Priscilla, Aquila: Women in Ministry
Romans 16:1-7
Turn in your Bibles to Romans,
chapter 16. Tonight we’re going to get into an interesting topic we touched on
some last time. A lot of people get to a passage like this where Paul basically
is giving shout-outs to a lot of people that he knew from different places in
the Roman Empire and people he knew from his travels and so many people think
there’s not a whole lot here.
It reminds me of something that
happened last Saturday at the picnic. When you walk around anywhere in rural
Texas you will see here and there, if you’re looking, these small little
disturbed areas of the ground that indicate a fire ant bed. If it’s rained
recently they’ll try to get above the water and they’ll build up the mound a little
bit. A lot of time you just don’t really see it until you kick it and step in
it and suddenly thousands of ants come boiling out of the nest and up on to
your legs stinging you. It’s really not a pleasant experience.
There are some passages in Scripture
that are like that. They don’t seem to have a whole lot on the surface but you
kick them around a little bit and all of a sudden you find there’s a lot of
discussion and use of debate in these passages. This debate goes on in several
verses in the beginning of chapter 16. It has to do with gender role which is a
timely topic if you’re living in Houston, Texas.
Tonight we’re going to look at
Aquila and Priscilla and women in ministry. To introduce this we’re going to
look at a chart I developed that illustrates what goes on with evangelical
Christians today. On the left side it has to do with unbelievers, individuals
who are just totally influenced by the pagan culture around them. It starts at
the bottom which is the foundation. At the top we see behavior, how a person
behaves, what they think about law, what they think about politics, how they
would implement or shape policy. That top level is the area where we usually
engage in conversation with people when we are debating.
Tonight I was handed an editorial
that was written by Scott Wall who is the pastor of Magnolia Bible Church.
Scott Wall is the son of Joe Wall who used to be the pastor of Spring Branch
Community Church near here. I’ve known Joe most of my life and I’ve known Scott
since he was in diapers, just about. He wrote an excellent editorial here
entitled “To Mayor Annise Parker: You are wrong.”
What happens is that just looking at
that we see a discussion on policy, law, and politics. How you approach this as
a believer is going to differ but it flows from what takes place at the bottom
story, your foundational beliefs. These are your view of ultimate reality,
which philosophers call metaphysics, what goes beyond the physical. It’s
frequently called ontology. It means the same thing and it has to do with the
essence of something from the Greek word ONTOS.
Ontology is probably not a word you
throw around too much. Probably most of you learned that word or were exposed
to it in about 7th grade biology when you were erroneously taught
that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. How many of you remember that? One or two people. That was a Darwinian doctrine that the
form of the fetus goes through the same processes and morphology as evolution
so when the fetus grows it looks kind of like a little tadpole and then a guppy
and on and on like that. That was the little catch phrase that impressed
everyone that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. Ontology has to do with being.
It’s the same word as the word for metaphysics. We’re going to get into this a
little later on because it’s important to understand ontology when you talk
about gender roles.
So we start with our ultimate view
of reality, which is metaphysics. This also relates to those of you who have
heard of the ontological view for God. I’m not going to go there tonight. I
wrote a master’s thesis on it. I’m sick of the subject, twenty-five years
later. So we start off with metaphysics which tells us what we think about
ultimate reality. What we build on that then, if we’re consistent, is our
understanding of where we get knowledge, how we get knowledge, and what the
ultimate authority for truth or knowledge is in the world. Once we ascertain
the nature of knowledge and truth we ask: is truth absolute or is truth
relative or is truth somewhere in between? Out of that come our values.
What do we value? What are our
priorities? What do we value in terms of the structure of society that affects
our norms and our ethics? What do we think about marriage? I read a statistic
this last week that the number of marriages has declined to its lowest level in
the U.S. ever. That’s because people just aren’t getting married anymore.
That’s not important to a lot of people. They just want to shack up and that’s
it.
So we have values and norms and
standards and ethics. Out of that comes behavior. Out of that comes our
understanding of law, what should be encapsulated in law, what shouldn’t be
encapsulated in law. It relates to politics and policy as well. That’s the
structure.
Most of the time when we get
involved in political arguments with people it’s always on the top layer.
Sometimes we might dip down a little deeper and that’s as far as it goes. The
real issue takes place down in the foundation. For believers as I pointed out
last time, we have to go back to our ultimate authority which has to do with
God. Knowledge of truth comes from God. If you don’t have a Biblical God, if
you have a pantheistic or a polytheistic concept of god then that’s going to
dictate a different understanding of knowledge and truth. If you have no god
whatsoever, as an atheist, or you’re just not sure, you’re confused, and you’re
agnostic, then that’s going to change things as well. So if you fiddle with
that bottom layer, the foundation, it’s going to change everything built on top
of it.
When it comes to knowledge or truth,
if there’s no Biblical view of God, and by that I mean a Judeo-Christian view
of a personal, infinite God, then knowledge and truth become relative. This affects
your norms and your standards, things of that nature. So when we come along and
talk about marriage, if marriage is no longer something instituted by God who
created not only the physical world but the norms and standards that should
govern the world, and decides what is righteousness, then that leads to a view
of absolute truth and absolute knowledge and therefore our values should be in
conformity to God’s character.
From a Biblical viewpoint, starting
with a strong view of God we have a strong view of truth and absolute knowledge
as certain. When you do not have this foundation, then knowledge and truth
become relative to the creature, not the Creator. The creature determines what
is true. The creature determines what the absolutes are and that can change
from culture to culture.
As we’ve seen in its most recent iteration
in what is called multiculturalism, this means that every culture’s values are
equally significant and equally valuable. So whether you are a headhunting
cannibal down in the rainforest or whether you are an elite graduate of
Harvard, no matter what your values are, they’re really equal. So no one should
ever condemn someone else’s values, they believe. They’re all good. So if you
are a perverted homosexual transvestite that enjoys young children, then your
values are equal to the person who is the most ethical, moral person in terms
of all of his sexual mores. You can’t distinguish between those in their view.
If that’s your concept of truth and
that’s your concept of right and wrong and that shapes your values, how is that
going to shape your political theory? Political theory, essentially, always
goes back to a religious position so that even secular atheism and humanism, as
it was declared by the United States Supreme Court in 1973, is in effect a
religion. So everything grows out of religion because everything grows out of
your view of ultimate reality and that’s not something you can prove in a
science laboratory but you have to assume it and believe it because it’s all
based upon faith.
No one has ever taught this to our
mayor or she refuses to acknowledge it. When it comes to this issue we’re
facing in Houston which has to do with gender confusion, the underlying issue
is those who are promoting it want to have equal access to restrooms, based on
what sex they think they are. As I pointed out last time, these decisions,
which are social policy, have economic consequences. If this gets puts into
effect, then that means that every building, every business, every McDonald’s,
every church, although they say it doesn’t apply to churches, are going to have
to have a bathroom for the trannies, and maybe two. The men that think they’re
women aren’t really welcomed by normal men in a male restroom. The women don’t
want them in their restroom. So the men who think they’re women aren’t made to
feel comfortable and welcome by either men or women. So you have to have one
restroom for the men who think they’re women.
The women who think they’re really
men aren’t welcome either so then you have to have another restroom. If you
follow this out logically, it just leads to mass confusion and silliness and
this relates to an extremely small minority. A recent study that I saw indicated
that no more than 3% of the population has a gender-identification problem.
That includes male homosexuals, female lesbians, and the transgender types that
are really confused. The transgenders are about a
half of one percent. So two and half percent just have problems with one form
of homosexuality or another. So half of one percent are
really the end hairs on a dog’s tail that are wagging the rest of the dog. This
has enormous economic consequences but it boils down to the fact that we don’t
have a belief in a Creator-God who can speak to absolutes and say that “Yes,
there are these absolutes. A male is a male and a female is a female. The
reason you have gender confusion is because of sin.”
It’s always interesting that when
issues like this come up it’s always the Christians who become the bad guys.
I’ve read that Orthodox Jews have very successful ministries to help
homosexuals straighten out their gender confusion. You never hear about them.
It’s not politically correct so the press is never going to tell you where you
can find out about this. There are a number of Christian ministries. There was
one in Connecticut that I became aware of right before we moved back down here.
The man had grown up in a homosexual culture and was very involved in all the
perversions. He became a believer. Eventually he got straightened out as a
result of his Christian growth and married, has a couple of kids, and developed
a tremendous ministry helping homosexuals come out of that lifestyle. If you
don’t believe there are absolutes then you just believe something that is
horrible.
All of this starts off with your
view of God and your view of creation, that God created human beings in the
likeness and image of God and they are distinct from the animals. You can’t
draw analogies from the animals to man because this thing called the image of
God is different. It not only affects the gender confusion in terms of sexual
identity but it also affects role and how we understand the role of men and the
role of women and the family and marriage and society and the church.
God created men and women equally as
image bearers. In Genesis 1:26-27. God said, “Let us create man in our image,
male and female.” So both men and women are equally, fully in the image of God.
That means that ontologically [see, I knew I needed to prepare for this],
ontologically men and women are equal in their being. They’re both equally and
fully in the image of God. But God created men to be men and women to be women.
And He created souls that are different.
Male souls and female souls are designed for different roles just as female
bodies and male bodies are created for different functions. This is a very
inconvenient truth for evolutionists and for those who want to have role
reversal and role interchangeability. These ideas started getting promoted in
the late 19th century as western civilization shifted from a
theistic foundation and a Judeo-Christian heritage into an evolutionary
foundation. By the early part of the 20th century these things were
already being talked about among those who were deeply involved in the
progressive agenda. It was way behind the scenes but there were people in the
intellectual elites of the early 20th century who were already
engaging in this as an agenda.
This did not really come to fruition
in terms of popular culture until you got into the 1960s and the development of
the Equal Rights amendment in the 70s and the development of the radical
feminist movement in the 60s. All had these different things as part of their
agenda. This was when you had the rise of the gay rights movements. All of
these things were related together. They’re all part of pagan thought.
There is behavior in terms of gender
confusion. Behavior in terms of role reversal and role identification between
men and women all impacted laws. Those who supported this became very activistic in terms of trying to get Congress to pass laws.
It affected politics. It affected policy. It affected what was taught in the
college classroom and how literature was developed.
I was talking to a young man from my
congregation this last week who ended up dropping an English class because he
had made some references to God in an English paper he had turned in. The
professor just scribbled all over his paper, “There is no God. This is all
nonsense.” He just vented all over his paper from his hostile atheism and this
is what’s normative today in most college classrooms, especially in liberal
arts. Liberal arts are much more dangerous than the science classes. History,
sociology, psychology, and especially English classes are dangerous. I had a
double major in college, a history/English major and I saw this many years ago
when I was in college. It was just horrendous what was coming across from most
of the teachers in the liberal arts departments.
The reason I’m getting into this is
because this is the area where this fire ant bed focuses on these issues. There
are three verses here that talk about women in ministry. This has become a
hotbed issue in evangelicalism over the last thirty years. Christians seem to
always reflect the trends of the culture. I remember in 1975 I was involved
with a couple of other young men who were going to go to Dallas Seminary. We
met every week or so with the pastor over at Spring Branch Community Church. He
talked about a lot of different issues we would be facing when we went to
seminary. One of the first ones he mentioned was this whole issue of whether or
not women should be admitted into the seminary and what kind of ministry they should
have in the local church.
This was particularly important from
the financial angle. See, social policy always affects finances. I keep
repeating that because there’s this movement that has been around for at least
twenty years in the Republican Party who say they’re conservative economically
but not conservative socially. This is also a libertarian line. They think they
can forget about when life begins, about homosexual or gay marriage, and they
want to just forget about all these other social issues. That’s not relevant so
let’s just talk about money.
In the mid-70s schools who wanted to
allow guys on G.I. bills to attend were being pressured by the government that
they would lose their federal aid if they didn’t change their policies and allow
women. Money talks. It wasn’t long before Dallas Seminary came up with a
new program. The only program they had had before 1975 was a Masters of
Theology program. They introduced a Master of Arts of Biblical Studies which
was a two year master’s degree. It was just in summer school and over a period
of three or four years you could get your MA degree. That was open to women.
By the time I was in my second year
of seminary, women were now coming to take their MA classes. Some of those
classes were the same as the ThM classes. You see
this gradualism that creeps in. Then by the early 80s when Dallas Seminary had
engaged in a huge capital expenditure program after building a lot of new
buildings, the number of students that applied for the ThM
program were fewer than the slots available. Back in the 70s they would get six
or eight times as many applicants for each slot that was open. Now you had 220
applicants for 230 slots. What happens to your quality control? All of a sudden
you need more students because you have to pay off your debt. “Maybe we ought
to open up the ThM program to women, “some said. That
was a factor. It wasn’t the only factor but it was a factor. Money talks.
Things like this happen.
There was a lot of social pressure
taking place as well. All of a sudden you had people going back and revising
their exegesis of Scripture. A lot of controversy took place during this
particular time. Dallas generally kept a pretty strong line although they did
open up the ThM program and later the DMin program to women students. They still kept a strong
line that women were not to be pastors or teach men. They continued to publish
articles written by Wayne House. If you want to investigate some of this look
at Wayne’s book, “The Role of Women in Ministry.” There are other books
published by Dallas grads dealing with this particular issue. This is
foundational.
Remember I talked about the fire ant
bed which doesn’t look very significant until you kick it? That’s what happened
here. Last week we looked at Romans 16:1-2 talking about Phoebe who is a
servant of the church. I said this is the word DIAKONOS in the feminine form. There are
those who have sold out to what is known as evangelicalism feminism who come to
Romans 16:1 and say this shows they had deaconesses in the early church. This
is a misuse of both history as well as language. The idea of a deacon having an
official church leadership position in the sense that we have today was unheard
of in the early church. It was a servant position, not a position of authority
or teaching or leadership.
Romans 16:1-2 was part of what I
pointed out last time and then another aspect of this is the noun that used in
Romans 16:2 that Phoebe should be taken care of and helped out because she had
been a helper of many and of Paul also. There have been numerous scholarly
articles arguing back and forth on this word in the second verse, PROSTATIS. This
is in the feminine form, a nominative feminine singular, and in the feminine
form it has the idea of a patron or a benefactor. The related noun PROSTATES is the
masculine form which means ruler or leader. There has been a huge amount of ink
spilled on this particular issue. So you kick this little dirt hill on the ground
and all of a sudden you see all these fire ants bubbling up out of the ground
just as all the theologians start arguing about this.
Then we come to the next set of
verses in Romans 16:3-5 talking about Priscilla and Aquila. Now this is
important because they’re always mentioned together. Priscilla’s name is almost
always mentioned first. Of the six times that they’re mentioned, she’s
mentioned first four of those six times. Some have tried to say this shows she
was more the leader and a lot of stuff is read into this. It’s probably either
one of two things. Either she was more involved in terms of helping Paul or she
probably came from a higher social status than her husband did so she would
have been listed first.
Their names always come up when you
hear a discussion related to the role of women in ministry because here’s
Priscilla mentioned a number of times. The fact that Paul mentions her and has
such a strong relationship with them indicates that the liberal position you
often hear that Paul was a misogynist is just not true. He mentions a number of
women in this particular list, alone. In fact, if you look at this whole
chapter we see that there are twenty-four people who are named and two people
who are not named. Of the twenty-six total who are mentioned, nine of them are
women. Paul is commending nine women here. That’s approximately a third of
them. Paul had a very high view of women.
What he says about women doesn’t
come out of a cultural background. It isn’t influenced by his Pharisaic
background and it wasn’t influenced by the Greek culture. It’s influenced by
God’s inspiration and by God’s order of creation in Genesis, chapter one.
Priscilla and Aquila are indicated here as his fellow workers in Christ Jesus.
In this section we have several places where “in Christ” is mentioned and “in
the Lord” is mentioned. For example in verse 8, “Greet Ampliatus,
my beloved in the Lord.” In verse 11, “Greet those of the household of
Narcissus who are in the Lord.” Also, in verse 13 and verse 22 you have this
phrase “in the Lord.” It seems that it is used interchangeably with the phrase
“in Christ”. What Paul is saying is that they are carrying out their ministry
to Christ together. They were partners in ministry.
In verse 4 Paul goes on to praise
Priscilla and Aquila because they had risked their lives for Paul. He singles
them out, indicating how much he appreciates their ministry back in Rome at
this particular time. He expressed his gratitude to them for how they had
worked with him. Also he mentions the church that is in their house.
In 1 Corinthians he also mentions
them. It seemed they traveled a lot and they always had a group of believers
that met in their house as a church. What we know about them from Scripture is
that they were married; they were believers who were originally from Rome
although Aquila is originally from Pontus in Asia Minor which is modern Turkey.
Somewhere they met and they married. They’re from a Jewish background so they
had become believers at some point or at the point of Paul’s ministry.
Sometimes she’s mentioned as Prisca which is actually the more formal term for
the name and diminutive was Priscilla. Luke usually calls her Priscilla but
Paul usually refers to her as Prisca.
They had an important relationship
with Paul. Aquila, which is the Latin word for eagle, was a tentmaker, just as
Paul was. They had settled in Rome but then they were forced to leave when
there were riots in Rome, according to Acts 18:2 that were stated to be by
Claudius because the Christians were debating this person called Prestus, which is probably a misspelling for Christ. All of
the Jews were expelled from Rome under Emperor Claudius.
That brought them to Corinth which
is where they met Paul. They came together, developed a friendship, worked
together, and had their tent making business together. Then they continued to
follow him. They followed him to Ephesus. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in 1
Corinthians 16:9 he mentioned that they had a church meeting in their house in
Corinth. They come up because of this particular verse mentioned in Acts 18:6,
“So he [Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue…” Apollos was a Greek
Jew who was speaking out in the synagogue but he didn’t understand the gospel
clearly. Aquila and Priscilla heard him in the synagogue and they took him
aside and “explained to him the way of God more accurately.”
One of the arguments you hear from
the feminist evangelical side is that this means Priscilla is teaching him the
Bible. Let’s look at the terminology here. It says they explained to him the
way of God. This is the word EKTITHOMI which means to explain something or to expose
something. It is not a synonym for the word DIDASKOLOS which means to formally teach or to
instruct someone. DIDASKO is usually used to refer to a group instructional situation where you
have a recognized teacher giving instruction to other.
What you see with Aquila and
Priscilla is that they’re sitting around the coffee table at home having a cup
of coffee or tea or whatever they drank at that time and they’re having a
dialogue with Apollos saying they really enjoyed his message but asking him if
he’s thought about certain things. Generally through dialogue and questions and
answers they led him through to an understanding of the Messiahship
of Jesus. Priscilla isn’t sitting there taking out her Bible and saying, “Now
we’re going to have Bible class and I’m going to teach you about Christ.” It’s
not a lecture. That’s a different type of scenario so it’s not legitimate to go
to Acts 18 to try to pull out of this an example of a woman teaching a man.
The key passage for understanding
this comes from 1 Timothy 2:8-13 so let’s turn there and take a look. This is a
very important passage because it teaches that there are different roles in the
church just as there are different roles in the home. What happens here is that
Paul is having to deal with some problems in the
congregation in Ephesus. Timothy is the pastor there so Paul is encouraging
Timothy to deal with various problems in the church brought about by those who
are getting involved in teaching false doctrine. Back in 1 Timothy 1:3 Paul
writes, “I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may
charge some that they teach no other doctrine nor give heed to fables or
endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is
in faith.” So Paul has to straighten things out. In 1 Timothy 1:6 he says,
“There are those who have strayed and turned aside to idle talk desiring to be teachers
of the Law.” There’s a use of our word DIDASKOLOS and that indicates a formal
teaching position as it does all through the pastorals. It’s not just sitting
around the coffee table and having a discussion about what the Scripture means.
It’s a formal teaching position.
Paul needs to give Timothy some
instruction on some priorities when it comes to the congregation. In 1 Timothy
2 he says, “Therefore I exhort first of all that all supplications, prayers,
intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.” So we have a little
section there dealing with the importance of prayer. Then he says in 1 Timothy
2:8, “Therefore I want the men…” This flows directly out of his discussion of
prayer. “Men” is the Greek word ANER, not ANTHROPOS, where we get our word anthropology, the study of man
kind. ANTHROPOS is the broad word, not just males, but refers to mankind or humanity,
the human race. It can refer to just men but usually it has a broader sense
including both male and female. The Greek word ANER means male as opposed to female.
The word for female is GUNE which can refer to a woman or a wife. So he says
here, “I want the males in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without
wrath and dissension.” Does that mean he doesn’t want the women to pray? No.
He’s not addressing that. He’s talking about the orderly way of worship; when
the body of believers come together. He wants the men
to be in this leadership position and they’re the ones to lead in terms of
prayer.
Lifting up holy hands is not the
charismatic view that you lift up your hands and somehow that makes you a
little more holy and your prayers will get a little higher toward heaven. The
word there indicates sanctification. It means you’re in fellowship. Okay?
That’s the idea there. They’re not unholy hands, they’re sanctified. Without
wrath and dissension. The positive there is that you’re in fellowship. You’re
in right relationship to God in terms of experiential sanctification. The
negative is that there are not mental attitude sins in the thought life of the
leaders of the church.
Then he addresses the women in like
manner. He’s not taking on everything the men and women should do but he’s
taking on these topics because apparently there was some confusion or some
areas of disobedience in these particular areas. In 1 Timothy 2:9,
“Likewise I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing.” So for women
it was a matter of how they dressed when they came together for worship. They
needed to dress modestly and they needed to not dress in a way that would
provoke men in terms of mental attitude sins, creating lust or anything of that
nature. Probably it was not so much that as that the more affluent in the
congregation should not dress in a way that would over-emphasize their affluence
and prosperity as opposed to those who were poor. Some who would come might
even be slaves so they should not make an issue out of their status in life.
They should dress modestly and discreetly.
I remember when I first went to
seminary I went to a couple of churches in North Dallas and I was just amazed
at the style show. It was a very affluent part of Dallas. I’d never really
noticed how the men and women dressed in my background. It was like a fashion
show every Sunday morning in Dallas. Instead Paul said the women were to focus
on good works, that is, walking by the Spirit in the production of Divine good
in their life “as befits a woman who is making a claim to godliness.”
As I’ve pointed out before the word
“godliness” is the Greek word THEOSEBEIA which indicates a spiritual life. Godliness is an
English verb that emphasizes God-likeness. It emphasizes character. Romans
8:28-29 says we’re being conformed to the image of Christ-likeness or
God-likeness. So that’s what that word means. It’s not really piety. That’s one
of those funny little religious words that people focus on. It has to do with
your spiritual growth and spiritual maturity.
In 1 Timothy 2:11 Paul gives a
command, “Let a woman quietly receive instruction.” It’s a present active imperative
so this is to be a standard operating procedure. This is the normative
expression of the role of women in the local church. They are to receive
instruction. Now the word here is MONTHANO which is related to the Greek noun for disciple,
someone who is a learner, someone who is a student. So women are to do this in
a way that is quiet. Paul says that women are to keep silent in the church.
That’s not an absolute command because he talks about women praying, how they
should pray in the local assembly, and under what conditions they could pray
and engage in some other vocal activities but it wasn’t teaching the Word.
He’s laying this out that when it
comes to the time of instruction from the Word the women were not to be involved
in that. They were to instead be “learning with submissiveness”. They are
to be listening with the view of applying the Word in their life. Then he goes
on to explain this. Why does he say this? 1 Timothy 2:12, “Now I do not allow a
woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet.” That word
quiet is the same word for “quietly receiving instruction.” He repeats that. 1
Corinthians 14 talks about the fact that women are not to speak in the church
and it’s that sense of being quiet as opposed to interrupting, as opposed to
expressing their opinions. Not that men should be doing that either but he’s
focusing this on women because this had apparently become an issue in the
Ephesians congregation so he’s reminding them of what the standard protocol is
at all times and at all places. So he used these two words, “to teach or to
exercise authority”.
Now what is that word between those
two infinitives? It’s the little word “or”. That’s an important word. One of
the first times I really recognized that and it stands out in my mind is that
when I was a student at Dallas Seminary this, of course, was a hot topic along
with Calvinism, pre-trib Rapture and a few other
things. In my senior year the first woman was invited to speak at the chapel at
Dallas Seminary. Her name was Elizabeth Elliott. Her husband, Jim Elliott, was
one of the five men who were martyred down on that sandbar in Ecuador by the Auca Indians. She had written their stories in three
different books, the main one of which is called “Through Gates of Splendor”.
It’s a tremendous book and I recommend it. It happened in the late 50s. This
gave her a measure of celebrity status in the evangelical world. She also wrote
books on women’s ministry.
She got up in the pulpit at Dallas
Seminary and said, “I understand that I’m the first woman to address the
seminary up here. I just want you to understand that I recognize the proper
Scriptural role of women and I’m up here under the authority of these men
because the Scripture says a “woman is not to teach and exercise authority over
men.” Tommy Ice was sitting next to me and he put an elbow in my ribs and
whispered, “It’s OR exercise authority, not AND.” It doesn’t say you can’t
teach and exercise authority. You can’t do either one. That was a misplaced
quote of the Scripture at Dallas Seminary.
The first thing that Paul says is
that a woman is not to teach. The word there is DIDASKO which means to teach publicly, to
give instruction to several people but it’s not used in a one-on-one situation.
In fact, Ann Bowman, who was one of the first PhD women students to graduate
from Dallas Seminary back in the early 90s, wrote a very, well-done article in Bibliotheca Sacra, the Dallas Seminary
Theological journal called “Women in Ministry.” She gives an excellent
description of all these words. She says the word DIDASKO and all its cognates are the most
common words for teaching in the New Testament. The word refers almost
exclusively to public instruction or teaching of groups. It’s a formal concept.
It’s not an informal one-on-one having discussions around a cup of coffee.
Her article states, “In the New
Testament a teacher is one who systematically expounds the Word of God and
gives instruction in the Old Testament and Apostolic teaching.” That’s an
excellent definition of the term. It is a more formal, structured form of
instruction. Paul says I don’t allow women to teach, to give this kind of
instruction. Secondly he says, “Or to exercise authority over a man.” This is
talking about grown-up men.
We have a policy about prep school,
as best as we can. We draw the line that once a male child reaches puberty;
he’s going to have male teachers in prep school and not women teachers. Under
that age, women teachers are fine and great. But after that women are not to
have authority over a man or teach a man. The word for exercising authority is
an unusual word in Greek. It’s AUTHENTEO and it means to exercise or to have authority over
someone else. That definition fits all six uses of the word in the New
Testament.
Again, Paul says that they should
remain quiet. Why does Paul say that? Some people today say that he’s not
giving a universal principle to the church but is just addressing a specific
problem in Ephesus so it only applied to that situation. There’s no evidence of
that whatsoever. Others say he’s just influenced by his culture. These are
usually people who don’t believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of
Scripture. They say he came out of a Pharisaical background like Orthodox Jewry
later on. Men sat on one side of the synagogue. Women sat on the other side and
the women were basically given a second-class status.
Now that’s a problem. As I pointed
out, if men and women are equally created in the mage of God, then it’s a phony
application to relegate women to a second-class status. Paul doesn’t do that.
Paul’s argument for that doesn’t come from the culture. He doesn’t say that
this is the way the Greeks do it or this is the way the Jews do it. It comes
from God’s order to creation. He introduces this with that word “for”, the
Greek word GAR which indicates an explanation. “For it was Adam who was first created
and then Eve.”
He’s summarizing Genesis 2. What
happens there? God first created man and then told the man to name all the
animals. That was his first mission. So all the animals come trotting by Adam.
He looks at them and sees there are a male and a female for each one of them.
They all have a match but he didn’t have a match. What’s going on? When Adam
recognizes that something is missing, God says, “It’s not good for a man, a
male, to be alone.” So he created a what? He created a helper, an ASER.
Only two people in the Old Testament
are identified as ASERS and that’s women and God. Feminists come along and say that being a
helper is sort of a second-class role. Not when the only other classification
of ASER is God. That
elevates that role quite high. That’s a significant statement. Women have a
role like God has. A helper. This isn’t a second-class position. Adam’s created
first and Eve is created to be his helper in carrying out the mission God gave
him as the vice gerent over all the creation. Together they both had this role
as image bearers.
Then we had a little problem in
Genesis 3. The woman is deceived by Satan. There’s a role reversal here. Satan
goes after the woman in order to get her to functioning as the leader. He
figures out she’s the weak spot so he goes after her. Paul says that it wasn’t
Adam who was deceived but the woman, being quite deceived, fell into
transgression. What’s important is that throughout Scripture it’s not Eve’s sin
that God makes the issue out of. It’s Adam’s sin. Adam was the one who was
ultimately responsible. Romans 5:12 says that it’s in Adam that all die, not in
Eve. It’s Adam that’s the responsible one.
When God showed up in the Garden
that afternoon and started to ask where they were, He doesn’t address the woman
to explain what happened. He addresses the responsible party in the couple, the
leader in the home. God asked Adam what happened. He said it was Adam’s
responsibility. He was the representative head of the human race. Adam was not
deceived. The woman was deceived so this has something to do with why women
have a different role than men do.
Next we get into 1 Timothy 2:15.
This is a difficult verse that challenges a lot of people. “Women shall be
preserved through the bearing of children.” What in the world is going on here?
We have to understand a couple of different words here. The word for preserve
is the word for saved. But this isn’t using SOZO from a salvation perspective. It
can relate to justification. It can relate to sanctification and to
glorification. If this were talking about justification we would have a real
problem. Almost like Mormons who say you ladies can’t go to heaven unless you
have babies. I don’t think that quite passes the smell test. Is it talking
about phase 2 that women will be sanctified through childbearing? Not really
because the issue in phase 2 sanctification is what you have at the end of the
verse, “Continuing in faith and love and sanctity with self restraint.”
Maybe this verse has something to do
with the fact that the verb is a future tense. This is talking about
glorification and is related to rewards. Women are created to be the bearers of
children within the Divine viewpoint or Divine institution family. They’re the
ones who are given that position, that role, and that responsibility. That
takes things to the next level in training. She has a responsibility there. That
ultimately can relate to her rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ. This is a
long-term outlook, not a short-term outlook. Is that “they” talking about
“they, the children” or “they, the women”? It could be either one but I think
it’s primarily talking about the women. Part of their sanctification is
fulfilling part of their role as being a mother and bearing children. Does that
mean if a woman doesn’t have a child or is incapable of having a child, then
she can’t realize that? We know that’s in God’s hands, not in our hands. This
is just one of the ways a woman realizes her fulfillment in life. It doesn’t
mean that if you don’t have children, then you don’t realize that. All through
this we’re seeing that Paul is arguing that men have one role and women have
another role.
If you’ve never heard this before or
you’re coming at this from an understanding of the culture, then your training
has come out of a “no God” orientation. When you get up to what you believe
about the nature of men and women, it’s going to be radically different under
paganism than it is under Biblical thought. You’re going to get out in the
workplace and there’s going to be some kind of conflict. You’re going to have
to decide if you’re going to live your life and function under Biblical truth
or not. That’s going to impact how you relate to employers, co-workers, and
others in terms of same-sex marriage and gender confusion. It’s going to impact
how you view the role of men and women. This is hard in a pagan society because
the pressure is on you to conform to the world and not to be transformed by the
renewing of your mind.
This is what happens to growing
believers who have an incomplete thought transformation. When pressure comes,
they’re going to go toward the position of pragmatism. They’re going to go
toward something that works rather than something’s that right. This is what
leads to the destruction of your spiritual life. I want to close with a story
that I may have told you last time but I want to draw a little different application.
A man at church was telling me that if you work for the federal government and
someone comes in and tells you they’re transgender and you refer to them by the
wrong sex they say they are, then you may lose your job. In other words if a
man tells you he’s a woman, you must refer to him as a “she”. This works across
the board in terms of many different government agencies.
What is happening is that the
government is basically using vocabulary to change your thinking and to change your
values. After a while, if you keep referring to this biological male who
dresses like a woman as a “she” you begin to think there’s nothing wrong with
this. After all “she’s” a nice person. I don’t want to be too judgmental. This
really isn’t too bad. What’s happened is government policy is forcing a
breakdown in your thought life and your norms and standards and you have just
lost that battle in spiritual warfare and caved into the world. Rather than
being transformed by the renewing of your mind, you’re being forced and
conformed into the world.
This is just beginning, folks.
Actually, it’s just becoming very obvious. It’s been going on for twenty or
thirty years in a lot more subtle ways. Now it’s becoming much more overt. We’re
going to see churches and institutions attacked more and more from the left
because they can’t abide for people to think so radically different about men
and women and the essence of families and society. So we’re going to see this
coming along in a lot of different ways.
In fact, I gave Alan a letter we
received from an organization that is at the root of a lot of these attacks on
the church. It states that they just want to warn the “kind church leaders”
that there are a lot of things about politics which you can’t say from the
pulpit. Make sure you don’t say these things or you will cause great harm to
come to your organization. Just a little letter of intimidation! This is the
kind of thing we’re going to see more and more of, not to mention the kind of
things the mayor is doing.
We have to make a decision. Are you
really willing to stay the course? That’s what discipleship is all about. All
the things Jesus teaches in Matthew about discipleship about whether you’re
willing to count the cost. Are you willing to make the sacrifice? Are you
willing to give up everything in your life because when it comes right down to
it, the only thing that matters is your relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ?
If that’s all that matters, then everything else we have may go away. It may go
away in our lifetime in a decade. The only thing that’s going to give us the
strength to handle those battles is the Word of God in our souls.