If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. – Martin Luther
 
In battle, the breach in the wall is the point at which the enemy has concentrated his attack and has gained a foothold. Faithful soldiers flock to the gap, ready to stand firm and defend the fortress while cowards flee. In the days of Athanasius, the battle raged over the doctrines of the Trinity and the person of Christ. While others fled, Athanasius stood in the gap and contended for the faith. In the days of Augustine, the gap issue was original sin. While the world followed after Pelagius, Augustine relentlessly contended for the truth. In the time of the Reformation, men like Calvin and Luther contended with the Roman Catholic Church for the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And in the time of Machen, the battle was engaged over the authority and inspiration of Scripture.
 
Each of these conflicts arose from pervasive, demonic heresy inside the Church—that is, from among God’s own people. And God used each of these conflicts to purify His Church and to clarify what the Bible teaches. That this kind of attack is constantly coming from inside the church should be no surprise to us, as the Apostle Paul warned the elders at Ephesus:
 
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Acts 20:28-30, NAS95.
 
Heeding the Apostle Paul’s warning, each of these men recognized the points where God’s enemies were attacking His truth and they were faithful to contend for the faith. In their day, they stood alone—abandoned and ostracized. We are called to nothing less. If we are to follow in their footsteps, we must not pretend that there are no more savage wolves among the flock, or men in the church speaking perverse things.
 
Today the church is facing an attack on the doctrine of man. It is a subtle attack, and it has crept into the church virtually unnoticed. This makes it particularly dangerous. Many souls have been led astray by false teachers in our midst. Therefore, anyone who desires to be a faithful shepherd of God’s flock must publicly stand and fight for the truth of this doctrine.
 
God has inextricably bound our understanding of ourselves with our understanding of Him. As such, we can’t understand one without understanding the other. As John Calvin observes, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
 
For this reason, the doctrine of man is central to the Christian faith. Failing to understand it destroys our ability to see the connection between who God is and who He made us to be. This, in turn, distorts our understanding of how we are to relate to one another. In other words, if we lose the doctrine of man, we also end up losing both the doctrine of God and all practical Christian obedience.
 
Because the doctrine of man bears on almost every major issue in the church, it has massive implications concerning what our practice teaches the watching world about God. Consider the relevance of the following issues:

1. Abortion, Infanticide, and Euthanasia. From the point of conception—that is, the point of fertilization—man is given the honor of bearing God’s image and this distinguishes us from all other parts of God’s creation. In other words, man is not endowed with humanity by virtue of his mental or physical capacities, but ontologically—by virtue of his being. For this reason, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are all forms of murder. And murder in all its forms, is an assault on God Himself.
2. Fornication, Adultery, and Divorce. When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden, He blessed them with a mysterious one-flesh union. This union was intended from the very beginning to be a picture showing us the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. This is why fornication, adultery, and divorce are so heinous. They are not merely sins against others. They are blasphemous lies about Jesus and the covenant relationship He shares with the Church.
3. Headship and Submission. The relationship between a man and his wife is to be a reflection of Christ’s relationship with His Church. Scripture commands husbands to love, provide for, protect, and lay their lives down for their wives. Similarly, wives are commanded to honor, respect, and obey their husbands. None of this is optional. It is fundamental Christian obedience that is explicitly commanded in Scripture and flows directly from the gospel. If we reject these commands, we are despising Jesus, His sacrificial love for His Bride, and the Church’s response of honor, respect, and submission to Christ.
4. Fatherhood and Fatherlessness. When God made Adam, He imprinted on him the nature of His own perfect Fatherhood. God, our true Father, rules over his creation with all authority and with tender care. For men, this imprint of divine Fatherhood comes with both authority and responsibility in every realm of human existence. And just as husbands who refuse to love their wives lie about Christ’s love for the church, men who refuse to be godly fathers lie about God the Father. The lack of godly fathers in Christian homes and in the church has left us with a culture of orphans and illegitimate children struggling to understand God’s fatherly goodness.
5. Sexuality. God exists in three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—distinct in their personhood, one in nature, and fulfilling different functions. From the beginning, God made man male and female. There is a reason why God did not give Adam a dog or another man for his helper. Somehow, this is a reflection of God’s relationship with Himself in Trinity. God made Eve from Adam’s flesh, and He made her with corresponding parts and corresponding abilities. More than that, God gave them each distinct responsibilities that are based on their sex. This means that sexuality is biological in nature—it is not a function of societal constructs, but a function of God’s good creation. And so it is also meant to teach us about God. All ways of rejecting this basic reality of human existence—sodomy, lesbianism, transsexuality, bisexuality, bestiality—fundamentally deny what it means to be created "male and female", and consequently, what it means to be made in God’s image.
6. Fruitfulness and Contraception. When God made Adam and Eve, He commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply.” In the same way that God, from the abundance of His love, created the earth, mankind was intended to procreate. This is one of the primary reasons that God gave us the gift of sex. This becomes more evident when we look at the relationship between Jesus and the Church: the “fruit” of their love is spiritual children. This does not mean that contraception is always and necessarily wrong in all circumstances, but it does teach us that contrary to popular opinion, children are the fruit of a loving and healthy marriage and a blessing from God that we are commanded to seek.

When God made man in His own image He wrote deep and profound truths about who He is into our very nature. When He wrote Fatherhood into Adam’s nature, He wrote of Himself. When He made Adam and Eve in the Garden, He wrote mysteries into their relationship that are really about who He is, how He relates to Himself, and how He relates to His people. When He held Adam accountable for the sin in the Garden and punished mankind in Adam as our federal head, He laid the foundation for the work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, in whom we find redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And when God made man male and female, He defined the most basic category of human existence: our sexuality. We process everything we do (consciously or unconsciously) through our sexuality, including how we are to obey God. Without the doctrine of man, we have no gospel.
 
Unfortunately, in our day we have cultivated a willful blindness to the connections between the doctrine of man, Christian obedience, and the doctrine of God. And not content to be blind ourselves, we have even changed our Bible translations to hide these truths from others. We have made peace with Satan and the world. But there is no peace. This blindness is destroying our churches, our families, and our culture.
 
The church today needs faithful men who will stand firmly on the biblical doctrine of man, contending for the faith—men who, as the fathers and husbands God created them to be, will rise up to protect the souls that are being led astray. This is the breach in the wall.