Why the Church Gets Manhood Wrong: What Biblical Masculinity Really Means

What does the Bible really say about being a man?
Many churches reduce “biblical masculinity” to being a good husband and father. While those roles matter, they’re not the full story. In this episode, discover a bigger, bolder vision of manhood rooted in the life of Jesus Himself.

We break down the 5 Marks of Manhood—Strength, Courage, Skill, Honor, and Allegiance—and reveal how Jesus embodied each one. You’ll learn why the last two marks, Honor and Allegiance, are crucial to living as a godly man, building strong brotherhood, and staying loyal to your true calling.

If you’ve ever felt out of place in church conversations about masculinity, this episode will reframe the discussion and give you a vision of manhood that challenges and inspires—whether you’re single, married, a father, or not.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Why the Church Gets Manhood Wrong
03:12 Why “Good Husband and Father” Isn’t Enough
07:41 The 5 Marks of Manhood in the Bible
11:58 Allegiance: Putting God First
17:35 Honor: Building a Brotherhood That Shapes You
22:15 How This Vision Changes Everything

💪 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

0:00

All right. Tell me if you've heard this before. A real man is a good husband and father. If you're a guy who has grown up around the church or any kind of religious environment here in the west, then probably you've heard that definition pretty regularly, especially if you've been taught anything about what the church tends to call biblical masculinity. For the most part, what churches mean when they use that phrase is being a good husband and a good dad. Now I wanna say those things are not bad things to be, but I don't think that's really what biblical masculinity is all about. Today we're unpacking a much bigger vision of biblical masculinity. One that begins with becoming a man, not just playing a role. My name is Don, and you're here at the Manhood Tribes Channel. We love to talk at the Manhood Tribes Channel about all things manhood, faith, life, and how all of those things tend to work together. And so I want to try to give you some clear ideas about all of that. And this in particular is a topic that really resonates with me because. I grew up in the church and I've been around this discussion of biblical masculinity for a long time. In fact, it wasn't just all that long ago, just a couple months ago where I was in a church and I heard the pastor say, you need to be a good husband and a good dad. That's pretty much what being a biblical man is all about. And I just had to kind of pause right there in my tracks and go, I don't think that's accurate. Why is that? Why, why wouldn't that be accurate? Well, let's, let's start with the basics. Number one, not every guy is a husband or a dad, and does that mean that they can't be a biblical man because they don't have those roles in their lives? Obviously not. Uh, let's talk about the fact that Jesus, the ultimate biblical man was not a husband or a father. Okay? So we're, we're immediately off on the wrong foot if we're trying to say that that's the essence of what biblical masculinity is really all about. I think the reason that churches tend to go that direction is because there are some pretty clear instructions in the Bible about how husbands and fathers should live and should treat their wives and their children. Now, look, those things are really important. We should pay attention to those things if we are husbands and fathers because that's how we should be doing those things. But that's not all it is to being a biblical man. We also are living in an age that where some things are kind of unique right now in our age, uh, it's not uncommon for men to actually be wondering what does it mean to be a man? And that's a fairly. Actually in the course of human history, that's a fairly uncommon question. It's, it's fairly unusual for cultures to not have a good idea of what it means to be a man. For the most part, throughout human history, the pathway to becoming a man in many cultures was very clear cut and dry. It was. Pretty simple and straightforward. There was some kind of initiation process that all young boys went through on their pathway towards becoming men. Our culture doesn't have that and hasn't had it for a long time, and now we are living with the consequence and the fallout of that, which is that men in our world today. Don't really know if they're men. They're not sure how they arrived at manhood or what made them a man. So the, the church is still kind of operating in this framework of, yeah, our men know what it means to be a man. We just have to kind of teach them like some godly ways of doing manly things. But that's not really where most men are at. Most men are at a place where. They don't know what it means to be a man. So the church is kind of putting the cart before the horse. They're starting the conversation in the wrong place, and they're leaving out a whole bunch of men who actually don't fit into that conversation at all. So this is why we need to talk about biblical masculinity and really different terms than the way that the church typically does it. Now to be clear, I am not throwing out the church's I church's ideas of what it means to be a good husband and a good father. Those things are important. They just aren't the whole picture. And we need a much bigger picture of biblical masculinity today in order to be able to help men where they actually are.'cause not all of them are at the place of trying to figure out how to be a good dad or a good husband. Okay. I think I've made that point clear. So let's talk about what, what does it mean then? What? What does biblical masculinity actually look like and how do we get to a better vision of what being a godly man really is all about? I. I think we need to start in the place that I've been starting most of the time as we have gone through many of our series here on the Manhood Tribes Channel. We need to start with the five marks of manhood because this is really just a clear idea of what it means to be a man. Now, if you look through the Bible, you're not going to find the five marks of manhood listed anywhere as a prescription of what it means to be a man. And again, that's because in most cultures and including, uh, the cultures that we find throughout the biblical narrative, it wasn't all that hard to figure out what it meant to be a man. Their cultures pretty much had it. As a given, it was sort of assumed or taken for granted that this is what men do, this is how men act, this is the pathway towards becoming a man. And all of those things were just. Part of the culture. You didn't have to talk about them or lay them out as much because the path was clear for men all along. It's not that way in our day, so we've gotta lay some groundwork. You will, however, find the five marks of manhood. When you look throughout scripture at the way that good godly men lived, you'll find them demonstrating these things well. And in fact, you'll even find examples of ungodly men who were living out these same five marks of manhood. It made them manly, just didn't necessarily make them good. They were living out the marks of manhood, but they weren't necessarily living them out in ways that honored God, and so it made them kind of like bad men, even though it didn't necessarily take away from the fact that they were men. Okay. These things are really important because this is how we help men understand what it means to be a man. Now if you haven't followed along at all, I'll just say briefly that the five marks of manhood are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. If you want some more ideas about those, you can go check out the earliest videos here on the channel that will go into detail about that. Or you can look back at episode 48 where I talk about the five marks of manhood and how Jesus demonstrated those things in particular. That'll give you some good ideas of what it means to be a biblical man in the way that Jesus really kind of modeled it. But the point is every man should possess those five traits and should be demonstrating them as a way to show that they are men. That's what manhood is really all about, is those five marks. Now, how do we do those five marks is really the key to what it means to be a biblical man. Because a biblical man really is nothing more than a man who is trying to live his life the way that Jesus would've lived if Jesus were living that man's life. Okay. That's a little convoluted the way that I just said it, but the point is, you're not just trying to be a, you know, first century Jewish rabbi. You're trying to live your life. If Jesus were living your life and your place, how would he live it? That's probably the best question to ask If you want to get an understanding of what being a biblical man really looks like if Jesus were trying to live your life. How would he live it? Jesus is the ultimate biblical man, and so we need to really kind of wrap our minds around who he is and the way that he lived so that we can art, start to understand what Biblical manhood is all about. Now I think we can tie it back to these five marks of manhood, and in particular where we're going to get some clarity about what it looks like to be a biblical man is in the last two marks of manhood, honor and Allegiance. Honor you may remember, is really about. Peer relationships, kind of the like horizontal axis of relationships. Whereas allegiance is about those authority figures in our lives, the vertical axis of relationships. And so these two things really kind of form the way that we think about how we function and relate to not only the people in our lives, but all of the big decisions in our lives as well. All of the things are surrounding our purpose, uh, how we spend our time, how we spend our money, uh, really kind of any way that we orient our life. All of that comes out of honor and allegiance. So those are the ways that we want to try to look to Jesus to be able to say, how did he do those things so that we can do those things Similarly. And as men, I think these two things are really crucial. Let's start with allegiance. If we're going to be a biblical man, we've got to have our allegiance, and especially our ultimate allegiance in the right place. It was very clear that Jesus' ultimate allegiance was to God the father. He followed the father in. All things. And in fact, he said it repeatedly talking about the fact that he only did what he saw the father doing and that he would go away for periods of time just to listen for the father's voice to be able to know what he needed to do. That is the kind of allegiance that we as biblical men are looking for. We have got to have a relationship with God to where we are dialed into listening to him. The most important part of being a biblical man is that you have a. Ongoing, interactive relationship with the God of the Bible. A biblical man means you are relating to the God of the Bible, and if you don't have that kind of ongoing relationship with him, then that's the first thing that you need to begin to cultivate. It's not your relationship with your wife or your relationship with your kids, it's your relationship with God. You have to have that in place if you're going to be a biblical man. Because a biblical man follows God. That's really what it's all about. To be able to do that, you're gonna need to be able to spend regular time listening to the voice of God. You demonstrate your allegiance by regularly asking him how does he think you should be living? What should you be doing? Who should you be interacting with? Those are the kinds of questions that you take to God to demonstrate, I want my life ordered around the things that you care about. My allegiance is to you. I want to follow you in all things, so I'm taking the time to ask you about all of that and how I should be living my life. That's what allegiance looks like, and we see that modeled in Jesus' life all the time. Now. The second thing there is the mark of manhood called honor. And again, honor is about our peer relationships. It's about our friends, and especially about the tribe of men that we have around us. Jesus had his disciples and we need a group of men around us as well, and that those group. That group of men, what they are going to do for us is to really challenge us and to push us to becoming more like Jesus. This is the kind of thing that we want to honor when we choose to follow Jesus, that helps dictate for us what we should honor in our lives, right? I've said before that honor is really a morally neutral trait. You can honor anything you want as long as you have a group of men who agree that those are the things that should be honored. So the point here is that. By choosing Jesus as your ultimate allegiance, what he is then saying about honor is you need to pick men to be around you who are going to honor and uphold what it looks like to live like Jesus. Because if you have those men around you, then they are going to push you and challenge you to become more like him, and that's what biblical honor really looks like, is having men around you who are honoring you for following Jesus. Okay. Are you starting to see that the picture of biblical masculinity is really different than maybe what you've been told? Now, if you are living in a, in the context of a tribe with men who are upholding what Jesus would say is right and good, then that is going to push you to the way that you treat your wife and the way that you treat your kids and doing right by them in a whole host of ways that is going to lead to those kinds of things. That just isn't where we start. We have to start with our allegiance to Jesus and the honor that we are cultivating in the group of men that we choose to live our lives around. All right. These things are most important, and by developing those things, you can develop yourself into being an incredible biblical man, and you will start to see those kinds of right relationships begin to really flourish in your life. Whether you have a wife and kids or not, all of your relationships will start to look better because you have men around you who are honoring following Jesus, and Jesus is going to shape the way that you relate to everyone. Not just your wife and kids, but maybe especially them. And all of those things should improve over time as you learn to become more like Jesus and live the way that he did as a biblical man, I. Okay. I hope that this has been helpful for you and maybe has reoriented you a little bit to what it actually means to be a biblical man and to pursue biblical masculinity. If you like this kind of content content, I would love for you to like this video and to subscribe to the channel. And if you are looking for. Other biblical men that you can get around to help you in being able to pursue these kinds of things. I would love for you to check out the Manhood Tribes community. This is a place where you can get better at being a man. You can get better at following Jesus, and you can connect with other like-minded men who are trying to do the same. So just go to manhood tribes.com/community and check out for the next opportunity to be able to join our community when the doors are open. All right. Now, I would love for you to engage in the comments below by just leaving a comment about, have you ever felt like that you didn't belong as a man in a church? Why was that? Talk about that. What was the vision of masculinity that was being painted in the church that you were a part of, that you just felt like, man, you didn't quite fit, or maybe that wasn't all that appealing to you. Leave that in the comments, and I would love to engage with you around those comments. I look forward to doing that and to seeing you again here on the Manhood Tribes Channel. Soon we'll talk again.