Thank you very much.

And I bring you greetings from the Whitra's and from a half dozen other alumni of this college that I didn't know where at my church, but when I asked them to pray for me yesterday as I left they met me at the door

and said well we went to Brian tell them hi so hi.

I'd like to pray as I begin and take you with me into this topic. Father in heaven,

I ask that you would make me an instrument of truth this morning, that you

would fill me with your Holy Spirit to open eyes to your perspective on things.

I pray for these students that you give them

a wakeful and attentive mind and a positively critical mindset to discern what is good and what is bad and to lay hold on the truth and love it and live it. In Jesus name, I ask it,

Amen.

The longer I think about this whole issue of manhood and womanhood and God, the more I am led to not focus on merely the question of roles, like should there be a head of the

home and should it be a man or should there be primary unique leadership

in the church and should it be a man. But beneath those practical role questions to the question of who I am and who

you are by virtue of our male or female personhood.

In other words, it seems to me very, very, very important,

not just to ask the question of roles, but the question of personhood and nature and what we are by virtue of being created in God's image male or female.

It seems to me that this has not been the case.

This way of asking the question hasn't been the case for the length of time I've been thinking

about this issue, 15 years or so.

And there's some reasons for that.

Let me give you one. Paul Jewett was a professor of mine at Fuller who is

now deceased and I believe with the Lord in spite of the fact that I disagreed with

him on this issue, wrote the groundbreaking work about this issue in

...