Fulfill Your Function - Genesis 1:27-28

God reveals his design for human flourishing in Genesis 1:27-28:

God created man in His own image, male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The contents of this design are unambiguous. The Lord creates man and woman after His image and commands them to “be fruitful and multiply.” This design is given to the man and woman for their advantage, for their flourishing. Yet, if this Divine Design is easy to comprehend and for the prosperity of its adherents, then why is it abused so flippantly today?

The Confession helps answer this question as follows:

After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created; being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change. (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 1:26; Romans 2:14, 15; Genesis 3:6)

Second London Baptist Confession, 4.2 (Of Creation)

Note the following line of the confession, “rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created.” Every person, rebel or saint, enters this world via God’s design. Every person is a result of fruitful multiplication. Once endowed with a soul and distinct, unalterable maleness or femaleness, the confession says that a person is fit to fulfill their purpose, which is to live a life for God. This final point, living a life for God, is where the creature deviates. Despite the Fall, he or she has no design flaw in their maleness and femaleness. They are not failing to be male or female by design; instead, one fails to perform the function of their design.

Picture an assembly line of hammers. One after another comes off the conveyor with a firm wooden handle pressed into a robust hammerhead design with a weight and balance reflecting the manufacturer’s design. These tools are ready to drive nails! Remarkably, one of the hammers refuses to be shipped along with its kind and instead jumps in the handsaw box. The honest onlooker knows that the hammer does not look like a handsaw and cannot perform the function of a handsaw but alas, the hammer refuses to conform to execute its design function. Therefore, the hammer goes on, showing up to construction sites with the inability to saw wood in half while refusing to drive nails.

Here, the metaphor ends, and the gravitas begins. When a male or female denies their Creator’s choice for their sex, they are like the hammer posing as a saw. The problem is not their Designer but instead their refusal to, in the words of the Confession, live a “life to God for which they were created.” Yes, the Fall in Eden impacts this privilege immensely, but even the Fall does not prevent fruitful multiplication leading to the production of image-bearing males and females (Genesis 3:16; 9:7). Therefore, God’s people must reiterate, even in this “present evil age,” that God’s design for human flourishing is perfect, while compassionately calling all who deviate from it to repentance that they may be one with the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins (Galatians 1:4).