What is a true woman?

Since roughly 50% of the people I know are women, I thought I'd pass this along. Tim Challies is attending the True Woman Conference in Chicago and live blogging the talks there. The third talk was given by John Piper. I wanted to highlight a few things from his talk, but you can check out the whole post here.

"'True womanhood is a distinctive calling of God to display the glory of his Son in ways that would not be displayed if there was no womanhood.' When God described the work of his Son as the sacrifice of a husband for his bride, he was telling us why he made us male and female. He made us this way so this relationship would describe more fully the relationship of his son and his son's blood-brought bride. If you reduce woman to biological features you not only reduce the value of womanhood but reduce the glory given God. We must understand that, in opposition to what the world teaches, womanhood is not incidental to personhood."

And he adds this special word to single women

"The Apostle Paul loved his singleness. He loved it because it gave him such radical freedom to get arrested month after month and to be beaten and lashed and shipwrecked. Singleness is a high calling. He celebrated it and called many to follow him in it, even with the beauty of all that marriage displays. Why would he lure some out of pursuing marriage if he made marriage as such a magnificent portrait? In this season of history since the Fall, the natural order God established is not absolute. The reason that rejoicing in singleness is not an assault on God's glory is that in this world there are truths about Christ and his kingdom that can be more clearly displayed by manhood and womanhood in singleness than in marriage. He offered three things single womanhood can say better than married womanhood:

1. A life of Christ-exalting singleness bears witness that the family of God grows by regeneration by faith, not propagation by sexual intercourse. The main thing we're about is growing this family!
2. A life of Christ-exalting singleness bears witnesses that relationships in Christ are more lasting than relationships in families.
3. The Christ-exalting singleness of a woman bears witness to the truth that marriage is temporary and finally gives way in the end to the reality of what the portrait points to. A single woman who lives with this in view says something very powerfully about her Savior

Offering a final summary and challenge, Piper said that true womanhood is a distinctive calling to display the glory of the Son in ways that cannot be displayed in any other way. This is true whether a woman is married or single. No matter whether you're married or single, do not settle for wimpy theology. Do not waste your true womanhood, for it was made for the glory of Christ."