Is God male or female?

God & the TrinityIn theological review

The short answer

God is neither male nor female, because God is spirit and sex belongs to created bodies. Genesis says male and female together bear God's image, the Bible says God is not a man, and Scripture pictures his love with both fatherly and motherly imagery while revealing him as Father, the name Jesus taught.

The fuller answer

God is neither male nor female. He is spirit, not a biological creature, and sex belongs to the created, bodily order, not to the Creator. Genesis says God created mankind in his own image, male and female he created them, which means both sexes together reflect him and neither one exhausts him. A God who were literally male could not be the full image-source of women, and Scripture never treats him that way. The question often hides another one underneath it, about whether women reflect God as fully as men do, and Genesis answers that question at the very start.

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27 (BSB)

The Bible is explicit that God is not a man (Numbers 23:19), a line spoken precisely to separate him from human limitations. Yet Scripture is comfortable picturing God with feminine imagery when it serves the truth being told. Isaiah asks whether a mother could forget her nursing child, and has God answer that even if she could, he will not forget his people, placing God's faithfulness above the strongest maternal bond his listeners knew.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!

Isaiah 49:15 (BSB)

Jesus used the same kind of picture of himself. Over Jerusalem he cried that he had longed to gather her children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and they were not willing (Matthew 23:37). Nobody reading that imagines Jesus claiming to be a mother hen. It is an image of protective, grieving love. Scripture's masculine and feminine pictures of God are both images, chosen for what they reveal, not descriptions of his anatomy.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!

Matthew 23:37 (BSB)

Why, then, does the Bible overwhelmingly call God he, and name him Father? Because God has chosen to reveal himself that way, and Father is the name Jesus himself taught his followers to use. The pronouns and the name are gifts of revelation, not biology. Christians receive them as given, while remembering that the God they name Father is beyond sex, and that women and men alike bear his image fully and equally. Churches therefore do not need to rewrite the Bible's language to honour women, or to keep it in order to honour God; Scripture itself holds the balance.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

No answer here is a dead end. Follow the question on, test it in practice, or work the method yourself on the Dig deeper page.

Does God have a body?No, God as God does not have a body, because God is spirit, and a spirit does not have flesh and bones. The Bible's language about God's hand, eyes, and arm describes his power and knowledge in human terms, while in Jesus Christ the Son took a real human body in the incarnation.Why is God called Father?God is called Father because he is eternally the Father of the Son, and because he makes believers his children by adoption. Scripture calls Israel his firstborn son, Jesus taught his followers to pray 'our Father', and Paul says the Spirit enables God's adopted children to cry 'Abba, Father'.What is God like?God is spirit, eternal, unchanging, all powerful, holy, just, good, and true. And he is love. Scripture gives his character in his own words and deeds rather than in our guesses: he is the I AM who always is, the Maker who never tires, and the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son.Who made God?No one made God. Scripture presents God as uncreated and self-existent, existing from everlasting to everlasting, while everything else was made by him. The question assumes God is a made thing, and the Bible places him in a category of his own.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.Bible Character: IsaiahThe prophet who saw the LORD high and lifted up in the temple, volunteered to be sent, and foretold the child to be born and the servant pierced for our transgressions.On the map: JerusalemFind it in the Lands of the Bible, with the verses that place it there.On the map: JudahJudah is the southern hill country, with Jerusalem and Hebron as its main centres and Bethlehem as the town of David. It is the setting for Ruth, for much of the kings and prophets, and for the birth of Jesus.