The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Knowledge, Nakedness & Shame - Sex and Gender in and out of the garden - with Rob Smith
We’re digging into the Bible’s teaching on sex and gender—inside and outside the Garden of Eden - relating to transgender.
We’re asking foundational questions: Was humanity created androgynous? Does Genesis allow for more than two sexes? Is sexual difference a core part of the imago Dei? What does it mean that the man and woman were naked and felt no shame?
Dr Rob Smith lectures at Sydney Missionary and Bible College and serves with Living Faith, a pastoral ministry of the Sydney Anglican Church caring for those navigating same-sex attraction or gender incongruence.
Rob is the author of a new book The Body God Gives.
Rob also spoke to us in February 2025 about the historic and cultural issues relating to the transgender, under the heading 'The Sexed body is the Gendered Self'.
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knowledge, nakedness and shame. We are talking sex and gender in and out of the garden. It is the pastor's heart. It's dominic steel. Rob smith is with us. Does genesis 1 teach that humanity was initially androgynous? Does genesis 1 allow for additional sexes? What is the connection between knowledge, nakedness and shame, and what does this connection reveal about the significance of human sexuality? And what do the Bible's commands reveal about human constitution? It is a Bible study today. On the pastor's heart.
Speaker 1:Rob Smith, doctrine Lecturer at Sydney Missionary and Bible College, is with us. Rob also serves on the Pastoral Ministry of Living Faith, the Pastoral Ministry of the Sydney Anglican Church, caring for those who are experiencing same-sex attraction or gender incongruence. Rob was here a few months ago talking to us about his new book, the Body God Gives, and I made the observation then, when we interviewed Rob, that a sermon series on early Genesis would be marked by whether or not that series had been preached before or after the release of Rob's book, such is the super helpful nature of the work that he's done in his well. It's a biblical response to transgender theory. Last time we focused on the historic and cultural issues, the diverse theories surrounding sex and gender, distinguishing between well, non-trans, soft trans, hard trans and various queer perspectives. Today we're looking at the Bible, but first, rob Smith, these issues of transgender. They're not just academic?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. We're talking about a response to transgender theory, but of course, that theory impacts real lives, and there are people who are wrestling personally with not only experiences, but then how these ideas either inform or maybe misinform those experiences. And so, yes, we can't separate ideas from people. As we've always known, ideas have consequences, they have legs, as it were, and so we've got to see what difference they make to the lives of people.
Speaker 1:And so, yes, this is a response to transgender theory, but behind the theory is people, often people in pain now, when I was looking at this book a few months ago with you, we were looking at the uh, the various uh transgender theories and you interacting with them. But the back part, in fact the main substance of the book, is looking at the scriptures and, um, I want to go there and start off in creation and start off on page one and chapter one of Genesis and really we'll put it up on the screen. But Genesis 1, 27, and God created man in his own image. He created him in the image of God. He created them, male and female, and this has become an extraordinary battleground verse, well, not just in the wider theological community, but in the transgender debate.
Speaker 2:Yes, there are certainly people who take a very different read of that verse to what most of us would assume it means. Now, I do think it's a fairly straightforward verse but, as you raised at the very beginning, there are some who've argued that we were initially made androgynous. So they read the second line of that verse there as referring to some initial sort of androgynous humanity.
Speaker 1:So God created man in his own image. He created him in the image of God. They're running with the view that we're talking androgynous up to that point in the verse yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there's a subsequent, as it were, splitting of this humanity into male and female.
Speaker 1:So, if you like, god's perfect creation was androgynous.
Speaker 2:And then Well, yeah, certainly it takes someone like Gregory of Nyssa. He sees the, as it were, the sort of descent into male and female as an anticipation of the fall. Wow so that we effectively fall into sex Now. You and I always thought we fell into sin, not into sex and that's of course right.
Speaker 1:But yes, gregory of Nyssa had a strange view. Sex is part of God's good creation.
Speaker 2:It is part of the good creation. It's not an anticipation of the fall, but anyway. Gregory of Nyssa is a great church father in many ways, but has some weird ideas.
Speaker 1:I just thought he was a good guy. You're saying no, it's been. I mean, he's a good guy in many areas.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, but in some areas particularly unhelpful. Yeah, and I think he's very confused on this point. And not only did he argue for initial androgyny, but also ultimate androgyny in the resurrection. Now, neither of those things I think we'll see are true. But no Genesis 127, you do have in Chapter 2, of course, the woman coming from the man, and so there is a sequence in Chapter 2. But I don't know. We're meant to read that back into Chapter 1, given that Chapter 1 comes before Chapter 2, funnily enough.
Speaker 1:But what we're being told here is really just all of a piece. So what's your argument to reply to someone like Gregory of Nicaea?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, again, I think this has a form of a particular Hebrew poetic form. So God is making humanity Adam is the word there in his image, and Adam is singular because it's a collective term for humanity. And Adam is singular because it's a collective term for humanity, and so that he made him in his image. The second line there and then made them, that is, individuals, male and female, is not telling us that we were somehow initially non-sexual, pre-sexual, asexual and then became sexual. It's just simply saying that collective humanity is made in God's image and it comes in these two sex forms, male and female. Now, how male and female come into being, we learn in Genesis 2.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go there in terms of the constitution of humanity and the making of man, and then I think you say the building of woman.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, it's a different Hebrew word there and it's quite a significant one, because it's a word that's used often in the building of sacred architecture and so on. So it highlights this.
Speaker 1:So why are women built and men made?
Speaker 2:Well, you could argue it's just a sort of stylistic difference. But certainly Adam as he is, the man, is made from the adamar, from the ground.
Speaker 1:And what's the male word and what's the female word there? Is there any significance there?
Speaker 2:You mean ish and ishah those words yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, distinguishing terms, obviously, and so one of the things we learn as you put Genesis 1 and 2 together is that the man of Genesis 2 is the male of Genesis 1. The woman of Genesis 2 is the female of Genesis 1. And indeed it's Jesus who puts those verses together, as I know you've pointed out, in Matthew 19. He does a mash-up, as it were, of Genesis 1.27 and Genesis 2.24. And so that itself tells us straight away that sex and gender go together, and really that sex, as it were, is the foundation of gender, that whether you're male and whether you're female is what determines whether you're a man or a woman, and so all of that's very significant.
Speaker 1:And it's axiomatic. You can't have. Yeah, it has to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, exactly, I mean, we distinguish these terms today sex and gender. The Bible really knows no distinction of that kind. If you're a male, you're a man, you grow to be a man. If you're a female, you grow to be a woman. There's no thought or possibility in sort of biblical anthropology of somebody, a woman, being born in a man's body or a man being born in a woman's body.
Speaker 1:That's just an unthinkable thought, so popular culture wants us to say, and certainly trans theory wants us to say, sex and gender are totally separate.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But you are saying that the Bible is saying that only the male can be a man and only the man can be a father, a brother, a nephew, an uncle, husband, yep, husband, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that shouldn't really be in dispute and certainly biblically it's not, and historically it hasn't been, but until very recently, with these theories queer theory, trans theory that's where these ideas have been thrown into the mix to say, well, can you be a man and yet have a female body? And the Bible's answer is no.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:The body God gives to use the title of my book, which wasn't my thought, by the way, it was the publisher's idea.
Speaker 1:It's a great thought. Yeah, because it… I mean, it's really…. You spend three years working out all the detail and then somebody comes and says here's the caption. Well, that's what marketing.
Speaker 2:people are for right. But yeah, because it answers the question. The question is how do I know if God made me a man or a woman? And the answer is the body. The body God gave me, the body God gave. That's what signals the reality, it's what determines. I say in the book that sex determines gender, in that if you're male, then everything follows from that. And sex also reveals gender, in that if I want to understand well, what am I, then my sex will tell me the answer. Now I interrupted.
Speaker 1:We were on building and making.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, again, we have an interesting, well two episodes there in Genesis 2. So the man's body is formed first, formed of the dust of the ground, and so, interestingly, he is a man just by virtue of the body God makes, even before he comes to life, because it's the second stage in Genesis 2 where the breath of life enters him and he becomes a living being. Now he's unique in that sense because all the rest of us who follow Eve and Eve, just we, come into being, you know, body and breath all together. But he gets the body first. But just knowing that he's a man by virtue of the body God gives him tells you that there is no, you know, thought of somehow then a different sexed soul entering that body.
Speaker 1:That's not even the picture, because some queer theory does say that, doesn't it? It says you can have a body and a soul that are out of alignment.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, perhaps some forms of trans theory might be saying that sort of thing, or at, or saying something akin to that. So you know, man in a woman's body, that whole idea is really, as many secular thinkers have pointed out. It's very theological at that point. But it's perhaps more philosophical because, if you're talking theology, or at least biblical theology, body and soul don't work that way. It's not like souls are dropped into bodies and you know, maybe the angels were having an off day and dropped in um the soul sexed female into a body sexed male. No, no, we are made as integrated persons.
Speaker 2:Uh, psychosomatic beings is the technical language. Uh, psycho sucare for soma, for body, psychosomatic wholeness is what characterizes humanity. Now we see this in the case of the woman. Now she, as you pointed out, is built from part of the side of the man. It's not, strictly speaking, a rib, I mean, it's bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, it's part of his side that's taken.
Speaker 2:But one of the other strange ideas again, it fits in with this claim of original androgyny, or primordial androgyny as sometimes it's called is that somehow the Adam in Genesis 2 was a male and female being and then God, as it were, split the Adam and took the woman part out that's not the picture and took the woman part out. That's not the picture. The picture is no. He is man, and part of the side of the man is taken and then built into a separate human, but one who is well complementary in her sex. Okay, so what he needs is a, the Hebrew there, an ezer khanegdo, a helper, like opposite him. She is like him in humanity, opposite him in her sex, and so then they can come together, you know, as husband and wife and so on. But anyway, it's a very beautiful, rich picture. Now there was one thing we jumped over in Genesis 1, actually, if you want to go, back to it.
Speaker 2:Because you mentioned in your intro that people have tried to argue and they do from Genesis 1, that there are potentially more than two sexes.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not just light, dark, but kind of dawn and dusk. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, again, Genesis 2 is clear it's only a man and a woman. There's no others there. But Genesis 1, yes, you have these night and day, and some will say, yes, okay, that's fine, but between night and day we've got dawn and dusk, and you've got land and sea. And, yes, in between land and sea we've got swamps and marshes and amphibians, Amphibians yeah, you've got land animals, sea creatures, and yet you've got these hybrid species that seem to be able to function in both environments.
Speaker 1:So they put there in the argument that it's not simple binary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these so-called binaries may be more complex, and so maybe that also applies to male and female, that, yes, these are two poles at the end of the spectrum, but perhaps in between there are other sexes. Okay, you've almost persuaded me.
Speaker 1:Pull me back.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, so yeah, and superficially it sounds like quite a strong argument. Now, first of all, of course, we're dealing with, again, unique things in each case, and the man and the woman, clearly, or male and female, as it is in Genesis 1. We're not told if that's the case there, if there's something in between, but there's certainly no indication of that. It's humanity in God's image, male and female, made he them. And then, of course, verse 28 follows on from verse 27,. Be fruitful and multiply. And so it's the male and female that, of course, is required for procreation. And again, if we just step aside into the realm of biology for a moment, we actually know there is no third sex, biologically speaking, there's no third gamete, there's no third gonad right, there's no third type of genitalia, it's even the amphibians, it's male and female.
Speaker 2:Exactly yes, one scholar has pointed out, amphibians can't reproduce other than male and female, and that's all that's required, and so it's just simply not the case that there are more than two sexes. And this comes out most dramatically, I think, in the flood narrative, right.
Speaker 1:Because how many? Oh yes, of course, it's two by two. The.
Speaker 2:Hebrew is very clear it's two and two, two and two, two and two, two and two, male and female, zachar and Nekevar, same terms of Genesis 1. There are no other sexes. Now, at this point some people say well, hang on. But what about people who are born intersexes Sometimes the term is used or, as I think, perhaps better said, born with a disorder of sex development, which means they haven't developed straightforwardly as perhaps a male or female?
Speaker 2:There may be some confusion at some level, perhaps in terms of genitalia or something and our heart wants to go out to that person, absolutely, absolutely. We're talking about a very small percentage of people, you know, because 99.98% of people are born straightforwardly.
Speaker 1:That's the percentage 99.98%.
Speaker 2:Yes, straightforwardly, male and female. But again there's a small but significant number of people absolutely, who have these and I think we should rightly say post-fall conditions, because all of our bodily disorders and dysfunctions they're all post-fall, they're all consequences of sin and death coming into the world.
Speaker 2:But there are some people who have these conditions. But these conditions don't create a third sex. They just simply mean that sex for some people is not straightforward. But that itself does not create a third sex.
Speaker 2:And you get a wonderful indication of how the Bible thinks about this in Matthew 19, the very passage where Jesus brings Genesis 127 and 224 together, because at the beginning of the chapter, as he's talking about marriage and divorce and so on, he says from the beginning God made them male and female, not just in the beginning, but from the beginning. This is God's pattern going forward. And yet, come to verse 12 of that chapter, he introduces some, he says, who are eunuchs from birth. And now here is one of a number of rabbinic and Hebrew categories of someone with an intersex condition. In this case eunuchs were regarded as men, but men who are unable to function reproductively because of, again, a disorder of sex development. If it was from birth, they were either their penis had not developed or their testes not developed, or whatever it was, they were a eunuch from birth. But that doesn't disturb the basic fact that sex remains male and female binary, that from the beginning God made them male and female.
Speaker 1:Let's go to that end of Genesis 2 verse. This is why a man leaves his father and mother bonds with his wife. They'll become one flesh. The man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame. I mean, many of us would say that's one of the most important verses in the Scriptures for understanding marriage. Certainly verse 24, yes, what's the implication for the whole transgender discussion there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, several. First of all, as we said before, jesus puts Genesis 1 and 2 together, telling us that males, men, husbands, females, women, wives.
Speaker 1:A man leaves his father and mother bonds with his wife. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's no disrupting of that, and if there was, it would kind of dismantle the whole system a little. In the Bible's sexual ethics, I mean, you can't even just, for example, just to step aside from it, you can't have the prohibitions against homosexual behaviour unless there is a stable sex and gender connection, because otherwise the whole thing just kind of makes no sense. So again the Bible is assuming and stating in fact that again male man, husband, father, female woman wife mother, so that's all there.
Speaker 2:Father, female woman, wife, mother, so that's all there. And it also tells us that, again, marriage is one of the primary purposes of us being made male and female, and the context into which children are to be born. It's not the only purpose of being male and female. As we see, not everybody marries, not every married couple can have children.
Speaker 1:So, again, there's more to being male and female than simply it being about marriage, and only a male can be a son and only a woman can be a daughter.
Speaker 2:That's right. So, yes, even if you're never married, you're still a woman, still a daughter, still a sister, still an auntie, Still an auntie. Yeah, now, but verse 25.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this issue of naked and no shame. I mean I was reading through your book and I mean I've thought about those issues and covering up in Chapter 3 when, I sinned and that kind of thing. But you showed me a vulnerability that I don't think I had thought about, or a level of vulnerability that I don't think I had thought about, or a level of vulnerability that I don't think I had thought about before.
Speaker 2:Yes, when I really began digging into 225, I just thought this is a staggering picture.
Speaker 1:New ground Well, it was new ground for me yeah, we easily just jump over it.
Speaker 2:They were naked and not ashamed. But when we realise we don't know that experience that bodily shame because we live on the other side of the fall, bodily shame is just par for the course with us. We instinctively cover up, as they did. But 225, no, there's no need to cover up. They are unashamed, uninhibited, perhaps even you might say blissfully unaware of their naked. It just doesn't occur to them to be self-conscious. And so it's just a very beautiful picture of total openness, total freedom, zero fear, zero threat. They're not a danger to each other, there's no vulnerability.
Speaker 2:So it's just such a wonderful image, which then is shattered only a few verses later, in Chapter 3, when, after they sin, they are immediately afraid, firstly of God, and rightly, but then of each other, and so they start to hide from each other, they protect themselves from each other. They actually make loincloths, and so you know again, they're covering their genitalia. They're not just, as it were, just putting a coat on, as it were. They're actually covering those parts of their anatomy that distinguish them most clearly from one another as male and female and are now areas of potential threat to each other. So, yeah, it's quite a dramatic shift that is meant to lift us up and then kind of decimate us or deeply disturb us, as it should. So yeah, shame and sexual sensitivity, those things go together.
Speaker 1:So when I want to hide my genitalia, you know there's something in that that resonates with the transgender experience.
Speaker 2:Well, certainly can do, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, we know from many accounts that many people who have sought to well take on a trans identity have done so in order to escape from their given sex, because they have been in some way shamed in that sex most dramatic form of that shaming. But people can be sexually shamed in other ways too and made fun of and even pick up cultural messages that it's shameful to be a boy, that it's toxic to be a male and these kinds of messages. So we're all ashamed because we're all men and all sinners, and yet there is a focus of shame around our genitalia and that can be very much exacerbated by them particular life experiences that some people have, and it makes total sense that some would think the way to solve this problem is to escape my sex.
Speaker 1:Okay, we head outside the garden to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, we've already touched on Matthew 19.
Speaker 2:Is there anywhere else we want to go to in terms of Christ on this, Well, yes, absolutely, because the only person, ultimately, who can take our shame away is him, and I mean that is the great promise of the gospel, that all who confess his name will not be put to shame. And so he is the antidote to our fallenness and everything that goes into that fallenness. Now, again, one of the things Jesus shows us is that the way God has made us is good. It's the way, again, he intends us to be, and what it means for us to grow and to flourish and to indeed be sanctified and made like him is to, as it were, to lead into our creativeness, to go with the grain of our creativeness.
Speaker 2:So one of the discoveries I made in the process well, discovery's a bit too strong, but one of the things that was highlighted for me is just the goodness of God's commands, because all of his commands are really about teaching us and showing us how to work with the grain of our createdness, and so the commands, in that sense, reveal created order to us. You know, as fallen sinners, we don't always know what. We can't just read off now from you know, post-fall creation, how it's all meant to work. We need Scripture to guide us as to what is true, what is good, what is beautiful. And it does that through the laws do that, the commands do that. So you know, take a command like Deuteronomy 22.5, which is a prohibition against cross-dressing.
Speaker 1:I'll just read it here A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord, your God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's a very strong prohibition with a very strong term at the end, which is again a term used in particular commands.
Speaker 1:Abomination makes you kind of stop in your steps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's saying this is a serious violation of God's order and intention. And so why should this be seen so significantly? Well, it's because there is here a going against the grain of one's creativeness. There is a denial or a disguising or a deceiving of others as to who and what God made us to be, and so the commands, particularly the warnings like this one, are saying no, don't go there. This is not the way of life. There's a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. This is not going to help.
Speaker 1:How does a New Testament. Christian read that verse in Deuteronomy 22?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need to, of course, look at the Old Testament law carefully and see what the New Testament is doing with it. Christians, historically, have often distinguished different types of commands moral commands, civil commands, ceremonial commands and certainly there are some commands in the Old Testament that no longer apply to us the food laws, the sacrificial laws and so on. It doesn't mean we can't learn things from them. There's much we should learn from them, but we're not meant to obey them as were to the letter. But there are other commands that are clearly moral, they've got to do with again created order, created good. This, I believe, is certainly one of them, and the New Testament has some parallels to this, both in its sexual ethics, but also in a passage as complex as it is, like 1 Corinthians 11, where there's a clear concern on the part of the Apostle Paul that men and women are recognisable as men and women when they're praying and prophesying when they're praying and prophesying when they're gathered together, that we're not confusing each other, we're not again denying, disguising, somehow blurring our sexual distinctiveness.
Speaker 1:Let me boil up the other one that's discussed and debated in Deuteronomy, deuteronomy 23.1. Sure, we now come to the second of the prohibitions. No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord. I mean, again, that's a pretty, I mean testicle crushing, I mean that's a kind of confronting statement yes, but to be shut out of the temple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now again, we need to understand well the Old Testament world and particularly well the biblical thought around. You know what it means to appear before the Lord. Now, one of the things that the Old Testament scholars will tell you and tell me is that there is a link in much Old Testament thought between holiness and wholeness, and so there are certain people who can't become priests, for example, because there's something they have a bodily defect or disfigurement or something.
Speaker 2:There's something. They have a bodily defect or disfigurement or something. There's something that's unwhole about them and therefore they don't qualify to enter the holy place.
Speaker 1:Something like the leprosy type thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah that kind of thing. So now that obviously to us might seem sad and indeed unkind, but it's sending a message that of is a message we all need to hear, and every Israelite needed to hear, which is that unless we are holy, we can't come before a holy God and expect to stand, and of course, that's why sacrifices were needed, that's why blood needed to be shed and so on. But in regard to this particular command, the Bible does something with this as its story unfolds, because we get to this wonderful promise in Isaiah 56 that God is going to, as it were, reverse this directive and is going to include the faithful, the believing eunuch, among his people and give them an inheritance better than sons and daughters says the text.
Speaker 2:And well then, of course that follows into the New Testament when we see the fulfilment of it in the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch Acts, chapter 8. Acts, chapter 8. Okay so, yeah, no-transcript. Acts, chapter 8.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah, let's just dig into that because that's exciting. I mean, when I read the Ethiopian eunuch passage I'm just thinking oh wow, a non-Jew, yes, but there's something really exciting about the crushed testicle person being welcomed into the presence of. I mean. So this is one where the New Testament has overturned the Old Testament. Is that?
Speaker 2:right, yes, well, it certainly is saying that this, no longer this restriction of Deuteronomy 22.1, now no longer 23.1. 23.1, sorry, 23.1, no longer applies in the new covenant. That well, not only have Gentiles been welcomed in, which is part of the Isaiah prophecy, but even eunuchs are welcomed in. And so you know, god is dealing with something even deeper here, because he's again cleansing hearts and opening hearts. And so when the eunuch says to Philip you know, is there anything to prevent me from being baptised? I'm sure he had in his mind, his….
Speaker 1:He's not just thinking I'm not a Jew, he's thinking I've got crushed testicles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Philip says nothing whatsoever. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Here's the Lord Leaping and jumping and praising God.
Speaker 2:So that's wonderful. So I've spent time in the book on this passage because, unlike Deuteronomy 22.5, I think, Deuteronomy 23.1 takes a different path and it's very good news, therefore, for the person who and I know many people who have taken this path themselves, who have had surgeries in the hope that this will bring relief to their gender confusion, their gender dysphoria, have had parts of their bodies removed that can never be put back to know that that is not a problem to God, and they're reading Acts 8 with that joy that you've just described.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Isn't that exciting? Yeah, so they can have a name and an inheritance. Better than sons and daughters, they are fully welcomed. They're not second class. Their bodily condition makes no difference to their status in the kingdom. And now, of course, ahead of them is resurrection. But even now there's just no problem knowing the Lord, serving the Lord and being part of his people.
Speaker 1:Hallelujah, we're almost out of time, but trans and the resurrection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, the resurrection of the body is what we're talking about, and it's not just a resurrection of persons or souls or something. No, resurrection is a bodily idea, and I think it's very clear in Scripture that we are going to be raised in these self-same bodies, not given different bodies, but at the same time these bodies will be transformed and made perfect, made indeed immortal, imperishable, glorious beyond our imaginings. And so, yeah, the idea that somehow we'll be raised asexual or raised all male, as some have pondered, no, we will be raised as us, just like Jesus was raised as Jesus. He is still the man, christ Jesus.
Speaker 2:He is, as one writer says, and will always be, a circumcised Jewish male, because that is the body that lived, that is the body that died, that is the body that was raised, that is the body that ascended, that is the body that will come again, of the Lord Jesus. And likewise, with us. And again, for those who have perhaps wrestled with their sex and have had struggles accepting that sex, some may find this confusing Do I really want a resurrection of this body? Well, again, it won't be this body in the sense that it won't have any of the problems of this body, but it will be this body, in that it will be a perfected, transformed, glorified version, and all that troubles you about your body now will not trouble you then. There will be no dysphoria, no disappointment only happiness.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in. Dr Rob Smith has been my guest. He's Doctrine Lecturer at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. The author of this book, the Body God Gives A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory. You could obviously go buy that book, but we spoke to Rob a couple of months ago under the heading of the Body God Gives, back in February on the Pastor's Heart. You could go and find that my name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. We will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
