What a difference it will make if Christian men will check out of the self-centered grid paraded around us in secular society and instead embrace God’s calling to work and keep — to till the soil of hearts and stand guard over God’s treasured ones. Christian men will spend our lifetimes learning what it means to serve sacrificially so that others may abound in life and to guard vigilantly so that our wives, children, communities, and church are kept safe. But what a difference such biblical manhood makes.

I come from a cavalry family — as in horse soldiers. My grandfather commanded the US Army’s last cavalry regiment, until we shifted to tanks together with the rest of the twentieth century. Given this background, I am steeped in the old cavalry movies, the greatest of which is John Wayne’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Portraying Captain Nathan Briddles, a grizzled Civil War veteran facing the end of his career, this cavalry classic unleashes a torrent of manly quips. According to Captain Briddles, true manliness can be summed up in two words: Never apologize.

When I became a Christian, I learned that not every manly saying in John Wayne movies should be adopted. “Never apologize” sounds great in theory, but in practice it may combine with a man’s sin nature to make him overbearing and arrogant. Yet it turns out that the biblical ideal of manhood may also be summed up in two words. They are found in Genesis 2:15, which contain the Lord’s calling to the first man, Adam, for his life in the Garden of Eden.

The creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 supplies a wealth of information regarding God’s design for human society, including men. Genesis 1:27 states that “God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them,” stating that God created two sexes of equal value and dignity. Genesis 2:7 says that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground,” showing that mankind is specially created by God and not the product of evolution. Moreover, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” so that man is a spiritual being designed for covenant union with God through faith and obedience.

Armed with all this useful information, Genesis 2:15 goes on to provide the how of biblical manhood: how is the distinctive male calling lived out? I have called this verse the “Masculine Mandate,” because it establishes the architecture of biblical manhood in a way that is confirmed throughout Scripture. It is blessedly direct and to the point: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). At the heart of this calling are two words that shape the biblical view of manhood: work and keep.

A Man’s Work

God’s first calling to men directs us to work. It is commonly realized that men were made to be productive. Yet the idea here is not simply labor, but specifically the work of cultivating. We gain this insight from the context in which Adam was to work: as the cultivator of God’s garden. The man was called by God to till the soil and cultivate living things so that they would grow and bear beautiful fruit.

What does a gardener do to make his garden grow? The answer is that he tends the garden. He plants seeds and prunes branches. The gardener digs and fertilizes.

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