What Is The Gender Of God

The Gender of God Part 1 God the Father and God the Son are both definitely male persona, so why am I writing about the gender of God? The simple answer is: why is God limited to only one gender? When did His creation establish the “fact” that God is restricted to what we can comprehend or know or think of Him? If God hasn’t revealed something to us, does that mean that it can not exist? Or even worse, is God revealing information to us and we are not paying attention and don’t get it? We are not consistent in our own reasoning. We will say one God, who has one gender, but we will freely claim that He is three unique Gods (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit). Our irrational thinking is based on using our physical world view as reference when trying to express the Spiritual world of reality. The best we can do is limited to our present knowledge. There are certain concepts which have never entered into our mind, let alone do we have the ability to explain them. There is the Spiritual realm where most of God’s Kingdom has never been shown or explained to us. The sole reason we know of it, is because God has chosen to enlighten us by speaking of it; He says it exists. Another example of our disjointed logic is that of being “Born Again”. All Christians have experienced it, yet other than saying God forgives us and now abides in us, we have little if no understanding of what happened. We have cute sayings like; “God is in my heart”, but we can offer no evidence of this. Our heart looks and weighs the same before Salvation, as it will after God sets up residence in it. Hopefully we will start thinking God’s way, but there is no physical proof of His indwelling. So why should our lack of spiritual perception in other areas limit God in regard to His gender? An observation on my part is that God is short on details. He doesn’t always feel it necessary to explain Himself or His motives and actions to His creation. He dispenses information as He pleases. Understanding on our part has never been important, but following and trusting Him are of the highest significance. God also distributes information as needed, as in the case of Moses; Exodus 6:2 “And God speaketh unto Moses, and saith unto him, 'I [am] Jehovah, 3. and I appear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; as to My name Jehovah, I have not been known to them”. Was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a different God than the God Moses knew? No, same God. He just revealed to Moses something He had chosen not to show the others. Likewise many Prophets had spoken of Jesus; they had prophesied about Him and they longed to see this image of God. God gave an inkling of what was to come, but the Prophets could not appreciate the significance of Jehovah coming in as Jesus. Isaiah 40:3. “A voice is crying - in a wilderness - Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, Make straight in a desert a highway to our God. 4. Every valley is raised up, And every mountain and hill become low, And the crooked place hath become a plain, And the entangled places a valley. 5. And revealed hath been the honour of Jehovah, And seen [it] have all flesh together, For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.” Matthew 3: 1. “And in those days cometh John the Baptist, proclaiming in the wilderness of Judea, 2. and saying, 'Reform, for come nigh hath the reign of the heavens,'

3. for this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, 'A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, straight make ye His paths.'” Shaddai, Jehovah and Jesus are different persona of God. The idea that we have a complete understanding of God and that we can forcefully conclude that He is solely male just may mean we know less than we think we do. Have we established ourselves as the benchmark by which we measure God? Is it because we are usually a single gendered person? Do we make God in our image; do we restrict Him to our comprehension and our attributes? When God created man He created him in His image male and female, so God has both “male” and “female” as part of His image. Genesis 1:25. “And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good. 26. And God saith, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.' 27. And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them. 28. And God blesseth them, and God saith to them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth.'” The female was not created as a “fix” because man couldn’t do the job himself or because God had forgotten half of the chromosomes and then needed a “place” to reproduce them. God had created the animals after their kind and He created humans after His “kind”. Verse 26 should be read as 'Let Us make mankind in Our image…”. Also verse 27 should be “… God prepareth mankind in His image…”. The word that was used is “adam” which means - ruddy i.e. a human being (an individual or the species, mankind, etc.). So both the male and female are made in God’s image. God has an image of “maleness” and God has an image of “femaleness”. I want to mention here the possibility that Adam may have been both “male and female” all in one! Some people are born today with both genders, and it would make perfect sense that it might have been the way Adam began. The idea that God is also feminine seems to invoke anger or an attitude of opposition in many, as if we are down grading an all masculine, all powerful God into a multiple gendered less godly kind of God. Culture and traditions have manipulated us into believing that being a male is superior to that of being a female, but that is not true. There absolutely are differences in the roles of the male and of the female, but the sexes were designed to compliment each other. As God said the two shall become one. This hybrid, the fusing of separate identities into one, is a common theme that God uses. God joins physical man with physical woman, He joins physical man or woman with Spiritual God, He joins physical God (Jesus) with Spiritual God, He joins Spiritual God with Spiritual God and He joins Spiritual man or woman with Spiritual God. Why should a “complete” God be seen as out of line? One of the first commands God gave was to populate the Earth, and remember what God said about the union of a man and a woman, that they would become one! God takes male and female and turns them into one. This spiritual reality should be the easiest one for us in the flesh to relate to. God clearly states that two separate and individual flesh and gender shall become one. This is probably the primary reason why a homosexual union is wrong; it does not represent the image of God, there is a gender missing, it is not complete. To God this would be unnatural.

Shaddai is a name God used when He spoke with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and it seems to infer fruitfulness and fertility. It has been suggested that the Greek Septuagint writers used a mistaken translation when defining this particular name of God. Traditionally it is translated as "Almighty" because of the assumption that it is derived either from the word shadad; which means “burly” or “powerful” or from shadah; which means “mountain”. There is also a belief that Shaddai may have been derived from the word shad; which means “breast”, thus God would be called “Breasted One”, i.e. a female. These are the verses where Shaddai is used in Genesis: Genesis 17:1. “And Abram is a son of ninety and nine years, and Jehovah appeareth unto Abram, and saith unto him, 'I [am] God Almighty, walk habitually before Me, and be thou perfect; 2. and I give My covenant between Me and thee, and multiply thee very exceedingly.'” Genesis 28:1. “And Isaac calleth unto Jacob, and blesseth him, and commandeth him, and saith to him, 'Thou dost not take a wife of the daughters of Caanan; 2. rise, go to Padan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father, and take for thyself from thence a wife, of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother; 3. and God Almighty doth bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and thou hast become an assembly of peoples;” Genesis 35:9. “And God appeareth unto Jacob again, in his coming from Padan-Aram, and blesseth him; 10. and God saith to him, 'Thy name [is] Jacob: thy name is no more called Jacob, but Israel is thy name;' and He calleth his name Israel. 11. And God saith to him, 'I [am] God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply, a nation and an assembly of nations is from thee, and kings from thy loins go out;” Genesis 43:14. “and God Almighty give to you mercies before the man, so that he hath sent to you your other brother and Benjamin; and I, when I am bereaved - I am bereaved.'” Genesis 48:3. “And Jacob saith unto Joseph, 'God Almighty hath appeared unto me, in Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blesseth me, 4. and saith unto me, Lo, I am making thee fruitful, and have multiplied thee, and given thee for an assembly of peoples, and given this land to thy seed after thee, a possession age-during.” Genesis 49:25. “By the God of thy father who helpeth thee, And the Mighty One who blesseth thee, Blessings of the heavens from above, Blessings of the deep lying under, Blessings of breasts and womb;” To me Shaddai seems to be a God of blessings and increase while Jehovah seems to be a God of power. The same God uses different names depending on how He wants to be perceived. Exodus 6:1. “And Jehovah saith unto Moses, 'Now dost thou see that which I do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he doth send them away, yea, with a strong hand he doth cast them out of his land.' 2. And God speaketh unto Moses, and saith unto him, 'I [am] Jehovah, 3. and I appear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; as to My name Jehovah, I have not been known to them; 4. and also I have established My covenant with them, to give to them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they have sojourned;” Jesus refers to Himself as the Bridegroom; Matthew 9:14-15 and He compares those waiting to marry Him as virgins; Matthew 25:1-13. We are the bride of Jesus Christ. Has it not dawned on you that there is going to be a gender problem at Jesus’ wedding? Remember what Jesus said; Luke 20:37 “'And that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the Bush, since he doth call the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;” The alpha male God is going to marry a

lot of male brides! Or maybe united we all become the one true bride of Christ. This solves the problem of same sex marriage as far as Jesus is concerned but how do males become female with out being emasculated? In a parable Jesus refers to Abraham as “father” Abraham, so even after dieing you seem to retain your old gender, and in Revelation 14: 4 the concept of the universal bride is not upheld because it speaks of virgin men in Heaven ~ “these were bought from among men - a firstfruit to God and to the Lamb –“. And as Jesus said we will not be marrying others in Heaven. So as long as we keep thinking of gender as we do in this physical realm, we will encounter problems. Gender needs to be defined by God’s definition and not by our physical attributes. We are not the originators of gender. We cannot declare God male or female by our standards, but rather God declares us male or female by His standard. Again we were made in God’s image, we are measured by His measure, and God does not measure Himself against us. Gender is a Spiritual attribute that has been given to us. Gender is not a case of anthropomorphism; that is the assigning of human characteristics and qualities to describe God. To believe that gender started with our creation and that it will be an ongoing situation and that God is both bound and limited by it, and that He will be denied the experience of femaleness is unthinkable. Has God always been only male or did He change? Did He become male at some certain point in His existence? If He changed to “male” what was He before? Was He neuter; that is genderless? And if He had always been male, why would He consider same gender bonding as wrong, since for Him this would have been all that was available till He created females. Remember Jesus (male) said He and His Father (male) were one. This would imply that “male” had always existed and that “female” is newly created. This gives men an eternal heritage, while women can only go back as far as the Garden. And a son would always surpass his mother’s legacy and a daughter would never inherit her father’s legacy, so in a family the children could never be a product of the blending of the mother and the father, but rather a type; either male or female. We would always take on only the heritage of our gender. But the truth of this matter is we probably do not understand what gender is, but we still boldly speak out as to what God is. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part 2 Gender in its archaic form means "kind", “sort", “class”, “kin” or "type". It is related to the Greek root “gen” - to produce; as in gene, genesis, generation, genealogy etc. This older definition is the one we should be paying attention to, since it is the one God used. The male human and female human have the same core root; we are not totally different, we are of the same “kind”; we are mankind. In the verb form it can be used to mean breed, as in Leviticus 19:19. “'My statutes ye do keep: thy cattle thou dost not cause to gender [with] diverse kinds; thy field thou dost not sow with diverse kinds, and a garment of diverse kinds, shaatnez, doth not go up upon thee.” As you can see it is not referring to the sex of the cattle but to diverse “kinds”. Go back to Genesis 1:25. “And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good. 26. And God saith, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.' 27. And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them.

28. And God blesseth them, and God saith to them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth.'” God is gendering with His “kind” and His “kind” is mankind, both male and female. In Genesis 5:3 “And Adam liveth an hundred and thirty years, and begetteth [a son] in his likeness, according to his image, and calleth his name Seth.”, the Hebrew word for image in this verse is the same word used in Genesis 1:26 “And God saith, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”. Remember Jesus’ parables about Heaven; the marriage of the king's son; Matthew 22:1-14, and the ten virgins, who went forth to meet the bridegroom; Matthew 25:1-13. God created us for the purpose of increasing His “kind”. God created us in His image. God gave us at least two of His attributes; creating and power. Creating; giving us the ability and mandate to populate the Earth by re-creating our own kind. Power; giving us the ability and mandate to subdue and rule over every living thing. Even though we sinned and turned away from Him, God still wanted a relationship with mankind. God promised a “seed” that would redeem us. This Kinsmen redeemer, which is one of our “kind”, was promised to us in the Garden. God reiterated His promise with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of a “seed” that would be from their lineage. Later God tells Moses how to redeem family. Deuteronomy 25:5. “'When brethren dwell together, and one of them hath died, and hath no son, the wife of the dead is not without to a strange man; her husband's brother doth go in unto her, and hath taken her to him for a wife, and doth perform the duty of her husband's brother; 6. and it hath been, the first-born which she beareth doth rise for the name of his dead brother, and his name is not wiped away out of Israel. 7. 'And if the man doth not delight to take his brother's wife, then hath his brother's wife gone up to the gate, unto the elders, and said, My husband's brother is refusing to raise up to his brother a name in Israel; he hath not been willing to perform the duty of my husband's brother; 8. and the elders of his city have called for him, and spoken unto him, and he hath stood and said, I have no desire to take her; 9. 'Then hath his brother's wife drawn nigh unto him, before the eyes of the elders, and drawn his shoe from off his foot, and spat in his face, and answered and said, Thus it is done to the man who doth not build up the house of his brother; 10. and his name hath been called in Israel - The house of him whose shoe is drawn off.” And later on we see this principle used in regard to Ruth, when she was redeemed by Boaz, she was the great grandmother of King David. (Ruth 3:9-14 and Ruth 4:1-22) Our Kinsmen Redeemer is Jesus. He is the “seed” God had promised to give us. He is wholly and completely God, and He made us in His image. He redeems us; He buys back what was formally His. He promises us an inheritance and He prepares His Kingdom for us. He also brings us into His family. We are now a child of God; we are adopted, we are a bride to God, we are now part of His family. Jesus was God and Jesus was man; we are His gender. God redeemed His kind; we are made in the image of God. God’s gender is mankind, so in the original understanding of the word “gender”, mankind is God’s “gender”.