Honoring the six-feet rule, I stood on the dot and waited my turn to check out at the big box store. I looked to my left and noticed an attractive young mom with her 2-year old daughter in the line next to me. I looked to my right and saw every man, young and old, in every check out line across the room staring directly at her.

Could she sense their eyes on her? Did she know what was happening? If she knew, how did she feel?

I think we can stipulate that men notice women. Even as a solidly middle-aged man, my eyes are still in working order, and I can appreciate the grandeur of snow-covered mountains, the striking colors of a sunset, as well as the radiance of an attractive woman.

Interestingly, women see beauty as well. My wife will occasionally comment on how pretty another lady looks in a dress, or that George Clooney and Tom Cruise were quite handsome back in the day. My daughters fawn over Harry Stiles and the like.

So to see and appreciate beauty is not gender-specific, and it is not sinful. God created each person male and female in his own image, yet he made us with certain distinct physical qualities and characteristics. Those distinctions are obvious, admirable, and attractive.

I don’t know another man’s heart. I don’t even have an accurate take on my own heart most of the time, but something was happening back in that check out line that wasn’t exactly right. Something was taking place in that moment between several men and one woman that exposed something less than respect and admiration.

First, however, let me state a few things I don’t think were happening:

  • It’s unlikely that every man looking at that lady was lusting. Looking and lusting are related, but they are different.
  • It’s unlikely that any of the men looking were planning any kind of harm. We know that violent plotting toward women does happen, but I’m not willing to assume it was happening in that moment.
  • It’s unlikely that any man looking intended to do anything disrespectful or inappropriate.

But if you’re a man, it is not enough to not look wrongly at a woman. It is not enough to simply avoid moral transgression. As good neighbors, we have a greater responsibility than that. So let’s consider these four ways to look at a woman.

Look at a woman differently than any other created thing.

Go to the art gallery and stare at a Monet. Watch the sun rise over the blue horizon of the ocean. Fix your gaze on a mountain range. But look and keep on looking at a woman and you will soon forget she’s an image bearer of the Most High God. Keep looking and before you know it, she becomes an object for your selfish viewing pleasure.

This may be the most tragic reality of the sinfulness of pornography. Yes, the perversion of human sexuality undermines one of God’s great gifts. But in a more fundamental distortion of God’s creation than that, inviting one human to use another human exclusively for selfish means denies the inherent worth and dignity of another human being.

Slavery did that to Africans. Hitler did that to Jews. And the pornography industry does that to every man, woman, and child recruited voluntarily or by force into the industry.

We can see beauty and admire beauty, but using another person solely for your viewing pleasure perverts what is good and disregards the value of your fellow image bearer.

Look at a woman with admiration that moves you toward Jesus.

King Solomon did not do marriage and sexuality very well, but in grace and mercy, the Lord redeemed him and used him to point all of us to Jesus. The Old Testament book of the Song of Solomon has been the subject of significant conversation on this issue, but it seems that in the most basic way, this graphic and very real love story between a man and a woman compels us to experience the greater, more wonderful love of God discovered in Christ Jesus.

Solomon wrote,

How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful! Your eyes are doves. Song of Songs 1:15

His unbridled admiration of his “swarthy skinned” bride moved him toward God, and still moves those of us who read this story to look more closely on the perfections of Jesus.

Exactly how human beings bear the image of God is still a mystery, but that we do bear his image means even the physical attributes of a woman are God-given expressions of God himself. So when our hearts are bent toward Jesus, malleable for his sanctifying work, our view of a woman moves us to see God’s glory in her and to dwell more thoroughly on His attributes. Her beauty leads us to holiness, not away from it.

Look at a woman as a neighbor to serve.

I know it’s weird, but sometimes when I meet an adult, I imagine what they may have looked like when they were children. Something changes about the way I view someone when I see him or her as a child who has done nothing to me and can do nothing for me. Aside from being slightly entertaining, there’s an innocence in it that is compelling.

Looks alone can be deceiving. Outward beauty only tells half-truths. The whole truth is that beneath the surface lives a person who needs encouragement, needs care, and who ultimately needs new life in Jesus.

Jesus said it is better to serve than to be served, so when we see a woman, our first priority, our first responsibility is to serve her. Not to patronize her and not to woo her, but to serve her. Not because she is weak or frail, but because she is fully human.

Even among evangelicals, the idea of biblical manhood has often been distorted. In our debate of complimentarianism and egalitarianism, however, we cannot lose the distinct call upon a man’s role as servant-leader.

The distinctions between men and women are not manufactured. They are rooted in our divine design, but physical strength and spiritual responsibility of a man are a divine mandate to serve, not to be served.

Look at a woman as a fellow partner in the grace of God.

In a recent conversation about ethnic bigotry, a friend reminded me again that the Holy Spirit’s work in the first days of the early church removed the three dominant dividing walls between us: ethnic (Jew and Gentile), socio-economic (free and slave), and gender (male and female).

The removal of this gender wall is another declaration that every woman is a fellow image bearer possessing equal dignity and worth of any man, that Jesus bore the sin debt for women as well as for men, and that every woman can become a sister in Christ and partner in the grace of God.

Because our greatest desire for any woman is that she experience new life in Christ and grow in grace, our Gospel witness is the primary motivation of our personal thoughts, private comments, and public actions toward her.   

Interestingly, in a culture that devalued women, Jesus elevated women as key disciples throughout his ministry. And it was the testimony of women that was a clarion voice of the resurrection of Jesus on the first Easter morning. In the formative years of the early church, women of faith served indispensible roles in the spread of the Gospel.

So women are not supporting characters in the story of Jesus’ redeeming love. They are central to it, and they possess unique and invaluable qualities that help all of us join Jesus’ kingdom work.

God has given us eyes to see beauty, and he has even built us to be attracted to beauty. But he has also given us a moral character, sometimes called a conscience, which creates in us the capacity and responsibility to esteem and elevate women both publicly and privately.

We honor women for who they are rather than for how they look. We appreciate outward beauty, but we look to women as wise and worthy of respect, as co-laborers in the Gospel, as recipients of God’s grace, and as instruments of his sanctifying work that gives all of us a better view of the beauty, majesty, and glory of Jesus.

Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash