Understanding God's Design

We are in a portion of Scripture where the Apostle Paul addresses the issue of roles. More specifically, as we come to the end of chapte 2, we are focused on the role of women. As we’ve mentioned already, Paul is not talking about roles in a theoretical or educational setting. He brings these issues up with the aim of correcting problems that had arisen in the church. Men were fighting, women were dressing inappropriately, and women were taking on the role of elders, which is to teach and have authority over the men.

Last week, we specifically looked at verses 11 and 12 where Paul says : Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

Verse 12 is the explanation, or the expansion, of verse 11. What does it mean when verse 11 says that a women should learn quietly? The answer is in verse 12; it means that in the formal assembly of the church, she is not to teach the congregation. What does it mean that she should be submissive? It means that she is not to exercise authority over the church, which includes the men.

And just to make sure the point is clear, Paul repeats himself at the end of verse 12—a woman is to remain quiet. It’s the same phrase he used in verse 11. When the church gathers for corporate worship and instruction, a woman is not to take on the role of a teacher or the role of institutional authority over men. Her posture is to be one of silence and submission.

Now, as I said before, you and I recognize that this is not a message our culture accepts. Frankly, it’s not really a message they understand either. Some people imagine that God’s instruction is stricter than it really is, and that is unfortunate.

This doesn’t mean that a woman can’t talk at all. All that is being said here is that in the formal gathering of the church, the teaching voice is not to be a woman. And the highest level of authority—that which includes oversight over the men in the church—is also not for a women. This is why we don’t have women pastors. And we’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come when we get to chapter 3.

We expect the world to push back against God’s design. That’s unfortunate, but it’s what the unregenerate heart does. What I find more troubling, however, is when people or groups, in the name of Christ, want to undo what the Bible clearly and repeatedly says.

I showed you last week that this is not an isolated teaching. Paul says the same kind of thing in 1 Corinthians 14. In the context of a church gathering to hear instruction, the women are to be silent. That’s one way they demonstrate their submission to God’s design.

So, why is it that we have churches today that allow women to preach to the congregation or women who serve as pastors? This is what I want to help you understand and interact with today.

I was originally planning to finish our study of chapter 2 today, but instead, we are going to do that next week. What I want to do today is, in a more general way, address the issue of male leadership and help you interact with those who are opposed to the idea.

I am going to begin by talking about how we should think about churches that reject or push against the roles God has given us in His word for men and women. And then I want to help you understand and respond to the kinds of arguments you might hear from those who claim to honor the Scriptures.

So, to start: How should we think about those who reject or push back on God’s design?

In a general sense, you need to know that going against God’s design is always unhealthy. Paul alludes to that in Romans 1, when he talks about a culture that embraces homosexuality. In verse 26, he mentions those who [exchange] natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And verse 27 says the result of that is that they received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Paul is talking about something specific, but I am simply drawing out amore general principle. It is not healthy for us to reject God’s design. There will be consequences both spiritually and physically.

All rebellion against God and disobedience of His design is sin, but not all rebellion is in the same category. We have different levels, or degrees, of sin which bring different levels of consequences or judgment.

Just like with physical health, there are a variety of reasons why a church or a Christian can be unhealthy spiritually. This may be oversimplifying things, but I think this will help you think about this issue. Think about unhealth in three main categories. A church could be unhealthy due to rebellion, to pressure, or to ignorance. Think about that as a spectrum.

Rebellious unhealth is the most troubling scenario. It is a flagrant disregard for the truth and an intentional working against divine instruction. A physical example of this would be a man with severe cirrhosis of the liver due to years of alcohol abuse, and his doctor is telling him, “You need to stop. If you have another drink, you could die.” But this man rejects the instruction and still gets drunk every night. That’s a rebellious lack of health.

For a local church, we see this rebellion in churches that have not only embraced women as preachers and pastors, but also openly embraced the LGBT lifestyle claiming it is compatible with Christianity. That is no longer a true, faithful church. It doesn’t understand sin, so it can’t understand repentance, and therefore, it cannot preach the true gospel. That is an unhealth church due to rebellion.

Coming down a step, we have pressured unhealth. In the physical realm, this could be someone who says, “I understand what I should do to be healthy, but I just can’t do it right now. I don’t have time to cook properly or to exercise. I just eat what people give me or what’s available when I need it.” That person is also unhealthy, but the situation is not as severe as the rebellious person.

What does that look like in a local church setting? This would be churches that, in general, might have an understanding the Bible , but they have too many pressures on them to look more into the subject or to make changes in the right direction. They are affected by cultural pressure. Maybe they’re affected by traditions in the church or in their surrounding community. They may also feel pressure because, in their eyes, adjusting their approach to the word of God leads to more people joining. So, there’s a numerical pressure. “People will leave if we change.” Those kinds of pressures aren’t supposed to change our obedience to God’s word, but they are forms of pressure that can keep a church unhealthy.

The final category is the least severe on the spectrum, but it is still dealing with unhealthy practices. This is unhealth due to ignorance. As a physical example of this, think about all the people who smoked cigarettes in the 1950s.The general population wasn’t being told about the health risks. Nobody heard anything about connections to cancer, and most people smoked. There was a lack of health, and it was due to ignorance; they didn’t know any better.

Some churches today are in a similar category when it comes to doctrine. You can find people who love Christ and love their church, but sadly, tradition takes over, and there is never any exposure to what the Bible says about these things. The pastor might hop from topic to topic, and there may be more of a devotional approach to Scripture rather than one focused on teaching the whole counsel of God. And so, ecclesiological issues, like church leadership and structure, never come to the forefront. People don’t hear about it.

So, at the most extreme level, we have heretical churches which have abandoned the gospel and cannot lead people to Christ. And on the other end you have church  that have never been exposed to sound biblical instruction.

We don’t want to respond to all churches in the same way, but we should be alert when there is unhealth because, left unchecked, unhealthy churches only get unhealthier. This is what you see in Israel’s history in the Old Testament. A generation makes small allowances, and the next generation makes more, and eventually, the whole nation is in rebellious idolatry ignoring the word of God.

That’s what we’ve seen in denominations like the Episcopal church or the PCUSA. Once a church starts making concessions to culture and straying from God’s good order and making exceptions to biblical instruction, they’re in trouble. And in only a few generations, they are openly affirming sin.

Just to give a more personalized example, there is a pastor in the Atlanta area named Andy Stanley. He is the son of Charles Stanley who passed away this year. Andy Stanley has a large following and, for the past decade, has been saying things that undermine the authority of the Bible.

Well, a couple weeks ago, his church began promoting a conference that will feature speakers who are in so called “same-sex marriages.” As Al Mohler stated, the conference is “structured as what most evangelical would quickly recognize as a departure from historic normative Biblical Christianity.” This is where things lead when people erode the foundation of God’s word.

When a church’s theological view or a specific practice begins to erode the fundamental distinctions God created between men and women, that church is on a dangerous, unhealthy path. And so that’s why I want to equip you to think about this issue for yourself form the Scriptures.

As I mentioned last week, the theological term for the view that allows a woman to preach to a local congregation and to be a pastor is egalitarianism. You don’t have to memorize that term, but I will use it again, and I want you to know what I mean. The view that there are to be no distinctions between men and women is called egalitarianism. The other side of this issue is known as complementarianism. Complementarianism is the view that men and women hold different but complementary roles.

Both egalitarianism and complementarianism uphold a woman’s equal status before the Lord, but the egalitarian position rejects this idea of woman’s submission. How do they make that argument? Let me walk you through some of the ways they do that.

The first argument of egalitarianism is to say that that equal status means equal roles. Equal status means equal roles. That is not true, but it’s a big point the egalitarian position makes. I’d like you to turn with me to Galatians chapter 3, verse 28. Galatians 3:28. This is a key passage for the egalitarian position.

Here’s what Paul says in Galatians 3:28—There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

According to the egalitarian position, this verse proves that there should be no distinction between men and women. Paul clearly says, “There is no male and female.”

The problem with that view is that it misses the point of the passage, which the immediate context makes clear. In this discussion, Paul is not talking about function, he is talking about salvation by faith alone, as opposed to salvation requiring works.

If you jump back for a second to Galatians 2:16, you see that it says this—yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

This is the background to chapter 3. Paul doesn’t change topics. Salvation is not based on works or on the Law; it is based on the promise of God and our faith in that promise. If you start at verse 25 of chapter 3, you get to see the full idea. Paul says—But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

Imagine a high-school class waiting in line waiting for lunch, and one of the boys starts to grow impatient. In seeing this, a teacher says to him, “Wait your turn. It doesn’t matter where you are in line. There’s plenty for everyone. We are all equal; we’re all going to get the same portion.”

Now, if on that same day, the students go to choir practice, what if the boy gets upset because he wants a certain solo or a certain part? And the choir teacher is the same lady who talked to him in the lunch line. Would it be legitimate for him to say, “You said we were all the same! You said there wouldn’t be any differences!”? Is that a legitimate argument?

It is not because the context has changed. In terms of lunch, everyone gets the same type and amount of food. But when it comes to singing in the choir, people get assigned different roles, different parts. A soprano isn’t going to get a part made for a tenor. I hope that analogy helps.

Galatians 3 affirms the equality of men and women before the Lord. Nobody is a second-class citizen. We all enter through the work of Christ on the cross. But that equality in status does not mean we all have access to the same roles.

The New Testament describes the church as a body, and we have varying gifts. First Corinthians 12 says we all have the same Spirit, but we do not have the same gifts or the same functions. We are different. We are united in Christ; there should be no division. But that doesn’t mean there should be no distinctions between our contributions. We have different roles.

And just like we have different roles in the body of Christ, men and women have distinct roles in a marriage and in the church. This is God’s design. Women are not inferior to men. Their contribution isn’t less valuable to the work of Christ, but it is different. Equal status does not mean we get the same function. And also, a difference in function, or role, does not mean we have a difference in status or value. So, don’t let anybody mix that up for you.

The best example is Jesus the Son of God and His relationship to the Father. Is Jesus equal to the Father in power and glory? Is He eternal like the Father? Is He worthy of worship? Yes. But in terms of His function, the Son willingly submits to the Father. They are equal in status, but different in roles.

Here’s what Paul says in First Corinthians 11:3—But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

“Head” refers to a position of functional authority, and there is to be submission to that head. That’s why passages like Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter, when they speak to women, instruct them to submit. And the man is instructed to be loving and sacrificial and kind. He dishonors God when he abuses his leadership and fails to honor his wife.

Husbands and wives, and pastors and members, have different roles in the church. But they all reflect the glory of Christ.

Now, to be clear, Bible never teaches that all women must submit to all men. It simply states that in the home and in the church, the woman is to submit to the authority of the man. We have the same status, but different roles.

A second argument egalitarianism makes is that hierarchy is a product of the fall. Hierarchy is a product of the fall. In other words, the authority of a man, they claim, isn’t part of God’s original creation; they say it is a result of the brokenness in our world, which, in Christ, is undone.

Let’s look more closely at this by turning to page 1 of our Bibles. Let’s go to Genesis chapter 1. For six straight days, God creates and organizes, and fills the world. And the culmination of His creation comes in verse 26. Genesis chapter 1, verse 26—Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” [27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

There we have the divine account of creation. Men and women are equally made in God’s image. Both are made to serve and represent Him on the earth.

Now, when we come to chapter 3, we find the story of sin entering the world. Satan convinces the woman that God is withholding something from her. The fruit that is forbidden for them to eat, Satan says, will be good for them. So, Eve takes a bite, and then she turns to her husband, who is next to her, and he takes a bite.

This is the entrance of sin to the human race. The man and the women hide themselves, but God calls out to the man. The man admits his shame, and when God asks him if he ate from the forbidden tree, the man says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

So, God turns to the woman, and she says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Well, then God pronounce a curse on the serpent, on the man, and on the woman. The serpent is going to be destroyed by the offspring of the woman.

And then, here is what God says to woman. This is Genesis 3:16—I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

Here is what some egalitarians say: You see, part of sin’s curse was that the man would rule over the woman. This hierarchy is a result of the curse. And since Christ has come to undo the curse of sin, in Christ, we can now undo the man’s authority over the woman. As one pastor put it, God intended a partnership, not a patriarchy. It's a pretty attractive argument to some, but it has some serious problems.

First of all, this view doesn’t understand what the curse accomplished. The curse on this world didn’t change God’s design; it frustrated it. It brought friction into this world so that the design wouldn’t flow easily.

For example, if you look at the curse for the man, God says that the ground is going to be cursed. It will be painful for him to work it. It’s not saying that the earth is going to rule over the man. It is saying that it will be work for him to subdue it. Does that mean that work is a product of the fall? No, because back in Genesis 2:15, we are told that God put the man in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

The curse didn’t make the man work, it made his work more difficult. Now, he’s going to sweat. Now, the land will fight back with thorns.

And this is what’s happening with the curse on the woman. The curse didn’t introduce a hierarchy; it introduced friction into the relationship between a man and his wife. He was already given a position of authority over her, but now she would fight back. Verse 16 says she would have a “desire” for him.

That’s not talking about sexual desire, as some have said. They say that because the same word is used in Song of Solomon. But that was written over 500 years later by a different author in a different context. The same word, however, is used one other time in the Bible, and it is in the same book by the same author, which gives us a much closer comparison. This word is used in Genesis 4:7, when God speaks to Cain who is upset about his sacrifice not being accepted.

God says to Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door. It [has a desire for] you, but you must rule over it.” There we see the same connection as in Genesis 3:16. There is desire and there is ruling. This is talking about a desire to control.

Just like God’s curse meant that the ground was going to fight back against the man’s work, now the woman would have these desires to fight back against her husband’s leadership. That’s the curse upon this world. That’s part of our sinful nature.

A husband will not want to lead as God requires, and a wife will not want to submit as God requires; she will not easily or naturally accept her husband’s leadership. The curse is not a change to the design; it is a frustration or a difficulty in accomplishing the design. The bike chain is going to get stuck, and it won’t flow smoothly. The design has friction now.

You can see this friction more clearly in the first part of the curse to the woman. God says, “In pain you shall bring forth children.” Back in Genesis 1, God told the man and the woman to multiply, so having kids isn’t part of the curse. But the great pain of having kids is what the curse introduced. So, one last time, the curse didn’t introduce a hierarchy, it introduced a difficulty.

Another problem with this misunderstand of the curse is that it makes a false distinction between a patriarchy and a partnership. Does God intend a man and his wife to be partners? Yes. they are to work together. First Peter 3 says the wife is a fellow heir of the grace of life. She is to be honored. But being partners doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t submit to the other. Two soldiers can be part of the same team while one of them has a higher rank, right? Partnership is compatible with a hierarchy.

A final problem with this misunderstanding of the curse is that it completely ignores Genesis chapter 2. So, go ahead and turn there as well. Genesis chapter 2, verse 18. Chapter 1 gave us a summary of God creating male and female. But chapter 2 goes back and slows the story down to tell us how God made the man and the woman.

Look at Genesis 2:18—Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” [19] Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. [20] The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. [21] So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [22] And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. [23] Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

God wanted Adam to feel lonely so that He could provide a solution he would cherish. God made men and women equal before Him. But they were not created at the same time. The woman was created as a helper for the man. That’s not an inferior status, because that term is even used for God who is our Helper. But here, it conveys the idea of the woman’s service and submission. She is meeting a need for the man.

God didn’t just make a group of humans, like He did with the fish or the birds. God intentionally made the man first, and then He made the woman out of the man. He intentionally made the man first as a symbol of his authority over the woman in the way they function. We’ll talk about this again next week, when we get back to 1 Timothy 2.

Let me read to you what Paul says about this in 1 Corinthians 11:8. He is talking about the submission of a woman to her husband, and he says—For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. [9] Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

And then, to make sure he isn’t saying that men are of a higher status, Paul adds, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; [12] for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.”

So, the first woman came from a man, but after that, every man has come from a woman. God has designed an interdependence. There is equality in status, but that does not erase differing roles.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul tells us that a man’s authority, expressed in love and sacrifice is an expression of Christ’s authority and love for His church. And a woman’s submission to her husband is an expression of the humble heart of Christ as well. We do it in different ways, but we do it together for the glory of our King and our Bridegroom Jesus Christ.

As we end our time together, let me address one final argument made by the egalitarian position. This is the argument that God has used many women for His glory, and we have numerous examples biblically and historically. What do we do with all the examples of women whom God has used?

To start, as we think about the historic effect women have had, we need to recognize that the human effect of any person’s ministry is not the final criteria. The most pressing criteria is faithfulness to God’s word. There are plenty of churches that have growing numbers but do not honor God by their ministries. In fact, cults and other religions might grow faster than Christianity, but that doesn’t mean they are faithful to God’s word.

We also need to think more carefully about the women who served in the Bible. For example, Deborah in the Old Testament was not actually a judge. The judge was a man named Barak who was too afraid to fight for Israel. And he needed a woman to boost his confidence. He said to her, “If you go, I’ll go too.”

This inclusion of a woman was God’s mercy toward him, but it was also a picture of Israel’s increasing shame. That’s the theme of Judges. Israel is in a downward spiral of sin and shame. So, fact, when Deborah agrees to go with Barak, she says, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

A woman’s victory in battle was part of God’s judgment, and it lines up with Isaiah’s judgment in Isaiah 3:12. There, it says, “My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.” A woman ruling over God’s people was not a commendable thing.

When we come to the New Testament, there are numerous examples of women who served and ministered. But there is no indication of any women teaching in the formal gathering of the church.

Shortly after Jesus’ birth, we read about a prophetess named Anna, a widow who was 84years old. What kind of ministry did she have? It says that she never left the temple. She worshiped and fasted and prayed, and she talked to the people there about Jesus. That’s a beautiful thing, but it’s not the same as the ministry of an elder in a church. That sounds more like a wonderful greeter or usher encouraging everyone who enters.

Jesus also had women who ministered with him, but no women were named as Apostles, and there is no women who is recognized as an author of Scripture.

The Apostle Paul lists women whom he refers to as fellow workers. Priscilla even helped teach Apollos, but that was a personal instruction given, not a sermon given to the entire congregation. And Paul never named a woman as a pastor or an elder of a local church.

So, we need to make sure we affirm the beautiful, valuable, necessary, and critical role of women in the church, both biblically and historically, but affirming women in ministry doesn’t mean we have to allow them to serve as pastors and preachers for a local congregation. This is something the word of God clearly prohibits. There is no example of a woman preaching to a congregation or being a pastor of a church.

So, don’t get confused by some of the arguments you might hear. Equal status in Christ does not mean that our distinctions get erased. The curse on this world was not the introduction of a hierarchy; it was the frustration of it. And women’s ministry in the Bible and in church history do not undo the clear principles we see laid out throughout the Bible, from Genesis to the New Testament epistles.

Well, I’ve done my best to teach about egalitarianism in general. Next week, we’ll go back to 1 Timothy 2 and see why it is that some people don’t think it means what it says.

As we close our time, I simply want to say that affirmation the headship or the authority of men in leadership in the family in the church is not about men trying to stay in control. That should never be the heart behind this discussion. And though there are countless examples of poor leadership or negligent leadership or abusive leadership, those negative examples shouldn’t be used to minimize God’s good design.

Ultimately, this is not a conversation about power; this is a conversation about the word of God. And as Paul says in Timothy, we, the church, are the pillar and support of the truth. We proclaim the word of God, and we are to put it on display in all that we do.

May God, by His grace, continue to enable us to do it faithfully.