The New Eve (11 page)

You know how the story ends. To paraphrase Romans 5:15, through one man (Adam) the world cascaded into death, but through a second man (Jesus), the way of salvation and new life was opened to all. So while Adam failed his manhood test in the Garden of Eden, Jesus triumphed with His in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Not as I will, but as You will,” He cried (Matt. 26:39). Rejecting passivity, He selflessly loved his bride and bravely took a stand for His responsibilities even though it cost Him everything. He obeyed the Father's call because He trusted the Father's promise that the suffering of the cross was a necessary part of the journey to greater glory. “For the joy set before Him,” Jesus endured the cross, Hebrews 12:2 says. In the end Jesus' courageous leadership showed all men what the first man's didn't: God's will, however difficult it may appear or feel at any given moment, ultimately results in a richer, more abundant life and greater reward. This was the vision Jesus held on to in modeling a thoroughly masculine life.

So it was in bringing Adam and Jesus together that I discovered a vision of manhood worthy of any man's consideration. By
noting the parallels between these two towering masculine figures, their points of departure, as well as the different responses each had to his specific manhood responsibilities, I pieced together a biblical definition of manhood that now gives vision and inspiration to thousands of men who have tested it against Scripture. Here it is:

A real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, and expects God's greater reward.
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Several years after developing this biblical definition of authentic manhood, I was asked by the women's ministry coordinator at our church to develop a series of messages on biblical womanhood. Right away I wondered,
Does Scripture provide for women a pattern for envisioning biblical womanhood like that of Adam and Jesus?
Put another way,
If Jesus is the second Adam, is there a second Eve?
Almost as soon as I asked that question, I had my answer.

Mary.

This special woman presents herself in such a way as to be considered Eve's righteous twin. Any serious reader of Scripture can't help but notice this. The Bible is arranged in such a way as to actually invite this conclusion. Much as Eve is on center stage in the high drama opening the Old Testament, Mary stands in the spotlight in the powerful events opening the New Testament. In different ways both are clearly the feminine counterparts to the two Adams. Both women help unleash history-making social and spiritual influences and leave as their legacies one-of-a-kind marks on the human race. Eve's foolish choices are used to introduce sin and death into the world. Conversely, Mary's courageous choices play a central role in helping to bring forgiveness and life back to the world. Eve is the model of an
outside-in lifestyle; Mary, the model of an inside-out lifestyle. Eve and Mary—Mary and Eve. So striking are the obvious parallels between these two women that early Christians in the first three hundred years after Christ actually considered Mary to be a “second Eve.”
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Unfortunately Mary rarely invites this healthy comparison today. Instead, for many Christians, she has become a controversial figure. Because she was the mother of God, opinions about her vary and often go to extremes. Some have held her in such high esteem as to actually worship her, while others react to this exaggerated adoration by retreating to the opposite error of ignoring her altogether. Some feel compelled to warn others that Mary is really nothing special. It's really a shame. As the famed New Testament scholar A. T. Robertson once said, Mary has long been “the victim of circumstances that have obscured her real character.”
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But character is what makes Mary stand so tall in Scripture and among women. She exuded exemplary virtue and bold, extraordinary faith. Indeed, she lived the life the first Eve forsook. But even more important for our purposes, Mary's life, when coupled with that of Eve's, helps us to fashion a biblical definition of authentic womanhood.

When Mary's life is placed next to Eve's, I believe three significant issues stand out that serve as building blocks for constructing a vision of authentic womanhood.

Both Mary and Eve were offered the chance to accept or reject God's word. In Eve's case God's commands could not have been clearer: be fruitful and multiply, subdue and rule, leave and
cleave, and do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will die (Gen. 2:17, 24). With those core callings and a single restriction, Eve was free to enter all the goodness God had put before her and Adam. And Eden, the most idyllic paradise on earth, was just the beginning of that goodness. In truth, it was merely a launching pad for adventures yet to be revealed.

But this goodness soon was challenged. As we observed in the previous chapter, Eve heard from the serpent that there were better things beyond God's will for her—things she thought would be much more satisfying. God had been holding these things back and lying about them too. “You surely will not die!” the serpent scoffed while holding up the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:4). Satan was telling Eve, the only thing that will die is your limitations. To eat is to become like God, to live life without restraint, to make your own rules, to decide for yourself what's right and what's wrong.

So Eve listened. And she responded by choosing to believe the deceiver's offer rather than embracing God's callings and the goodness she already enjoyed from Him. “There must be more,” she concluded.

Mary's crossroads were even more daunting than Eve's. Seriously. Remember how it began? The angel Gabriel invaded Mary's home with his awesome presence (Luke 1:26–30). He seemed more threatening than inviting. The universal reaction to angelic visitation in the Bible is fear. Angels scared people stiff.

Take the priest Zacharias, for instance. He was in the temple of God when an angel visited him. Did he clasp the angel's hand and trade banter? No, Zacharias froze in his tracks (Luke 1:12). It is a fearful thing to stand in the presence of holiness.

And so here was Mary, a young girl alone at home, betrothed to a good man, minding her own business, and suddenly she was confronted with a supernatural encounter that might have
ruined her life. God had made her pregnant before marriage! But He gave her His promise that this pregnancy of bearing the Son of God would make her life special too. It was an awkward, overwhelming moment. It sounded wonderful, but it also could have been a catastrophe. There was a real world out there that frowned on unmarried, pregnant teenage girls. After this encounter Mary could have easily panicked and submitted to an abortion (they were available in her day and popular among the Romans) or to a secret divorce (Joseph was willing to do so; Matt. 1:19), or she could have beat a trail out of town, leaving God's calling far behind. But Mary instead showed remarkable faith. She stood her ground, trembling and yet bold, and chose to embrace God's calling on her life. Mary's cousin, Elizabeth, summed up Mary's choice this way: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord” (Luke 1:45). As in Eve's case, this was Mary's life-defining moment. But whereas Eve shunned God's word, Mary embraced it.

Action flows from belief. What you do reflects what you believe about yourself, the world, and God—your worldview as we discussed in chapter 2. We've seen what Mary and Eve chose to believe. Now what did they
do?

In Eve's case it can be summarized in two words: she ate (Gen. 3:6). In this daring act she abandoned not only God but also the vital core callings He had set forth to bless her life: to be a helper to Adam, to nurture the next generation, and to be a Kingdom builder. All of that richness was abandoned for the promise of grander things as the fruit touched her lips.

Mary's choice of trusting God's word led to a completely different set of actions. She didn't strike out on her own or seek to
end her pregnancy. In fact, she did just the opposite. She drew closer to God, cherished her pregnancy, and carried through with her marriage to Joseph. In spite of the fear she felt and the shame and misunderstanding that she knew would follow, she courageously aligned her life with God's callings. Nowhere is that alignment better seen than in Mary's remarkable statement, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Both Mary and Eve expected good to come from their beliefs and actions. In making her break, Eve obviously envisioned even greater personal fulfillments and adventures than God's regime could provide. Her imagination, no doubt, ran wild.
What new freedoms will being like God give me? What wonders will knowing everything, good and evil, open to me? How much greater will I be? How much happier?
Here was the life she'd been missing, though before this moment she never once thought
anything
was missing. But now, caught up in the serpent's words, it all sounded too good to pass up. So she went for the life she believed could offer her more than God had given. And indeed she found more—more pain, sorrow, and regret than she knew existed.

Mary expected great reward too, but in her case it circled back to what God had promised her. We admire the courageous obedience she displayed, especially when we know the major payoff is still a number of hard years away. But Mary's faith held firm to God's word. Amazingly, she exulted in God's goodness to her before any of the really good results came to pass. In Luke 1:48–49 she said, “He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me; and holy is His name.” Mary was celebrating God's goodness
at a time when all she could reasonably see was the scandal that would soon visit her. She was about to be a social outcast and a cause for gossip. Yet with the eyes of faith she trusted God and believed her life would be blessed with His best. Nine months later that's exactly what she got.

So here are the lives of history's two most important and influential women. Eve and Mary are
the
women of the Bible. In reviewing their divergent responses to God, to temptation, and to what each considered the better life, I find a biblical definition of authentic womanhood that I believe offers vision to any woman's life. Here it is:

A real woman embraces God's core callings, chooses wisely, lives courageously, and expects God's greater reward.

Let's unpack each phrase of this definition from a twenty-first-century perspective.

Those callings should be clear to you now. Namely, a woman is to pursue deep companionship with a man; launch healthy, godly children into the next generation; and advance God's kingdom in ways appropriate to her gifting. These are the callings around which the rest of your life should be prioritized, organized, and managed.

When any of these three goals are neglected or sacrificed by you as a woman for whatever reason (overemphasizing one goal at the expense of the others or compromising or abandoning one or more of these goals for other ambitions), trouble is usually waiting on the road ahead.

As mentioned in chapter 1, Sylvia Ann Hewlett set out to
write a book about a dozen women of what she called the “breakthrough generation.” These are trailblazers who broke through bias and barriers to get their fair share of male-dominated fields. As these women were turning fifty at the dawn of the new millennium, Hewlett wanted to know their perspectives now that they were comfortably on top and had the chance to look back down their path to success. Several themes were common in all the interviews: an emphasis on education, unmatched ambition, and long hours. But after a while Hewlett noticed another theme shared by each of these women: all of them were childless. A dozen women, zero babies. Hewlett found she was on to something. She had selected these dozen women because each of them had reached the top. The odds that all of them would prove to be childless seemed impossibly long. But a little more research revealed that the odds are actually
high.
Today a whopping 49 percent of women business executives earning $100,000 or more annually are childless.
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As Hewlett turned greater attention to the childlessness of her interview group, the women became “guarded, even evasive,” but they couldn't hide their feelings for long. One after another they admitted a deep sense of loss.
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What went wrong? Simply this: you cannot sacrifice any of the goals God has given you as a woman without loss. God created you this way. In her study of working women, Lisa Belkin noticed that a growing number of high-achieving women are leaving the workplace for motherhood. “There is nothing wrong with money or power,” she said, “but they come at a high price. And lately when women talk about success, they use words like satisfaction, balance, and sanity.”
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A real woman will do her best to find a balance that allows her to be successful, not only in a career but also in all three of God's callings for her life.

The modern world's dizzying array of opportunities and options constantly vie for our attention and affection. This makes choosing harder than ever before. Because we don't want to miss out on anything, it's natural to try and do everything. Unfortunately that grab-for-all-you-can lifestyle leaves most women in a state of near exhaustion. One woman confessed to me, “I am spread so thin right now, I don't think there's anything left of me. I am an overworked professional, an overtired mother, a part-time wife, and a fair-weather friend.”

Is that you? Without a vision of what is most important, everything becomes a priority. Everything gets a yes because you have no grid to help you say no. Where there is no vision, life gets out of control, remember?