing the same thing. But he is calling out people from all nations, not just from this one nation Israel, that was Yahweh's nation. But now he is calling out people from all the nations to be able to say, come and be part of my kingdom. And for those of us who do we find out that we're not just subjects in his kingdom, but that we have actually been adopted into his family. We find out that we are now sons. Of God, we have a new identity. And it is not just as a loyal subject. But it is actually as a son. We have been grafted into the very family of God. And because I have been grafted as a son. And you have been grafted as a son. That means that we are brothers. We are now brothers in Christ in the family of God. And we are to treat one another as if our closest and most important relationships are that family. Now. This has big implications. And so I want to talk about that. What does it look like to be able to treat other followers of Christ as if we are family and maybe even to the point that we see them more as family than even our own biological relatives. There's lots of ways to be able to talk about that. And I don't have time to cover everything that the scriptures say about what it means to treat other followers of God, his family. So I want to just kind of narrow it down to about three things today, and we're going to look at those real briefly. But the overarching idea of all of these things that we're going to talk about is really what Jesus says over and over and over again. Love one another. As I have as I have loved you. So you should love one another. And we are to do it in the way that he modeled love. In the book of Philippians, we get this idea that we are to have the same mindset as Jesus who considered himself nothing and emptied of himself, everything so that he could sacrifice himself in death, even death on a cross for our sakes. We are meant to look to others' needs as more important than our own. That is the kind of sacrificial love that Jesus is calling us to. So let's look at three specific ways that we are meant to live out that kind of sacrificial love with other followers of Jesus. The first is that we want to see other Jesus followers according to their identity in Christ and not according to their identity in the world. When someone is in Christ, they are a new creation. They have been given a new identity in him. And what that means for us is just, like I said, we are now brothers and sisters in Christ. We are meant to see them according to that identity. We are meant to see them as Jesus sees them. So when we look at another person, we don't see him or her just as what race or what gender, or what ethnicity, or what sexual orientation or what socioeconomic status or what, you know, any other label that you want to come up with. We're not meant to see those things first. We are meant to first, see, this is a child of God. This is someone who is made as God's image. This is my brother. And what that means. Even more specifically can get really, really difficult because it could mean that like, For you, who is someone who is following Jesus? Let's say you're a white male in your forties who leans towards being a Republican. Well, if that's true of you, then you actually have more in common with your black female coworker. Who's a single mom and a Democrat, but who is also a follower of Jesus. You have more in common with her and are meant to relate more closely to her than you do with your other male white colleagues who are also Republicans and seem to share all the same values and interests that you share. From a worldly standpoint, it can be really easy to relate to those other people around you, who you feel like you have the most in common with. But what the scriptures are calling us to is to be able to say, actually, what's true. Is I have most in common. With other people who are following Jesus, regardless of what all kinds of other markers of who they are, are like. Those are the people that I am most in common with. They are my family. And I need to learn to love them. To know them. To share with them and to sacrifice for them because that's the kind of love that Christ has called me to. Now, if that isn't already making you squeamish. Then you need to go back and listen to the last couple minutes. Because, let me tell you guys that is hard. That is hard to do. And you won't see it done very often anywhere in the world. And not all that often, even among churchgoers, among people who do say they are Christ followers, because honestly, most men who are following Jesus tend to take our cues from the world. About how we relate to others instead of taking our cues from Jesus. Jesus. Didn't look to all those external markers. When he was picking disciples, he didn't look to those external markers when he decided who he was going to do miracles for. He didn't look to external markers when he decided who he was going to feed 5,000, you know, like it had nothing to do with that. It's simply had to do with the fact that he loved them. And he wanted to extend that love to anyone who is willing to receive it. And that's what we are to do as well. If Jesus has invited them into his family, then who are we to say? We don't want to treat them as such. We have been invited into that same family through no merit of our own. And so it's out of that place that we learned to show love and kindness to those who also call themselves followers of Jesus. Okay. So we want to see their identity as Jesus sees them. That's the first thing, the second thing is that we want to see their needs, according to the provision of Jesus. The second thing is that we want to see their needs according to Jesus's provision. So when we're talking about needs, what we should think about is the way that we imagine needs within our family, especially for those of you guys who are watching right now, who are husbands and fathers. You probably feel the significant weight of wanting to be able to provide for your family. Of making sure that no real need goes unmet in your family. Jesus is inviting us to be able to say it should be the same way among us with those who call themselves followers of Jesus. No need. Uh, within the family of God should go unmet. We should look to be able to sacrifice for one another so that everyone can be fed, clothed, secure, taken care of, have their basic needs met, be able to use their abilities to contribute to some good in society. All of these things are things that we should take care of for the body of Christ. Anyone who calls themselves a follower of Jesus. I should be able to have their needs met. Within the family of God. Now everyone is expected to work. Everyone is expected to contribute. But no one should go without. And when it comes to thinking about how to address the needs of others in the family of God, you should look to sacrificing for others the way that you would sacrifice for your biological family. Now that is going to feel so backwards and so different to what most of us men feel like we're supposed to do, especially here in America, where we have been so conditioned to thinking of our resources as our own. And to treating our nuclear family as if they are the absolute and utmost priority in our lives. But Jesus doesn't play by the world's games. He plays by the rules of the kingdom of God. And in the kingdom of God, no one who's a part of that family should have their needs go unmet. So I'm supposed to use all that he has given me. We frequently talk about this within church circles in terms of time, talent and treasure. Right. Cause it's got three tees and it's easy to repeat, but it just means the time that I have available to do for others. The talents, the skills, the abilities that he has given me. And the treasure, the resources financially that he has given to me, I am meant to use those, to be able to meet the needs of others around me and in particular, Those of the family of God. And I am to meet those needs as if I am meeting them out of Jesus's provision, not my own. And Jesus has provision is unlimited. He has no lack of resources. And so if I am doing what he asked me to do, I am willing to be radically generous for the sake of others, because I know he is going to do the same for me. He is going to take care of my needs. He wants me to focus on taking care of the needs of others and especially the needs of those in his family. So that's. So that's the second thing, seeing the needs of others through the lens of Jesus's provision. The last thing is that we want to see their sins according to Jesus, his sacrifice. All of us have flaws and mistakes and ways that we have messed up our lives. And the family of God, we are not meant to see each other, according to those things. We are to see each other, according to the way that Jesus has forgiven us. And to extend that same kind of forgiveness to one another. And a very poignant moment. One of Jesus's followers named Peter asked Jesus how many times he's meant to forgive someone seven times. Which seemed like a whole lot for the same thing. Right. And most of us would probably feel the same way if I forgive somebody one time and they do it again. Maybe I can forgive them a second time, but if they keep doing it a third time or more, am I even going to want to keep hanging out with that person? And Jesus says, no, not just seven times, but 70 times seven. In other words, he was saying, you don't stop. You just keep forgiving. Now there's probably ways to be able to be wise in that forgiveness. We don't necessarily have to put all our resources at that person's feet. If they're doing things to abuse our trust. But we can forgive them for the ways that they might be miss handling things. We don't necessarily want to open our heart up to someone who is emotionally or verbally abusive. But we can forgive them for being that way. And ask God to give us the strength to continue forgiving them for doing that. To help them become more like Jesus. We have to offer forgiveness to them. And we have to see their sins. The same way that Jesus sees our sense. In the sense that he forgives them. If we want forgiveness, he offers it freely. And we are meant to offer it freely as well to others. Along with forgiveness. We have a couple of other tools in our tool belt that help us to be able to relate to one another. Especially with regards to our sins. With forgiveness. We also have repentance, which is where we turn away from our own sins and turn back towards Jesus to follow a different path. And with confession, we bring our sins out into the light and ask for forgiveness and repent from what we've done. If we can focus on those three tools, forgiveness, repentance, and confession, we can help bring restoration and healing to all of our relationships because we're choosing to see each other the way that Jesus sees us. And we're choosing to see our sins, the way that he sees them, not the way that the world tends to see them, which is where we hold our sins against one. One another. Jesus says, forgive, repent, confess. These are the ways to love one another to bring healing and restoration into relationships. If we can live like that. We will create a family that everyone would want to be a part of, but that's hard work. And it's radically different than the way that most of us learn to relate to people just based on what we see from the world around us. But that's the point. We don't take our cues from the world. We take our cues from Jesus and he invites us to live in a family. And to treat his followers as if they are our own family. So that's what I want to challenge you with today. I want you to, as a follower of Jesus to think about who are a few followers of Jesus around you, that you could treat more like family. What are some ways that you can do that? Maybe there's some specific things that you need to sacrifice for someone else to help meet needs. Maybe there was some specific sins that you need to forgive. Or invite someone to repent of. Maybe you need to be the one asking for forgiveness. Maybe there are just some ways where you need to adjust your perspective about someone who, you know, who is a follower of Jesus, but who doesn't feel very like you. And so you don't feel very loving towards them. You need to learn how to see them, the way that Jesus sees them. Try to identify three or four other followers of Jesus that you could treat them more like they are your family. Okay. I hope this helps you get a better picture of what it looks like to be the kind of man who can step up to a high calling, a pretty big challenge that Jesus is inviting us into. But that if we will do that, we can literally change the world because everyone would long to be part of a family. That looks like that. Let's create it and invite them into it. I hope this helps you men. I look forward to talking to you some more about this as we continue this series, the way of the king. Next time here on the manhood tribe show. I'll see you then.