Some would claim that the Bible says nothing about the outbreak of the transgender sensation taking place in the Western world. No verse states, "You can not transition from a man to a woman." But neither is there any verse that speaks directly about gun violence or vaccines. We cannot expect the Bible to communicate in the terms we use in our day.
But that does not mean Scripture does not guide us to make sense of this transgender movement. When it comes to the transgender movement, the Bible has much to say. There is a rich understanding of sexual identity in the Bible.
The transgender movement, as a social trend, is highly intricate. It touches on fields as broad as medicine, law, schooling, entertainment, and religious freedom. People say the church should stay out of this issue. The truth is that Christians must think through and speak about all of these subjects. When we ask, "What does the Bible say about gender?" we ask a question that can take us on various paths.
Christians are to be "people of the Book." That is, we are those who believe, like Jesus, that the Scripture cannot be broken.
"If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;" - John 10:35
Scripture cannot be altered, and the gender question must yield to the Bible. Therefore, we must start with a Scriptural understanding of male and female.
The Bible instructs us that God created us either male or female. This does not change based on our emotions or confusion. We must act in accordance with the reality of God's design. Transgender ideology falls short of God's glory and is not how we walk in obedience to our Creator.
Three Biblical facts ultimately lead us to this understanding:
1. Binary
There are no other gender categories in Scripture besides male and female. While both man and woman throughout the Bible may express their manliness and womanliness in various ways, it always functions with the binary categories of man and woman. You are either one or the other. The rarity of intersex people does not change our design by our Creator. Instead, it gives an example of the reality of a fallen world by showing us we are not the way we are supposed to be and all of creation is groaning due to sin.
"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." - Roamans 8:22
From Genesis 1 and 2, we understand that the classifications of male and female are God's design for mankind. When God formed the first human couple in His image, He made them male and female.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." - Genesis 1:27
He created woman to complement and be a help to the man.
"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." - Genesis 2:18
God shows the reality of a man and a woman as fundamental to His plan. Society wants to say the binary is a cultural construct, but it is far from it. The two are neither equivalent nor interchangeable.
"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." - Genesis 1:23-24
God split mankind into two genders, male and female. You are either one or the other. You cannot be both, nor can you be one then the other. The "patriarchy" did not create gender. It was God's creation.
2. Identity
Many people could agree that God created us either man or woman. They say, "but you are mistaking gender with biological sex." While many people who adopt the idea of transgender ideology may do so because of a social contagion, some people sincerely believe that if they live as the opposite sex, they can be their authentic selves.
The question is not if people or feelings like this exist. The question is if our emotional or mental condition is what God designed. As Christians, we believe that God's design is to die to ourselves to follow Jesus. We have a renewed mind and no longer walk as we used to.
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." - Matthew 16:24
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:" - Ephesians 4:17-18
"Following our heart" is continuously a wrong choice when it implies going against Scripture. Scripture acknowledges the natural unity of sex and gender, regardless of what modern-day academia says. This is why the combination of male and female is the only classification of people that can reproduce and is why homosexuality is wrong.
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." - Genesis 1:28
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." - Leviticus 18:22
3. Confusion
If the design of male and female is God's creation, and if we are to embrace our natural difference as men and women, then it proves that the confusion of these facts would dissatisfy God. We see in Scripture that a man should not act sexually as a woman and that a man should not dress as a woman.
"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." - Romans 1:26-27
"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God." - Deuteronomy 22:5
We do not have the freedom to do anything we want with our physical bodies. We belong to God, and everything we do should glorify Him with our bodies.
"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Society has arrived at the point where they want to excuse their sin before others, and they will go to great lengths to prove they are right. Not only do they justify their sin, but the world also desires all who oppose them to validate their sinful feelings. As Christians, we must stand for the truth of God's Word and, with love, assist in proclaiming that truth to others.