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What significance is attached to the historical fact that the incarnate Son of God, the

eternal Word who took on human flesh, came into this world as a man (i.e., as a male human
being)? Does Scripture give us reason to think that his male gender does or does not have
theological and soteriological importance? Is it necessary that the Savior who would come be
born, live, and die as a man, or could our Savior have been a woman?

Theological Necessity of the Male Gender of our Savior

Consider with me a number of reasons (twelve, to be exact) for concluding that the male

gender of Jesus was essential both to the reality of his incarnational identity and to the
accomplishment of his incarnational mission.

First and most basic, Jesus Christ`s pre-incarnate existence and identity is clearly

revealed to be that of the eternal Son of the Father. As Jesus says in John 6:37-38, All that the
Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never case out. I have come
down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me,

i.e., the will of his

Father in heaven. And in John 6:44 Jesus continues, No one can come to me unless the Father
who sent me draws him . . . . Clearly, Jesus understands that he has come down from heaven,
that he has been sent to earth to fulfill the mission for which he was sent, and that it is the Father
(in heaven) who sent the Son (from heaven to earth) to do this work. As Augustine has put this
point,

For the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son. In the light of this we can
now perceive that the Son is not just said to have been sent because the Word became
flesh, but that he was sent in order for the Word to become flesh, and by this bodily
presence to do all that was written. That is, we should understand that it was not just the
man who the Word became that was sent, but that the Word was sent to become man. For
he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance or anything in him that
was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father
being from the Son.

The Son, then, is the eternal Son of the Father; and the Father is the eternal Father of the Son.
This relationship stands apart from the created order and the incarnation itself, while it is also
true that this relationship accounts, in part, for the created order (i.e., the Father creates through
the Son, e.g., Col 1:12-16) and the incarnation (i.e., the Word of John`s prologue displays the
glory of the Father, e.g., John 1:14).

Now, as it is true that God is not in essence male, so also is it true that neither the eternal

Father nor the eternal Son is male; neither the divine essence, nor the eternal Persons of the God-
head are gendered, literally and really. So, why is the First Person of the Trinity the eternal
Father, and the Second Person, the eternal Son? Must this not be the language God has
chosen to indicate the type of eternal relationship that exists between the first and second
Persons? If the Son is sent by the Father, and if the Son comes to do the will of the

Unless otherwise noted, all citations are from the English Standard Version. Emphases are added.

St. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 5 of The Works of St. Augustine (Brooklyn, NY: New City

Press, 1991) IV. 27 (italics added).