The Christian faith is a happy marriage of sound doctrine and sound living. The first creates the second. In Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen said it well: “the Christian movement at its inception was…a way of life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of words, but upon an account of facts. In other words it was based upon doctrine.”

As then, so now. The plain truth, however, is that there are different questions we face in this life that we must “work out” according to sound doctrine (Phil. 2:12). Let me explain: as one example that I’ll explore in this piece, we know that manhood is a unique reality, that men are made by God, and that God blesses courageous leadership from men. 1 Corinthians 16:13 features the apostle Paul telling the Corinthians to “Act like men” (andrizesthe in the Greek), communicating across time that manhood is synonymous with courageous leadership.

But while we may take this principle to the bank, it is not always easy to know how to make good on this call. This is where we see that a major part of day-to-day Christianity involves the use of wisdom, the sound application of truth to our circumstances. Wisdom flows downstream from sound doctrine. What is wise is always in accordance with biblical teaching. But wisdom is less a set of already-worked-out regulations and more a state of mind (a mind shaped by the truth of God, that is). The Christian feasting on the whole counsel of God ventures out into the big, bad world and seeks to figure out how the principles of Scripture apply to the many situations they face. Sound doctrine, then, creates a sound life—but the sound life involves not merely knowing biblical teachings, but putting them to work.

This is true in the aforementioned area of manhood. (It is equally true with regard to womanhood.) We know what men are called to be in Scripture, but how we live this out is not as nailed down. This means that we must live wisely as men, holding fast to biblical teaching even as we bring it to bear on the decisions before us. Wise living is not only dependent, however, on the foundation that God has laid. Wise living is also framed out by the telos, the end, that God seeks for his people. In this sense, the Christian life is like one of those beautiful new homes going up on a mountainside in the West: the foundation must be poured, but the frame must be pounded in.

We are not generically making disciples in Christ’s church; we are making disciples oriented to a certain goal. We can call discipleship of this kind teleological discipleship. For our purposes, we are seeking to make disciples of men and women to the end that we produce godly men and godly women (in line with Titus 2, as just one text to cite here). There is obviously a good deal of overlap in this discipleship; there is not, for example, one doctrine of union with Christ for men, and a wholly different doctrine of union with Christ for women. There is one doctrine of union with Christ, and every Christian must learn it as pastors and elders teach it to the whole church. Nonetheless, God has also called men and women to different roles throughout life, and so union with Christ manifests in certain distinct patterns of faithfulness for the sexes.

The existence of these roles means that our discipleship is ordered to a certain telos or end goal. Returning to our new-build metaphor, when we have the foundation set and the house framed out, we are able to build the structure in earnest. We are able to make the many decisions one must make to create a livable, thriving home. So it is in the Christian life. Sound doctrine is in place, praise God; God poured that foundation through his apostles and prophets. There are no edits or tweaks to make to sound doctrine; it is not adjudicated by any committee, nor developed by any school of theologians. It is there, ripe for the plucking, in Scripture. This means that we have what we need in principial form to make disciples—to nurture godly men and godly women.

This two-fold reality now helps us ask and answer the thousands of questions that require wisdom, day-to-day wisdom grounded in biblical teaching and ordered to the end goal of godly manhood or godly womanhood. Frankly, many of these decisions involve gray areas. Let’s say we’re trying to train our son to grow into a Christian man by the grace of God. Let’s say we believe that manhood is distinct from womanhood, that men are called to lead in Christ’s church, that leading in Christ’s church is hard and involves all sorts of self-sacrifice, tenacity, and depth of character, and that we thus want to do our best to form our son into just this kind of man. How do you do so? For many of us men, we will seek to disciple our son by actual teaching of the truths of the Word of God. We’ll lead our family in devotions, articulate the gospel, have conversations in the car about the Christian worldview, spank when called for in the younger years, and spend lots of time working together, playing together, and having fun together.

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