Be a man. Obey God.

As David's time to die drew near, he charged Solomon his son, saying, "I am going the way of all the earth.  Be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man.  Keep the charge of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to what is written in the Law of Moses, that you may succeed in all that you do and wherever you turn," (1 Kings 2:1-3).

Notice what David told Solomon.  First, show yourself a man.  Immediately following that is, "Keep the charge of the LORD your God."  In David's mind, then, there is a definite connection between being a man and following God.  It struck me as I read this that obeying God is, in fact, at least for men, a true definition of what it means to be a man.  This can be understood in a couple of ways. 

First, obeying God fully gets at the essence of what man [mankind] actually is, a creature of and belonging to God.  God is the Maker, Master, Owner; man is His and thus entirely at His disposal.  Thus, by virtue of his nature as a creature, man has the inherent duty to be entirely submissive to God.  It is significant that in the creations story, the text makes it clear that God gave the original command to Adam, the man, and not to Eve--and even apparently prior to Eve's arrival on the scene (Gen. 2:15-17).  To obey God then, is to re-capture the essence of what it is to be a man, to restore the purpose and role of man in his Edenic perfection.

Second, obeying God fully shows a man as a true man because complete obedience to God is hard.  In fact, it's impossibly hard apart from the indwelling power of the Spirit of God.  But, assuming a man is a Christian filled with the Holy Spirit, it is still the most difficult thing to do.  Obeying God is hard.  Everything comes against you: the world, your flesh, the devil.  It isn't "natural" (at least post-Fall).  It is all-encompassing; there is no sphere of life where God has not spoken.  God's standards and commands are a lot to remember and take heed of; you cannot let your guard down or let up the fight for one second.  It is, therefore, exhausting.  I could go on, I suppose, but you get the point.  The stark reality is that being an obedient servant of God is hard.  I have a friend who once said to me, "I didn't say it would be easy.  If I wanted life to be easy, I'd be a Christian."  How wrong he was!  He had no idea what it takes to be a Christian.  You must be strong, persevering, disciplined, self-controlled, and diligent.  You must die to yourself every single day, mortifying your pride and fleshly desires.  You must be a man.

For example, anybody can give full vent to their anger though a chain of explicit four-letter words with a great deal of volume to them.  Any guy can let his eyes roam free and have sex with any woman he wants in his mind.  It takes a man of God--a true man--to control his anger and hold his tongue.  It takes a man of God--a true man--to gouge out his eyes so that he won't stumble (figuratively, of course, but not excluding literally) and violate a woman, refusing to see her as an object for his "innocent" pleasure but as a precious creation of God who belongs to Him and to someone else.

No, obeying God means being a man.  Men, you want to be a true man?  You want to show yourself rugged, strong, disciplined, faithful, worthy, respectable?  Obey God.  It's the purpose and role for which you were created.  Not only that, it is the hardest thing on earth to do, so if you do obey God, you are worthy of hearing, "Now he is a real man, a man of God."