September 30, 2025 • 22 mins
What does it mean to be a man? In this episode, we explore a clear framework—the five marks of manhood: strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance.
We delve into how Jesus perfectly exemplified each of these traits, demonstrating his manliness in ways that can inspire and guide us today.
Join us as we learn from Jesus’ example to become better men and followers.
00:00 Introduction to the Five Marks of Manhood
01:56 Exploring the Five Marks: Strength, Courage, Skill, Honor, and Allegiance
04:44 Jesus as the Ultimate Model of Manhood
06:23 Strength: The Core of Manhood
11:08 Courage: Facing Challenges Head-On
14:28 Skill: Mastering the Art of Teaching
16:49 Honor and Allegiance: Building Respect and Loyalty
20:12 Conclusion: Emulating Jesus in Manhood
21:21 Join the Manhood Tribes Community
💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don Ross (00:01):
Guys, what if you had a clear framework for what it
means to be a man, as well asthe perfect model to demonstrate
it for you so that you couldfollow along?
On today's episode, I want tointroduce or remind you of the
five marks of manhood, and Iwant to tell you about how Jesus
(00:22):
nailed every one of them.
That's right.
We're gonna talk about Jesustoday and we're gonna talk about
how he is the man most worthy offollowing.
My name's Don, and here we areat the Manhood Tribes Channel,
and we talk a lot about what itmeans to be a man, how to do
that well, what the pathway todoing that well actually looks
like.
And we are in the midst of kindof a series where we're talking
(00:45):
about this idea of Jesus as theman who is actually most worthy
of being followed.
That may be kind of like a newidea to you or a surprising idea
to you that Jesus.
A is a man, right?
That's not something that weoften talk about with Jesus.
I mean, we kind of like assumethat he was, but we don't talk
about his manliness or hismasculinity very much, and I
(01:07):
think that's something that weneed to kind of recover.
But also we, we don't reallykind of think about Jesus as the
man that we want to emulate.
There's a lot of things aboutJesus that we want to emulate.
Most of them are very kind oflike holy or religious kinds of
things that we think aboutemulating, but we don't always
think about his masculinity asbeing something that we want to
(01:28):
try to imitate, that we want tobe true of our lives as well.
But here on the Manhood TribesChannel, we talk about manhood
in some very specific ways.
And as we talk about thosethings today, I think you're
going to be able to see thatJesus not only modeled these
things for us, he actuallydemonstrated the perfect ways to
(01:48):
be able to live them out so thatwe can be the kind of men that
we actually want to become.
So let's dive into it.
As a brief reminder for those ofyou who are following along on
this channel or if you're brandnew as by way of introduction,
the five marks of manhood arethe things that we believe all
men should possess in order todemonstrate what it means to be
(02:11):
a man.
Those five marks are strength.
Courage, skill, honor, andallegiance.
And if you're doing well in allof those things, you are
exhibiting to the world what itmeans to be a man.
And just real briefly, let'stouch on what each of those
things are when it comes tostrength.
We're talking primarily about.
(02:31):
Physical strength, men's bodiesare built to be strong, and so
part of what it means to be aman, and really the core of our
essence of masculinity is aboutbeing strong.
And yes, we're mostly talkingabout physical strength,
although mental and emotionaltoughness comes into play in
that as well, especially as wepick up the second mark of
manhood, which is courage.
(02:52):
Courage just means that we arefacing our fears and moving
towards them instead of backingaway from the things that are
difficult or challenging inlife.
We're actually figuring out howwe can move into those things
and overcome them.
Skill is the third mark ofmanhood and it just is really
about the idea that men aredependent on for being good at
things that we need to begrowing in our skills in lots of
(03:15):
different areas, but probablyalso mastering or even
perfecting our skills and one ortwo kind of key areas where me,
we are meant to contribute tothe good of others around us.
Honor is really all about ourrelationships with our peers.
Honor is about doing right bythose around you, and so in
particular, the group of menthat you have closest to you are
(03:38):
meant to share some values incommon.
And if you uphold those values,then you are worthy of honor.
Allegiance is really about thosekind of like authority
relationships.
So if honor is about kind of thehorizontal axis of
relationships, allegiance isreally about that vertical axis.
It's about how we relate tothose who are in authority over
(03:59):
us.
And one area in particular thatwe have to deal with is our
ultimate allegiance.
What or who is the thing that wemost give authority to in our
lives.
What are we choosing to followthat actually has authority over
every place in our life,especially the big decisions and
the ways that we shave ourlives?
Okay, so those are our fivemarks of manhood.
(04:20):
Again, strength, courage, skill,honor and allegiance.
As a man, you can grow and getbetter, and.
All of those areas, and that'sone of the great things about
them is that you're not stuck asa man.
Just kind of feeling like, I'mnot really good at being a man,
or I'm, I don't feel very manlytoday.
Well, that's okay.
You can get better at any ofthose things and start to feel
more manly because you areliving as what it means to be a
(04:43):
man.
Now, what does it look like thatJesus lived out all five of
those marks of manhood, and howdid he do it in ways that we
might look at him and say, ohyeah, he really is kind of like
the ideal man, or the man mostworthy of being followed.
Why would we say that?
I think when most of us kind ofthink of Jesus, we have this
(05:04):
picture of him that's kind oflike soft and sweet and nice and
you know, encouraging kind likeall of these words kind of come
to mind.
I think in our sort of modernpicture of Jesus.
And look, none of those words iswrong.
None of those words is bad, butnone of those words completely
describe what Jesus is like evenif they have kind of taken over
(05:26):
as sort of like the major themesof his life.
I don't know that it's reallyfair to say that those are the
major things of his life, butthat is kind of the picture that
we have of him in modern culturetoday, is that he's soft, he's
meek, he's gentle.
Okay.
All of those things are true,but I.
If we're honest as guys, none ofus really kinda look at those
(05:48):
characteristics and say, thoseare the things that I most want
to be known for.
Right?
They're not bad things.
It's not bad to have thosethings be true of us, but
they're probably not the essenceor the core of really what I
want to be known for as a man.
As a man, I'm probably moredrawn to those kind of like five
marks of manhood, things that Ijust talked about, strength,
courage, honor.
(06:09):
I wanna be known for thosethings, and that's really kind
of getting at the heart of whatit means to be a man.
And I think those really are thethings that Jesus lived out.
He demonstrated those thingswell, so let's talk about how he
did that.
Let's just start with the mostbasic, the one that's kind of at
the core of what it means to bea man strength.
Now the thing about strength inour day and age is that we tend
(06:32):
to think about it too much interms of sort of like the
Hollywood culture or thebodybuilding culture or you
know, YouTube and Instagramfitness influencers who are just
showing off their like perfectlysculpted and, you know,
intricately waxed bodies so thatwe can see every crevice in
between all of their eight packabs, right?
(06:52):
But that's really not whatstrength is about.
And for the most part of humanhistory, that's not what
strength has been about for men.
Strength has really just beenabout am I strong enough to get
through the basic needs of myday, and do I have enough
strength that when I'm testedwith something exceptional in
life, I can rise up to thatchallenge.
(07:13):
Okay, so strength means havingsome things in reserve.
It means that I've got more inthe tank than usually what my
day-to-day requires.
I definitely have enough to getthrough the day-to-day, but
I've, I've got some.
Extra in the tank.
I've got some strength built upthat's capable of doing more
than what I usually need to doon a day-to-day basis, so that
when those needs arise, I'm ableto meet them.
(07:35):
Now here's the thing aboutJesus.
He was strong enough to meet allof the day-to-day demands of his
life and look his day-to-daydemands.
Probably we're much more taxingthan the lives that most of us
live.
When you look at the stories ofJesus, one of the things that he
probably spent a whole lot oftime doing that most of us don't
have to do is walking.
(07:57):
Jesus walked.
Everywhere.
And he walked really longdistances to get from one end of
Israel to the other, which hedid several times throughout.
The biblical narrative wasusually a multi-day hike.
Okay.
It involved a long trip and itinvolved carrying packs on your
back and it was heavy and it washot and they camped outside, you
(08:18):
know, in between, uh, days ofthe hike.
So like.
There's real physical effortinvolved in Jesus' day-to-day
living that probably most of usdon't experience as we, you
know, live in our airconditioned homes and work in
our air conditioned offices and,you know, have food preserved us
for us in our refrigerators.
And, you know, most of us sit infront of a computer for our work
(08:39):
on the, you know, large amountof the day.
Okay.
We live a much more.
Rested and, uh, you know, softkind of life than what Jesus
actually lived.
So he was in fairly decent shapejust because as a man and his
culture, you kind of had to be,it was a much more physically
demanding culture than what welive in today.
But we also see some ways thatJesus was even stronger than
(09:01):
that.
That he really did have theability to rise up to the
challenge when he was faced withit.
We see this, especially when hehad the strength to kind of walk
into the temple and to challengeeveryone there and with a whip
to actually drive people out ofthe temple, to turn over tables,
to push people out of the way tobe intimidating with his
(09:21):
physical presence.
We see him living out some ofthe strength in moments like
that.
And probably more so than in anyplace in the narrative, we see
his physical strength throughhis crucifixion, through the way
that he had to endure thetorture, leading up to his
crucifixion, to the fact that hehad to carry his actual cross
(09:41):
for long distances before he waseven crucified.
With a body that was beaten andbloodied and bruised.
He was weak, and yeah, he fell acouple times, but he's carrying
this massive wooden beam on hisshoulders.
We would probably fall more thana couple times, especially in
the condition that he was in,but he fell along the way of
actually getting there.
He carried the thing.
(10:02):
He made the trek of being ableto hold up this huge wooden beam
and carry it down into a valley,up a hill again.
While he's waiting his own deathat the other end of that trial,
and then to be able to becrucified, to hang on that
cross, the strength required toendure the torture and the
(10:22):
punishment that he faced issomething that most of us will
never have to face.
So when we look at Jesus' life,we see all these examples of,
yeah, he had manly strength thatmost of us men today don't have.
He was capable of doing thingsand of pushing himself to limits
and beyond that most of us don'thave to face.
(10:44):
There is a manliness to hisstrength that we would do well
to emulate.
He had the strength that heneeded and he rose to the
challenges that he was facedwith when he needed to be able
to do that.
That's all that's asked of us asmen when it comes to strength.
Jesus had that and more, and sowe should look to him as our
example of what it looks like tocultivate physical strength.
(11:06):
Now let's talk about the secondone.
Courage.
Jesus was not afraid to walkinto the challenges that he
faced in his life and attempt toovercome them.
You've probably heard manypeople say that Jesus was not
afraid of picking a fight.
What did that actually look likethough?
Jesus was not really kind oflike the playground bully,
right?
So he was not the guy who wasjust walking up to and pushing
(11:29):
people down and intimidatingpeople and you know, trying to
say things that provoked theminto arguments.
He did that sometimes, but thatwasn't typically his way.
So what does it look like thatJesus demonstrated courage in
those different kinds ofsituations?
Well, Jesus had a real clearsense of what was right.
Of what was just, of what wasgood and when things got in the
(11:52):
way of that, he wasn't afraid tomove towards what was right and
good, even if it was going to beupsetting in his culture.
So for example, one of thethings that he wasn't afraid of
doing was in his culture, theyhad what was called the Sabbath,
which was a day of rest, and nowork was supposed to be done on
those days.
That happened once a week, andit was surprising the number of
(12:14):
times that Jesus would dosomething on the Sabbath, that
his culture would consider workjust to kind of like irritate or
agonize the spiritual leadersaround him.
But he was doing good things.
He was feeding people.
He was.
Healing people.
He was taking care of needs thatneeded to be met.
(12:35):
All of these things were goodand were within the boundaries
of what God would say was okayon the Sabbath, but the
religious leaders were so afraidof anyone doing anything that
might be construed as work thatthey couldn't see the good that
Jesus was doing.
But Jesus didn't shy away fromthat.
He didn't back down from thereligious leaders because he
knew that they weren't in theright.
(12:55):
They weren't interpreting thatSabbath idea well, and so he
wasn't afraid to push past theirwrong ideas, to do what actually
needed to be done.
He took care of people on theSabbath and that wasn't the kind
of work that God wanted peopleto avoid.
That was the kind of thing thathe wanted us doing all along.
And yet the religious leaderswere more concerned about rules
(13:17):
and regulations than they wereabout people.
Jesus had the courage to be ableto face that and to say, Nope,
that isn't right.
That's not the way that that'smeant to be handled.
And I'm going to set a differentexample.
Jesus wasn't afraid to call outthose very same religious
leaders to address them and tolet them know that the way that
they were living was wrong.
They were missing the heart ofGod.
(13:38):
And so even in very precarioussituations, he wasn't afraid to
stand up and to call out loudly.
The way that they were handlingthings and the way they were
teaching others to handle thosethings was wrong.
He had the courage to face thosewho were in the wrong and to
call them out for it.
That takes a lot of courage.
When was the last time that youstood up to your boss and told
(14:01):
him or her that the way she washandling things was not good, or
the way that he was handling thepeople on the team was not the
right way to do it yet?
Probably not at all.
Right.
Probably not ever have.
Most of us stood up to anauthority figure in our lives in
that way, and yet Jesus kind ofmade a habit of it because he
knew the purpose that he wasafter, and so he had the courage
(14:22):
to be able to go after what wasright.
Now let's talk about the thirdmark of manhood, which is skill.
Jesus was a skilled man and heshowed that he had developed and
honed the skills necessary forhim to accomplish the mission
that God had given him.
In particular, I wanna focus onone skill that we can really see
(14:45):
that he cultivated, and that wasthe skill of teaching Jesus
thought about and practicedteaching in ways that nobody
else in his day did.
And even today, the way thatpeople teach, especially even
sometimes the way that pastorsand other religious leaders
teach, isn't much like the waythat Jesus taught.
(15:06):
Jesus tried to teach in a waythat people would not only
remember his teaching.
But they would actually be ableto put it into practice.
His goal wasn't just retaininginformation, which people were
able to do remarkably wellbecause he told stories that
helped them to retain it.
But his goal was actually thatthey would be able to live it
(15:26):
out.
And so he told stories.
He gave examples.
He tied things into verypractical, tangible, daily parts
of their lives.
Things like farming and.
Fishing and things that relatedto the temple culture that they
and their Jewish world were allvery familiar with.
He tied it into those thingsthat were in their everyday
world, and so because of that,it made sense for how they could
(15:50):
actually apply it.
Here we are 2000 years later andpeople are still applying his
teaching.
Jesus is hands down the greatestteacher who has ever lived.
There's not a teacher in all ofthe world whose teaching has
been more sought after andfollowed and copied and taught
than Jesus.
(16:10):
His skill at teaching surpasseseveryone, and it was this kind
of thing that demonstrates thatJesus really knew what skill was
about.
He knew that that was needed ofhim, and so he practiced it.
He rehearsed it, he honed it.
He told his stories in multipleplaces so that he could get good
at them and rehearsed them andknow how to be able to use them.
(16:31):
He told it in ways that otherscould copy it and preach it as
well, which he sent hisfollowers out to do.
He knew what he was doing whenit.
Came to the skill that wasneeded of him in order to do
good for the sake of othersaround him.
And that's really what skill isall about.
Jesus was a master of it.
Now let's talk about those lasttwo marks of manhood, honor and
(16:53):
allegiance.
Honor is really about peers.
Jesus had so many peers in hislife.
Yes, he had the 12 disciples,the group of young men who he
had around him who were hisclosest followers, and the men
who carried the torch after hewas gone.
But not only that, he had womenwho were among his followers and
he had a wider circle offollowers beyond the 12 as well,
(17:17):
who were committed to him andwho wanted to take his message
to the world.
Jesus.
Had honor among those peoplebecause of the way that he
treated them.
He lifted them up, he healedthem.
He cared for their needs andtheir burdens.
He paid attention to them.
He taught them what it meant tolove.
He taught them what it meant topray.
(17:38):
He taught them that followingGod wasn't just about the rules
and the restrictions that theywere used to, but that was
really about a relationship withGod and how that relationship
translated into relating rightlyto the other people around them.
He was so unique and sodifferent, and that made him
worthy of so much honor in theirlives.
(17:59):
They valued him so much.
They wanted to spend time aroundhim.
They wanted to care for hisneeds.
They wanted to honor him becauseof how good he was and how much
he was changing people's lives.
Jesus was worthy of honor inways that few people ever have
been.
And the people closest to himreally demonstrated that they
(18:20):
honored him in all the ways thatthey possibly could.
Now, they didn't do itperfectly, and we see that
example all throughout thebiblical narratives, but they
did do it well and they wantedto do it, and that was probably
what was most important.
Jesus was a man worthy of honor,and he was so honored by the
people around him.
(18:41):
When it comes to allegiance,Jesus's allegiance was very
clear.
He was allegient to God, hisfather, and he talked about God
the Father all the time, and howhe was following the Father and
how he only did what he saw thefather doing and how he.
Got away regularly to pray tothe father all the time the
father was on his lips.
(19:01):
He talked about his allegianceto the father and that he wanted
his followers to know the Fatheras he knew the father.
There was so much about hisallegiance to the Father that
was so clear and the way that hedid his ministry and the way
that he lived his life, and thisis what we would call ultimate
allegiance.
Jesus structured all of his lifearound his ultimate allegiance.
(19:22):
To God the father, and it madeevery other aspect of his life
abundantly clear.
He knew what kind of skills hehad to go after because of his
relationship and his allegianceto God the father.
He knew what kinds of thingsneeded to be honored in his
community because of hisallegiance to God the father.
His allegiance to God, thefather gave him a courage.
(19:44):
It gave him an identity to beable to say, I know what I can
stand for because I know I'malready accepted and loved by
God, my father, and so I canstand up for the things that he
really values.
I.
And it also gave him a strength.
He knew that he needed to be theman that God the father had
created him to be, and thatpushed him to be able to grow
(20:06):
physically strong, mentally,strong, emotionally,
spiritually, relationally,strong in so many ways.
I.
So all these five marks ofmanhood, Jesus demonstrated them
heroically.
He demonstrated them in waysthat we as men can only hope to
be able to do.
But that's really the point.
We have all these models todayof how to live out those same
(20:29):
kinds of traits from men who aredoing them in ways that just
seem silly.
Right, that ways that, you know,we talk about it sometimes in
our culture, like there's thisthing called toxic max
masculinity, or now there's wokemasculinity, and now there's all
these just different ways ofliving out what it means to be a
man.
And yet none of them seem trulygenuine.
None of them seem to really begetting at the kind of man that
(20:49):
most of us men want to be.
But when we look at Jesus.
We see a very clear picture ofall of those things.
We see the kind of man that wewant to be, and we see those
five marks lived out in waysthat we are meant to go after.
So let's do that.
Let's go after being that kindof man that Jesus was and is,
(21:11):
and live out the five marks theway that he did it.
That is the best kind of manthat we can be.
'cause Jesus is the man who ismost worth following.
Alright.
If this has been helpful to you,I would love for you to put down
in the comments, which of thefive marks of manhood do you
want to grow in and become morelike Jesus in that way?
(21:31):
Which of those five marks?
Strength, courage, skill, honor,allegiance, you can just put one
word, or you can put the mark ofmanhood and how you want to
become more like Jesus in thatarea.
Whatever you want to do, justput it down in there in the
comments and if you would like.
To connect with some other menwho are trying to grow in those
five marks of manhood as well,who are like-minded to your
(21:52):
purposes in your life.
Then I would encourage you toconsider joining our Manhood
Tribes community.
You can check it out at manhoodtribes.com/community.
And there you're gonna find menwho want to get better at being
men who want to get better atfollowing Jesus and who are
looking to connect with otherlike.
Minded men.
I know that's probably true ofyou as well, so head on over
(22:13):
there and get your name on thelist for how you can connect
with our community, manhoodtribes.com/community.
All right, I hope I'll hear fromyou in the comments and I look
forward to talking to you againnext time here on the Manhood
Tribes Channel.
We'll see you then.
Guys, what if you had a clear framework for what it
means to be a man, as well asthe perfect model to demonstrate
it for you so that you couldfollow along?
On today's episode, I want tointroduce or remind you of the
five marks of manhood, and Iwant to tell you about how Jesus
(00:22):
nailed every one of them.
That's right.
We're gonna talk about Jesustoday and we're gonna talk about
how he is the man most worthy offollowing.
My name's Don, and here we areat the Manhood Tribes Channel,
and we talk a lot about what itmeans to be a man, how to do
that well, what the pathway todoing that well actually looks
like.
And we are in the midst of kindof a series where we're talking
(00:45):
about this idea of Jesus as theman who is actually most worthy
of being followed.
That may be kind of like a newidea to you or a surprising idea
to you that Jesus.
A is a man, right?
That's not something that weoften talk about with Jesus.
I mean, we kind of like assumethat he was, but we don't talk
about his manliness or hismasculinity very much, and I
(01:07):
think that's something that weneed to kind of recover.
But also we, we don't reallykind of think about Jesus as the
man that we want to emulate.
There's a lot of things aboutJesus that we want to emulate.
Most of them are very kind oflike holy or religious kinds of
things that we think aboutemulating, but we don't always
think about his masculinity asbeing something that we want to
(01:28):
try to imitate, that we want tobe true of our lives as well.
But here on the Manhood TribesChannel, we talk about manhood
in some very specific ways.
And as we talk about thosethings today, I think you're
going to be able to see thatJesus not only modeled these
things for us, he actuallydemonstrated the perfect ways to
(01:48):
be able to live them out so thatwe can be the kind of men that
we actually want to become.
So let's dive into it.
As a brief reminder for those ofyou who are following along on
this channel or if you're brandnew as by way of introduction,
the five marks of manhood arethe things that we believe all
men should possess in order todemonstrate what it means to be
(02:11):
a man.
Those five marks are strength.
Courage, skill, honor, andallegiance.
And if you're doing well in allof those things, you are
exhibiting to the world what itmeans to be a man.
And just real briefly, let'stouch on what each of those
things are when it comes tostrength.
We're talking primarily about.
(02:31):
Physical strength, men's bodiesare built to be strong, and so
part of what it means to be aman, and really the core of our
essence of masculinity is aboutbeing strong.
And yes, we're mostly talkingabout physical strength,
although mental and emotionaltoughness comes into play in
that as well, especially as wepick up the second mark of
manhood, which is courage.
(02:52):
Courage just means that we arefacing our fears and moving
towards them instead of backingaway from the things that are
difficult or challenging inlife.
We're actually figuring out howwe can move into those things
and overcome them.
Skill is the third mark ofmanhood and it just is really
about the idea that men aredependent on for being good at
things that we need to begrowing in our skills in lots of
(03:15):
different areas, but probablyalso mastering or even
perfecting our skills and one ortwo kind of key areas where me,
we are meant to contribute tothe good of others around us.
Honor is really all about ourrelationships with our peers.
Honor is about doing right bythose around you, and so in
particular, the group of menthat you have closest to you are
(03:38):
meant to share some values incommon.
And if you uphold those values,then you are worthy of honor.
Allegiance is really about thosekind of like authority
relationships.
So if honor is about kind of thehorizontal axis of
relationships, allegiance isreally about that vertical axis.
It's about how we relate tothose who are in authority over
(03:59):
us.
And one area in particular thatwe have to deal with is our
ultimate allegiance.
What or who is the thing that wemost give authority to in our
lives.
What are we choosing to followthat actually has authority over
every place in our life,especially the big decisions and
the ways that we shave ourlives?
Okay, so those are our fivemarks of manhood.
(04:20):
Again, strength, courage, skill,honor and allegiance.
As a man, you can grow and getbetter, and.
All of those areas, and that'sone of the great things about
them is that you're not stuck asa man.
Just kind of feeling like, I'mnot really good at being a man,
or I'm, I don't feel very manlytoday.
Well, that's okay.
You can get better at any ofthose things and start to feel
more manly because you areliving as what it means to be a
(04:43):
man.
Now, what does it look like thatJesus lived out all five of
those marks of manhood, and howdid he do it in ways that we
might look at him and say, ohyeah, he really is kind of like
the ideal man, or the man mostworthy of being followed.
Why would we say that?
I think when most of us kind ofthink of Jesus, we have this
(05:04):
picture of him that's kind oflike soft and sweet and nice and
you know, encouraging kind likeall of these words kind of come
to mind.
I think in our sort of modernpicture of Jesus.
And look, none of those words iswrong.
None of those words is bad, butnone of those words completely
describe what Jesus is like evenif they have kind of taken over
(05:26):
as sort of like the major themesof his life.
I don't know that it's reallyfair to say that those are the
major things of his life, butthat is kind of the picture that
we have of him in modern culturetoday, is that he's soft, he's
meek, he's gentle.
Okay.
All of those things are true,but I.
If we're honest as guys, none ofus really kinda look at those
(05:48):
characteristics and say, thoseare the things that I most want
to be known for.
Right?
They're not bad things.
It's not bad to have thosethings be true of us, but
they're probably not the essenceor the core of really what I
want to be known for as a man.
As a man, I'm probably moredrawn to those kind of like five
marks of manhood, things that Ijust talked about, strength,
courage, honor.
(06:09):
I wanna be known for thosethings, and that's really kind
of getting at the heart of whatit means to be a man.
And I think those really are thethings that Jesus lived out.
He demonstrated those thingswell, so let's talk about how he
did that.
Let's just start with the mostbasic, the one that's kind of at
the core of what it means to bea man strength.
Now the thing about strength inour day and age is that we tend
(06:32):
to think about it too much interms of sort of like the
Hollywood culture or thebodybuilding culture or you
know, YouTube and Instagramfitness influencers who are just
showing off their like perfectlysculpted and, you know,
intricately waxed bodies so thatwe can see every crevice in
between all of their eight packabs, right?
(06:52):
But that's really not whatstrength is about.
And for the most part of humanhistory, that's not what
strength has been about for men.
Strength has really just beenabout am I strong enough to get
through the basic needs of myday, and do I have enough
strength that when I'm testedwith something exceptional in
life, I can rise up to thatchallenge.
(07:13):
Okay, so strength means havingsome things in reserve.
It means that I've got more inthe tank than usually what my
day-to-day requires.
I definitely have enough to getthrough the day-to-day, but
I've, I've got some.
Extra in the tank.
I've got some strength built upthat's capable of doing more
than what I usually need to doon a day-to-day basis, so that
when those needs arise, I'm ableto meet them.
(07:35):
Now here's the thing aboutJesus.
He was strong enough to meet allof the day-to-day demands of his
life and look his day-to-daydemands.
Probably we're much more taxingthan the lives that most of us
live.
When you look at the stories ofJesus, one of the things that he
probably spent a whole lot oftime doing that most of us don't
have to do is walking.
(07:57):
Jesus walked.
Everywhere.
And he walked really longdistances to get from one end of
Israel to the other, which hedid several times throughout.
The biblical narrative wasusually a multi-day hike.
Okay.
It involved a long trip and itinvolved carrying packs on your
back and it was heavy and it washot and they camped outside, you
(08:18):
know, in between, uh, days ofthe hike.
So like.
There's real physical effortinvolved in Jesus' day-to-day
living that probably most of usdon't experience as we, you
know, live in our airconditioned homes and work in
our air conditioned offices and,you know, have food preserved us
for us in our refrigerators.
And, you know, most of us sit infront of a computer for our work
(08:39):
on the, you know, large amountof the day.
Okay.
We live a much more.
Rested and, uh, you know, softkind of life than what Jesus
actually lived.
So he was in fairly decent shapejust because as a man and his
culture, you kind of had to be,it was a much more physically
demanding culture than what welive in today.
But we also see some ways thatJesus was even stronger than
(09:01):
that.
That he really did have theability to rise up to the
challenge when he was faced withit.
We see this, especially when hehad the strength to kind of walk
into the temple and to challengeeveryone there and with a whip
to actually drive people out ofthe temple, to turn over tables,
to push people out of the way tobe intimidating with his
(09:21):
physical presence.
We see him living out some ofthe strength in moments like
that.
And probably more so than in anyplace in the narrative, we see
his physical strength throughhis crucifixion, through the way
that he had to endure thetorture, leading up to his
crucifixion, to the fact that hehad to carry his actual cross
(09:41):
for long distances before he waseven crucified.
With a body that was beaten andbloodied and bruised.
He was weak, and yeah, he fell acouple times, but he's carrying
this massive wooden beam on hisshoulders.
We would probably fall more thana couple times, especially in
the condition that he was in,but he fell along the way of
actually getting there.
He carried the thing.
(10:02):
He made the trek of being ableto hold up this huge wooden beam
and carry it down into a valley,up a hill again.
While he's waiting his own deathat the other end of that trial,
and then to be able to becrucified, to hang on that
cross, the strength required toendure the torture and the
(10:22):
punishment that he faced issomething that most of us will
never have to face.
So when we look at Jesus' life,we see all these examples of,
yeah, he had manly strength thatmost of us men today don't have.
He was capable of doing thingsand of pushing himself to limits
and beyond that most of us don'thave to face.
(10:44):
There is a manliness to hisstrength that we would do well
to emulate.
He had the strength that heneeded and he rose to the
challenges that he was facedwith when he needed to be able
to do that.
That's all that's asked of us asmen when it comes to strength.
Jesus had that and more, and sowe should look to him as our
example of what it looks like tocultivate physical strength.
(11:06):
Now let's talk about the secondone.
Courage.
Jesus was not afraid to walkinto the challenges that he
faced in his life and attempt toovercome them.
You've probably heard manypeople say that Jesus was not
afraid of picking a fight.
What did that actually look likethough?
Jesus was not really kind oflike the playground bully,
right?
So he was not the guy who wasjust walking up to and pushing
(11:29):
people down and intimidatingpeople and you know, trying to
say things that provoked theminto arguments.
He did that sometimes, but thatwasn't typically his way.
So what does it look like thatJesus demonstrated courage in
those different kinds ofsituations?
Well, Jesus had a real clearsense of what was right.
Of what was just, of what wasgood and when things got in the
(11:52):
way of that, he wasn't afraid tomove towards what was right and
good, even if it was going to beupsetting in his culture.
So for example, one of thethings that he wasn't afraid of
doing was in his culture, theyhad what was called the Sabbath,
which was a day of rest, and nowork was supposed to be done on
those days.
That happened once a week, andit was surprising the number of
(12:14):
times that Jesus would dosomething on the Sabbath, that
his culture would consider workjust to kind of like irritate or
agonize the spiritual leadersaround him.
But he was doing good things.
He was feeding people.
He was.
Healing people.
He was taking care of needs thatneeded to be met.
(12:35):
All of these things were goodand were within the boundaries
of what God would say was okayon the Sabbath, but the
religious leaders were so afraidof anyone doing anything that
might be construed as work thatthey couldn't see the good that
Jesus was doing.
But Jesus didn't shy away fromthat.
He didn't back down from thereligious leaders because he
knew that they weren't in theright.
(12:55):
They weren't interpreting thatSabbath idea well, and so he
wasn't afraid to push past theirwrong ideas, to do what actually
needed to be done.
He took care of people on theSabbath and that wasn't the kind
of work that God wanted peopleto avoid.
That was the kind of thing thathe wanted us doing all along.
And yet the religious leaderswere more concerned about rules
(13:17):
and regulations than they wereabout people.
Jesus had the courage to be ableto face that and to say, Nope,
that isn't right.
That's not the way that that'smeant to be handled.
And I'm going to set a differentexample.
Jesus wasn't afraid to call outthose very same religious
leaders to address them and tolet them know that the way that
they were living was wrong.
They were missing the heart ofGod.
(13:38):
And so even in very precarioussituations, he wasn't afraid to
stand up and to call out loudly.
The way that they were handlingthings and the way they were
teaching others to handle thosethings was wrong.
He had the courage to face thosewho were in the wrong and to
call them out for it.
That takes a lot of courage.
When was the last time that youstood up to your boss and told
(14:01):
him or her that the way she washandling things was not good, or
the way that he was handling thepeople on the team was not the
right way to do it yet?
Probably not at all.
Right.
Probably not ever have.
Most of us stood up to anauthority figure in our lives in
that way, and yet Jesus kind ofmade a habit of it because he
knew the purpose that he wasafter, and so he had the courage
(14:22):
to be able to go after what wasright.
Now let's talk about the thirdmark of manhood, which is skill.
Jesus was a skilled man and heshowed that he had developed and
honed the skills necessary forhim to accomplish the mission
that God had given him.
In particular, I wanna focus onone skill that we can really see
(14:45):
that he cultivated, and that wasthe skill of teaching Jesus
thought about and practicedteaching in ways that nobody
else in his day did.
And even today, the way thatpeople teach, especially even
sometimes the way that pastorsand other religious leaders
teach, isn't much like the waythat Jesus taught.
(15:06):
Jesus tried to teach in a waythat people would not only
remember his teaching.
But they would actually be ableto put it into practice.
His goal wasn't just retaininginformation, which people were
able to do remarkably wellbecause he told stories that
helped them to retain it.
But his goal was actually thatthey would be able to live it
(15:26):
out.
And so he told stories.
He gave examples.
He tied things into verypractical, tangible, daily parts
of their lives.
Things like farming and.
Fishing and things that relatedto the temple culture that they
and their Jewish world were allvery familiar with.
He tied it into those thingsthat were in their everyday
world, and so because of that,it made sense for how they could
(15:50):
actually apply it.
Here we are 2000 years later andpeople are still applying his
teaching.
Jesus is hands down the greatestteacher who has ever lived.
There's not a teacher in all ofthe world whose teaching has
been more sought after andfollowed and copied and taught
than Jesus.
(16:10):
His skill at teaching surpasseseveryone, and it was this kind
of thing that demonstrates thatJesus really knew what skill was
about.
He knew that that was needed ofhim, and so he practiced it.
He rehearsed it, he honed it.
He told his stories in multipleplaces so that he could get good
at them and rehearsed them andknow how to be able to use them.
(16:31):
He told it in ways that otherscould copy it and preach it as
well, which he sent hisfollowers out to do.
He knew what he was doing whenit.
Came to the skill that wasneeded of him in order to do
good for the sake of othersaround him.
And that's really what skill isall about.
Jesus was a master of it.
Now let's talk about those lasttwo marks of manhood, honor and
(16:53):
allegiance.
Honor is really about peers.
Jesus had so many peers in hislife.
Yes, he had the 12 disciples,the group of young men who he
had around him who were hisclosest followers, and the men
who carried the torch after hewas gone.
But not only that, he had womenwho were among his followers and
he had a wider circle offollowers beyond the 12 as well,
(17:17):
who were committed to him andwho wanted to take his message
to the world.
Jesus.
Had honor among those peoplebecause of the way that he
treated them.
He lifted them up, he healedthem.
He cared for their needs andtheir burdens.
He paid attention to them.
He taught them what it meant tolove.
He taught them what it meant topray.
(17:38):
He taught them that followingGod wasn't just about the rules
and the restrictions that theywere used to, but that was
really about a relationship withGod and how that relationship
translated into relating rightlyto the other people around them.
He was so unique and sodifferent, and that made him
worthy of so much honor in theirlives.
(17:59):
They valued him so much.
They wanted to spend time aroundhim.
They wanted to care for hisneeds.
They wanted to honor him becauseof how good he was and how much
he was changing people's lives.
Jesus was worthy of honor inways that few people ever have
been.
And the people closest to himreally demonstrated that they
(18:20):
honored him in all the ways thatthey possibly could.
Now, they didn't do itperfectly, and we see that
example all throughout thebiblical narratives, but they
did do it well and they wantedto do it, and that was probably
what was most important.
Jesus was a man worthy of honor,and he was so honored by the
people around him.
(18:41):
When it comes to allegiance,Jesus's allegiance was very
clear.
He was allegient to God, hisfather, and he talked about God
the Father all the time, and howhe was following the Father and
how he only did what he saw thefather doing and how he.
Got away regularly to pray tothe father all the time the
father was on his lips.
(19:01):
He talked about his allegianceto the father and that he wanted
his followers to know the Fatheras he knew the father.
There was so much about hisallegiance to the Father that
was so clear and the way that hedid his ministry and the way
that he lived his life, and thisis what we would call ultimate
allegiance.
Jesus structured all of his lifearound his ultimate allegiance.
(19:22):
To God the father, and it madeevery other aspect of his life
abundantly clear.
He knew what kind of skills hehad to go after because of his
relationship and his allegianceto God the father.
He knew what kinds of thingsneeded to be honored in his
community because of hisallegiance to God the father.
His allegiance to God, thefather gave him a courage.
(19:44):
It gave him an identity to beable to say, I know what I can
stand for because I know I'malready accepted and loved by
God, my father, and so I canstand up for the things that he
really values.
I.
And it also gave him a strength.
He knew that he needed to be theman that God the father had
created him to be, and thatpushed him to be able to grow
(20:06):
physically strong, mentally,strong, emotionally,
spiritually, relationally,strong in so many ways.
I.
So all these five marks ofmanhood, Jesus demonstrated them
heroically.
He demonstrated them in waysthat we as men can only hope to
be able to do.
But that's really the point.
We have all these models todayof how to live out those same
(20:29):
kinds of traits from men who aredoing them in ways that just
seem silly.
Right, that ways that, you know,we talk about it sometimes in
our culture, like there's thisthing called toxic max
masculinity, or now there's wokemasculinity, and now there's all
these just different ways ofliving out what it means to be a
man.
And yet none of them seem trulygenuine.
None of them seem to really begetting at the kind of man that
(20:49):
most of us men want to be.
But when we look at Jesus.
We see a very clear picture ofall of those things.
We see the kind of man that wewant to be, and we see those
five marks lived out in waysthat we are meant to go after.
So let's do that.
Let's go after being that kindof man that Jesus was and is,
(21:11):
and live out the five marks theway that he did it.
That is the best kind of manthat we can be.
'cause Jesus is the man who ismost worth following.
Alright.
If this has been helpful to you,I would love for you to put down
in the comments, which of thefive marks of manhood do you
want to grow in and become morelike Jesus in that way?
(21:31):
Which of those five marks?
Strength, courage, skill, honor,allegiance, you can just put one
word, or you can put the mark ofmanhood and how you want to
become more like Jesus in thatarea.
Whatever you want to do, justput it down in there in the
comments and if you would like.
To connect with some other menwho are trying to grow in those
five marks of manhood as well,who are like-minded to your
(21:52):
purposes in your life.
Then I would encourage you toconsider joining our Manhood
Tribes community.
You can check it out at manhoodtribes.com/community.
And there you're gonna find menwho want to get better at being
men who want to get better atfollowing Jesus and who are
looking to connect with otherlike.
Minded men.
I know that's probably true ofyou as well, so head on over
(22:13):
there and get your name on thelist for how you can connect
with our community, manhoodtribes.com/community.
All right, I hope I'll hear fromyou in the comments and I look
forward to talking to you againnext time here on the Manhood
Tribes Channel.
We'll see you then.
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