Not long after the first successful vote for Al Mohler’s Truth and Unity Amendment in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) approved an overture at its general assembly declaring the Danvers Statement to be “a biblically faithful declaration.”¹

It would be tempting to celebrate these developments as unqualified successes, as a sign that both denominations are remaining conservative on important questions of the faith. But the fact that said amendment and overture were even needed is a troubling sign. It means that a significant number of Christians in confessionally conservative denominations are either abandoning a robust and fully biblical view of the sexes, or else they are showing that they never had such a view to begin with.

I thought about the contemporary church’s tragic state as I witnessed a recent tweet from Rebecca McLaughlin, a fellow of The Gospel Coalition’s Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, go viral. 

She wrote, “The Bible does not give us different virtue lists for men & women.”

This is partly true, but it misconstrues the total witness of Scripture in ways that are particularly harmful in the present.

Considered on their own, the virtues—the habits of the soul formed by a long obedience in the right direction that orient us to do what is good—simply are what they are: temperance, fortitude, justice, prudence, and their children. Paul commands us to “think on” these things, using the word “virtue” explicitly (Phil. 4:8). And Peter calls all Christians to “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue” (2 Pet. 1:5). He means that each of us should endeavor to embody the character of Christ—“until Christ is formed in you,” as Paul says (Gal. 4:19).

It is true, then, as McLaughlin said, that the Bible does not give “differentiated lists” of virtues for men and women. Instead, the goal of every Christian, male or female, is Christlikeness (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:1). 

But this isn’t the whole testimony of Scripture, and acting as if it were creates significant problems in the present moment. As I reflected on her statement, I was reminded of something the late Tim Keller once said when asked why he didn’t sign The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel.

He opined, “It’s what it’s doing that I don’t like.”²

Many conservative figures criticized Keller for his statement, especially for his not-so-subtle insinuation that the motives of its drafters and signatories were nefarious.³ For the record, I think Keller was quite wrong about The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, but I do not think he was wrong about the nature of language. 

Words indeed “do” things in certain times and places. Suppose, for example, someone were to say that “Muslims are made in the image of God” immediately after another Islamic terrorist attack. The statement, by itself, is true. Every Christian can affirm it on paper. Yet the timing of such a statement has a particular effect—intended or not—on all those who are grieving the (avoidable) murder of others who are also made in the image of God.

In other words, even if such a statement were not a deliberate attempt to discourage Christians from recognizing the serious threat of Islam in the West,⁴ it would still bear culpable neglect for failing to consider how those words affirm one truth at the cost of other, more pertinent truths.⁵ 

So, I was amused to find myself saying with Keller, “It’s what [McLaughlin’s words] are doing that I don’t like.” I assign no attribution of motive here, for only the Lord knows the heart. Instead, I say the above in view of the fact that our cultural moment is one of increasing sexual confusion,⁶ one of advancing feminism,⁷ and one in which many conservative Christians—who ought to know better—are increasingly downplaying the differences between the sexes in God’s design.⁸

The Design Factor: Male and Female, He Created Us

The central point of my argument against McLaughlin‘s construction is this: Though the end or goal for all Christians is the same (a virtuous, Christlike life), the path to that goal differs for men and women according to how God has made us and what he has called us to do.

As for the differences between men and women in God’s design, consider how Jesus applies the general command, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14; cf. Matt. 5:27) by addressing men in a special manner. Christ says, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).⁹

Jesus easily could have said, “Everyone who looks at anyone with lustful intent has already committed adultery in the heart.” There is no grammatical reason why Jesus had to specify the (male) sex of the one who lusts, nor why he had to make a woman the object of lust. Yet Jesus does so, and it should not be difficult to grasp why.

Every person with two eyes and a brain—that is, everyone who is not living in denial of reality— knows that men struggle to a significantly greater degree with sexual sins: lust, pornography, sexual abuse, and rape. The statistical data on these matters is overwhelming. In the case of pornography, 87% of men view pornography at least weekly, while only 28.5% of women do so.¹⁰ Men also commit 96.6% of all confirmed cases of rape or sexual assault.¹¹

We must never forget: God knows our frame (Ps. 103:14). He is the one who made us male and female, and he knows why these differences were intended as well as how sin corrupts what God made to be good. For example, God knows that he imbued women with the power to attract men, as this was his design from the beginning. Notice how Moses is aware of this: “For this reason, a man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife…” (Gen. 2:24; cf. Matt. 19:5). 

Once again, Moses could have said, “For this reason a man and a woman leave their respective fathers and mothers and hold fast to each other,” but he did not do so. At a minimum, the principle of male headship in view here is through the man’s initiative in leaving and cleaving. But I think (following the work of Alastair Roberts and Stephen B. Clark, among others) that the God-given order of his world is also in view in that verse. Specifically, God designed women to be attractive to men, and he designed men to act on this attraction by pursuing a woman unto a godly marriage.

This sort of observation is so obvious that older generations understood it, embraced it, and even made jokes about it. But we’ve forgotten—or, it would be better to say, intentionally rejected—much of what was once obvious to everyone, and we’re worse off for doing so. For this leads us to treat men and women as interchangeable units, completely overlooking our differing characteristics, callings, and proclivities.¹²

Consider another example. In 1 Timothy 2:8–10, God (through Paul) gives instructions to men and women regarding how they should conduct themselves within the household of God (1 Tim. 3:15). Paul writes,

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. (1 Tim. 2:8–10)

Note the asymmetry in Paul’s instructions. He knows, of course, that both men and women alike are forbidden from expressing wrath (Eph. 4:31) and dissentious quarreling (Phil. 2:14). And he knows that both men and women alike ought to adorn themselves with modesty (Heb. 12:28¹³), self-control (Titus 2:2–8), and good works (Eph. 2:10). 

But Paul also knows that men and women are different by design. He knows, in other words, that unbridled men are far more prone to violent crime.¹⁴ That is why Paul redirects male strength (cf. 1 John 2:14) and aggression toward godly ends and away from sinful, destructive ones. Likewise, Paul knows about the woman’s God-given power to attract the attention of others. So he chastens this power by steering it away from self-serving, destructive ends. (Though Paul is not speaking about sexual modesty in 1 Timothy 2:9–10, the point about the power of attraction remains).¹⁵

Only a fool would ask, “Is Paul then saying that women are free to be wrathful and men are free to dress immodestly?” Of course not. But it is also foolish to overlook the asymmetry of the apostle’s instructions, which do not engage in unisex discipleship here. Yet of the two errors I have mentioned here, which is the more common in our day? I know of no one who makes the former error, while many today are guilty of the latter one.

So, yes, anyone can sin in any of the ways Paul mentions, and no one gets a pass because of their sex. However, we need to grasp that men and women are prone to sin in particular ways to an especial degree. This inclination is owing to the way in which sin has spoiled the design of God, taking what he meant for good—like male strength and feminine beauty (Ps. 144:12)—and using it for evil. So, no, strictly speaking, there are not different virtues for men and women. 

But the acquisition of the virtues takes on special significance in the lives of men and women who are inclined to violate them in particular ways. 

The Duty Factor: Masculine and Feminine Expressions of Virtue

Though there are no “different lists” of virtues for men and women in the Scriptures, we have already seen that there are differences in God’s design that led the Lord Jesus and the apostles to speak about particular virtues in asymmetrically gendered ways. Now we need to add to this that men and women also have differing duties, in accordance with different callings, and these affect the expression of the virtues man and woman are called to embody. 

Consider the virtue of fortitude, for example. If a man were to act cowardly in the face of a threat to his family, he would not only be guilty of failing to exhibit fortitude (courage) but also guilty of failing to fulfill his duty as a man, for the man is charged to “guard/watch over” what is entrusted to him (Gen. 2:15), even laying down his life when necessary (Eph. 5:25). 

However, women are not explicitly called by God to protect their husbands in the same way (for they have different bodies and different callings). If, therefore, a woman were to act cowardly in the face of a threat to her family, we might say that she was guilty of failing to exhibit courage, but we would not (or, rather, we should not) say that she was acting “unwomanly.”

This truth is why the prophet Nahum mocked the people of Nineveh, saying that their troops (which were all male) “are like women in your midst” (Nah. 3:13). We have two options here: either (1) God, via Nahum, is a sexist who mocks women, or (2) there is something different about men and women in God’s design that makes such a remark fitting and appropriate in that context. (As for me and my house, we shall choose the latter of those options, and let all the redeemed of the Lord say so.)

So, then, there is something about the way God made men, and what he has called them to be and do, that requires a different expression of fortitude or courage that is not demanded of women in all times and places. The same goes for women and other expressions of particular virtues.¹⁶

At this point, the knowledgeable objector will raise questions about women like Jael (Judges 4:17ff) or the woman of Thebez, who dropped a millstone on the skull of Abimelch (Judg. 9:53). Weren’t these women, the objector says, displaying a masculine expression of fortitude? 

Consider the details of those accounts. First, when Jael drives the tent peg through Sisera’s skull, she is going above and beyond the call of duty (Judg. 4:21). Further, as many scholars have pointed out, there is a gendered element to her deed. Jael did not conquer Sisera on the battlefield but in a homely tent (Judg. 4:18), after giving the man some milk (Judg. 4:19). Sisera even asked Jael, “Is there a man here?” (Judg. 4:20), for he knew the usual source of danger to a soldier. And it’s only in that context, when “he was lying fast asleep from weariness” (Judg. 4:22), that Jael did her glorious deed.¹⁷ 

Similarly, as regards the woman of Thebez, she pushes a millstone—the kind used for grinding wheat to make flour for baking bread—onto Abimelech’s head (Judges 9:53, 2 Sam. 11:21). As author Emma Waters summarized in her endorsement of my response to Rebecca McLaughlin, “No woman in the canonical Bible ever picks up a sword to fight, and instead relies on distinctly feminine tools: tent peg, mill grinding stone, hospitality, childbirth, and so on.”

The mention of childbirth may raise a few eyebrows, but Waters is precisely correct. For just as the Lord told the serpent that there would be “enmity between you and the woman, and between youroffspring and her offspring” (Gen. 3:15a) he mentions the woman’s postlapsarian struggles in the bringing forth of children (Gen. 3:16). This is why Paul would later say that “she will be saved through childbearing” (1 Tim. 2:15), referring to a principal way in which women battle against the serpent and his offspring, namely, by bringing godly offspring into the world—most especially, the One who would bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15b).

As an aside (since we’re in Judges), it has always struck me as humorous that people think Deborah stands as some kind of symbol for egalitarian strengths or giftedness. For when she and Barak sing their song of victory, Deborah says of herself, “I, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel” (Judg. 5:7). And later the author of Hebrews 11 mentions Barak (Heb. 11:32), but not Deborah, in his famous “hall of faith,” despite the fact that the former never acted without the latter. That’s a monstrous blast of the trumpet against anyone who is inclined to see Deborah’s story as a kind of proof text that strikes against either the principle of male headship or the distinctness of God’s sexual designs.

Conclusion: Same End Point, but Differing Paths

Men and women are both called to Christlikeness. But because we are men and women, the path to Christlikeness is marked by differing tendencies and differing duties (callings) that give rise to differing expressions of the virtues.

Building an illustration from Alastair Roberts,¹⁸ it is best to say that when it comes to virtue, men and women are called to play the same notes, but they play them with different timbres¹⁹ according to their differences in God’s design.

McLaughlin’s expanded tweet goes on to say, “Much of the narrative I’m hearing about men & women cannot account (for instance) for Paul saying to the Thessalonians, ‘But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children’ (1 Thess. 2:7).”

Though McLaughlin identifies as a complementarian, her argument here is remarkably similar to those made by egalitarians in other contexts. That argument, in essence, is that since men and women are called to be gentle, any association of gentleness with femininity is chauvinistic and out of place. (One wonders, of course, what the apostle Peter would say about this, given what he wrote in 1 Pet. 3:5).

Yet note that when Paul says “we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother,” Paul is using an analogy (hence the word “like”). And, as SBTS PhD student David Mitzenmacher observes, “That analogy works only because maternal nurture has an intelligibly determinate form.” To speak plainly, Paul knows that while both men and women are called to gentleness in Scripture (e.g., Gal. 5:23), there is an expression of maternal gentleness that made the apostle’s metaphor so fitting. That is also why Paul does not say, “But we were gentle among you, like a father taking care of his own children.”

Similarly, just a few verses later, Paul adds these words: “For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God” (1 Thess. 2:11–12). This is significant. It shows that when Paul wanted to make a point about his own gentleness, the analogy of a mother was most fitting, but when he wanted to emphasize his authoritative exhortations and charges, only the analogy of a father would do.

The desperate need of our context in the West today, unlike other cultures and times in the past, is not an emphasis on those places where men and women are the same, for this is all that our culture talks about. Indeed, any suggestion whatsoever that men and women differ in any way, to any degree, is met with the sharpest condemnation. 

Instead, the crying need of the hour is for Christians to declare that men and women are neither identical nor interchangeable. To be a man means to be a son, a brother, and a potential husband and father, with all the embodied differences and differing duties that God has given to each. But to be a woman means to be a daughter, a sister, and a potential wife and mother, with all the embodied differences and differing duties that God has assigned to each. 

The differences between men and women may seem to diminish if we speak about virtue or Christlikeness or the fruit of the Spirit in the abstract, but they are amplified in practice when we seek to disciple embodied souls whom God made male and female.²⁰

Those who understand all this will see no threat to women (or men) in my words, much less the words of Scripture. Rather, they will see that though all Christians strive after the same goal—conformity to the image of Christ—our steps will differ along the way in accordance with how and why God made men and women different from each other and different for each other, both for his glory and our good.²¹

1. For a report on the successful votes in both the SBC and the PCA, see Matt Damico, “News: SBC and PCA Strengthen Complementarian Commitments,” CMBW, June 29, 2026. ↩︎
2. The original video has been taken down due to a copyright claim by Rafael E. Lara, however, a partial transcript can be found at Relevant, who endorsed his remarks in total. ↩︎
3. For this portion of Keller’s remarks, see James White’s critique of Keller’s full statement here. ↩︎
4. For an excellent treatment of the Islamic threat today, see the June 2026 issue of Christ Over All, “Unmasking Islam.” ↩︎
5. Like the fact that people made in God’s image forfeit their lives when they take the lives of others (Gen. 9:6). ↩︎
6. See the Nashville Statement, along with the statement’s endorsements, which repeatedly highlight the sexual “confusion” of our time. ↩︎
7. See my article here on “Slaying Feminism: Ending the Impossible Quest for Sexual Interchangeability,” Christ Over All, October 28, 2024. ↩︎
8. See my article with Bryan Laughlin, “Complementarians and the Rise of Second-Wave Evangelical Feminism,” Sola Ecclesia, February 26, 2024. ↩︎
9. Paul does something similar in 1 Corinthians 7:1. ↩︎
10. See Katharina Buchholz, “How Much of the Internet Consists of Porn?” Feb. 11, 2019, citing studies by Columbia University, et al. ↩︎
11. See the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, “Crime in the United States, 2019.” ↩︎
12. For an excellent article on this error, with an alley-oop from C. S. Lewis, see Colin Smothers, “The Fallacy of Interchangeability,” CBMW, June 5, 2019. ↩︎
13. The Greek word for “modesty” is exceedingly rare, being used only once in the NT outside of 1 Timothy 2:9 (viz., Heb. 12:28), and even there, it is a textual variant. But its synonyms are used in various places, including of men as well as women (Eph. 4:2; Phil. 2:3; Col. 3:12; 1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8; Titus 2:2, 5). ↩︎
14. For example, 88% of known murderers are male. See the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, “Crime in the United States, 2019.” Similar numbers are found for the perpetrators of domestic violence. See the U.S. Department of Justice’s report on “Domestic Relationships and Violent Crimes, 2020–2024.” ↩︎
15. Paul is quite clear that the modesty he has in view concerns ostentatious displays, particularly those involving wealth. That said, it is likely that sexual modesty is not mentioned because in the ancient world, such things were taken for granted. Prostitutes dressed with more modesty in first-century Palestine than the average American woman does today. This type of behavior should be ruled out, by good and necessary consequence, from the principle Paul articulates here. ↩︎
16. For an excellent example of how expressions of virtues differ according to our design, see Joe Rigney, “Men and Women of Courage,” King’s Domain Conference, 2024. ↩︎
17. For a popular-level treatment of this story that makes the same points I raise here, see Emma Waters, Lead Like Jael: 7 Timeless Principles for Today’s Women of Faith (Regnery Faith, 2026). ↩︎
18. Roberts writes, “Man and woman, in their particular labour and relations, have a sort of ‘musical’ role to perform. They repeat in their own ways the foundational musical themes provided by God’s own labour and provide figures of ‘musical’ realities that are gloriously expressed in Christ and the Church.” See Roberts, “The Music of Male and Female,” Primer 03 (2018), 32. ↩︎
19. Timbre is the musical term that denotes the tonal quality of a sound. For example, when a piano and a trumpet play the same note, it differs not in pitch but in the kind of sound that is produced. ↩︎
20. For more on the significance of sexual difference, See also Doug Ponder, “A Biblical Vision of the Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry,” Eikon, June 10, 2024, and “On Natural and Complementary Differences: A Forum (Part 2),” Eikon, Nov. 21, 2024. ↩︎
21. See my article here on “Different From and Different For,” American Reformer, April 5, 2024. ↩︎