Male Messiah
Exploring Why Jesus Came as a Male
The gender of Jesus is in the news again. This time, it’s because of Broadway: Cynthia Erivo—black, female, brilliant—is set to play Jesus in a new staging of Jesus Christ Superstar. Reactions are predictable: celebration from some corners, outrage from others. But while the headlines argue about whether Jesus can be portrayed as a woman, I couldn’t resist sitting with a different question entirely:
Why did Jesus come as a man? And what might that say—not just about maleness, but about power?
Male Messiah
Exploring Why Jesus Came as a Male
Daniel L. Bacon
Why did Jesus come as a man? Wouldn’t it have been a more compelling flip of the narrative for the saviour of the universe to come as a woman—we have records of women leading in the Old Testament, so, why not? For the sake of this essay, we’re going to pretend that we don’t know about the prophesies telling of his maleness and ask the question in isolation from questions that make us sound like we’re sitting at a D&D Table and the DM is quoting “according to the prophecy…”
We’re taking on Jesus’ maleness for all it’s worth.
Who is the Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?
David Mathis, Editor in Chief of Desiring God took on the gender of Jesus in a 2020 Desiring God article entitled, Why Jesus was Not a Woman. In typical male fashion, Mathis says that Jesus was essentially born as a man to fulfil all of His manly duties which are being:
Head of a New Race
Husband to God’s People
Teacher with Authority
Warrior for the Cosmos
Rescuer of the Imperilled
All of which couldn’t possibly have been achieved in the body of a woman… so case closed?
Not quite.
All of the roles Mathis highlights assume the right of male headship—and yet, when Jesus preaches about who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, He says that it’s the least of these. I find it hard to believe that what Jesus meant was the least of men, and in this case, Jesus does not include Himself among the demographic of whom he’s preaching. He, as a man, and a teacher and the Messiah is the furthest thing from being the least of these. So who is Jesus if not the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?
The Messiah’s Descent
Jesus enters the world not just as a man, but as a poor man, born under imperial rule, with a suspect conception and no reputation. And then, even from this low place, He keeps going lower. He relinquishes even the social capital that came with being a man in a patriarchal society. He chooses friends who don't increase His status. He refuses the role of the respectable rabbi. He shares meals with outcasts. He washes feet. He rides into Jerusalem not on a warhorse, but on a borrowed donkey.
And finally, He dies—not as a king or warrior—but as a condemned criminal, stripped naked, mocked and murdered by the very systems of power He refused to play by.
In other words, Jesus comes as a man only to reject the male-coded paths to power at every turn. So if His gender was part of His mission, it was not to validate patriarchy but to enter it, subvert it, and dismantle it from the inside out.
The Polemic of Power
This is why His teaching on greatness matters. When Jesus says the greatest in the Kingdom is the servant of all, when He lifts up a child as the prototype of Kingdom status, He’s not just spiritualizing humility. He’s reprogramming a whole system.
He comes as someone who could dominate—and then chooses not to.
He comes as someone whose gender gave Him default privilege—and He lays it down, again and again.
He doesn’t deny the reality of power, He redefines it.
This isn’t the classic hero’s journey where the underdog rises to glory. This is the divine descent—the one with all power laying it aside, not just to be with the least, but to become the least, so that no one can ever again say that greatness is reserved for the dominant.
Reversing the Gaze
So maybe the better question isn’t “Why didn’t Jesus come as a woman?” but “What does Jesus’ rejection of manhood-as-power tell us about who holds authority now?”
Because if we’re still working from the assumption that Jesus came as a man to give men authority to lead, we’ve missed the point.
The Kingdom is not about the strong giving the weak permission to speak—it’s about the Spirit giving each one a voice.
Jesus doesn’t come to bestow authority like a royal sceptre. He comes to level the playing field, dismantle the pyramid, and invite us all to the table—each one empowered, each one beloved, each one called.
The End of Gatekeeping
We often treat power as something men have and can choose to give away—to women, to the marginalized, to the “least of these.” But Jesus upends even that. He doesn’t merely invite others to share in male authority; He obliterates the whole premise. Authority in the Kingdom isn’t something handed down by those on top—it’s something poured out from above, given to all, as the Spirit wills.
When the Spirit falls at Pentecost, there’s no male headship clause in the outpouring. Sons and daughters prophesy. Male servants and female servants receive the same fire. The new humanity doesn’t flow down from male leadership—it rises up from Spirit-filled bodies, regardless of gender.
Jesus, as the Male Messiah, enters the epicenter of inherited, entitled, hierarchical power. And then He lays it all down so thoroughly that it becomes laughable to argue over who gets to be “in charge” anymore.
A Final Irony
So yes, Jesus came as a man. But perhaps not because masculinity is the template for divinity—but because it was the most fitting costume to strip off on stage.
In this light, the casting of Cynthia Erivo as Jesus becomes not just permissible—it becomes poetic. Because the gospel was never about keeping the image of Jesus tidy and respectable. It was about God breaking the rules we built around Him. About a power that moves through bodies—not one that defers to them.
Reimagining the Kingdom
So when we ask, “Why did Jesus come as a man?” perhaps the real question is: What are we missing when we fixate on gendered power dynamics in the Kingdom of Heaven? Jesus came to obliterate the very categories we use to distinguish who’s “in charge” and who’s “least.” He showed us that authority doesn’t reside in titles, positions, or bodies—whether male or female—but in the self-emptying love that invites us all to serve and be served, to lead and be led in humility.
Jesus' maleness was never about reinforcing the patriarchal structure; it was about subverting it. The question we should ask now is not, “Can women portray Jesus?” but, “How can we all embody the radical, upside-down power that Jesus displayed—no matter who we are?”