If you pay close attention to current cultural developments, you’ll notice that the word “binary” gets used a lot, very often in a negative light. Binary refers to something that has two components that are distinct from each other but are connected and complementary, that go together. The sexual or gender binary, then, would be male and female. Humanity cannot be described properly and fully without referring to the fact that human beings come in one of two forms, either male or female–not just outwardly but right down to the level of our chromosomes. When God creates man, the human being, He creates him male and female. There is one humanity, but it’s a binary humanity of man and woman.
However, this way of thinking is increasingly denigrated as simplistic and incorrect. And so you’ll sometimes hear of people referring to themselves as non-binary, gender fluid, and so forth. Our binary creation as male and female is rejected in favor of some other third or fourth or 50th option.
We could dismiss this sort of stuff as just so much woke silliness–and it is probably healthy not to pay too much attention to the weirdness of the world’s thinking–but we do need to affirm that the one true God whom we worship creates humanity and virtually all of creation in a binary fashion. To reject the binary is to reject Him.
Just consider the things which most everyone finds beautiful in this creation. It’s where these binaries come together: a sunset (or a sunrise), the very edge of where light and darkness meet; or a seashore or beach, where the land and water come together; or a mountain peak, where heaven and earth seem to touch. Each of these things maintain their distinctiveness, and yet as they come together with their God-given pair, it is good, as He says repeatedly.
So it is, then, also for male and female. God creates humanity as a pair of two distinct and different forms; and where this binary meets and is joined together in marriage, God declares it to be very good. It is beautiful in His sight. It’s how He made things to be. To reject this created binary is to reject both beauty and goodness in favor of something else that is counterfeit and pretend.
And this isn’t just a matter of sexuality or morality either. Of course, it is best for us and for our neighbors to live according to the way we’ve been designed, just as a matter of common sense. But the way God created the world and human beings is also a living sign of His redemption of the world and human beings. The truth of male and female is the truth of God and His people, of Christ and the Church. To tear down the distinction between man and woman, to say that one can even become the other, is to attack the very Gospel of Christ. The Groom Jesus laid down His life for His one Elect Lady, the one holy Christian apostolic Church. His side was opened like Adam’s, and the blood and water that poured forth cleansed her and gave her life. The Gospel is a binary matter, where the Lord gives life and salvation to us purely by grace, and our sole action as His people is to receive it. We cling to His love and mercy; we rejoice in it and live in it, and we praise and thank Him for it.
The most beautiful thing in all of this fallen creation, then, is not a sunset or a mountain peak. It is when God and His people come together in divine service, where the Creator and those who are created in His image share in fellowship through His Word, who commune with Him and partake in His life in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Heaven and earth are joined here as God and man come together in Him who is both God and Man, Jesus Christ. If the height of goodness and beauty is where the two parts of the binary come together, then our Lord Jesus is goodness and beauty incarnate.
In Jesus, who is fully divine and fully human, we are given now by faith what we shall experience fully in eternity, where God and His people are brought together in perfect unity. Scripture speaks of this in Revelation 21, when heaven and earth are rejoined on the Last Day, when everything is brought to its consummation: “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
