THE SEX OF GOD

Adam was not a man.

Paul says Adam was created before Eve (1 Timothy 2:13).  He says furthermore: “Man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Corinthians 11:8-9).  This is not only male-chauvinistic but, as usual with Paul, factually incorrect.

Adam was not a man.  He was a hermaphrodite.  When God created Adam, “he” was a man and a woman simultaneously.  Adam and Eve were created at the same time.  Later, Eve was “taken out of” Adam.  

Jesus says: “At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6).  Genesis records that when Adam saw Eve, he declared: “‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man’” (Genesis 2:22-23). 

Therefore, initially, Adam was not male but generically human.  He was male and female.  Moses affirms that God created human-beings in his own image; “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).  After Eve was pulled out of Adam, Adam became what we now call a man.  Unlike the first and last Adams of Paul’s creative imagination (1 Corinthians 15:45); this is the scripturally-true story of the first and the second Adam.  The first Adam was male and female.  The second Adam was male.

Fatherhood of God

This shows God is gender-free.  More precisely, God is male and female combined.  So when we talk of God as “our Father,” it does not mean he is a man.  As our Father, God fathers and also mothers us (Isaiah 66:13).  He is masculine and feminine.

I once prayed for a lady and said words to the effect that God should do something “for your son.”  She interrupted me in the middle of the prayer to say I should have said “for your daughter.”  But God does not have any daughters: he only has sons.  A “son” is a spiritual terminology which incorporates both men and women.  We are spiritual sons and not biological sons.  We are spiritual sons, even when we are biological daughters.  God is a
spiritual Father.  He is not a biological father.

Something else needs to be understood here.  Christians are the sons of the kingdom of God but not automatically the sons of God.  The sons of God inherit the kingdom.  But according to Jesus, if proper care is not taken, the sons of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness (Matthew 8:12).  Jesus asks: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).  By and large, Christians are those who say “Lord, Lord” to Jesus, but don’t do what he says.  We are those who say “Lord, Lord” to Jesus, but do what Paul says.

Gender-free sons

We do not become sons of God by doing what Paul says: answering an altar-call where we make confessions declaring Jesus as our Lord and Saviour (Romans 10:9-10).  We become sons of God by doing what Jesus says: doing the will of the Father. 

Jesus explained this fulsomely in the bible-episode where he was told his mother and brothers were looking for him: “He answered and said to the one who told him, ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’  And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (Matthew 12:48-50). 

Jesus did not say “whoever does the will of my father is either my brother or my sister or my mother.”  He pointed to his disciples who were all men and said “they are my mother and sister.”  This means Peter is Jesus’ “mother.”  John is Jesus’ “sister.”  But even more remarkably, Peter and John are Jesus’ “brother and sister and mother” simultaneously. 

This shows the kingdom of God does not recognise the sexes; a fact which should make Christians ignore all the chauvinistic things Paul says about women’s lower status relative to men.  God is not a respecter of persons.  Neither is he a respecter of the sexes.

Incestuous marriage

Since the kingdom of God is gender-free, there can be no marriage in the resurrection.  Paul himself acknowledges: “There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  Nevertheless, he says Christians are betrothed to Christ (Romans 7:4; 2 Corinthians 11:2).  However, Jesus does not propose marriage to us.  Members of the same family don’t marry one another. 

If only Paul had heard Jesus preach, he might have heard him say to the Sadducees: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:29-30).