A man of gravitas fears God more than he fears man. So he is free to declare, “Thus says the Lord,” in direct opposition to the popular opinion of the unbelieving masses. His grounded confidence in God—in God’s word, God’s protection, and God’s promises—informs a courageous demeanor in the midst of a fallen world.

Our culture wants men to be featherweights when it comes to conviction, seriousness, responsibility, discipline, courage, and truth. The Creator of these men does not. He wants gravitas.

Gravitas comes from the Latin gravis, which means “dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner.” In line with the expectation upon men seen in the entire breadth of Scripture, it is my argument that every Christian man should aim, by God’s grace and for his glory, to be characterized by this trait, with the effect that people can look at him and say, “That is a man of gravitas. There is a solemn weight to the way he carries himself. He believes in truth. He walks in love, joy, passion, and conviction. There’s an undeniable winsome seriousness evident in his character, his words, his thoughts, and his motivations.”

DON’T BE A MAN OF VAPOR

Vapor. What’s it like? It’s a light thing. In the gas phase, it’s not weighty. It does not hold itself to the ground, but diffuses into the air. It is unsubstantial and fleeting.

In like manner, a man of vapor lacks sober-minded heaviness to his demeanor or respectable weightiness to his persona. The substance of his personhood is as unsubstantial as vaporous gas. If you would set the smallest ember of God’s truth next to him, and call him to define it, reflect on it, defend it, or be challenged by it, he would melt into a puddle of spineless indecision and passivity. An unbelieving man of vapor is a reflection of his father Adam, who rejected righteousness, conviction, truth, action, courage, and God-honoring gravitas for the vaporous pleasures of sin and folly.

But the man of vapor has become the cultural icon. Pick any popular sitcom or comedy. It’s a near guarantee that at least one of its male characters is perpetually goofy, passively conviction-less, pathetically self-pleasing, or just a plain ‘ole imbecile. From Bad Grandpa, Hall Pass, Friends with Benefits, Jack*ss, and The Hangover (now forthcoming with its third installment), and even back to American Pie, Superbad, and Old School, we are constantly bombarded with these boy-man comedies. The plot of these movies, almost without fail, goes something like this: immature college boys or too-old-to-act-like-that middle-aged dudes engage in reckless/fratty/sexual/drunken/irresponsible exploits in a humorous celebration of carefree boy-man living….

BE A MAN OF GRAVITAS

In contrast to a man of vapor, this man is weighty, filled with the gravitas of the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:11). This is through Jesus Christ alone. This gravitas comes to bear upon fallen masculinity when the Spirit of God invades a man of vapor, grants him new life and a new heart, and commissions him to live no longer for himself and for his fleeting personal gratification, but for the eternal cause of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:15).

But even redeemed brothers can struggle to cultivate a counter-cultural disposition of righteous gravitas, because we’re not yet made perfect. Therefore, the Bible constantly exhorts us, and we need to be continually reminded by God’s Word and God’s people. What, then, are some marks of this man of gravitas that we should aim to cultivate?

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