Tonic Masculinity

Do you think the cross is weak?

Think about that question for a bit. Because a lot of men walking around calling themselves men of faith would, if they were honest about the posture their lives actually take, say yes. Not out loud. (Never out loud). But their fruit tells on them and it's a modern "wolf in sheep's clothing" ordeal.

“You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16)

James says it plainer: “Faith apart from works is dead.” (James 2:26) Dead. No sign of life. Empty. And I think a significant number of men in the American church right now have built an entire identity on the confession of faith while the actual shape of their lives (how they lead their homes, how they treat their wives, how they father their children, how they carry themselves in their friend groups and workplaces and church pews) bears almost no resemblance to the man that confession is supposed to produce. It’s a conviction that I have to live under and hold myself under the microscope of Scripture with, as all professing men should.

Here is the substitution that’s happened, and I want to call it out bluntly because a vague critique lets everyone off the hook. Political allegiance has replaced theological formation. Moral posturing: being loudly against the right things, tribally correct, culturally recognizable as “on the right side”, has replaced the actual, costly, daily work of becoming the kind of man Christ describes. You can vote a certain way, post the right things, be angry about all the culturally approved targets of fury, and never once have submitted your own heart to the discipline of Christlike headship. Those are not the same thing. They were never meant to be close to the same thing. And I think a lot of men have been handed politics and morality culturally and allowed them to usurp the discipline of formation in Christ. Which is weird and not the flex y’all dudes think it is.

The Counterfeit Wears a Cross Around Its Neck

This is what makes it so dangerous compared to the openly secular version of “toxic” (and I use that term because it’s what’s been popularized) masculinity: the alpha bro, dominate the room dudes, women make you weak if not submissive posture. That version, at least, doesn’t pretend to be discipleship. The version I’m talking about does.

It’s the man who quotes “love your wife as Christ loved the church” and stops reading before he gets to gave himself up for her. It’s the man whose theology of headship has become a theology of authority without ever becoming a theology of sacrifice: who has memorized the half of Ephesians 5 that puts him in charge and skipped the half that tells him what being in charge actually costs him.

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25)

“Gave himself up.” That is the entire content of the command and not a footnote to it, as some would like to make it. The verb doing all the work is self-emptying, and if a man’s understanding of headship hasn’t been shaped by that verb specifically, he does not have a biblical theology of masculinity. He has a cultural one with Bible verses stapled to the outside of it. Doing what’s always been done, using Scripture to justify positions and arguments, without taking the whole council.

What the Fruit Actually Reveals

Go back to Genesis, before any of this got twisted, and look at the actual first assignment given to man.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)

Abad and shamar: the same pairing used later for the priestly duties of the Levites tending the tabernacle (Numbers 3:7–8). Man’s first vocation was not dominion for its own sake. It was priestly service: cultivate what has been entrusted to you, guard what has been entrusted to you. That is the theological floor everything else is built on. A man who cannot articulate his calling as priestly service to what God has placed in his care (his wife, yes, but also his children, the men he leads and works with at work, the friendships he’s responsible to steward with honesty instead of performance) has not actually located his masculinity in Scripture. He’s located it in the script the culture wrote and handed him a Bible verse to defend it with. Which is lame and theologically obtuse.

And this has to extend past the marriage bed, because that’s where most of these conversations stop and it’s not where the fruit actually shows up most clearly (but know, it shows up there too). Fatherhood is where the theology gets tested daily.

“Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” (Colossians 3:21)

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4)

Notice the warning is aimed specifically at fathers, specifically about the danger of their own anger and harshness producing discouragement in the very children they’re supposed to be forming. A man who postures as strong at church and online but whose children go quiet when he walks in the room, whose kids have learned to manage his moods rather than trust his presence: that man’s theology of masculinity has failed the actual test Scripture sets for it, regardless of how “correct” his politics are, regardless of how loudly he can quote a verse about headship at a men’s Bible study. Where’s the fruit, my dude?

Priestly, Not Political

“Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Read that last clause again. “So that your prayers may not be hindered”. Peter is not offering marriage advice. He is telling men that their vertical relationship with God is contingent on the health of their horizontal relationship with the wife they lead. You cannot mistreat her, dismiss her, use her, diminish her, and expect an unbroken line to Heaven. That should terrify every man who has confused theological confession with theological fruit. Scripture is explicit that God is watching the home before He is impressed by the platform. Again, proximity to something (ideals, church, whatever) really doesn’t mean ANYTHING if the integrity of being a biblical man isn’t there, being shaped by Christ being the discipline we come under.

A Tonic that Heals and Holds

This is what I mean by tonic masculinity instead of toxic. I think toxic is the wrong word. It's more of a missing the point of masculinity. But it's also not the feminine ideal in male clothing; I am not describing softness for softness’s sake, and Christ was not soft; He turned over tables and called out hypocrisy with more precision and force than any alpha-bro social account ever has. I am describing strength with a completely different center of gravity. Strength that serves without needing credit. Strength that leads by absorbing cost first; for the wife, for the children, for the friend who needs correction spoken in love instead of contempt disguised as honesty. Strength whose fruit actually matches its confession, because it was formed by the cross and not merely decorated with it.

So, Do You Think the Cross Is Weak?

If your masculinity is built on political tribe and moral posturing, dressed up in a few verses about headship you never finished reading, then yes: somewhere in you, you believe the cross was weak. You believe real strength looks like winning, dominating, never being crossed, never absorbing cost without extracting and expecting something back, getting what you want in marriage without ever giving back (or giving first, revisit Eph. 5, please).

But the cross is not weak. It is the single strongest act in human history, and it did not look like winning to a single person watching it happen. Faith without that kind of fruit is dead. Not diminished. Dead. No life in it. Completely flatlined.

The measure of a man’s theology was never his political alignment or moral superiority. It was, and will always be, his household. The wife whose flourishing costs him something (time, sensitivity, vulnerability, service) and she gets it anyway, because she should. Which leads to a wife who respects him because she has been given something to respect and adores him out of that. His children’s faces when he walks in the room, do they light up or turn their heads down? The friend he told the truth to instead of the comfortable lie, leading the conversation with grace.

That’s not weak. That’s the only kind of strong that was ever real.

And these lame dudes want to make masculinity something different. Making biblical masculinity a shadow instead of the prominent thing, because consevitism or culture tells them it should be this way. By making it different, you’re proving yourself to not be masculine at all. Rather insecure in your footing. The only issue with that is, when you fall, you take more than yourself with you and you won’t be ready to pick up the pieces when they break.

Be a tonic or be a false version… the fruit will be there for either. How much better to be a healing tonic guided by the Healer? To heal the things in you, in your wife, in your children, and the culture around you. Thats biblical masculinity wrapped up in the cross of Christ.