Does the Father Hold His Sons?
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Student: Professor, can I ask you something that’s been sitting with me? Jesus is so gentle with me. I’ve always thought of the Father as a girl dad. But then I started wondering about my brothers, my friends’ sons, the men I know. Some of them grew up being told not to cry, to toughen up. Does Jesus treat men differently than He treats us?
Professor: That’s a good question to bring in at the end of a long day. Let me answer it with another. When you picture Jesus being tender with someone, who do you see?
Student: Mary at His feet. The woman at the well. The woman who touched His robe.
Professor: All true. Now tell me about the night Peter denied Him.
Student: Three times. And then he went out and wept bitterly.
Professor: And before that night ever happened, what had Jesus already told him?
Student: I’m not sure.
Professor: Luke 22:32. “But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail.” Jesus prayed for the failure before the failure. And after the resurrection, where do we find the two of them?
Student: On the beach. Jesus cooked breakfast and asked him three times, “Do you love me?”
Professor: Three denials, three restorations. Does that sound like a man being told to toughen up?
Student: No. It sounds like the way He’s been with me.
Professor: Then let’s keep going. What did Thomas say he needed?
Student: To see the wounds. To touch them.
Professor: And did Jesus scold him for it?
Student: He invited him. “Put your finger here, and look at my hands.”
Professor: He held His own scars out to a doubting man. Now think about the parable of the lost son. When the boy comes home, what does the father do?
Student: He runs to him. “Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”
Professor: That is the picture Jesus chose to show us the Father. Is that a father who tells his son to stop crying?
Student: No. But then where did that idea even come from?
Professor: Not from Scripture. Tell me, how many men cry in the Bible?
Student: Peter. David, I think.
Professor: And Joseph, when he finally revealed himself to his brothers. “He wept so loudly the Egyptians could hear him.” And who else? The shortest verse in the Bible.
Student: “Then Jesus wept.”
Professor: Hebrews 5:7 says that while He was on earth, He prayed “with a loud cry and tears.” The most complete man who ever lived cried out loud before His Father. So when someone tells a boy that real men don’t cry, whose definition of a man is he using?
Student: Not Jesus’s.
Professor: Good. Now let me turn your question around. Is Jesus only ever soft with women?
Student: I’d like to think so, but no. He corrected Martha. “Martha, Martha.” He told the woman at the well everything she’d done.
Professor: And in both of those moments, was He pushing them away or drawing them in?
Student: Drawing them in. Martha got her brother back. The woman at the well ran to tell her whole town.
Professor: So He is firm with daughters and tender with sons. He is the same Lord to both. Which brings us to your real question. If He loves us the same, is there any difference at all?
Student: That’s exactly what I can’t figure out. We’re so different. It feels like there should be.
Professor: Go back to the garden. What was Adam placed there to do?
Student: “To tend and watch over it.”
Professor: Those are two Hebrew words. The first is ʿabad, Strong’s H5647. It means to work, to serve. The second is shamar, H8104. To keep, to guard, to protect. What does that tell you about his assignment?
Student: He was meant to serve and protect what God gave him.
Professor: And what did God call Eve?
Student: A helper. Which honestly always bothered me a little. It sounds like an assistant.
Professor: The word is ʿezer, H5828. Where else does that word appear? Try Psalm 121.
Student: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth!”
Professor: The same word God uses to describe Himself.
Student: Oh. So it isn’t smaller. It’s a word of strength.
Professor: Both callings are drawn from God’s own character. He serves and guards. He helps and rescues. Now look at how Paul tells men to carry themselves in 1 Corinthians 16:13. “Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong.” That word courageous is andrizomai, G407, literally “act like men.” What comes in the very next verse?
Student: “And do everything with love.”
Professor: Strength and love in the same breath. And when Paul tells husbands how to lead, in Ephesians 5:25, what is the model?
Student: “Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her.”
Professor: So biblical strength is strength that kneels, strength that lays itself down. Now, one more set of verses. Galatians 3:28.
Student: “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Professor: And Romans 8:15. When we are adopted, what do we call Him?
Student: “Abba, Father.” Both of us. Sons and daughters.
Professor: And 1 Peter 3:7 calls a wife her husband’s “equal partner in God’s gift of new life.” Equal partner. So, when it comes to grace, to adoption, to being comforted, is there any difference?
Student: No. We come to Him with the same need.
Professor: Even the comfort crosses over. In Isaiah 66:13, God says, “I will comfort you there in Jerusalem as a mother comforts her child.” He describes Himself as a father and as a mother. So then, where does the difference live?
Student: I think I see it now. Adam was given ground to tend and guard. Eve was called to the kind of help God Himself gives. Our assignments can look different. But the Father who runs down the road for His son is the same Father who calls me His daughter.
Professor: Say it plainly.
Student: The difference between men and women shows up in how we serve and steward, not in how much we need to be held.
Professor: And the men who were told they had to stop crying?
Student: They need to know the same arms are open to them. Jesus wept. Peter wept. Joseph wept so loud a whole house heard it. And not one of them was turned away.
Professor: Not one. He never once looked away.
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