BEHOLD, THE MAN!
A Theology of Manness, by Dr. Andrew Corbett
In 1719, a young recently graduated German lawyer did what many aristocratic young men do, just before they were about to embark on their diplomatic careers, and went on a jaunt around Europe. He had already been greatly impressed by the writings of Martin Luther and was persuaded by Luther’s understanding of how a man was reconciled to God through faith in the Christ. When he visited one particular art gallery he was struck by a painting that gripped him and changed his life — and quite literally, the world.
The young man was Count Nicklaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Ludwig, as he was known to his friends, was already a devout man by the time he walked into that art gallery and was captivated by the painting of Domenico Fetti called, Ecce Homo (‘Behold the man’). The scene was one of many that the artist painted depicting Christ being presented to Jerusalem mob by Pilate.
So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”
John 19:5
The painting by Fetti is now located in the Bayerische Staats Museum in Munich. Its inscription in Latin at the bottom of the canvas deeply impacted Zinzendorf:
Ego pro te haec passus sum
Tu vero quid fecisti pro me
“This have I suffered for you; now what will you do for me?”
Zinzendorf had been born into great privilege in Dresden. After this encounter with Ecce Homo he determined that while he had been appreciative of what Christ had done for him in bearing his guilt and shame on the cross, the young count had done little to show his appreciation to his Saviour. The early 1700s in Europe was turbulent time. The effects of the Reformation were still reverberating across Europe and had greatly challenged the concept that Christianity was just a matter of identification (much like national identity) rather than individual spiritual conversion. The work of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Luther, Zwingli, Huss, and Calvin had demonstrated from the teachings of Christ and His apostles that Christianity was a matter of spiritual conversion mediating directly by the Holy Spirit into the soul of the repentant (rather than through a ‘sacrament’ by a priest).
For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
First Timothy 2:5
In 1722 Zinzendorf gave refuge to Moravian (Czech) Christians who were fleeing persecution and permitted them to establish a village, Herrnhut on a corner of his estate of Berthelsdorf. But various Christian groups were difficult to pastor for the appointed Lutheran minister. Eventually Zinzendorf stepped in and helped them establish the rules of brotherhood after guiding them through what the New Testament taught about Christian community. The transformation was dramatic. The Moravians instituted love as their goal and bond of brotherhood. They began praying regularly together. Initially their prayers were for their fellow countrymen in Moravia. But then, as they continued to pray together, they began praying for the salvation of people much further afield. This culminated in a special combined communion service on August 13th, 1727. But something very strange happened as they met together to worship, give heed to the Word, and celebrate Holy Communion together. It was reported that as they gathered the door mysteriously opened and a wind came rushing into their gathering. Many of the gathered Moravians began speaking in tongues and crying out to God for the lost of the world. This became known as “the Moravian Pentecost” and marked the beginning of an amazing sequence of events that would change the world!
After this, several of the Moravians felt a deep burden to not just pray for the far-flung peoples of the world, but to go to them and share the gospel. Moravians sold themselves into slavery to reach the unfortunate Africans who had been kidnapped into slavery. They bought passage to the nearly settled Americas. In fact, on one of the sailings, there was a young Anglican minister travelling to America who was doing some deep soul-searching of his own when the ship he was on encountered a violent storm. As many of the passengers feared for their lives, this minister could faintly hear singing coming from the deck of the ship! Curious about who would be so fool-hardy as to be on the deck of a doomed ship in the middle of a violent storm, he peered through a hatch to observe that the group of Moravian Christians also travelling on the ship had decided to sit down on the deck of the ship and worship God together! The minister was so struck by their peace in the midst of this horrendous storm, that he later wrote about it in his journal. He saw in the Moravians a genuine faith in Christ – a faith that he himself did not have. He wrote in his journal, “I have come to save Americans. But who will save me?” This minister’s name was John Wesley. After he returned to England from America he sought out Zinzendorf, and the rest, as they say, is history.
A statue of Count Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany.
I deeply admire Zinzendorf. I consider him to be one of the greatest men that have ever lived and certainly one of the few men who have literally changed the course of human history. For me, Zinzendorf lived out Paul’s injunction to men that the apostle had written to the Corinthians. Corinth was a highly sexualised city. The city was nestled at the foot of Mount Corinth. At the summit of Mount Corinth was a temple dedicated to the goddess, Aphrodite – the goddess of love. Men would visit Corinth to indulge in the sexual enchantments of the hundreds of available temple prostitutes. We know from Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians that there was promiscuity, rampant fornication, adultery, and sexual abuse of children, vulnerable boys, and women happening in Corinth. It appears that in some measure there was also confusion over gender distinction since many of them had become Christians. We read in First Corinthians about the need for women to wear “head coverings” and assume that Paul is discussing points of fashion without realising that he was reinforcing the original creation mandate that God gave to man and woman (Gen 2:21-22). This original creation of man and woman made them distinct yet equal. Each shared the imago dei (image of God), but each were called to emphasize different aspects of God’s nature and were given bodies which corresponded to these distinctions. To the man, God assigned a stronger sense of justice and gave him a body that enabled him to use his physical strength to protect the woman and her offspring. To the woman, God gave her a stronger sense of nurture and a body that enabled her to nurture her offspring.
¶ Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
First Peter 3:7
TRUE MANHOOD
Paul concludes his ‘first’ epistle to the Corinthians by speaking directly to the men of the Church. It is clear that the Holy Spirit has preserved this for the benefit of all Christian men. It is my hope that the men of our church can exemplify what Paul told these Corinthian men.
¶ Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love.
First Corinthians 16:13
Dr. Gordon Fee notes that the imperative (something which must be done) is written in “military language” to men. Be watchful is a military term. It echoes God’s first command to the first man to guard and keep the garden (of Eden) (Gen. 2:15). Men are thus called to use their strength to protect, not harm, women and children. Secondly, stand firm in the faith is also a military term echoing how a soldier must act when under attack from the enemy. They are to hold their position. Men are to do this when it comes to spiritual truth — despite what the cancel-cultured crowd says. Act like men reinforces the original creation mandate for men to use their God-given strength to muster the courage to be watchful and defend the truth, the right, and the good — especially when it involves the vulnerable. But, Paul concludes, men must not do this in an ugly fashion. They must be watchful, resolute, defending the truth/right/good, by using their strength, in a loving way. The greatest example of this Biblical revelation of manhood was Jesus the Christ, The Man (referred to by Paul in the previous chapter to the Corinthians as “the second Adam” 1Cor. 15:45), “the second Man” (1Cor. 15:47), “the Man from Heaven” (1Cor. 15:48). Jesus is literally, the Man. Every man should look to Jesus as the ultimate example of manhood. And this is my aspiration for my life and my pastoral hope for every man in our church — to act like men! This is something that Count Nicklaus van Zinzendorf and his band of Moravian missionaries were able to promote among the men of the community, which is yet another reason why admire him so much.
This is why I want to implement a strategy to help young boys transition well into manhood, and I need every man in our church to help me. The immediate result will be that we, the Christian men of Tasmania, actually challenge the toxic-manhood model that so many Tasmanian men have been duped into by Satan’s cunning and deceptive use of pornography as a lure in its various forms and media. The end result will be that men treat women with gentleness and respect as their equals — not as objects to be exploited or subjugated for their proclivities and gratifications. This, I hope will empower the women of Tasmania to be free to act like women and find lasting, satisfying, meaningful, life-long partnerships in the manner that our Maker has designed for human flourishing.
Your pastor,
Andrew
Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.
In C.S. (Jack) Lewis’s best-selling book, Mere Christianity, he described Christianity as being like a great house with a large hallway. Off the vast hallway there are many doors. Behind each door there is an even larger area where a set dining table awaits in front of an inviting open fire-place which complements the aroma of the just cooked roast dinner about to be served. Behind each of these doors in the hallway there are similar rooms yet each with their distinctive differences. God calls, Lewis states, each of His children not to linger unnecessarily long in the hallway, but to actively seek the door that they are meant to enter through into the room where they belong. In that particular room is the place where each believer is wanted, needed, welcomed, and appreciated. Lewis wrote-
“In plain language, the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular doorkeeper?’ When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still In the hall. If they are wrong they need. your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”
Although raised as a nominal Christian in Northern Ireland, when CS Lewis was 9 years old, his mother, Flora, died at the age of 42 of cancer. As a young adult, C.S. Lewis enrolled to serve as a British soldier in WWI and was injured in the 
Lewis developed a keen awareness of the spiritual realm and the intense spiritual battle that was taking place over every human soul. His later book, The Screwtape Letters, is a masterful insight into how the Enemy tries to hinder people from coming Christ. It is the story of a senior demon, Screwtape, writing to a junior demon, Wormwood, on how to undermine the attempts of their Enemy (God) from snatching a soul out of their grasp. The things these demons feared most was when a non-believer came in contact with a Christian because the light of Christ would shine so brightly through them that their captured soul (the unbeliever) might be enticed and attracted to turn to the Saviour. But worse than this, these demons were terrified when one of their non-believing captives accepted an invitation to go to a believer’s church. For it was the intense presence of Christ in the midst of His gathered redeemed followers that did the most damage to their evil schemes for their deluded captive because when Christ’s church gathered their worship and the attention they gave to God’s Word brought the clearest vision of the Saviour to those gathered. Even if they should lose a previously deluded soul to the ‘Enemy’ (God), Screwtape writes to Wormwood, hope is not lost. Do all you can, Screwtape tells Wormwood, to keep this believer from associating with Christians — especially when they meet as the church! And most of all, do all you can to hinder him from enjoying the Enemy’s pleasures such as enjoyable walks, good meals, fine company, and even sunshine. What Lewis exposed to millions of readers was just how central the local church was to the great spiritual conquest which God has assigned to the church to defeat the forces of darkness by leading a soul to Christ. This was, the apostle Paul earlier wrote, God’s “manifold wisdom” to “the rulers and authorities in the spiritual realm” (
To paraphrase what Mr. Costello was pointing out, Christians are aware that we live in a seen and unseen world where temporal needs are easily seen and eternal needs are not so easily seen but are none the less vitally important as well. To paraphrase the paraphrase: we all live in a material world 
While seeking to implement this rite of passage into manhood, the existing young men of the church are each given the responsibility opportunity that the inducted young man will be given after his rite of passage. Once each young man has had at least one opportunity to publicly speak in some way during the main church service, all of these young men should be gathered together to discuss the vision and challenge of being a godly young man. 
It is important that young women hear from the pulpit how a young man ought to view and treat them in a biblically informed vision of godly manhood. It is similarly important that every young man hears this vision at the same time so that he knows what’s expected of him and also knows that every young lady in the church also knows what’s expected of him. It’s important that the senior minister teaches it so that everyone knows what’s expected of each man.