Would Jesus Allow Women To Speak In Church?
1 Corinthians 14:26-35 Bridge City Church 8/11/2023
Jesus is to be our role model in everything in the life of the church and outside of the church. Jesus was the greatest liberator of women from all walks of life that the world has ever known. The first person Jesus revealed himself to as the Messiah and allowed to go and tell others about him being the Messiah (the Christ) was a woman.
Not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman who was despised by Jesus’ own people the Jews. She was not only despised by the Jews, she was despised by her own people because she had been married and divorced five times and was now living with a man that was not her husband. Yet, after one single afternoon encounter with Jesus, her life changed drastically. She became an evangelist that started a revival in her home town in which many people came to know the Lord because her testimony led them to Jesus.
God sent an angel to tell the women about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first persons to actually see the resurrected Jesus and touch his body by clasping his feet and worshiping him were two women. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.
Jesus empowered them with the task to go and tell the disciples not only that he had been resurrected, but gave them instructions on where the other 11 disciples were to meet him. The amazing thing is that a woman at this time was not considered a valid witness. Yet Jesus chose two women as witnesses to announce to the world the greatest event to take place in human history. Christianity itself rises and falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now before I get to today’s text, I’m going to show you something that some of you may find shocking at first. Have you ever seen those disclaimers that say, “Do not try this at home?”
Well I’m telling you now, what I am about to do, don’t try it at home or anywhere else, because you have to listen carefully to what I am about to say. Pastor Keon may even bar me from future preaching.
I’m going to show you from a story in Scripture that Jesus has taken a pro choice position. In Matthew chapter 10 we find the story.
17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[d]”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
As much as Jesus loved this man, he left the choice as to whether or not the man would follow Jesus completely up to the man. When it comes to our salvation, Jesus is pro-choice.
Now some of you are probably thinking, what does that have to do with abortion. My response is absolutely nothing. But I never said, I was going to say anything about abortion. I said I was going to show you where Jesus made a pro choice decision.
I wanted to you to see, how when we hear or see certain phrases, our mind goes into a particular mode, sometimes setting up defenses and arguments that are not fully justified.
We see and hear things that were never spoken. Words that the are on a page, are given a meaning that they never had at the time they were written. We look at the Bible through certain backgrounds which affect our willingness to accept the text as it is written.
We have been looking at passages in the Bible that have been taken out of context and used for a host of different things that were never intended. I am a firm believer in the Bible being the Word of God and that we should allow the Word of God to interpret itself if there ever appears to be a contradiction.
Rather than bringing our own biases and culture to a text we need to allow the text to speak to us from its own background and culture.
One word that is crucial to understanding today’s text is the word church. When you hear the word church, what comes to mind first; a building or a gathering of people? What you see first will affect how you read this passage in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.
The word Church in the New Testament is never used for a building, never used for a denomination, and never described as place with a pulpit, a platform and organ or piano.
The word church began to refer to buildings around the Middle Ages in the 6th and 7th century. Therefore in looking at today’s text, since Corinthians is written in the first century the word church has to mean what it meant to the Corinthians in the first century which was “A gathering of God’s people.”
Today’s passage that we are going to look at specifically is that “Women must be silent in the church.”
As we look at some of the controversial passages which lead to different conclusions for various people, we need to follow some ground rules and sincerely attempt to answer some of the following questions:
• 1. What is going on in this particular passage, and what problem is being addressed?
• 2. Why is this particular admonition being given?
• 3. If this is followed all the time, will it contradict other parts of the Bible?
• 4. Does this writer say something else in another situation which may shed light on the passage?
• 5. If you follow everything in this passage with the same literalism, will you have sound theology?
• 6 Is anything from present culture being read into the text that is not there in the text?
We are looking at 1 Corinthians 14 verses 26-34 which is a part of chapter 14. The whole of chapter 14 deals with order in the worship service. The goal is for the worship service to be held in such a way as to build up the body of believers.
Some people were thinking, “hey if I got the gift of speaking in tongues I should use it when we get together.” Paul says, “if people don’t understand what you’re saying, that’s not helpful to the body. Stay quiet unless there is an interpreter. I would that you would prophesy rather than speak in tongues. He then explains how tongues and prophecy affects believers and non believers.
One of the passages that has been at the center of controversy on women is 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 (NIV) :
26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two--or at the most three--should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. 29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, 34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church
It is important to try and understand this whole section of Scripture in order to grasp the meaning of the most controversial parts. The temptation is to go straight to verse 34 which says women should remain silent in the churches.
The context of this passage seems to be that the worship service is filled with a lot of confusion. People are going on and on speaking in tongues in languages the congregation does not understand. Paul has to limit them to three people at the most. The number had to be cut back to zero if there was not an interpreter.
There were several people preaching or prophesying during the service and some of them were starting to preach before the others had finished. They just started up with a new sermon. They justified their interruption by saying they had no control over themselves. Paul had to remind them that the spirit of a prophet was always under the control of the prophet so there was no excuse for several people talking at once.
There also seemed to be a group of women who were interrupting the service by calling out questions to the speakers while they were speaking. The reality is this, service was not anything like our worship services today and it was not the norm for what Paul felt a worship service should be.
Does anyone structure their worship service in this manner today with 1) up to three people being given the chance to speak in tongues followed by an interpreter for each message, 2) up to at least three people being given the opportunity to preach one after the other, 3) making sure that no married women is allowed to ask questions of the speaker during the sermon and 4) guaranteeing freedom for someone to speak in tongues if an interpreter is present? In my fifty years of being a Christian, I have never visited such a church, and I have little desire to do so. The service could take up to four or five hours depending on how many people came with a hymn, the length of the tongues, and the lengths of the messages.
We come to our passage, “Women must be silent in the church” and that’s where most people stop in quoting this passage and they build an entire theology on the role of women in the church
Let’s apply our 6 point test to this passage and see if it passes the test.
1.What is going on and what is the problem being addressed? The overall problem is confusion in the worship service. Things are not flowing smoothly in an edifying way to build up the church.
2. Why is this admonition being given? The specific problem is that some of the wives are asking questions of the speakers that Paul believes should be answered by their husbands at home. It’s possible they were interrupting their husbands with questions while they were speaking. This is contributing to the problem of confusion.
3. If this is followed all the time, will it contradict other parts of the Bible. Yes it would contradict other parts of the Bible because spiritual gifts are given regardless of sex. Women have the gifts of tongues, the gifts of prophecy, the gifts of teaching, and the gifts of evangelism. It would not make sense to have gifts that could be used anywhere except in the presence of God’s people.
Remember, the church is not a building but a gathering of God’s people. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit fell on the women and they spoke in tongues. No woman would be able to use any vocal spiritual gift as long as they were with a community of God’s people.
4. Does the writer say something else in another situation which may shed light on the passage? Yes earlier in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul lays out specific instructions for how both men and a women are to pray and to prophesy. This indicates Paul is addressing a specific issue in chapter 14 when he writes Women are to remain silent.
In Romans chapter 16, Paul goes through a litany of women who labored by his side as co-laborers in Christ. He refers to Phoebe as a deacon, Priscilla as his co-worker, Junia as an apostle, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis, as women who worked very in the Lord. Do you really think he never allowed any of these women to speak in a gathering of believers.
5. If you follow everything in this passage with the same literalism will you have sound theology. How many of you want to change the service to have an unlimited number of hymns, two people speaking in tongues, with two others interpreting the tongues, and that followed by two or three sermons. That would be a literal following of Paul structuring the worship service.
6. Is anything from present culture being read into the text that is not there in the text?
Yes, we think that women had the same opportunities to learn about God as men did, but that was not the case.
The Life Application Bible Commentary sheds some light on what may have been happening with the women:
In the Greek culture, women were discouraged from saying anything in public, and they were certainly not allowed to confront or question men publicly. Apparently, some of the women who had become Christians thought that their Christian freedom gave them the right to question the men in public worship. This was causing division in the church. In addition, women of that day did not receive formal religious education as did the men. The "speaking" to which Paul referred was the inappropriate asking of questions that would disrupt the worship service or take it on a tangent. Therefore, the women should be silent during the church meetings, not because they were never to speak, but because they were not to speak out with questions that would be ineffective in edifying the entire church. What was disgraceful was that it showed the husbands were not doing their part in teaching at home.
Some people bring in our cultural understanding of the word churches into this passage and say women can speak anywhere but in the church building. But they even narrow it down further to say women can’t speak from the pulpit in the churches’ so they have a smaller podium for women to give the announcements.
The churches in the New Testament definition again were never buildings, they were the gathering of God’s people themselves. If you read closely the letters of Paul, you would find that the churches often met in people’s homes. There is no such word as pulpit in the bible, and people certainly did not have them and stages in their homes. To say this passage has anything to do with keeping a woman out of a pulpit is to put things in it that do not exist.
If you read the bible, you will never find a woman referred to as a pastor. But you will never find a man referred to as a pastor. We impose our cultural meaning of the word pastor onto the biblical word pastor. The biblical meaning is to simply shepherd, or to watch over God’s people according to Peter 5:2. We use this passage to exclude women from ministry, but only because we are reading things into the text that ought not to be placed there.
When Paul wrote of the husband and wife team of Priscilla and Aquilla having a church meeting in their house would they have been the pastors of the church in the biblical sense of the word. Watching over them with love and care, seeing to it that the people’s needs were being taking care of by them.
Did you know that there is not a single passage in the New Testament about men or women being ordained to the ministry, and nothing about ordination of men or women. The twelve disciples of Jesus were never ordained by him. They were called to come follow him. Even in the Old Testament, ordination to the priesthood was limited to Aaron’s sons.
Would Jesus allow women to speak in church? I believe most of us would say yes whether we are talking about the church as the people or the church as the building.
We hold fast to our own traditions, thinking we are being faithful to God. But God created a new people for himself and its made up of men and women from all nations, all races, and all ethnic groups. Peter put it this way, to those who believe in 1 Peter 2:9-10 9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
God has called all of us to declare His Praise. Jesus sometimes chooses the least of us to do some of the greatest works in the kingdom Of God.
PS. I have written a book that covers this subject more thoroughly. It is available on Amazon.com entitled “ Why Can’t A Woman Preach, Teach, Pastor Or Be An Apostle?”
