Is God Male or Female? Does the Bible Say?

Does the Bible say whether God is male or female? Can we know for certain from the Word of God? Can we tell from the style of the literature or the original authors?

God in the Masculine

God is spoken of as a “He.” Jesus is a male…the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is referred to as “He.” But does this mean that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are males? No, not as we know maleness in the human gender. If we understand that the Bible was written in the masculine form and that it is not gender-neutral, we can see that God is a “He.” Just like we christen a boat and give a feminine name to it, we hear the Bible mention “men, mankind and the sons of men.” But this does not mean that God is a male like human men and boys are. Jesus was born of a virgin woman as a male, yes, but before that He was God and was with God (John 1). God is Spirit (John 4:24) and so as God is a Spirit, He is neither male nor female as we understand it. I am not saying that God as the Father is not a male in name but God is spirit and even the angels are neither male nor female (Matt 22:30). Angels are given male names but this is by design because angels have no sexual orientation. They can not marry or reproduce because they are spirit beings. God can create beings like He did angels and mankind but God can not reproduce other Gods. This is because God, by definition, has always existed, was never created, and can not create an eternal god because by definition, something that is eternal can not have a beginning or an ending and thus be a created being.

He bids you to come to Him today…for tomorrow may be too late

God as Father

We understand that God the Father is likened to a human father. In Psalm 103:13-14 is among my favorites as it says that God is like, “a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.“ He is benevolent, He provides for, He sustains, He corrects, He disciplines, and He loves…but God is not a male as we know human maleness but He is male in His divine attributes. Just like a ship with a feminine name or a hurricane with a feminine or masculine name is not a sexual being. A few years ago when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, it was understood that the hurricane was not a female and could not reproduce. God created male and female and the First Person of the Trinity is referred to as a Father (male) but this doesn’t mean that God is a male in the sense of human maleness.

The Son of God

Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, is sometimes called “the Son of Man” indicating a masculine gender (Luke 19:10). Jesus was a carpenter and carpenters in that day worked with heavy stones and timbers. There is little doubt that Jesus must have been “a man’s man” or a very strong man because the job of a carpenter in those days was a very strenuous job and demanded hard, physical labor. He was the Son of God and the Son of Man, emphasizing His human birth. The Scriptures show dozens of time that Jesus was a male in the flesh and the Scriptures testify of this for even the Roman authorities said, “no one ever spoke like this man“ (John 7:47)! The Scriptures also testify that, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). Clearly Jesus was a man on earth but He was God before He became man (John 1:14). Before Jesus came in the flesh He was with the Triune God and neither male nor female but declared to be the Son of God, the “Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev 13:8b).

The Holy Spirit

When Jesus said that He was going away, He was going to send the Helper. This Helper would also be called the Counselor as we read in John 16:7-8, “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.” Here we see that the Holy Spirit is referred to as a “He.” There is a maleness in the gender of the Holy Spirit but that is the way that the Holy Spirit is referred to just as Jesus is called “Him” and the Father, “He.” This does not mean that the Holy Spirit is a male as far as we think of human maleness but we must refer to the Holy Spirit in the masculine.

Conclusion

We have heard many wrongly attribute God as a “she, her, or mother-god” but these are not found in Scripture and these are an insult to God. There are also many Bibles that have made God out to be gender-neutral. This is also wrong because the Bible in the Hebrew and Greek clearly say God is referred to in the masculine by name. You may have even heard the terms “mother earth” or “mother nature” but is the earth or nature really female? Of course not! It is just the way the language idiosyncrasies are in the Bible. This doesn’t mean that we should not refer to God the Father, the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit as “He’s” but they are not anything like a human male at all. Even so, we see that they are masculine by name and this is the way that we must refer to them. To refer to God in the female gender is not only incorrect; it is not biblical, so in the strictest sense, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “He’s” or male. Not so much in persuasion, sex, or gender as we know it, but by title and definition.

If you have not placed your trust in Jesus Christ, you can not pray to God as a Father, because if you are not one of His, then you are one of the children of the devil (John 8:44). You must belong to one family or the other. If you decide today to place your faith in Jesus Christ to save you and have repented of your sins and placed this saving trust in Christ, then you have a Father…God the Father that you can pray to. And when you pray, you can pray in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who gives you access to the Throne Room of Heaven. And you can be praying in the Holy Spirit for He helps us pray and knows what we should pray for. These three “He’s” are available to you. Will you come to Jesus to make the Son of God your Savior…or deny Him and have Him be your Judge (Rev 20)? He bids you to come to Him today…for tomorrow may be too late (2 Cor 6:2).

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