While teaching a class 20 years ago, Larry Crabb wondered aloud what book he would write when he cared more about what God thinks than what people think. In his latest work, he writes, “This may be that book, perhaps the first of many.”

Crabb, a psychologist and best-selling author, is founder of New Way Ministries. His new Baker Books (Baker Publishing Group) title, Fully Alive: A Biblical Vision of Gender That Frees Men and Women to Live Beyond Stereotypes (9780801015304, $19.99, June), explores what it means to be masculine and feminine. 

Crabb asks a number of big questions, including: “What does it mean to be fully alive as a male or female for the glory of God?” and “What makes a man deeply masculine in a way that reveals something wonderfully unique about how God relates?”

To explain the biblical answers to these questions, Crabb closely examines the Scriptures, including Greek and Hebrew meanings of words. He discusses the difference between sex and gender, and critiques current thinking on this topic, including the traditionalist, complementarian and egalitarian approaches.

Crabb also presents the idea of “relational gender.” He writes that the triune God is “a community of persons” and “the relational divine being creates relational human beings.” According to Crabb, this relational aspect of God is meant to be expressed in distinct ways by each gender.

He also examines the core fears of men and women and offers practical advice. He challenges traditional understandings of submission, saying, in part, that it “requires wise discernment, not reflexive obedience.”

Fully Alive is not for couples only, but for all men and women. Crabb beseeches readers not to limit or define themselves by anything except God’s call to come alive in relational masculinity and femininity. 

To order Fully Alive, call Baker Publishing Group at 800-877-2665.