The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

by Richard D. Phillips

Publisher:

Reformation Trust

, 2010

Overview

There is a crying need in the church today for men to be men. But competing visions for what a man is to be—some growing out of popular culture and others arising from flawed teaching in the church—are exacerbating the problem.

Rev. Richard D. Phillips believes the problem and the inadequate solutions being put forward demand sound exegesis of biblical passages relating to masculinity. The Bible alone has the answer to what men are to be in the eyes of their Creator.

In The Masculine Mandate, Rev. Phillips provides this essential exegesis and issues a call to reformation in the evangelical church’s attitude toward the role of men in the family, the church, and society.

With the Logos edition, The Masculine Mandate is fully integrated with the other resources in your digital library, including Bibles, maps, dictionaries, and numerous other Bible study tools. All Scripture references are linked directly to the text of your favorite Bible translation, making your Bible study and teaching preparations more effective and rewarding. You can also explore Scripture on a deeper level with powerful search features, Passage Guides, and all the other interactive features in your Logos library. That makes this important book more useful than ever before for pastors, teachers, Bible study leaders, and anyone else desiring to get deeper into the truth of God’s Word.

Key Features

• Foreword by Jerry Bridges
• Preface by the author
• Questions for reflection and discussion

Contents

Top Highlights

“The point of Wild at Heart is that a man finds his identity outside the garden in wilderness quests. In contrast, the point of Genesis 2:8 is that God has put the man into the garden, into the world of covenantal relationships and duties, in order to gain and act out his God-given identity there. If God intends men to be wild at heart, how strange that he placed man in the garden, where his life would be shaped not by self-centered identity quests but by covenantal bonds and blessings.” (Page 7)

“Indeed, this is what modern and postmodern masculinity has been all about—men behaving like little boys forever, serving themselves in the name of self-discovery.” (Page 9)

“Rather, we are called to ‘work’ whatever ‘field’ God has given us. Men are to be planters, builders, and growers. A man’s working life is to be spent accomplishing things, usually as part of a company or other grouping of people. We are to invest our time, our energies, our ideas, and our passions in bringing good things into being. A faithful man, then, is one who has devoted himself to cultivating, building, and growing.” (Page 13)

“Therefore, the humble working man, toiling faithfully at his job, nurturing and shepherding his wife, and seeking to bring up his children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, conforms to God’s picture of a real man.” (Page xii)

“Effective leadership always requires the leader to devote himself to acquiring the competence necessary to guide his particular flock. The most necessary competence of any leader is a knowledge of God’s truth in the Bible.” (Page 48)

Praise for the Print Edition

Egalitarian and chauvinistic thinking have corrupted our ideas about godly manhood. With boldness of heart and pastoral wisdom, Rick Phillips leads us back toward biblical manhood—masculinity grounded in the cultural mandate, the cross, and the ordinary means of grace. May men of the church answer the call of this mandate to stand up and be counted, and to live out their faith courageously as workers, protectors, nurturers, and leaders for Christ.

—Eric C. Redmond, senior pastor, Reformation Alive Baptist Church, Temple Hills, Md., author, Where Are All the Brothers? Straight Answers to Men’s Questions about the Church

In the face of the widespread confusion in our culture, Rick Phillips lays out the biblical mandate for men to work and keep the world around us. This book carefully avoids stereotypes and legalistic rules, while unfolding with clarity and practical simplicity the biblical vision of men as individuals and in relationships to other men, to our wives and children, and to the church of Jesus Christ. I learned much from this book and look forward to sharing it with my sons.

—Iain M. Duguid, professor of religion, Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.

Product Details

• Title: The Masculine Mandate: Godrsquo;s Calling to Men
• Author: Rev. Richard D. Phillips
• Publisher: Reformation Trust
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 175

About Richard D. Phillips

Richard Davis Phillips has been the Senior Minister of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina (PCA) since July, 2007. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan, and a master of business administration degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Prior to entering the ministry, he commanded tank units as an officer in the U.S. Army and later served as an assistant professor of leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He came to faith in Jesus Christ at the age of 30, and was soon was leading evangelistic Bible studies at the college where he was teaching. A few years later he received God’s call to enter the gospel ministry, and received a master of divinity degree from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA.