One of the dangers of topical preaching, like the series that we’re in the midst of right now, is that for me as a pastor, it’s easy to focus on topics that I’m comfortable with and to ignore others that may not be quite as comfortable for me or for you. The other danger is that it is relatively easy to begin by drawing some conclusions about a certain topic or issue and then try to find Scriptures, often taken out of context, to support those conclusions, rather than letting the Bible text itself develop the principles.
The topic that we’re going to deal with this morning certainly has the potential to fall into those traps. In many ways, it is a topic that is not entirely comfortable for us. In fact, the last time I addressed this issue a couple of years ago, there were a few people who took issue with that teaching and left our church. It is also a topic where it seems like many people have tried to advance their own views by “cherry-picking” a few verses that seem to support their opinions while at the same time ignoring or explaining away other passages that contradict them.
That is why the foundation we have laid for the past three weeks is so critical. The principles of Biblical manhood and womanhood that flow out of God’s original design at creation and which carry over into the marriage relationship, are, not surprisingly, the very principles that undergird the aspect of Biblical manhood and womanhood that we’ll look at this morning.
So once again, let’s take a moment to review what we’ve learned so far. [Let people fill in the blanks]
God’s design:
Men who love by serving like Christ
and Women who love by submitting like the Church
Man is the head; Woman is the helper
Man and Woman have equal worth but different work
Today, we are going to see just why it has been so important for us to work through these principles quite methodically, with each principle resting firmly on the preceding principle or principles.
We began by looking at the foundational principle of God’s original design for manhood and womanhood that He established at creation. Both man and woman were made in the image of God and are therefore equal in their God-like personhood. As we put it – man and woman have equal worth.
But at the same time man and woman have different God-ordained roles – roles that were determined and given by God at creation before sin ever entered the world. As we put it – man and woman have different work.
After establishing the basic foundation – that man and woman have equal worth, but different work, we were able to develop our next building block. As part of His original design, God created man to be the head – a strong, servant leader who would lead their partnership in a God-glorifying direction. And He created woman to be the helper – a partner who supports and honors that headship. In that design, the man and woman complemented each other perfectly as they respected and served each other. That design resulted in good for Adam and Eve and glory for God.
Then last week, we built some more on that original foundation and our first building block as we saw how the relationship between man and woman in marriage is both rooted in God’s original design and is intended to be a picture of the relationship between Jesus and His body, the church. So in marriage that original design is to be carried out by men who love by serving like Christ and women who submit like the church.
Many have claimed that the passage we’ll look at this morning is outdated or that it was only meant to apply to the specific cultural situation that existed in the church at Ephesus in the first century. And those people would assert, therefore, that it has no relevance for us in the United States in the 21st century.
But what we’ll see this morning that this passage is indeed relevant to us today because what Paul teaches is rooted not merely in the cultural situation of his day, but rather in God’s original design for manhood and womanhood that we’ve been learning about for the past three weeks.
It’s not surprising at all that God’s design for manhood and womanhood in the church is undergirded by the foundation of His original design for man and woman. But what may be surprising, is that God’s design for the home is also an important supporting building block.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 2 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 8:
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 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. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
(1 Timothy 2:8-15 ESV)
Before we look at this passage in detail, let me just point out how these instructions of Paul regarding the church are not merely cultural, but are in fact rooted in both God’s original design for man and woman as well as His design for the home.
First, let’s see how this passage is clearly connected back to the creation account in Genesis 1-2. Where do we find that connection in this passage? [Wait for answers]. That’s right – in verses 13 and 14. I would suggest to you that the most important word in this entire passage is the three letter word “for” at the beginning of verse 13. With that word Paul is indicating that the foundation for the instructions he is giving here goes all the way back to God’s creation of man and woman. So it is clear that Paul doesn’t intend for this merely to be relevant for Timothy’s particular situation in the church in Ephesus. It is a timeless principle that is rooted in God’s original design for man and woman. We’ll come back to that connection in a moment.
I would suggest that this section is also connected to God’s design for the home, but that connection is not nearly as evident. We’ll have to do a little digging to see that.
The New Testament writers use a number of different pictures to describe the church. For instance, Paul frequently pictures the church as a body. We saw that last week in Ephesians 5, where he calls the church the body of Christ.
But another way that the church is frequently described is as a family. Jesus certainly uses that picture when He calls God “Father” and when He calls His followers “brothers and sisters”. Paul also calls his fellow believers “brothers and sisters”. And Jesus, Paul and Peter all refer to believers as “sons of God” or “children of God.”
Paul certainly employs that imagery in his letter to Timothy that contains the passage we just read a moment ago. He begins that letter by calling Timothy “my true child in the faith”. And when he summarizes the purpose of his letter in chapter 3, we see him employing that same picture again.
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
(1 Timothy 3:14-15 ESV)
In our culture today, we have a tendency to compartmentalize our lives. We tend to think of some areas of our life as being “spiritual” – things like going to church or reading our Bibles or praying – and other areas as being “secular” – things like our jobs or our families. But that idea would have been completely foreign to Paul and the other New Testament authors.
To Paul if the church is the household of God, then it stood to reason that how God intended for people to behave within that household would naturally be consistent with how He intended for a man and woman to behave in their home. Obviously in the church, Jesus, and not any man, is the head. But under His headship, the men are to take on a leadership role in which they love by serving like Jesus and the women are to love by submitting to that leadership in the same way the church submits to Christ.
If we approach our passage with these supporting foundational truths in mind, then we’re not going to have any problem at all with what Paul writes here. I think that Pastor John Piper is exactly right when he wrote these words:
Now the real test I think of whether we have grasped the biblical essence of manhood and womanhood and affirm it as true and beautiful - the real test is whether Paul's application of it to the life of the church surprises and offends us or not.
I think one of the biggest mistakes I made when I preached on this passage a couple years ago is that I didn’t do a good enough job of making the connection between this passage and both God’s original design for manhood and womanhood at creation and His design for the home. So hopefully I’ve done a much better job of that this time.
I also think that one of the reasons some people have a hard time with this passage is because we often tend to focus on what women are prohibited from doing in the church rather than on what they are permitted to do. So I’m going to try to avoid that approach to the extent it is possible.
So we need to begin by emphasizing once again that the same equality of value that applies to men and women in general also applies in the church. That is the point that Paul makes in another of his letters when he writes these words:
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.
(Galatians 3:28 ESV)
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for this verse to be taken out of context and used to try to argue against the clear teaching that is presented in the passage we’re looking at this morning. When Paul writes that both male and female are one in Christ Jesus, he is focusing on the idea that they both have equal value before God. But there is certainly nothing in that verse or the surrounding context that would suggest that Paul is in any way contradicting the clear teaching in the rest of his writings that describe the differing roles of men in women in every area of life.
Rather than diminishing the value of women in his culture, Paul is actually giving much greater worth to women than was found in the culture of that day. At that time Jewish women were forbidden to learn the law. In the synagogue they were seated in a separate section or in a gallery and were not permitted to have any part in the service. So the idea that women in the church were permitted to learn and otherwise permitted to participate in public worship greatly elevated the position of Christian women in that culture.
There is certainly abundant evidence in the New Testament that women had important ministry roles within the church:
• Spiritual gifts are given to both men and women and since those gifts are to be used for the building up of the body, the exercise of those gifts by both men and women is essential to the health of the body.
• The Scriptures record that women were allowed to prophesy and pray in the church services. However, there were clearly some limitations placed on those forms of ministry.
• Women did have teaching roles within the church. Priscilla taught Apollos along with her husband, Aquilla. In his letter to Titus, Paul specifically instructed older women to teach the younger women. Timothy had learned the Scriptures from his mother and grandmother.
• There are several places in the New Testament where women are referred to as “fellow workers” by Paul.
So we can accurately conclude that men and women both have spiritual equality in the church and that they both have important roles in the church. But that in no way precludes them having different, but equally valuable roles.
We’re not going to be able to look in great detail at our entire passage this morning, so let’s focus on verses 11 and 12 where Paul confirms those God-ordained roles:
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.
Unfortunately, some of the backlash against these verses seems to be due to the KJV translation that reads:
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
I think you can pretty easily see the issue here – the idea that women are to learn “in silence”. That translation implies that woman in church should be “seen but not heard.” But the underlying Greek word does not convey that idea at all as we can see from the surrounding text.
In verse 11, Paul sets for the general principle:
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea that a woman was permitted to learn in church was revolutionary in itself. And apparently some of the women in the church had abused that newfound freedom and were using it to usurp the authority of the church leaders which led to the false teaching and divisions in the church that Paul refers to elsewhere in this letter.
So Paul instructs these women to exhibit submissiveness and to learn quietly. The idea here is that the women were to exhibit a kind of quietness in which they chose not to speak up and stir things up and cause problems.
Having established the general principle in verse 11, Paul goes on to explain the practical way in which that principle is to operate in verse 12:
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
The manner in which the woman is to “remain quiet” in the church is to not usurp the role of the church leaders by attempting to teach or exercise authority over men. So, not surprisingly, Paul devotes most of the third chapter of this letter to Timothy to the qualifications for those leaders. We don’t have time to look at those qualifications in detail, but we could summarize them by saying that in the church, God’s design for leadership requires godly men who have already demonstrated their ability to lead by serving their own families.
And the primary responsibilities of those godly leaders in the church are to teach and to exercise authority over the body. So when Paul gives these instructions, He is saying that while women have important roles in the church, they are not to usurp the role of teaching and exercising authority that God has specifically reserved for men who have already demonstrated the ability to do so in their own families. That is what he means when he instructs the women to “learn quietly” and to “remain quiet”.
So what we find, not surprisingly, is that the same roles given by God at creation and which are to be manifest in the home also carry over into the different roles that men and women have in the church.
That obviously doesn’t mean that women can’t teach at all. It is quite apparent that some women in the church have the spiritual gift of teaching. And as we saw earlier, the Scriptures reveal that there are appropriate ways for a woman to exercise that gift. In particular we find examples of a woman teaching along with her husband, women teaching other women and women teaching children.
Paul’s prohibition against women teaching in the church is dealing with the kind of teaching that is reserved for the God-ordained male leadership in the body. From the context here in 1 Timothy as well as what we see elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul is addressing the public teaching of Scripture, especially that kind of authoritative teaching that establishes doctrine – a role that is reserved for the male elders in the church.
And, as we’ve already mentioned, since Paul wants his readers to understand that he is not merely addressing some issue that is unique to their particular culture, he refers back to the creation account in verses 13-14 to support what he is teaching:
For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
We don’t really need to deal with the first part of those verses since we’ve already seen several times that the fact that God created Adam before Eve is just one of several evidences of the headship of man. But I do want to briefly look at the other idea that is contained in Paul’s words here – the idea that it was Adam, and not Eve, who was deceived.
Notice what Paul didn’t say here. He did not say that Eve was deceived because she was somehow inferior to or weaker than Adam. I don’t think that Paul’s point here is that the woman is more deceivable or that the man is less apt to being deceived. The point he is making is completely consistent with what we learned a couple weeks ago when we looked at the fall of man in Genesis 3:
When God’s design of man as the head and woman as the helper is violated, it puts both people in the partnership at a greater risk of being deceived.
That universal principle not only held true in the garden and holds true in the marriage relationship, it also holds true in the church. When God’s design for godly male leadership in the church, especially the kind of leadership that is expressed through the authoritative teaching of Scripture, is violated it puts everyone in the church – male and female – at greater risk for being deceived.
What we’ve learned today has some very practical implications for every local church, including ours. And here is how I would summarize God’s design for the roles of men and women in the church:
Men who mobilize men and women for ministry
In a way that is completely consistent with His original design for manhood and womanhood and which is also consistent with his design for the home, God has given men the role of being leaders in the church. And just as the husband is responsible for leading his marriage in a God-glorifying direction, the male leaders in the church are responsible for leading the church body in a God-glorifying direction. We can illustrate how all this works together by combining today’s building block with our foundation and the preceding building blocks that we’ve developed the last three weeks:
God’s design:
Men who mobilize men and women for ministry
Men who love by serving like Christ
and Women who love by submitting like the Church
Man is the head; Woman is the helper
Man and Woman have equal worth but different work
