by 
In the Beginning, God created Adam and Eve with a mission and a purpose. Adam, created in God’s image, was given the animals to name– signifying their submission to him– and a garden to tend, but God knew that was not sufficient for the plans He had, so God created Eve out of Adam, submissive to him, yet together in unity to accomplish the mission set before them.
The fall corrupted and twisted our first Father and Mother. Instead of serving their Creator’s purpose, they would constantly seek their own purpose and goals– each warring for control of the other and everything around them. This same selfish, rebellious, proud streak lies at the heart of all sin against our Holy Creator and starts moments after we’re born to manifest itself.
Yet even though this sin is ever present, Man and Woman still bear that image of God and seek to function the way they were designed. True, the boundaries of the design vary, just as their color, shape, and size; however, the design still exists, and it still manifests itself– especially in the true tests of character and trials.
Men Were Created to Lead
When God created the Earth, He made provision for it. He created animals and the food they would require. He gave them an idyllic existence where the environment met all their needs. When He created Adam and placed him in the garden to tend it, he was giving the animals and the Earth something to keep track of it, to love it and care for it. The animals, coming to Adam for their names, were part of the intimate bond that parents naming a child see every day. This wasn’t subjection in the sense of authoritarian rule but loving leadership.
When I think of this, I think of Jesus being the Good Shepherd, who takes care of and loves his sheep. It’s not power for power’s sake, but a leader whose interest is the interest of others.
Men are vilified for leadership to the point that many either abdicate or dominate. Neither of these fulfills the task given to the man to lead– and it doesn’t help that those that he would lead believe they either need no leader or actively believe that they should lead instead.
Men Were Created To Be Loyal
Fidelity was first directed to the man in the book of Genesis. Just look at the creation of Eve:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:24-25
To say that the man was to be joined, and place his wife in a higher position than his family, would just be restating the verse! Adam told all that came after him that their priority was their wife, and this came before sin entered the world. The design was for parents to raise children who would eventually be faithful to someone that whom they would bond with for life.
The loyalty that man would show to his family was to be eclipsed by the loyalty the man would show to his wife.
Men Were Created to Love
In the book of Ephesians, chapter 5 we see that man was created to love– just he had been loved by God. Paul makes clear that the correct orientation of a man’s heart is self-sacrificial love for his wife. He compares it to the love that Christ had dying for us on the cross and implies that this is the type of love man should have for one woman.
And we see this sacrificial instinct prevalent in our everyday lives when men push someone out of the way of pain, and when the culture expects the ladies to be the ones in the lifeboats. We consider it a weakness if the man tries to get in those lifeboats or seeks himself first because of this design.
We are to love, not as women love, but in a directed love that seeks what’s best. It drives our leadership and our loyalty. These items are not at war with one another but in concert for the best of both.
