Several years ago I was sharing my faith with a social worker in my community when he responded by saying, “I don’t want to be a Christian because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life, not to mention eternity, in meetings.”
He had a point. In his mind, all Christians do is attend meetings that have no purpose or practical outcome.
Of course, Christians attend meetings because we are followers of Jesus. We worship God and his Son, Jesus Christ, in meetings. We also learn about how to follow Jesus better by meeting together.
Who wants to spend eternity attending a meeting?
My social worker friend didn’t understand the purpose of our meetings because he didn’t understand the importance of Jesus. No one had answered his underlying question: Why Jesus?
That simple question — Why Jesus? — is one of the most important questions every men’s ministry must answer clearly, passionately, persuasively, and persistently.
Why? Because men have plenty of things to do other than just attend meetings.
But if they know their lives depend on meeting together, and if they know there are going to be concrete and positive outcomes as a result of it, not only in their own lives, but also in the lives of the people they know and love all around them, then they will not only be there, they will drag their loved ones and friends to the meeting along with them.
So why Jesus? Why, two thousand years after he walked the face of this earth, do we still meet together to worship him and learn how to follow him?
Why Jesus? Because Jesus accurately diagnoses men’s problems
Consider this: the further away American culture has gotten from Jesus, the more aimless, destructive, and depraved American men have become. For the first time in two thousand years Christianity is facing, not just a post-Jesus Western civilization, but an anti-Jesus, pagan civilization.
But ironically, the best apologetic for Jesus is the increasing absence of Jesus from our culture. Why? Because, without Jesus permeating Western culture as he has to varying degrees over the past two millennia, we are witnessing the greatest social experiment in the history of the world: what happens to men in a Jesus-less culture.
In Jesus-less America, men are losing their ability to control their sexual lust. They are losing their desire to marry. They are losing any commitment to raise their own children. They are losing any transcendent purpose in life. They are losing their passion for education. They are losing their work ethic. They are losing their ability to keep the law and stay out of prison. They are losing their resistance to drugs and alcohol. And finally, in a Jesus-less culture, men are losing their self respect, because they no longer know who they are, why they are here, or where they are going.
One cannot have a positive outcome to a problem until one knows the reason for the problem. Here is Jesus’ diagnosis for men’s problems.
Every man has an evil nature he cannot tame…without Jesus.1 He lives in an evil world he cannot overcome…without Jesus.2 He has an evil enemy he cannot defeat…without Jesus.3 And he faces a holy God he doesn’t know and cannot please…without Jesus.4
What, then, is the root cause of men’s problems? The root cause of men’s problems is that they don’t know or care about Jesus.
Why Jesus? Because without Jesus men cannot escape slavery to evil
Let’s face it, we men love sin. Or to put it in ordinary secular language: we men love evil. We love illicit sex. We love porn. We love exalting ourselves at the expense of others. We love living off of someone else’s dime. We love lying when we can get away with it. We love going our own selfish way, even if it means abandoning our wives and kids. We love cursing. We love road rage. We love warfare. We love beating people up and watching people beat each other up. We love getting even. We love putting others down. We love climbing the ladder and stepping on everyone else in the process. We love clicks. We love getting high. We love avarice. We love gluttony. We love being noticed. We love having a nicer car and living in a nicer home than our neighbors.
We may think these things are just temptations. But we are only tempted by the things we love. Dog food does not tempt us. Baby back ribs do.
It’s true. Men have a chronic temptation to descend into barbarism, or “toxic masculinity,” as some call it. In response to this overwhelming temptation, human culture has devised two polar opposite and contradictory solutions, which I call “The Bikini” and “The Burka.”
- The Bikini – Indulge Oneself
When it comes to lust, most men choose hedonism…at first. They choose it because indulging oneself is the path of least resistance. There are no moral absolutes, men think. So why bother with niceties? All that exists is the physical world and the pleasures it offers. “I’m just a man, doing what men do.”
The problem with this approach to dealing with one’s passions, as men soon find out, is that hedonism is both self destructive and also relationally destructive. It is self destructive because we become addicted to our chosen evil. It is relationally destructive, because no one wants to live with a selfish, self-absorbed man who hurts those around him.
- The Burka – Control Oneself
Legalism is the exact opposite of hedonism. Instead of addressing men’s lusts by giving in to them and even encouraging them, legalism seeks to tame lust through external sets of strict social rules — usually religious rules — enforced with various cultural sanctions like ostracism, corporal punishment, prison, and even execution.
The Taliban in Afghanistan, Amish culture in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and Hasidic Jews in urban New York, Los Angeles and Israel, all exemplify this legalistic and artificial approach.
The problem with legalism is that it is external and superficial only and does not deal with the real interior spiritual, emotional, and psychological problems men face. All legalism does is repress, control, and restrict both men and women with contrived rules and regulations that make no real change in their moral fiber.
Notice, too, that both the bikini and the burka solutions to men’s natural attraction to evil have this in common: they result in men becoming obsessed with dealing with it. On the one hand, indulging one’s lusts results in deeper and deeper addiction, more and more broken relationships, chronic sickness and even death. On the other hand, trying to control one’s lusts results in endless and fruitless ritualistic behavior.
Why Jesus? Because Jesus reconciles men to God
You noticed that I changed my terminology from “sin” to “evil” above. That is because modern men can stomach the concept of evil, but we have a knee jerk reaction to the concept of sin. Why? Because evil doesn’t make any reference to the God of the Bible, but sin does. One can imagine evil as something impersonal that just exists — like “the dark side” in Star Wars. But sin is personal, very personal. Sin is open rebellion against a holy and personal God.
The problem isn’t just that we men love evil, but that we love evil because we hate God who is holy. We hate any claim he has over us. We hate his authority and we hate his character. This is why we love to debase God by using his name and his son, Jesus’ name, in curses.
This is also why we men are willing to endure the painful consequences of evil, and even inflict evil on others around us, if only we can ignore a holy God to whom we know, either consciously or subconsciously, we are answerable. We are, to put it bluntly, damned and worthy of God’s wrath.
But God, who is holy, is also love. God is not just loving, God is love itself. God is all that love ever has been and ever will be. So, to satisfy both his holiness and his love, God sent his Son, his only son, to die in our place so he could take on himself God’s just wrath for our sin. In doing so, God satisfied both his holiness and his love.5
As a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, God offers us forgiveness and eternal life if we acknowledge our sinful state and put our faith — meaning our confidence — in Jesus Christ as the one who paid the penalty for our sin. Won’t you do that right now by telling God in prayer that you are trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior from sin and its penalty?
Why Jesus? Because Jesus gives men the freedom, the passion, and the supernatural ability to do good
As a result of a man’s faith in Jesus, many wonderful things happen to him, both immediately and long term. He is born again and becomes a “new man.” All of his sins are forgiven. He enters into a right relationship with God. He has eternal life. Suddenly the spiritual world comes alive for him because he receives the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. He becomes a member of the universal church, the Body of Christ. He has a special supernatural spiritual gift given to him to use in service to others. Jesus becomes his intercessor in the presence of God. As a result, this new believer has direct access to God through prayer. He has new insight into the Bible, God’s inspired Word. And, most importantly, he has a new love for God and his Son, Jesus Christ, and wants to do things that please them.
On the other hand, this new man still has issues. He still has his old sinful nature that has not been touched by his salvation. He also still lives in a sinful world with all of its temptations. And he still has an enemy, Satan, who hates the fact that he has now become a Christian.6
At first, this situation can seem untenable. But this new Christian man has been given a solution, and it’s called The Cross.
- The Cross – Ignore Your Old Sinful Nature and Follow Jesus
The mistake new Christian men often make is that they think the the purpose of their salvation is to remake their sinful nature into something good, or at least something better than it is. But that is impossible, as they soon find out; they discover that they still have the same temptations coming in from the outside world, and the same lusts going out from their sinful nature. And they will experience these realities until the day they die. So the tendency is to revert back to either giving in to those temptations and lusts (hedonism), or trying to subdue them through keeping a list of things they have to do (legalism): in this case, the “Christian” version of legalism usually takes the form of a checklist that looks like this:
Because I am a Christian, I must be sure to do the following:
- Attend church? Check.
- Read my Bible? Check.
- Pray? Check.
- Give money? Check.
- Do good things for people? Check
The problem is that, as we have seen above, keeping obligatory legalistic checklists such as this have no impact on our sinful flesh. In fact, they just give our flesh opportunities to rebel even more.
So what is the solution Jesus gives us? The solution he gives us is a third option: instead of giving in to the flesh through hedonism, or trying to control it or reform it through legalistic efforts, we simply ignore the flesh and focus on Jesus, on what he has done for us, and on what he wants us to do for others. In this way, Christian practices like attending church and reading the Bible become means to an end and not merely ends in themselves. With this third option in mind, the Christian practices above (and any other Christian practices) look like this:
Because of what Jesus Christ has done for me on the cross:
- I attend church in order to worship God and develop loving relationships with other believers.
- I read my Bible in order to understand God’s dealings in history and his will for my life.
- I pray in order to communicate with God my love for him and what my needs are.
- I give money in order to support the work of the church and meet the needs of others.
- I do good things for people in order to help them and show them the same love Jesus Christ has shown me.
As we men learn to engage in these practices for the proper reasons, something begins to happen: we become more aware of God, we enjoy the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives, we have a deeper appreciation of Jesus’ love for us, and we are motivated to engage in sacrificial service for others in need. In essence, we have been set free from slavery to sin and our sinful nature and have, instead, become willing and joyful slaves to God.
As a result, we are no longer obsessed with our flesh and instead, as we have victory over sin in our lives, we acquire a strong inner motivation to do the good that God saved us to do. We are, in effect, experiencing “the expulsive power of a new affection,” as Thomas Chalmers put it in his famous sermon by that title.
Why Jesus? Because Jesus is alive and coming soon
Of course, none of this matters if Jesus is dead and gone. But Jesus is not dead and gone. Jesus rose from the dead, just as the Bible predicted he would, and ascended into heaven. And there is plenty of historical evidence to prove this.
Of course, no amount of evidence for the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ will ever be enough for a man who is unwilling to acknowledge his sin and his love for evil. But for the one who has, and who has cast himself in faith on Jesus Christ, Jesus is very much alive and impacts everything he thinks, says, and does.
He lives for Jesus now, and he looks for Jesus in the future, because he knows that Jesus is coming soon and that he will see him face to face.
And that is the greatest meeting of all.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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One thought on “Why Jesus? The Question Every Men’s Ministry Must Answer”
Great blog, and very informative/thorough. Every pastor and men’s ministry lay leader should read it.