Book: Selected Scriptures

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Summary

This sermon examines the biblical basis for complementarianism through key passages in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 14, and 1 Corinthians 11. We are reminded that men and women are equal in value before God but distinct in roles as ordained by Him, with these distinctions rooted in creation rather than culture or the fall.

Key Lessons:

1. The behavior and practices of the world are not to dominate the behavior and practices of the church — our identity in Christ transforms how we present ourselves and relate to one another.
2. The prohibition against women holding the office of pastor/elder is not about ability, intellect, or spiritual worth, but about God’s ordained order rooted in creation.
3. Women played vital roles in the early church — praying, prophesying, teaching, and serving — and the restrictions are narrow and specific rather than broad silencing.
4. When Scripture is ambiguous on a particular application, we should not build rigid doctrinal positions on uncertain passages, nor should we rush to call others heretical for disagreeing on secondary matters.

Application: We are called to approach Scripture with humility, letting God’s Word shape our thinking rather than imposing cultural assumptions. We should honor the roles God has established while fully valuing and utilizing the gifts of every member of the congregation, avoiding both the extreme of suppressing women’s contributions and the extreme of dismissing God’s ordained order.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we distinguish between cultural expressions of authority and submission versus the timeless biblical principles behind them?
2. In what practical ways can our church better honor and utilize the gifts of women while maintaining biblical order?
3. When we encounter passages that are difficult to interpret with certainty, how should that affect how strongly we hold and enforce positions based on those passages?

Scripture Focus: 1 Timothy 2:8-15 (roles of men and women in the church, the prohibition on women teaching with authority over men), 1 Corinthians 14:29-35 (women keeping silent in the context of judging prophecy), 1 Corinthians 11:3-5 (head coverings and women praying and prophesying), Romans 16:1-2 (Phoebe as servant of the church), Genesis 3:16 and 4:7 (the curse and desire to dominate).

Outline

• Introduction
• Defining Complementarianism
• 1 Timothy 2:8–15 — Men and Women in the Church
• Prayer and the Posture of Men
• Navigating Difficult Passages with Humility
• Modesty and the Heart Behind Adornment
• Adorning Yourself with Good Works
• Freedom in Christ and the Temptation to Overstep
• Quiet Submission and Authority in Roles
• Women and the Office of Pastor
• The Fall and Stepping Outside God’s Order
• The Difficult Verse — Preserved Through Childbirth
• 1 Corinthians 14 — Silence in the Context of Prophecy
• Women Keeping Silent — What It Really Means
• 1 Corinthians 11 — Head Coverings and Women Praying
• Throwing Off Symbols of God’s Order
• Can Women Lead Worship, Pray, and Read Scripture?
• Applying the Two-Part Test for Roles
• Avoiding Extreme Restrictions
• Leviticus 27 — Different Monetary Values
• A Christian Woman Expert Teaching in the Church?
• Romans 16 — Phoebe and the Role of Deacon
• What About Abuse and Submission?
• Closing Prayer

Introduction

Before we begin going through the individual questions that came in, first I want to say thank you to everybody who sent in questions.

Two things. One, I should just quickly ask for prayer again. Last week I wasn’t feeling well for a different reason. This week, apparently I have something called zinc poisoning. Just asking if you can pray while I’m up here because I do not feel good.

But anyway, God, see me through this. Before we get into the questions, there are a couple of passages that we need to look at if we’re going to discuss this topic. We’re talking about complementarianism.

And I think I can manage it this time.

Defining Complementarianism

Kind of this loose definition that we’re working with is that men and women are equal in value before God, but distinct in roles as ordained by him.

These roles include authority and submission. They reflect the relationship between Christ and his church. They actually have their root in creation, not in the fall and not in any particular culture.

“Men and women are equal in value before God, but distinct in roles as ordained by Him.”

1 Timothy 2:8–15 — Men and Women in the Church

The first passage we should look at is 1 Timothy 2:8-15. You can turn there if you’d like, though it spans multiple pages.

We’re going to work our way through this. This is not meant to be a full examination of the text. We don’t have time—that would probably take a month or two worth of sermons just to go through this and the next passage that we’re going to look at. But I’ll read it for us here.

1 Timothy 2:8-15 says, “Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and dispute. Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive apparel, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women, making a claim to godliness.” Verse 11, “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a wrongdoer. But women will be preserved through childbirth if they continue in faith, love, and sanctity with moderation.”

1 Timothy 2:11: “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.”

That’s a lot. As you can see, we’re not going to be able to deeply dive into all of it here. There are a few observations we can make. It’s likely that these two statements are separate—one in verse 8 directed to men and one in verses 9-15 directed to women.

It seems like both of these statements, or all the statements made in these directives, are corrective in nature. Meaning that there were issues happening in the church of Ephesus, and Paul was writing this to correct the thinking and behavior of some of the people in the congregation. It wasn’t just writing and saying this to get it on the record—it was actually things going on.

Prayer and the Posture of Men

He’s saying, “I’m seeing this. I’m noticing these things happening. I’m getting reports of them.” And this is what God’s will is in this area. It could have been issues of questions that people had or disputes or things like that. And he’s setting the record straight. At least it would seem that way.

Here doesn’t mean it’s 100% that, but the language kind of lends itself to that. And one of the reasons—even when we look at this idea of prayer and he says I want the men in every place to pray—that seems like the obvious thing. You’re writing to a pastor of a church and you’re saying I want the people in your church to pray. That should be a no-brainer. Paul, why are you saying this?

It’s possible that, and I think we know this especially as men, that it can be sometimes more difficult to pray with sincerity because there’s a fear of vulnerability or dependency that seems to be naturally built into the way that many men in many societies are brought up. We’re taught to think that we should be handling things ourselves.

And even when we’re Christians and we’re talking about submitting to the almighty God, it is still sometimes difficult for us to not only say we need help, but to dig deep down in our hearts and expose all of the emotions that are really there. There are some men that I know who’ve cried like once or twice in their lives.

And actually, I haven’t cried that many times. I almost cried at a movie that was actually a comedy. That’s so odd. But I think music sometimes will bring me to tears, but it’s very difficult even for me. And some of that might be because I was raised that you got to be tough, you got to be strong, just handle it and move on. You’re a man. Leave that emotional stuff to the women.

And sometimes that could get into our relationship with God and get into prayer. So it’s possible that even in that culture some of the men there had an issue with praying with true sincerity and they were relying on these more formulaic prayers that really wasn’t exposing their hearts.

“It can be difficult for men to pray with sincerity because there’s a fear of vulnerability or dependency.”

Also he says I want you to pray lifting up holy hands. Now this idea of holy hands refers to living in a way that honors God. We could see it. We don’t have time to look at it, but in Psalm 24:3 and 4, there’s a question that’s asked: who can ascend to God essentially? And it says those who have clean hands and a pure heart.

Just the hands themselves are not talking about your hands. It’s elsewhere where God talks about the nation and says that you have blood on your hands. And again, just because you are men of war—that was the idea. You are vicious, you are murderous people. You have blood on your hands. And so this idea of hands representing the life and the way that we live is seen throughout scripture.

So he says here I want you to lift up holy hands. Not necessarily meaning that you have to have your hands raised when you pray, although that was one of the postures that was taken especially in ancient Israel. But it doesn’t mean that he’s saying every time you pray you have to lift up your hands or God is not hearing. This is more talking about the posture in a way that you even approach prayer.

Paul also adds in a warning about having anger and dispute being parts of the life of the church. And those are things that would hinder the prayers and would stop them from being effective. We saw last week that he also said that for husbands, if you don’t respect your wives and treat them in a particular way—and that was in 1 Peter 3:7—then your prayers may be hindered.

And so you want to honor your wives and you want to treat them tenderly as you would a precious item or something that’s delicate. And if you’re not doing that, your prayers will be hindered. So even there we see this idea of prayers being hindered because of the character of the person praying, even if they are a believer and they have access to the throne of God.

So it’s possible also that, and I’ve been saying all this talking about men, it’s possible that verse 8 was written to include women as well. So when it says therefore I want the men, it’s using a word that literally means men, males. But we do the same thing sometimes when we talk about humanity. We’ll say mankind. Sometimes we don’t say mankind and womankind.

If I say mankind, I’m talking about humans versus other life forms. My wife and I used to watch a show a long time ago called Man Versus Food. And it wasn’t—or even you see things about man versus nature—and it isn’t talking about it has to be a man fighting a bear. It could be a woman fighting a bear too, if you want to see a woman fight a bear. I don’t know why, but it is also possible that when he’s saying I want men, it’s—I kind of lean toward it not being that only because he says, likewise, I want the women. So he has a directive for the men and a directive for the women.

Navigating Difficult Passages with Humility

It seems like he also could be saying that this is how I want this spiritual behavior for the church, and in particular, here are some things I’m hearing about the women there. It could be that as well.

With these passages, I’m going to lay out something. It is with passages where it’s difficult to pull out every bit of meaning where there is some ambiguity. You don’t really want that to be the only or the primary source of a particular belief or doctrine that you hold.

Especially if you’re going to hold to it and say this is 100% what God is saying, and then we get to heaven and God says that’s not what I meant at all. You really twisted it there, or you didn’t fully get it. And that can happen.

I mean, in general, when we look at these things, why I’m saying this is because we may come across a teacher or a church or a book that says something different than what you hear here from any of the teachers here, from the elders here. And I don’t want your first thought to be that they’re heretical. Sometimes we have that kind of reaction—we jump in, they’re different, that means heretical—and it’s not the case many times.

There are a lot of people out there doing some odd things in the name of the Lord. But we just want to make sure that we see that there are some areas of scripture where there is room for moving. There’s room for some differences from people who are all trying to honor God.

“With passages where there is some ambiguity, you don’t want that to be the primary source of a doctrine you hold.”

Modesty and the Heart Behind Adornment

Going to verse 9, there’s so much that could be said about that, but I just want us to see the flow of this passage so we can pull things out when we answer questions.

In both Greek and Roman societies, it was common for wealthy women to show off their wealth by how they dressed. There’s this idea that modesty is just about covering yourself up. If you’re a woman, cover up your lady parts, but if you’re a man, you don’t really have to worry about modesty because women aren’t—they’re more in thinking and in how they are aroused. Men are more visual in how they are. And we know that’s not true to make those generalizations.

But even if it was, Paul here is bringing up a lot more than just “cover yourself up so that a man won’t stumble when he looks at you.” He’s talking about the heart and one that tries to draw attention to themselves based on their appearance. Your beauty, your loveliness should not come solely from how your hair is done or the dress you have on. Your worth should not be tied to your wealth.

Coming with a dress that costs $2 million and everyone knows it does because you just saw a report on the news about this dress, and you make sure the logo is big so everybody sees you have this dress that costs that much money—they know the wealth that you have, they know the importance you have. Maybe they’ll even treat you better. That is how you gain your status among your friends, among your family, among society: by flaunting this wealth or flaunting something that you have versus godliness and your character.

That also can apply to beauty as well, physical beauty. People talk about pretty privilege, and that people who seem to be attractive tend to get things for free or they kind of get a pass on things. Cops let them off with a warning, where somebody who looks like me, Shrek, they’re just like, “No, I might just throw you in jail just for speeding.” But somebody else, they’re just like, “No, go ahead, pretty lady.” We know that actually exists, and God is saying that is especially in the church.

What he’s ultimately saying is the behavior and practices of the world are not to dominate the behavior and practices of the church.

“The behavior and practices of the world are not to dominate the behavior and practices of the church.”

When you belong to Christ, you are different. Your motives are different. Your behavior is different because the goal is different. We’re now filled with the spirit, and so our attire may look different. The way that we speak may look different. These things that we do to try to gain favor with people based on wealth or looks or anything else like that will become different.

Adorning Yourself with Good Works

And so he gives this directive here in verse 10. This is what you should be. This is how you should adorn yourselves. This is how you should order and arrange yourselves—where we get the phrase “cosmetic.”

This is really how you should be adorning yourselves and making yourselves look beautiful by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. Your good works are the things that will speak before you. That is the thing that will be beautiful, and that is the thing that will create your worth—how much God uses you.

People will see that, and that is what will cause them to think highly of you. Not that you have an expensive coat. I’m not saying that you have to go thrifting for everything, but look at your heart and examine your heart.

“Adorn yourselves by means of good works — your good works are the things that will speak before you.”

Now we’re going to flow to the part that is more relevant to what we’re talking about here. What may have prompted these verses is that they came from a society represented by three main cultures in the New Testament: the Greek, the Romans, and the Jewish culture. All three had a very low view of women and held women down in society.

People of a certain age can probably relate to that if you grew up in this country. They had a very low view of the value and the worth of women outside of the kitchen and bedroom.

Freedom in Christ and the Temptation to Overstep

And when women came to Christ and the church was being formed, this was like a liberating experience because there was so much more freedom in Christ for women than there was in Greek, Roman, and Jewish societies.

Their voices could be heard. They could be like Priscilla and help teach and make more mature one of the leading preachers of the day. They could be like Phoebe, who we’ll look at a little bit and gets commended. So 2,000 years later, we’re talking about the amazing work of this woman named Phoebe. That’s because Paul talked about her and how important she was. They didn’t have that for the most part in their society.

And so when they came to Christ, it was this freedom that was there—that now I have a voice. Now I can be heard. I can be understood. Now I can actually influence things because God values all of his creation.

“When women came to Christ, it was a liberating experience — there was so much more freedom in Christ.”

And that freedom could have caused them to move to a point where now they want to dominate. And now it’s just, “Oh, I get to be heard. Okay. Then every chance I get, I’m going to be speaking. And every chance I get, I’m going to try to teach. And every position of authority I’m going to try to fill now.”

And it could have been that this created an atmosphere, which we talked about a little bit last week when we looked at the curse on Eve in Genesis 3:16 and compared that to what was said to Cain in Genesis 4:7. Looking at this desire now to kind of master her husband, and in response, that her husband would rule over her and dominate her, rather than this complementary relationship that God intended from the beginning.

And so we even look at not just here but in other passages. Several times when Paul writes to women specifically, he’s writing about order and writing about roles. And it’s almost like a parent when a child starts getting older and you start letting them say a little more and a little more. Sometimes you have to reel them in like, “All right, all right, I’m still your parent. All right, you’re getting a little older. You’re 13 and you think you’re grown now. But I need you to dial it down a little bit.”

Quiet Submission and Authority in Roles

Still got this child-parent relationship going on, and it seems like there’s a little bit of that going on. Like, okay, yes, there is freedom in Christ, but there’s still roles. There’s still order and we have to maintain that.

And so you have to make sure that you are quietly. And this “quietly” here does not mean not speaking. It’s the same word if you look at 1 Timothy 2:2. The word is used there as well, sometimes translated as tranquil or peaceable. And so it’s just this idea of being at peace and at rest with receiving instruction and being submissive.

So it doesn’t mean quiet as in never speaking, but it means quiet as in the attitude of your heart. It’s not one that’s contention. It’s not one that’s always rubbing up against the authority.

And then he says, “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.” It’s possible that that’s what they were trying to do. It’s possible that Timothy even allowed it and said, “Yes, of course you could. My grandmother and mother were the ones who influenced me the most in Christ. So yes, you could come and you can teach and you can do this.”

And he said, “Hey, Timothy, make sure that you maintain the order that God had set.” Which is why in verse 13, he goes and says, “For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve.” This is going back to creation, as we discussed last week.

It’s not just, “Well people in the culture aren’t going to like that. We can’t be too progressive. We can’t put too much on them too fast.” That’s not what he’s saying here. He’s saying that this was always God’s design to have there be this order and have there be roles.

It doesn’t impact value or worth at all or ability to minister for the sake of Christ. It just means that there are certain roles that everyone has and those roles come with different responsibilities. Some of the roles have authority and some of the roles will have submission, and some roles don’t have either in a small sense. But all in a sense have submission because we all submit to Christ.

“Yes, there is freedom in Christ, but there’s still roles. There’s still order and we have to maintain that.”

Women and the Office of Pastor

We talked last week about 1 Timothy 2:12, which forbids women from teaching or exercising authority over a man, or holding the office of elder, pastor, bishop, or overseer. This is why we would not accept a woman as a pastor.

Not because they can’t, not because they’re not spiritual, not because they’re not intelligent and don’t know the word of God. Simply because God said there is an order, and that is a role that I want to be filled by men. That is the only reason.

Full disclosure: my first pastor was a woman and was very instrumental in my spiritual growth. I didn’t know Christ at all when I came to that church to sing. It was through reading the word of God and talking to people there that God brought me into the real church. Serving under her, I learned a lot.

Then someone I was working with said, “Your pastor is a woman. You’re not supposed to have a woman as a pastor. Why not?” He never opened the Bible once. He was from a country where women can’t do anything but cook and bring up their children. I thought, of course you would say that. Had he just opened the Bible, I probably would have come to that realization much sooner.

But it wasn’t until I was applying to seminary that things changed. The seminary made a statement that they only allow men because they’re a small seminary and their goal is to train future pastors, not just give people a Christian education. Since their goal was to train pastors in a very small private school with limited spots, they’re going to let in people who could be a pastor in the future.

I thought, “What? Why wouldn’t they?” Of course, they listed scripture to back up that statement. Then I’m like, “I didn’t even know that was in the Bible. Wow.” That led me to study a lot more.

When I met the president of that seminary, my wife and I, and I told him something he said he’d never heard before. I said, “Here’s my wife. You almost broke us up.” I let him know because she was actually pursuing being a pastor. I didn’t even want to be a pastor, but I was supporting her in that.

When we came to this issue, I said, “Babe, what you’re doing is completely wrong. You can’t do that. Look at these passages here.” At first, she said, “Then we just have to break up.” I said, “We’re not breaking up. We’re going to study this. We’re going to sit and study this.”

And after intense study, if we don’t agree, fine, we break up. But if we still agree, we’re here. This year will be 20 years of marriage. I guess you see that she came around.

She realized you’re right.

You’re always right, even in non-spiritual matters. I’ll look right into the camera and say that, too.

But this is our basis, right? It’s the word of God. It’s not just, “Oh, that sounds weird. That’s disgusting. A man and a man together. That’s gross.” No, that’s not the basis for why we tell somebody something is sin or something is wrong or what God’s order is.

“God said there is an order and that is a role I want to be filled by men. That is the only reason.”

The Fall and Stepping Outside God’s Order

So I just want to throw that out there to make sure when we are discussing these things that we’re basing what we say on God’s word. We got a question about verses 13 and 14 together. It asks: doesn’t the prohibition of teaching with authority over men that we just saw in verse 12 have its foundation both in design, which is in verse 13, and the fall in verse 14? And then what is the meaning of verse 14 today?

Verse 14 says it was not Adam who was deceived but the woman was deceived and became a wrongdoer. That’s just referring to the fact that Eve was the one who was deceived by the serpent. Then she gave the fruit to her husband and he said, “Oh, okay. I’ll just take it.”

I think what we see here is an example of what happens when we step outside of the created order. God’s design was for the man to be the head, for Adam to be the head. He wasn’t even able to give input into this decision to plunge humanity into sin that Eve just made on her own.

Eve was deceived and she didn’t even go and talk to Adam about it. Who was her spiritual leader? Who was her head? This wasn’t about what shoes she was going to wear. This was about violating the only command that God had given them, and she didn’t even need to talk to her husband about it. She was just going to do it on her own.

It’s quite possible that Adam is the one who gave her the command in the first place. If you read the whole account, she got the command wrong. She said we can’t even touch it. That’s not what the command was. The command was don’t eat of it. They might have thrown in don’t touch there just to be extra precaution, but she still didn’t even quote God correctly.

But they said I have no need of going to the person that God has set up to be my spiritual leader, and so I believe this is an example of what happens when we step outside of that order. Paul is saying it’s not just the optics. It’s not just that we want the church to look a certain way. There is a real danger that can happen that we may not see. We may not even understand it, but there is a real danger that happens when we step outside of what God has ordained for us.

“There is a real danger that happens when we step outside of what God has ordained for us.”

The Difficult Verse — Preserved Through Childbirth

And then verse 15, I’m so glad no one asked a question about verse 15. This is—I’ll tell you, I’ve probably read about 10 to 12 commentaries.

I’m interested to see what people think about this. About half of them said this is probably the most difficult verse to interpret in the entire Bible.

Yes, this is either the most or one of the most difficult verses. I believe it is saying that not that women will be—there are a few things that people think. One is that women will be saved, meaning rescued from the pain in childbirth. I think any woman who’s had a child here can say no, that’s not true. There still is pain. Christian women will experience pain in childbirth. That’s not what he’s talking about here.

There are some who believe that he’s saying that just by raising children and being godly in how you raise your children, that will save you. But there are a lot of Christian women who don’t have that opportunity. So again, it seems to be something he’s saying to all women, not just Christian mothers. But he says women will be preserved through childbirth. I believe he’s talking about the stigma of being the one to plunge humanity into sin.

I think he’s talking here—especially in verse 14—would make you believe that women just make things worse or they just get in the way or that they’re naive and they’re just really easy to deceive. You can talk to them for a couple minutes. They don’t negotiate well. All these things that we think today about women. Well, the fact that the man was not deceived but the woman was deceived could give somebody some type of backup for those types of things.

So I believe that women being so instrumental for the furthering of the human race, it stops us from taking that view that women have less worth or that women have less intellect. When it’s women who are pouring into us and we’re raised by these women, we see their strength and their resilience and their brilliance. We see the sacrifices that they make.

Even if a woman is not a mother, when I see you, I think of my mother. I think of my sister and her raising her kids. I think of these women that I see and that pour and speak life into people daily. I am rescued from that thought of thinking that women may be inferior because it was Eve that led us into sin.

“Women being so instrumental for the furthering of the human race stops us from taking the view that women have less worth.”

So, another somewhat difficult passage. I’m going to try to go through this a little faster.

1 Corinthians 14 — Silence in the Context of Prophecy

1 Corinthians 14.

That is a long chapter and a chapter that has caused a lot of confusion. It is difficult to understand when you take just pieces out of it. Reading the whole thing is best, but we’re not going to read 40 verses here today. I’ll just pull these out: 1 Corinthians 14:29-35.

The chapter is primarily talking about speaking in tongues and prophecy here—receiving revelation from God directly. This is one of the earliest churches and one of the earliest books that was written to the church. Keep that in mind when we talk about spiritual gifts in June.

Paul is giving them instruction on the use of those gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues in the service as well as prophecy. Here he’s focusing more on prophecy. This is receiving revelation from God and speaking that revelation out to people.

So prophecy, when you see it in the Bible, can also talk about preaching what you see today, what we do in the pulpit. But in this instance, it’s talking about receiving revelation and how to handle that when God is speaking to someone at that moment.

Verse 29 says: “Have two or three prophets speak and have the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, then the first one is to keep silent.”

Verse 31: “For you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all may be exhorted and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”

I actually stopped there. So you have this scene: a bunch of people are hearing from God and Paul says, “Okay, you can’t all talk at once because it’s chaotic and it’s not orderly.” The same thing was happening with tongues. People were just speaking in different languages, then other people are yelling interpretation.

It was just chaotic. It was a mess. And here he’s saying that’s happening with prophecy. If it happens and you’re receiving a word and you’re speaking that word and someone else says, “Okay, I have a word,” you sit down, you let them speak, and then one by one each person will speak what God is putting on their hearts to say.

That way we can have some order. He says all of you can and we all may be able to be exhorted. We all may learn. When it says the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets, if someone says something, other prophets who are also hearing from God can say no—that doesn’t line up with what God is saying. They’re developing the written word of God at that time too, so they do have that as well.

So if one of the prophets says, “I just received the word. Jesus actually did sin. He sinned three times in his life and I’m about to tell you about him now,” then the other prophets can say, “Wait, wait, wait, brother. That’s crazy. Jesus did not sin. We know he didn’t. We have scripture. We have other revelation.” The entire gospel rests on the fact that he did not sin. And they can correct him there.

So that is what’s happening here. This is kind of an unfortunate cut off, but in the middle of verse 33, it starts a new sentence.

“God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”

Women Keeping Silent — What It Really Means

It says, “As in all the churches of the saints, the women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are subject themselves, just as the law also says, if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.”

The context of this command is the authoritative judgment of another speaker’s prophecy. I believe that the command to stay silent is in that context. Paul is not saying women should not utter a word in the church building or in the house where they’re meeting, or at least not while the official service is going on. He’s not saying you should not hear a woman’s voice at all, and if you do it’s an abomination. That’s not what Paul is saying here.

Paul is saying when we’re going through this one by one, talking about what God is giving you in the revelation, women are not to take part in the judgment of another person’s prophecy. Why? Because go back to 1 Timothy 2. What did he say there? That women are not to teach or exercise authority over a man.

In that space, a woman should not come and exercise spiritual authority over the men who are giving the prophecy by judging their prophecy and deeming it godly or ungodly, or saying it came from God or it didn’t come from God in that moment. That is what Paul is saying there, and not just there, but in all the churches.

If there is some dispute or if there’s something they just can’t hold in, then when you go home, talk about it with your husbands. Say, “I don’t think what that guy said was right. I don’t think he should have said Jesus sinned, or I think he was trying to say this thing in this way and it didn’t land.” Then you can talk just like you do now and talk about the sermons.

So essentially, Paul is saying women don’t interrupt the sermon. In those cases, there were men who were allowed to because it wasn’t a full, plain sermon. But understand this is kind of what the equivalence would be today: dare not to exercise authority over a man. So you shouldn’t even in this case where prophecy is being judged by others in the congregation.

“Women are not to take part in the authoritative judgment of another person’s prophecy.”

1 Corinthians 11 — Head Coverings and Women Praying

And the last passage reinforces that in the same book, in the same letter to the same people. We’re not going to talk about head covering. Thank you for not asking a question about head covering.

1 Corinthians 11:3-5 says, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head.

Let’s make sure Brian’s looking at that.

So every man—we don’t know what the head covering was, so it probably wasn’t a scully. But it says in verse five, every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for it is the same as the woman whose head is shaved.

So without even knowing what this covering is, the first thing we see is that in the church service, what are the women doing?

Praying and prophesying.

They’re receiving and even speaking the word of God.

They are praying in the public service.

“In the church service, what are the women doing? Praying and prophesying — receiving and speaking the word of God.”

But he says don’t do it in this way. That is a disgrace.

Don’t do it in a way that casts off authority. If we look later in the passage, it tells us that this covering was a symbol of authority and submission. This is why the one who is the head—the man—should not have this covering on, but the woman who is under the authority of the man should have it on.

Throwing Off Symbols of God’s Order

And I believe that this also goes back to what we said about the culture and the society of the time. In this new freedom that women were saying, “Oh, so what we were doing in society, how we didn’t have a voice, how we couldn’t speak, that was wrong.” Well, while I’m at it and I can talk now and I can teach and I can say things, I can pray publicly. Well, let me take this head covering off, too.

That is kind of an issue where they may have gone—well, they did go too far. They said, “I’m going to get rid of every cultural sign that there is authority and submission. I’m going to get rid of every symbol that shows that there is a distinction in the roles between men and women.”

And God says don’t do that. Don’t rebel against the roles that I put in place.

“God says don’t rebel against the roles that I put in place.”

Can Women Lead Worship, Pray, and Read Scripture?

And if your culture, if your society has something that indicates submission, something that indicates authority, don’t throw it off just by the way that it looks. And he said, because it’s the same as a woman whose head is shaved. There’s different things about whether a woman whose head is shaved was being rebellious, was being an ultra-feminist, or even some say that there was indication that meant a woman was into prostitution.

All of these things were saying “I’m throwing away the natural order that God has created when he created humans as male and female.” And he said, “God is saying, you are not to do that. Even though you have more freedom in the church and I’m allowing you to do things that the world has said you can’t do, there’s still order.”

There were several questions that were pretty much all started with: Can women lead worship? Can they pray in a service? Can they read scripture in a service? Can they do announcements? Can women do everything in a service except preaching a sermon? Can women do this in some form?

We kind of look at two things when we want to answer these questions.

Does a direct prohibition of the action exist?

And if not, does all or part of the action fall under a direct prohibition of another action?

The only clear and direct prohibition in the New Testament is that a woman may not hold a position or office that causes her to be a teacher, which is a more literal translation of 1 Timothy 2:12—not just to teach, but to be a teacher or to exercise authority over a man.

“The only clear prohibition is that a woman may not hold a position that causes her to be a teacher or exercise authority over a man.”

Anything else is either unclear or is possibly or probably based on a certain context and shouldn’t at least be used as the foundation for a doctrinal position. Now if there are five or six of those together, then maybe. But in legal terms, you say that’s circumstantial evidence.

Applying the Two-Part Test for Roles

If you just find something, I’ll give kind of an example by looking at these two questions. Going back, can a woman pray in the service? There’s no direct prohibition of the action. There’s no verse that says women cannot do this, a woman should not do this, or it is wrong for a woman to do X.

If you find that, then clearly a woman can’t do it. The other thing we look at is whether prayer falls under some aspect that would cause the woman to slip into the role of a teacher or to give her spiritual authority over the men that she is praying over. If you believe that to be the case, then you don’t have women do that. But if you don’t believe that a person is transferred some spiritual authority because they are praying, then it’s fine for women to do that.

Now at our church here, in public we have a pastoral prayer, meaning it’s the pastors of the church that are praying over the flock, praying on behalf of the sheep. We’re not going to have a woman do that. But if you notice, only the elders do that anyway. We don’t say, “Oh, any man come and do it. As long as you have a Y chromosome, you can get up there in the pulpit.” That’s not the case.

We have something with a stronger purpose behind the prayer. It is the pastors praying over the flock at that time. But if it wasn’t and it was just prayer, congregational prayer, then there’s nothing in scripture that says a woman couldn’t do that.

“If it was just congregational prayer, there’s nothing in scripture that says a woman couldn’t do that.”

Going back, lead worship, read scripture. Reading scripture—our elders here will say no, there’s no issue with a woman reading scripture in public for the same reason. Even leading worship, the question of leading worship comes again. There’s no direct prohibition against any of it.

Is that causing them to be a spiritual leader or giving them some sort of authority? The only kind of thinking that comes in is, well, what if before a song they’re introducing a song and they go into scripture and they exposit the scripture for a minute or two and they’re giving like a little mini Bible study about why this passage is so important, and the scripture is laid out to music and all. But I don’t want to read into the hearts and minds of people.

I would just say that it’s very difficult to make that argument from scripture that by just stating, “Oh, this comes from this song. It’s based on this verse in the Bible and it’s gotten me through a lot of tough times, so join me in singing this song”—that person has now exercised spiritual authority.

Avoiding Extreme Restrictions

I’ve even had someone say, “Well, they’re saying sit down and listen to the sermon.” Or they’re saying, “Please stand and sing.” And just those words alone are giving them authority because they’re telling me to sit down or stand up.

I mean, this is a real spiritual concern. Someone said they couldn’t see that. Someone even mentioned that during their membership interview many years ago, they had an issue with certain lyrics in the songs. They’re not here, and I’m not trying to say they were here. But I’ve heard someone really had an issue with women singing because there might be a lyric that says “raise your voice to the Lord.”

Oh, they’re telling me what to do. A woman just told me to lift up my voice or to lift up my hands to the Lord. They just acted in authority. And so you see here, it’s talking about being a teacher and exercising spiritual authority.

We don’t want to get to a place where we’re demeaning not just women, but we’re devaluing the Holy Spirit working in half the congregation. We’re not giving the Spirit a chance to work and to use people. We don’t want to try to find these little technicalities here and there.

God has freedom and God has put his Spirit into every person who is a believer. He wants to use them mightily, and they can do anything until I see something in Scripture that says this is for a select group. Only certain people can hold this role for whatever reason.

“We don’t want to get to a place where we’re devaluing the Holy Spirit working in half the congregation.”

You see that even with different things when we talk about elders—there are certain qualifications. Deacons—there are certain qualifications. It doesn’t mean that the people can’t be used greatly, but certain roles are meant for certain people. That is the only time that we will bring a restriction in.

Leviticus 27 — Different Monetary Values

There are a couple more questions. I think they were a little less heavy. One was: why in Leviticus 27 is the monetary value of a boy, girl, man, or woman different? We’re going to look at the scripture here.

Okay, it ends up being kind of long. So I’ll just read the scripture. Leviticus 27. Then we’ll talk about this because again the Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, when someone makes an explicit vow, he shall be valued according to your assessment of persons belonging to the Lord.

If your assessment is of a male from 20 years even to 60 years old, then your assessment shall be 50 shekels of silver by the shekel of the sanctuary. And if the person is from five years even to 20 years old, then your assessment for a male shall be 20 shekels, and for a female 10 shekels. But if the person is from a month even up to five years old, then your assessment shall be five shekels of silver for a male.

And for a female your assessment shall be three shekels of silver. If the person is from 60 years old and upward, if a male then your assessment shall be 15 shekels and for a female 10 shekels.”

So we see there, as the question states, that the assessment is different for the men and the women.

It would seem that reflects the value of their labor simply because in a society where just about every bit of labor is manual, the men were able to do more. They were able to lift more and they have more endurance. They have more muscle. So they’re able to do more in a field and carry more than a woman typically on average.

I mean, there are some strong women out there and some weak guys too. But on average, as a generalization, a woman would be able to do less of the type of work and labor that existed through much of the society. Most of the society wasn’t about sitting behind a car and driving or sitting behind a desk and being on the computer, where everybody is equal according to their brain.

Although I used to be a day laborer a long time ago and I was told I couldn’t have office jobs because they liked to give them to women because women could do tedious tasks longer than men. So I was kind of shut out because they said, “No, you’re going to be bored. You’ll stuff 5,000 envelopes for a mailing campaign and then stop doing it or joke around with people, whereas a woman is able to just stuff envelopes for eight hours.”

But I was able to get the jobs where they wanted me to put a 100-pound sack on my shoulder. So even there, that company and companies that hired from us valued us differently. They had specifications based on gender. They didn’t say, “We want the person to take a test to see how well they pay attention. If it’s a man, we don’t want them.”

So it seems that this is what’s going on here. Most of a person’s value in that society was in the work that they could perform—their physical labor. So in that case, you’re going to assume that a man could do more than a woman.

“The different monetary values seem to reflect the value of their physical labor, not their worth before God.”

Now we have this.

A Christian Woman Expert Teaching in the Church?

And this is the question that somebody posed to me. I want to call them out because, like, why are you all making me think so much? Why are you making me—just give me the softball stuff. But nope.

If there is a Sunday school or co-ed group talking about a specific subject matter, let’s say transgenderism, and a Christian woman with a PhD was brought in to speak about it, they’re a subject matter expert. So the first question is: would that occur and in what setting? And second, to what extent can she support her arguments and research with the Bible without it becoming teaching to men or teaching men with authority?

I think that’s such a great question to think about because it can really happen. In the moment, you’ll be scrambling like, “What do we do? How do we do this?” I think in this case, if it’s not someone teaching directly from the Bible, we wouldn’t have it in a Sunday school setting or something like that. We probably would do something else and say we’ll do something on a Saturday, like we’ve done for the biblical counseling conference or things like that, which are actually more biblical.

We actually did have a woman come in and give a presentation about domestic violence to the young adult ministry years ago. I think we did it after the service, in the afternoon. It wasn’t so much being afraid that it was a woman speaking, but that type of topic wasn’t coming from the Bible. She wasn’t even a Christian.

But it’s interesting here because in the second part of the question, I think if they were just presenting their research that’s not coming from the Bible, you would say, “Okay, you’re presenting research.” But the question really comes in: what if they start getting into the Bible? Now they’re teaching God’s word. They’re not just teaching from their research because they’re a Christian and they’re an expert. They’re a PhD presenting their research, but they are a believer and they’re showing from Scripture these certain things as well.

I think in that case there would be more leniency. I think there’s like a temporary moratorium or something on that. For instance, if we have a Sunday school which is not set up where one person is talking for a full hour because there’s so much to say, but there’s more dialogue and women are speaking and women are given the mic—if Glenda talks for three minutes about something and it’s coming from the word of God and you learn from it, did she just violate Scripture?

Or are we just saying okay, somebody is sharing something. She’s not taking an authoritative role. She’s not saying, “I’m diving into the Scripture and teaching you these meanings,” and all that. But we say okay, in the normal course of conversation, even in a public forum, it’s okay because everyone knows and realizes there was not a transfer of authority. Every time someone in the congregation grabs a mic, they’re not taking the authority from the teacher or from the elders at that time.

“Everyone knows and realizes there was not a transfer of authority every time someone grabs a mic.”

So I think there we just automatically say, “No, it’s not a big deal.” I think the same thing is true when we have kingdom workers come and speak and it’s a husband and wife team or something. We’re not like, “Okay, well your wife just has to sit there and take pictures of you while you’re up there talking. You’re the only one who could do anything.” But we like to hear from both of them. So I think it’s that same mindset there.

Romans 16 — Phoebe and the Role of Deacon

So, another question. This is actually the last question that we’re going to have. In the framework of the deacons and deacons’ wives, how do we understand Phoebe’s role in the church in Romans 16?

Let’s turn to Romans 16, please. I have it up there. Yes, I do. Okay, good. So if you’re not able to or just whatever, you can look it up too, but it’d be good to actually see this.

Romans 16:1-2 says: “I recommend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea, that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you, for she herself has also been a helper of many and of myself as well.”

Paul here is talking about this prominent woman who was very important to him in his ministry. He’s writing to the church at Rome, hoping to be able to see them. And he’s saying, “Well, there’s this person that you’re going to see coming. She might even have been the one to bring the letter.”

Phoebe is a servant of the church and she’s coming there. Paul wants them to receive her. He’s vouching for her, which is a good reason to think that she might have either brought the letter herself or was with the group that brought the letter. They can say, “Oh, okay. She’s not just a random person.”

Paul is saying this is somebody that you not only should have respect for and honor and be glad that she’s there, but he said help her in whatever matter she may need of you. You are to now serve her.

The other part of that question was if the Greek word uses diakonos, and it is. That word—you can kind of hear it in it—is where we get the word deacon from. It’s a transliteration of the word.

But this is one of those places where I think I’ve only said it to my wife because I’m like, “I’m not saying this in public.” Sometimes I just wish different decisions were made with things in the Bible. In this case, it wasn’t what was written. It was just a translation.

There are some words that if they weren’t a transliteration—just means you take the word in one language and you kind of just bring it over into English letters and spell it the same—so baptismo was baptized. If we didn’t use the word baptize, which really doesn’t exist in English (it’s a Greek word that’s just moved over with English letters), then we would know it says immerse. That’s actually the real meaning.

The real meaning here of diakonos is servant or minister. So this is one who serves. Even the role of deacon, the office of deacon—it’s so big and official—but it means one who serves.

“Even the role of deacon — it’s so big and official — but it means one who serves.”

In that office, they are ones who serve and organize the serving. They’re the ones who are kind of in charge of the serving. So it sounds like here that Paul is saying when she comes, treat her like a deacon. Treat her like somebody who not only serves well, but who helps to organize the serving.

There’s some authority that goes into her serving because she’s saying this is what you should do. And she’s at least in that sense organizing. Not spiritual authority, but authority enough to kind of manage what’s going on.

It’s difficult to say because there wasn’t another word that was created for that office or that officer. It’s just a transliteration of a word that means servant. So everybody here is diakonos. Everyone here is a servant. We all are.

But there’s also a group. And like I said, it’s difficult to say with 100% certainty when we go back to 1 Timothy 3:8-13 or 3:14. If that is saying that the women who serve in that role should be the wives of the deacons who are also qualified and serve, or if there are women who may not be married at all or married to the deacons who are serving alongside of them.

So if you see a church doing either, they’re not unbiblical for that. But at Calvary, we take that to mean the wives of the deacons who are qualified. As in many churches, as in ours and could have been the case at Rome, anybody can serve and the deacons typically will go and reach out to others. The deacons aren’t the ones doing all the work.

The deacons will ask other people to serve in different capacities. So if the deacon asked you to serve as a woman who’s not married to a deacon and you serve, you just were a servant there as well. You just did the same role.

And so it’s hard to know if Paul here is saying that Phoebe has the role of deacon in her current church and when she comes there, accept her as an official deacon in that office. Or if he’s saying she is an incredible servant—so much so that she could even come and help you guys get organized in the way that you serve and she could maybe take over a ministry and help out with that because she does so well and her character is so strong.

It’s hard to know for sure. So again, we wouldn’t use this as the basis for a doctrinal position. We would go elsewhere and maybe use this as a supporting piece to combine with something else.

What About Abuse and Submission?

So there was one more question that came in that we’re not going to have time to answer, and I’m actually going to—the other elders don’t know this—but we’re going to make it a part of the larger elder Q&A. And it might actually be on here so you can see. Yes.

How is abuse, whether verbal, emotional, physical, psychological, and of varying levels of severity, viewed and handled by the church? And also, another person asked that I’ll just tag into here.

Does a wife have to submit to an abusive husband? I think that would be a really good question to hear. The Bible doesn’t say that. There’s no passage on how to deal with domestic violence.

But there are principles in the Bible that we apply to that with a lot of prayer and a lot of wisdom. I think it would be great to hear multiple perspectives about it and hear the elders talking about it together.

That’s all we have time for. I’m going to pray. I don’t have to be part of a soundcheck, so I’m able to stay around and talk if you want to talk after this. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer now.

“There’s no passage on domestic violence, but there are principles in the Bible that we apply with prayer and wisdom.”

Closing Prayer

Our gracious God, we want to thank you for giving us your word and making it so clear what your will is. We thank you for that, God, because we would be, as your word says, tossed back and forth with every new piece of doctrine, every new belief, every cultural fad that comes along. We are thankful that we could be grounded in your word and rooted in your commands.

I pray that you would help us, Lord, to seek to honor you above all else. When we approach your word, God, if our thinking doesn’t line up with it, you would change our thinking. You would change our beliefs, you would change our behavior. We pray, God, that we would be able to look back and see our growth, see our maturation, and be able to thank you for it.

I pray, God, for the time of fellowship we’re about to have and for this service, that it would honor you and you would speak to us through it. I ask all of this in Christ’s name and for his sake. Amen.

Auto Transcript

Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.

Summary

Complementarianism—the idea that men and women are equal in value before God but distinct in roles—is rooted not in culture or tradition but in God’s creation order. We are reminded that Christ himself submitted to the Father, not because of lesser worth, but because of his role, giving us the perfect model of authority and submission. This teaching examines how complementarian roles apply in both the home and the church.

Key Lessons:

1. The authority-submission relationship between men and women mirrors the relationship between God the Father and Christ—it is about roles, not value or worth.
2. Husbands are called to sacrificial love that goes far beyond dramatic gestures; it includes daily speech, tone, and conduct that sanctifies and cherishes their wives.
3. The Bible restricts the office of elder/pastor and authoritative teaching over men to men, but women are free to teach, lead ministries, and use their gifts in every way not explicitly restricted by Scripture.
4. We must approach this topic from Scripture alone, setting aside both worldly distortions and cultural baggage that have marred our understanding of biblical authority and submission.

Application: We are called to examine our marriages and church life in light of what Scripture actually teaches—not what culture or tradition says. Husbands should pursue Christlike sacrificial love in every daily interaction, wives should pursue godly submission even in difficult circumstances, and the church should maximize the freedom of all members to serve while honoring the specific role restrictions God has established.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does understanding that Christ submitted to the Father change the way we view submission in marriage and the church?
2. In what ways might cultural attitudes—either traditional or modern—have shaped our view of men’s and women’s roles more than Scripture has?
3. What practical steps can husbands take to move beyond willingness to “take a bullet” toward daily, sacrificial, sanctifying love for their wives?

Scripture Focus: Genesis 1:27-31 and 2:18-25 (creation order establishing complementary roles), Galatians 3:26-29 (equality in salvation), Ephesians 5:22-33 (marriage as a picture of Christ and the church), 1 Corinthians 11:3 (headship), 1 Timothy 2:11-13 (roles in the church), 1 Peter 3:1-7 (submission and honor in marriage), Titus 2:3-5 (the wife’s domain), Acts 18:24-26 (Priscilla teaching Apollos).

Outline

• Introduction
• What Is Complementarianism?
• Approach Scripture with Fresh Eyes
• Equal Value in Creation
• Equality in Salvation
• Mutual Submission in Christ
• Distinct Roles Ordained by God
• Christ’s Submission to the Father
• The Meaning of ‘Head’
• Roles Rooted in Creation Order
• The Creation of Woman
• Authority Established Before the Fall
• Sin’s Distortion of Roles
• Roles in the Home: Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church
• Wives: Submit as to the Lord
• Husbands: Sacrificial Love
• Daily Sacrifice, Not Just Dramatic Moments
• Submission Even to an Unbelieving Husband
• A Counseling Example: Refusing Submission
• Husbands: Treat Her as Precious
• The Wife as Manager of the Home
• Practical Wisdom in Dividing Responsibilities
• Roles in the Church: Start with Freedom
• The Restriction: Authoritative Teaching over Men
• Priscilla and Aquila: Women Can Teach
• Don’t Over-Apply the Restriction
• Elders and Deacons
• Room for Disagreement on Deaconesses
• Conclusion: Let Scripture Establish Our View
• Closing Prayer

Introduction

All right. Good morning, Calvary. It’s 9:00 a.m. and time to start our Sunday school lesson. I’m sure you are praying already, but I’m really not feeling well right now. I’m just asking everybody to be praying for me while you’re listening.

What Is Complementarianism?

A few reminders and one thing to clarify. This is complimentarianism—the idea of complementing someone or something is different from giving a compliment with an I. This isn’t about just learning how to say nice things to each other.

This is about how men and women complement each other, how they fit together. God created us that way for men and women to fit together and to be complements for each other for God’s glory.

I’m pointing that out because I actually did have someone yesterday ask if it was that. They said, “Wait, is that what you’re talking about? I thought you were really talking about how to be nice to each other and treat each other well.” So I thought maybe I should say something about this just in case.

Men and women are equal in value before God, but distinct in roles as ordained by him.

“Men and women are equal in value before God, but distinct in roles as ordained by him.”

Approach Scripture with Fresh Eyes

We’re going to be looking at a couple of, actually a lot of passages of scripture. I want to say that as difficult as it is, we should approach this and any subject with the Bible with fresh eyes. Even if we think we know it very well, it’s a good practice to pretend like we know nothing about it at all and say, “What does the Bible tell me? What instruction do I get from the Bible?”

The reason I say that is because there are certain topics like this one—like ones we’ve just gone over that Dr. Ho taught the last four weeks—where the world has a lot to say and tradition has a lot to say. We get informed by a lot of different sources that aren’t the word of God. Even if it’s someone misquoting or misapplying the word of God, we take those things in and then we come to the Bible with 95% of our thoughts on the topic already worked out. Then the Bible is really there just to confirm what we already believe.

In these topics where the world has a huge influence, I find it almost rare to talk to someone and have them say, “There was a point where I did intense Bible study and my mind changed.”

“It’s a good practice to pretend like we know nothing about it at all and say, what is the Bible telling me?”

Whatever they think now is probably what they thought even before they came to Christ. It’s just more intense now because they have a few verses to pick through and hold up. So I just want to make sure that we don’t do that, especially for topics like this where it impacts different parts of life and the world has a lot to say about it.

That’s just something I’ll throw out there and probably say again, especially next week. This is just another way of saying the same thing. Men and women are equally created in God’s image, and we’ll actually see that when we look a little bit at the creation account. They are equally valued. That’s something I think is important for us to start with.

You haven’t seen it here, but there are places where you’ll hear something different than this. When you look at the word of God, I think it’s pretty clear. So let’s look at the creation account.

Equal Value in Creation

Most of the scripture I reference will be on a slide. Now we’ll look at Genesis 1:27-31. And it says, “So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Let me make sure I see what’s coming next. Then God said, “Behold, I’ve given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth.” I’m actually going to skip down. He’s basically just giving him dominion over everything that’s created.

Verse 31 says, “And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, there was morning, the sixth day.”

What we talk about today is based on creation. It’s not based on culture. It’s not based on any particular viewpoint or history. It’s based on not just the word of God, but the word of God telling us to look back at when God first created.

When God created, he built in this concept of complimentarianism. And no, you won’t find that word in the Bible. It’s a lot like the word trinity where it was a word that was coined to describe a biblical concept.

Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image… male and female he created them.”

Equality in Salvation

This is the next one we’re going to look at. Galatians 3:26-29 brings in this point even more in the gospel sense. It says:

“For you are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.”

The key verse there is verse 28. It’s basically saying that there is no distinction. This is talking about salvation. This verse can be taken and misapplied to other things and say there’s no distinction at all between men and women anywhere that you look.

This passage is particularly talking about faith in Christ and salvation and having now a relationship with God that we did not have before. It’s only talking about that.

“We are sons and daughters of the most high God at the same level with the same volume.”

Don’t let someone use this to tell you that there is no distinction between male and female at all. It’s just talking about salvation. But that is important because we are sons and daughters of the most high God at the same level with the same volume.

Mutual Submission in Christ

Another foundation passage is in Ephesians 5. We’re going to return to Ephesians 5 later in this lesson. Ephesians 5:18b-21 says, “But be filled with the spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to our God and father, and subject yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.”

This passage tells us there are ways we should be interacting with each other. We should be singing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, expressing joy to one another and encouraging each other, especially using the words of scripture and these songs that God has given us. We do that in our service and in other parts of our lives as well.

Another thing we are to do in verse 21 is subject ourselves to one another in the fear of Christ. Philippians 2:3 sheds light on this verse. It tells us that we should do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than ourselves.

When we come to a passage like this, there is a sense in which we subject ourselves to each other. We hold the other as more important than ourselves. We consider others before we consider ourselves.

If it’s something I can do that blesses one of us, and it’s between me and Arthur, it’s Arthur’s. It’s not mine. I’m going to make sure he can get the blessing, even though it was coming right to me. If it can bless him, I’m considering him first. If we’re discussing something, I’m considering him first, considering how my words could impact him. I’m considering while we’re speaking how I’m going to make sure that he sees the love of Christ in what I’m saying and how I say it.

We’re always to consider each other and be subject to each other in that way. As we think of a topic like this in different roles, it’s important to think that way as we talk about authority and submission in particular. There’s still that concept of serving as a leader, and as a leader you are serving the people that you are leading. It’s not a role as if you’re a king in an earthly sense.

“With humility consider one another as more important than ourselves.”

Distinct Roles Ordained by God

Now let’s look at one more thing that’s foundational. There are two places where we really see the roles come out: distinction and roles ordained by God. Basically, God has designed different roles for men and women as part of his creation.

We see that it came from creation and did not come from other sources. We looked a little bit at the creation account, but I want us to look at a couple other passages.

“God has ordained different roles for men and women as part of his creation.”

Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 11:3. I think we’re going to spend more time in 1 Corinthians 11 next week, at least in the Q&A. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.

Let’s stop there to even understand what Paul is saying.

Christ’s Submission to the Father

I think we take the easiest relationship to understand, or the one where we kind of see it played out the most. Let’s take God as the head of Christ. You might ask, how is God the easiest to understand? Well, there are many places that show us that Christ, a member of the Trinity, fully God, submitted to the will of the Father.

There’s not as many people here from Yam, but they got on me because sometimes my scripture references aren’t in order. They’re in order of how I think of them and how I want to put them. In my notes I have John 5:30. If you wanted to jot them down or look them up, John 5:30, Luke 22:42, and John 6:38 are just three passages.

If we looked a little further in Philippians 2, from the passage that we read, we would see another place in the Bible that talks about Jesus submitting himself to the will of the Father, even though he was fully God. As we talked about the Trinity, we see that it wasn’t because of value or worth—it was because of the roles. Christ took on the role of our Savior and our substitute, having to actually live out a sinless life.

Not just coming and going right to the cross and dying, but living for more than 30 years, starting ministry for three and a half years, and then going to the cross. That was also for us, for him to be our substitute. Because he did that, there were times that the Bible talks about him submitting himself to the will of the Father.

It’s important to see this because there is, or maybe there still is, a kind of movement that says when we look at the word that in the Greek that’s translated “head,” it really means “source” and it has nothing to do with authority. Then they say, because there’s no authority in submission in the Trinity.

“It wasn’t because of value or worth—it was because of the roles.”

They’re all equally God. So there’s no submission there. But that ignores all of the scripture that talks about Jesus submitting to the will of the Father, including Jesus saying, “Not my will but yours be done” in the garden. That’s the Luke 22:42 passage that I mentioned.

The Meaning of ‘Head’

And actually Wayne Grudem did a huge study on this. When we had our home groups and we went through First Corinthians, I referenced that study in at least the Somerset home group when we went through this passage. There was not one mention of this word in all of Greek literature that used it as “source.”

Someone literally in the 21st century just made that up and said, “What? I think it’s source.” If it was used a lot by Plato as “source,” then you could say, “Okay, there’s some evidence that it was also used that way. Maybe we have to examine how Paul was using it.” No one in the history of the Greek language has ever used that word to mean anything but head—in the sense of either authority when it’s figurative, or when it’s literal, your literal head.

So I think it’s important to see that there. Whatever we see as a relationship between the man and the woman and Christ and the man, it has to mirror the relationship between God and Christ. The authority is there because of the roles, and the authority does not imply worth or value.

“No one in the history of the Greek language has ever used that word to mean anything but head.”

It should be easier to embrace the idea of submission when it’s described with biblical terms and it comes from a biblical point of view rather than whatever the world says submission is. Whatever authority and submission looks like in the world is different.

When someone has authority and they become a ruler, there was actually a study done—the Stanford prison experiment. They took some students, I think they were graduate students, and they created a mock prison. Within several days, everybody who was in this mock prison was part of the experiment. They had guards and administrators of this prison and they had prisoners. No one was guilty of any crime, but within two days there was abuse.

The fake guards were abusing the fake prisoners because of their fake authority. It was supposed to last for a certain amount of time, but it lasted for either two or three days and they had to stop it because of the abuse that was going on. The fear that was instilled in the fake prisoners was so real that they would not report it. They literally had the same fear as a real prisoner would have from a real corrections officer.

It just really showed how wicked and evil man can be when they have authority. When we see the idea of authority and submission in a worldly sense, that’s what we tend to think of. Maybe not that exact experiment, but we think of people who were wicked and they used their authority in wicked ways.

But when we look at God being the head of Christ, that is the picture. That’s a biblical picture of authority and submission working hand in hand.

Roles Rooted in Creation Order

Now, when we look at 1 Timothy 2, again, 1 Timothy—another passage that we’re going to be in a little later—1 Timothy 2:11-13 says, “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve.

He doesn’t say Timothy, this is what I want because those women in Ephesus are so wild and they talk so much. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, “I know the Greeks aren’t going to really tolerate having a woman doing these certain things, so let’s not allow it for their conscience sake.”

He says in verse 13, Adam was created first and then Eve. He says that the creation order is the reason why we have this, and it’s the first picture that we see of authority and submission. I think it’s important to see that this isn’t something that some chauvinist 400 years ago, a thousand years ago, 2,000 years ago made up.

This isn’t something that was done because in ancient Israel they didn’t know how to treat women, so that just kind of found its way into the church. This is because of what God said in the beginning at creation. Now it’s been marred, and even in this country, especially in this country, it’s been marred—this idea of authority and submission.

But when we want to capture the biblical sense, which is why I said earlier, let’s empty our minds of the things that we have in our heads when we think about that and let’s look at what God says about it.

Now let’s actually look at the creation account. This is a little more detailed view of it. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.” And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every animal of the field, every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him.

“The creation order is the reason why we have this—it’s the first picture of authority and submission.”

The Creation of Woman

So we have this problem now where Adam is lonely. God said, “Man shouldn’t be alone. I’m going to create a helper.” Then he brings Adam all of these animals so that he could name them.

I believe he also did that so Adam would see that none of them were suitable for him. Adam would know that only his wife was the complement for him.

“Adam would know that only his wife was the complement for him.”

Verse 21 continues, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh of that place. And the Lord God fashioned into woman the rib which he had taken from the man. And he brought her to the man. And the man said, ‘At last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.’ I’ll stop there.

Authority Established Before the Fall

So as we’ve said before, looking at different places, man and woman—or mankind, I’ll say—man was created with these distinctives already in place. Naming someone was always a sign of authority.

Which is why God did that and said, “I’m giving you dominion over every animal, over everything, and then you can name them.” We see that it was clear he was given authority over Eve at that point. What is beautiful here when we look at verse 25: it says, “The man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed.” This is to show that this happened before sin. They were innocent and sinless at this point.

“This happened before sin—they were innocent and sinless at this point.”

So this was not a result of the fall. This was not a sin that happened.

And God did not say, “What? Okay, you can’t handle being in charge or on your own. So let’s just give it to man. Sorry, you squandered your opportunity for all of womankind, Eve. Thank you.” That’s not what happened.

God had already set this, and this is part of his very good creation that is beautiful and wonderful. This is what honors God the most, and that’s also important: no matter what we think about it or how we may chafe under it, this is what brings God the most glory and it will bring us the most joy.

Sin’s Distortion of Roles

Now, sin likely increased the woman’s inclination to try to overtake the man by rejecting his authority and assuming it in his place. And we don’t have time to look at that. But if you compare the words in Genesis 3:16 to that of Genesis 4:7, your desire will be for him. And you look at the message that was given to Cain in Genesis 4:7, there’s some reason to believe that part of the curse was that she would constantly reject his authority.

Because he says, not only will your desire be for him, it says, “And he will rule over you.” And so there will be this struggle where there wasn’t any and it was perfect harmony and unity and they would complement each other perfectly because of sin. It became more difficult for both sides.

Now he is going to rule over you rather than lovingly lead. Now there’s this inclination that the man has to be heavy-handed with this authority. And there’s also this inclination for the woman to reject it. And both of those things are unbiblical and unfortunate.

But because we’re here and we’re hearing the word of God, we can be redeemed from that. We’ve been redeemed from the effects of the curse eternally.

“This is what brings God the most glory and it will bring us the most joy.”

And even now, we have power over all sin. And even this where we’ve been sinful in our relationships and the way that we viewed each other, God can restore us.

Roles in the Home: Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church

Now we’re going to look at two places, two institutions. Hopefully we can look at both where we really see these roles take effect. The first one is going to be in the home. The Bible shows us that marriage is a picture of Christ and his church.

“The Bible shows us that marriage is a picture of Christ and his church.”

We’re going to spend a lot of time going back into Ephesians 5. Bear with me. If you want, you can open up the Bible here because there’s going to be more than one slide. It’ll be harder for me to keep bouncing back and forth if I need to.

Ephesians 5:22-33 says, “Wives, subject yourselves to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.”

So we’ll stop there.

Wives: Submit as to the Lord

This is the first thing that we see.

When I came across this, I don’t know, 20 something years ago, maybe even almost 30 years ago, what bothered me was that Paul had like two, maybe three little quick sentences to say to the women. Like wives, all right, this is what you got to do. All right, just make sure you love your husband. You know what I mean?

“Paul had two or three quick sentences for the women—then a whole essay for us husbands.”

Husbands: Sacrificial Love

You submit to your husbands. At the end he’s going to say be sure that you respect your husbands and that’s it. And then got a whole essay for us. Hey, come on. You could have split the words a little bit better than that, but nope. And a whole essay for men that we got to do. And the women is just like, “All right, make sure you respect your husbands and that you submit to them. That’s it. I mean, there’s a lot baked into that, but it’s like there’s a lot that we have to do.”

Well, verse 25, and we’ll kind of look in a little bit of detail into this. Says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.”

So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.

Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are parts of his body. For this reason, a man shall cleave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. We go back to Genesis 2:24.

This mystery is great, but I’m speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

Nevertheless, as for you individually, each husband is to love his own wife the same as himself, and a wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

So what’s great about this? A lot of things. But both the husbands and the wives have Christ as their example.

The ones who are to lead and have the authority and the ones who are to submit both have Christ as an example.

“Both the husbands and the wives have Christ as their example.”

And I think that’s something that sometimes we may skip over. I do sometimes.

And it’s because the picture of Christ in his church is the church submitting to Christ. But we have so many passages that talk about Jesus submitting. Not just those that we referenced earlier, but even if you just want to look at 2 Peter—not right now, but if you want to look at 2 Peter, all of chapter 2, the second half of chapter 2 is Peter giving examples of Christ suffering where we tell us where we should submit even while we’re suffering and submit to authority that may not be the most godly and that may be causing suffering rather than causing joy for us. We should still submit. Then he gives Christ as an example.

So there’s one thing I do want to point out here. In verse 25 he says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.” And we think of this sacrificial love. And it’s a beautiful thing. And I think most if not every husband in here—I know I’m speaking on y’all behalf—but if there was something coming that meant imminent death, that we would take it. We would stand in front of it for our wives.

And not just that, there are probably some or many of us in here who would see imminent death going to someone that’s not our wife, and we would still step in and say, “I’ll take it on their behalf.” So I don’t think there’s an issue there.

Daily Sacrifice, Not Just Dramatic Moments

But this sacrificial love, willing to give up yourself all the way until your life, involves everything leading up to that point.

It’s not just that you could be a terrible husband, but if she’s stuck on those train tracks, I’ll step in for her and push her out of the way. But I could be terrible in every other aspect of life as long as I’m willing to take a bullet for her. That’s what he goes on to say. This is what you do. You sanctify her. You cleanse her.

So even in our discussion, even in the way that we’re speaking with our wives, we’re thinking about what would edify her. What would set her off? What words would get under her skin? Let me avoid those. What things do I do? What tone do I take that makes it difficult for her to resist the temptation of anger or anything else? We constantly are thinking about those things.

In those very little moments, we’re sacrificing. There may be something we want to say. There may be a thing that we were just right on. We know that we’re right. And it’s like, I’m just going to let you step into that and see that I was right, that you should have done this thing or you should have listened to me or what I told you so. Those types of things.

And we say, “All right, I’m going to withhold from saying that. I’m not going to do that because that is not going to sanctify her. That is not cleansing her. That is not washing her with the water of the word. And I have to be really careful about how I do those things.”

So it is not just that I’m willing to sacrifice in the moment that a robber comes, but I’m willing to sacrifice in every interaction in life that we have.

“I’m willing to sacrifice in every interaction in life, not just the moment a robber comes.”

So I think it’s important to look at that. Even though this isn’t a marriage class totally, we are looking a little bit into that. And I do want to look at one of those examples that I mentioned.

Submission Even to an Unbelieving Husband

First Peter 3 addresses this in the context of suffering, submitting to headship, and submitting to authority even when they aren’t godly or are causing pain, discomfort, and suffering. You are still to submit.

Peter says, “In the same way, you wives be subject to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won over without a word by the behavior of their wives. As they observe your pure and respectful behavior.”

Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on apparel. But it should be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

For in this way, the holy women of former times who hoped in God also used to adorn themselves, being subject to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.

Stop there because then you can talk about the husband. In this passage, he’s saying that even if you are married to an unbelieving husband, you are still supposed to submit to him.

Of course, we have the caveat: you don’t submit to something that would cause you to disobey God directly. Over the years, we’ve had to counsel many women through situations where it seemed like that might be the case, and it is a difficult one.

But Peter is saying that as much as it’s possible for you, still honor God. The way you’re going to honor God the most is by following these commands, even if your husband is an unbeliever. Your behavior is going to win him more than nagging him to come to church every Sunday.

“Your behavior is going to win him more than nagging him to come to church every Sunday.”

What I mean is how we can be—especially when we know something is good for someone—how we can just say this is the best thing. Don’t come to me with your problems. I’m giving you Christ and you reject it the next week crying about your problems. I gave you the solution already. Don’t come here every week with something new.

A Counseling Example: Refusing Submission

So he’s setting this up. And I remember many years ago, Dr. Ho and I were counseling a couple. They’re not a part of this church, so they don’t have to worry. I’m not giving anything away.

They were having problems, and it was both of them, which is the case in just about every marital issue. Including yours—whoever, if y’all had any issues going on now, it’s both of y’all’s fault. That’s what was happening then. Both of them were dishonoring God.

She said when we talked about her in this passage submitting, “I am a daughter of the king, and he would not want his daughter to be treated this way. So I don’t have to submit to him. How am I going to submit to him? He still hasn’t done this thing that I’m judging his whole spiritual life on. He still hasn’t done that yet. And because he hasn’t, I don’t have to obey him. I don’t have to submit to him. I don’t even have to respect him. I don’t respect him.”

And I think that was one of the only times that I almost lost it. Usually nothing surprises me. People will talk to me and say something extreme that gets to me, but this was different. We read this passage and she was just like, “I’m a daughter of the king though.” And I’m like, “Oh, act like it. Listen to what the king is saying.” And she refused.

That was sad. It was infuriating at first, and then it just became really sad. The husband was no better. I think that was probably the most angry that I’ve ever seen Greg, because of some of the things that were revealed in there—how the husband was treating her.

I mean, in a worldly sense, if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d be like, “You’re right, he doesn’t deserve your respect after what I just heard.” But as a Christian, I’m like, “But the word of God says this. The word of God tells me my feelings don’t matter in this case. What I think doesn’t matter. I have to just counsel the word of God.”

But we have to make sure that this is real to us, that we’re believers, right? We believe this to be true. We believe that this is really God’s will for us. We believe this is best for us—that you would submit even to an unbeliever.

And then he says in verse seven, which I think is still on.

“We believe this is really God’s will for us—that you would submit even to an unbeliever.”

Husbands: Treat Her as Precious

You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

But even there, even though he said more to the women in this case, Peter gave to the women a little more. But look what he says to the men. If you don’t love your wives right and treat them the right way, your prayers will be hindered.

That’s serious. Some of us wonder why we don’t have victory in our lives. Your prayers are being hindered.

Now, without going too far into this idea of someone weaker—and I think the King James may say like a weaker vessel—the idea is not that women are weaker because they’re women. This isn’t even talking about some emotional weakness here. It is saying that the way you treat your wife and handle your wife is the same way you would handle something that’s delicate, something that’s precious, and that can be broken easily.

I’m going to carry a kettlebell or a dumbbell very differently than I’m going to carry a $50,000 vase. Or I guess if it cost that much we call it the vase, right? I’m going to be much more careful with that and delicate the way that I carry it, the way that I hold it.

When I put it down, I’m going to get out a rag and wipe off all my fingerprints on it. I’m going to make sure I’m caring for this thing because it’s so delicate and so precious and so priceless. Men, that is the way that we are to be with our wives.

It’s not that, oh yeah, she’s weaker because she’s so emotional. No, it’s that we’re treating them the same way we would treat a weaker vessel in a physical sense. Then in a spiritual, emotional, in every sense, that’s how we are to handle relationships with our wives, interactions with them.

“Handle your wife the way you would handle something delicate, precious, and priceless.”

I used to say all the time when in verse six—well, my wife isn’t here now to say it—but it says that Sarah called her husband Lord.

I want to hear some more of that, like being addressed. I want to hear some of you. Yeah, Magna, I’m looking at you when Steve comes in just like, “Lord, Como, how are you today?” Like I want to hear that, y’all sitting over there. Check her. Make sure that happened.

That’s such a beautiful thing. I don’t know if we would know how to act if our wives called us that. But it’s just treating them with that dignity and that respect that you would, because the word doesn’t have to mean lord as far as God, but lord as far as even master or how we would say mister. It’s kind of a high form of respect that we’re giving someone, calling someone sir. That would be kind of the equivalent now.

The Wife as Manager of the Home

So, another passage that kind of looks at this is Titus 2. Titus 2:3-5 says, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.”

If you don’t do your part, you’re dishonoring the word of God. If we don’t do all this, we’re not going to receive the full blessings of God. We have to do our part or we’re not going to receive the full blessings of God.

The phrase “workers at home” is related to a word—actually a compound word. It really is “home” and “worker.” It’s not anything deep or complicated, but it’s related to another compound word from which we get our word “economics.”

The idea here is that the domain, the work, or even the management of the home belongs to the wife.

“The domain or the management of the home belongs to the wife.”

I was thinking of one example yesterday as I was trying to fit leftovers in the fridge. We moved recently and we have a smaller fridge now than we used to, or at least the layout of it is not as good as the other ones.

My wife used to cook meals and she would make a lot. Those of you who know her know she’s Jamaican, and they don’t know how to cook for just two or three people. She’ll make a chili or a soup, and that’s our dinner for the whole week—like eight to ten meals right there. Then we just dish them out individually and stack them in these nice little glass containers that we have. They don’t fit now.

We have all this fruit in there, and then we have our eggs, and that’s a whole shelf. Fruit and eggs is like a whole shelf now. Before, that would be half of one, and we could do other things.

But my wife, being as crafty as she is, always finds a way to fit things in the fridge and make it work. Now she’s also saying, “Okay, we have to shop more often and we have to buy smaller things and try to make it work.”

My point in that is just saying that she sees a problem in the home, and she’s saying, “Okay, with the resources that we have, how are we going to make this work?” Why I thought about economics is because I did my graduate work in economics, so I’m kind of biased toward economics. In it, the economic problem as it’s stated is scarcity. It basically means we don’t have an endless supply of the resources that we need. So we have to learn to make do with what we have.

Same thing with the church. We wish we had maybe 20,000 more square feet to add on. We don’t have that. So we have to use the space that we have and figure out how to do that.

The Bible is saying that type of work is the primary domain of the wife—to take all the resources of the home, to take even what you’re bringing in, to take the physical layout, everything that you have, what you need. If you have children, take into account all those things and make it work.

Practical Wisdom in Dividing Responsibilities

And this isn’t banning women from having jobs or even careers outside of the home. But it is saying that it is the primary domain of the wife.

That also doesn’t mean that if the husband is better at one of these administrative tasks than the wife, you say the wife should still do it. There are many homes where the husband manages the finances just because he’s either better at it or it just fits into the flow of how the home works.

Even though managing the home and being a worker at home should be the wife’s primary role, sometimes it works better differently. There are some men that are great cooks and some women that aren’t. Sometimes the husbands will cook more than the wives. You aren’t violating scripture by doing any of those things.

You’re trying to be wise and figure out the best way to run the home. But God has given this special task and this responsibility and has ordained it so that the wife, if you’re married, is the one who is organizing those things. The wife may even say, “I think you’re better at it than me, so you should do that.” Okay, let’s work out how we’re going to have these things flow. But it is not banning a woman from working here.

When we look at the roles in the home, the primary thing that we see is that the wives are submitting to the husbands and husbands are loving the wives. We saw all the scripture here and even in other places in Colossians 3:18, it says “as is fitting to the Lord.” We see this is what honors God—that the roles, no matter how they play out and who does what, the husband has authority and the wife submits in the home.

Now we’ll look at the church and see that.

“You aren’t violating scripture by wisely dividing tasks—but God has ordained the wife to organize the home.”

Roles in the Church: Start with Freedom

And I’ll just as a reminder because it’s already 9:45 that the way we structure our Sunday schools for this series is that the first lesson is going to be just a bunch of points and really explaining the concept. And then hopefully you’ll have questions that you’ll send to me and then that will be the basis for next week’s lesson. We’ll be going over questions.

There are so many common questions and misconceptions that if you say nothing to me, I already have a full lesson for next week. But if you do have questions, make sure that you send them in and send them to me early. I’m not good like Dr. Ho. I think he was like, “You can give them to me up to like Thursday, Friday.” No, not me. I need them today, tomorrow. Send me questions you have.

Unfortunately, right after this, I’m going to be doing a sound check with the band. So I’m not going to be able to stand and answer questions. At 10 o’clock, I’ll be over there. So I won’t be able to answer questions today face to face.

We also have a membership interview after church, so I won’t be able to stand around for too long. Email me anything you have today or tomorrow. If you email it to me later in the week, I’ll try to fit it in. Most likely what you email me will be something someone else thought of anyway or something that was kind of common.

But if you have anything, make sure they’re real questions. I mean, we do a lot of the commenting thing or “I think you should talk about this.” So I’m going to try to tweak your lesson by asking a question that I already know the answer to, but I want you to cover it. So I’m just going to ask it as a question.

Make sure you ask legitimate questions that are really on your mind, on your heart, because if we get a lot, I may not be able to cover it all. It will be good to get the ones that people really want to hear, especially if they’re asked by several people.

Okay, now we can move on to the church. We actually don’t have too many left. One thing, and this kind of goes back to what I said earlier: we shouldn’t approach service in the church from a restrictive perspective. And what I mean is we shouldn’t, especially when we talk about women serving in the church, say women can’t do anything or all they could do is take care of the kids and cook us some lunch after the service.

And you have to then convince me if you want them to do anything else. You have to show me a scripture that they’re allowed to do this.

We all have freedom in Christ. So instead of that, come at it from this angle: men and women can do everything. Anyone can do anything. And then I’m going to open the Bible and see that there are actually restrictions. And those are the restrictions that we’re going to apply.

“Start from freedom: men and women can do everything—then apply only the restrictions Scripture gives.”

And there may be cases where you’re using wisdom and so it isn’t very explicit, but we still decide as a congregation. We still decide as even a ministry within a larger church to put restrictions on that may not be biblical, but they aren’t unbiblical. And I think that’s fine as well.

And I’m going to actually show you one where we would disagree. Well, we do things differently than other churches do it, but we would not say that they’re in error by doing it differently than us. So just try to come at it from that perspective: there is freedom and then as we read the word of God that freedom kind of gets reduced rather than just full restriction until you prove to me with eight different verses that that restriction can be lifted. Because where else will we get the restriction from if not from the Bible?

The Restriction: Authoritative Teaching over Men

1 Timothy 2:11-12 says, “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” We have our first restriction here.

In a public gathering, a woman is not to engage in authoritative teaching over men. Now, this is not implying that women can’t be more knowledgeable or more skilled or more mature or more godly or even better speakers and better teachers than the men who are doing that. But God has called each one of us to a particular role within his church. He has gifted us, and all of us are to use our gifts.

“This is the role God has called each one of us to within his church.”

If this is a role that would require authoritative teaching from a woman over men, that role is only going to be held by men. So you’re not going to have a case—at least if you’re following and applying this—where a woman is exercising authority and teaching over a man.

I want to look at something here.

Priscilla and Aquila: Women Can Teach

So, actually, I’m going to stay here for a second. If you want to, you could turn to Acts 18:24-26. Because I want you to see that this is very specific.

A woman is not to exercise authority or teach a man in the church.

But we have this case where in Acts 18:24-26. I’ll just read it and we’ll talk about it. It says, “Now a Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man came to Ephesus and he was proficient in the scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit. He was accurately speaking and teaching things about Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John.”

Verse 26 says, “And he began speaking boldly in a synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately to him.”

Apollos, who some believe may have written the book of Hebrews, was formally educated. He was eloquent. He knew the scriptures, especially the Old Testament scriptures. He was a bold, fervent preacher, and it doesn’t even say he was preaching error. He just had incomplete understanding, incomplete knowledge.

He knew up to the baptism of John and that was it. It’s kind of like those people in Acts 19 who received the Holy Spirit. He was heard preaching by this couple, Priscilla and Aquila, and they took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately to him. He became an even better preacher because of that.

So we see this woman Priscilla had a big part to play. We don’t know how much. We don’t know if it was 50/50, 60/40—it doesn’t matter. But she taught him the scriptures.

“Priscilla taught one of the preachers the scriptures—the Bible does not say a woman can’t teach a man.”

She wasn’t teaching like she was teaching Nathan. She was teaching one of the preachers the scriptures.

So the Bible does not say that a woman can’t teach a man, that a man can’t be subject to a woman in another way.

Don’t Over-Apply the Restriction

And I think that’s really important because here in our church we have a lot of brilliant godly women. And if the men only are going to learn from other men, we have brilliant godly men too. But if I want to hear something from, say, Cheryl, and I have to say no, no—can you tell Eric? Let him know what you have to say to me. And then Eric, you let me know what she has to say. And then we’ll pass it that way so we can make sure that we’re lined up with scripture. That’s not what it’s saying.

Another example: I serve in the nursery ministry, and I am under the director of that ministry, who is a woman. So as an elder of the church, I have to submit to her leadership. And if she says, “All right, nursery workers are going to have to start coming in at 10:15 rather than 10:25 because we really need to relieve the parents even earlier. I need you to come in at 10.” I can’t say, “What? You’re a woman? I don’t care what you have to say, Brian. What time do you want me there?” when he has nothing to do with the ministry.

That’s not how it works.

So we just have to make sure that we don’t go too far in trying to apply this scripture, especially because we have a certain feeling about how things are going in society or we feel like there’s a slippery slope. We shouldn’t overemphasize something in scripture because we don’t want to slip down that slope. And in doing that, we’re stopping half of the congregation from using their gifts properly.

“Don’t go too far applying scripture and stop half the congregation from using their gifts properly.”

So let’s talk a little more about that role.

Elders and Deacons

This is in 1 Timothy 3:1-7. This is talking about the office of elder or overseer, bishop, pastor. It says a trustworthy statement: “If any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a fine work that he desires to do.”

Then it talks about some of the qualities that he has to have, the characteristics being a husband of one wife and there are other things in there. The entire time this assumes a man. The language assumes a man is talking about a man in this role. And we don’t have time to go through all of it.

You also see that in Titus 1:6-9 you see the same qualifications. So the Bible is clear that this role, which involves authoritative teaching of the word of God, can only be held by men.

“The Bible is clear that the office of elder, which involves authoritative teaching, can only be held by men.”

And that’s just the rest of it there with deacons. This is the one that I was referring to earlier. You have again deacons likewise must be men of dignity, and then it talks about the different characteristics of them.

Then verse 11 it says women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips. It goes on from there. That’s one way to translate it. And then in verse 12, deacons must be the husbands of one wife. It goes on from there and talks about more qualifications of the deacons.

So it’s definitely we have this.

Room for Disagreement on Deaconesses

So, with the deacons, we clearly see there are men that serve as deacons and then there are women that serve with them.

There is a lot of evidence in this text to say that the women that serve with the deacons are their wives that serve alongside them. Some churches take this differently because there is some ambiguity there. They take this to mean that there are deaconesses or there are just women who serve as deacons alongside men who serve as deacons.

Even if they’re not unmarried, it’s just that you have deacons and it could be men or women because the role is a role of service. While we at Calvary hold to the view that you have deacon men who are serving and their wives serve alongside them, the wives need to be as qualified as the husbands are.

If a church says we have women serving as deacons, we’re not looking at them as being unbiblical.

“There is room for disagreement—we would not say they are being unbiblical for having women serve as deacons.”

Conclusion: Let Scripture Establish Our View

We’re not looking at them saying that’s a church you shouldn’t join or shouldn’t support. They are just taking this verse where there is room for disagreement, room for applying it in a different way without saying that they are being unbiblical. I just wanted to point out that distinction—we would not say that they’re being heretical because they have women serving in that role.

That is the last slide, and it is 9:58. From this, I just want to reiterate that we—not just at Calvary, but we in general as believers—should be looking at what the scriptures tell us. There’s so much that society has said. Women have only been voting in this country for 100 years. Most of the history of this country has said women shouldn’t even be allowed to have a voice when it comes to who leads a nation.

So there was a lot that the world got wrong. It seems like instead of standing up against that and using what the Bible says and having the biblical view of men and women, the church for the most part just went along with that. There’s a lot of things that we even have to unlearn.

When society did their unlearning, they jumped so far in another way that they still were being unbiblical. We went from one version of being unbiblical to another. We just don’t want to be fighting against the unbiblical version of the world, but we want to be establishing what God has said. That should be the thing that we’re focused on.

Let’s bow in prayer, and then if anyone from the band is here, I guess we’ll start the sound check. Our gracious God, we want to thank you for what your word says and how you created us to complement each other. How you created us with different roles and the beauty in your creation. I thank you, God, that your word liberates us. Your word frees us from trying to figure things out ourselves. It frees us from trying to stay up with what the world is doing.

“We don’t want to fight the world’s unbiblical version—we want to establish what God has said.”

Closing Prayer

And it frees us from constantly having to come up with reasons why we do what we do. We go to your word.

I just pray, God, that you would help us in our homes, in our church to establish Christ like this in everything that we do. I pray, God, for all the marriages that are represented here that you would be glorified and that you would help us all to be more like Christ no matter what our role is, that we will be serving each other in it.

And I ask this in Christ’s name.

Amen.