We've all heard the cultural shorthand. Boys will be boys. It's just the testosterone talking. For decades, popular culture has treated testosterone as a biological scapegoat, an inescapable excuse for aggression, reckless risk taking, and a cutthroat drive for dominance. But a massive new meta-analysis of 17,000 participants just dismantled that narrative, finding zero link between testosterone levels and an appetite for risk. So what does testosterone actually do? As primatologist Robert Sapolsky recently highlighted, testosterone doesn't invent aggressive behavior, it simply amplifies our sensitivity to social status. It hyperfocuses the brain on whatever behaviors are required to gain respect, honor, and standing within a given peer group. So if status in your world is gained through aggressive aggression, then the testosterone boosts aggression. But Sapolsky poses a fascinating question. What would testosterone do in a culture where status comes from being kind? This is where science runs headlong into the apostle Paul and into the deepest truths of reformed theology. You see, in reformed thought, the doctrine of total depravity reminds us that sin has fractured every square inch of human nature, our biology, our social structures, and our psychology alike. But the fall didn't stop at the will. As Cornelius Van Til and Gerhardus Voss consistently emphasized, sin corrupted our reasoning as well. So Paul puts it plainly, fallen humanity suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. So this is precisely why ideologies like biological determinism are so appealing. We don't just commit sin, we construct elaborate intellectual frameworks to justify it. We tell ourselves our creaturely constitution forces us to be prideful, domineering, or reckless. But both scripture and modern neurobiology push back against this. Biology isn't destiny, it's a tool. Fallen hearts have simply constructed a worr a world where worldly status is achieved by stepping on others and then our bodies adapt to chase that broken prize. Here's where the gospel strikes at the root. The first Adam grasped for status. In the garden he reached for equality with God, not as a gift to re to be received in obedience, but as a prize to be seized in rebellion. The result was humanity curved inward on itself, building towers, empires and hierarchies in a relentless, futile pursuit of glory, then came the second Adam, Jesus Christ. So writing into Roman and Philippian cultures, absolutely obsessed with aggressive, honor driven status hierarchies, Paul grounds his entire ethical vision in the Greek word kinosis, which means the self emptying of Christ, the self emptying. So he says in Philippians two, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. It is from this foundation that Paul then commands, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. That word for humility in Greek was not a virtue in the Greco Roman world. This was a actually considered a vice. Humility a vice? Well, it was a term of contempt, rather, reserved for the lowly and the servile. Meaning it would you would not use uh use it to describe your family or friends. It was a term of disdaining someone. So Paul deliberately seized a word that Rome used as an insult and crowned it as the defining mark of kingdom citizenship, humility. So Paul didn't call men to erase their drive, their strength or their passion. He completely redefined what constitutes status. In Christ's kingdom, honor is not gained by dominating others, it is gained by dying to self, bearing a cross and outdoing one another in showing honor. True kingdom strength, Paul declares, is perfected in weakness. The cross, history's most grotesque symbol of shame, becomes now the throne of the truest king. So when a person is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, meaning born again, their desires are now reordered from the inside out. And if Sapolski is right that our biology simply turbocharges our pursuit of whatever our environment defines as honorable, then the local church ought to be the most powerful force for biological redirection on the planet. Imagine a community of men so rooted in the grace of reformed theology, that their ultimate status is found entirely in Christ's finished work, men whose social standing is measured not by salary, dominance or social media reach, but by fruitfulness, humility, and sacrificial love for their families and neighbors. Picture what this looks like on an ordinary Tuesday. A father who comes home tired but chooses to sit with his child rather than retreat because servant leadership isn't a Sunday concept. A man at work who absorbs an unfair slight without retaliating, not because he's weak, but because he's already received the only verdict that matters. An elder who spends himself for a struggling congregational member at personal cost because in this kingdom greatness is measured in towels and basins, not corner offices. So in these men, the biological drive to pursue status hasn't been destroyed, rather it has been restored and sanctified. It turns into a fierce, unwavering drive to protect the vulnerable, serve the broken, and boldly claim the gospel. The same intensity that the world pours into conquest gets redirected by grace into Christlikeness. So this is not mere moralism, this is a power of union with Christ, what the reformed tradition has always called the mortification of the old self and the vivification of the new. So let's stop blaming God's design of the human body for fallen worldly behavior. Testosterone was never the problem. According to Augustine and Luther, the heart, the heart curved in on itself was always the problem. And a heart regenerated by the Holy Spirit, anchored in the finished work of Christ is always the answer. Testosterone isn't the king after all of masculinity. Christ Jesus is. And because Christ is king, we are freed, truly freed from the exhausting, futile scramble for worldly status. We're free to build families, churches, and communities where the highest honor belongs to the one who looks most like the servant king who washed dirty feet the night before he saved the world. To him be all the glory. Well that's it for today. Thanks for joining us once again, and to all who love the Lord with an undying love, may God's grace and peace abound in you this day and forevermore. Godspeed