The longest statement in the New Testament on the relationship of husbands and wives is Ephesians 5:21-33. The parallel account, Colossians 3:18-19, succinctly states the main points of Paul’s teaching. We shall use the Ephesians account as the basis for this chapter and relate the Colossians material to it.

Before we inquire into the particular truths the apostle articulates in Ephesians 5:22-33, we should determine the flow of his presentation. Paul ties his previous discussion to his treatment of husbands and wives with a summary preview: “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (verse 21).¹ Then he addresses the respective parties: wives (verses 22-24) and husbands (verses 25-31). He asks wives to submit to their husbands as their heads as the church submits to Christ as her head. He asks husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Paul compares the relationship of husband and wife to that between Christ and the church (notice the comparatives “as” and “just as” in verses 22, 23, 24, 25).

Paul not only compares marriage to the relationship between Christ and His church but also expands on the latter. Thus, some verses focus almost exclusively on Christ and the church (e.g., verses 26, 27). After these instructions and comparisons, Paul cites Genesis 2:24 in verse 31 and makes a final reference to the relationship of Christ and His church in verse 32. He concludes by summarizing his instructions in verse 33 with two key concepts: a husband is to love his wife and a wife is to respect her husband.

This passage abounds with instructions for marriage. The key ideas appear in the flow of the argument: submission to one another in the fear of the Lord (verse 21); submission by the wife to her husband as her head, as the church submits to Christ its head (verses 22-24); love by the husband for his wife, as Christ loves the church (verses 25-30); the appeal to Genesis 2:24 (verse 31); and the concluding summary (verse 33) with its emphasis on the husband’s love and the wife’s respect.

We will examine each of these in turn to ascertain its particular importance both in isolation and in its contribution to the whole passage. Limitations of space and the focus of our study demand that details about Christ and the church outside the comparison with marriage be omitted from consideration here.

Submit to One Another in the Fear of Christ

Verse 21 provides a transition from the verses that precede to those that follow. Even though the verb “submit to” is appropriately rendered as an imperative, as are others that precede it (“speak,” verse 19; “sing and make music,” verse 19), it (like them) is a participle that concludes the string of exhortations begun by Paul in verse 18 with the true imperative “be filled with the Spirit.” “Submit to one another” thus concludes the list of things that should characterize Spirit-filled living by the redeemed. Furthermore, in a couple of important manuscripts, no verb appears in verse 22, so that “submit to” from verse 21 has to be understood as functioning in verse 22 as well. In other important manuscripts, the verb appears in verse 22 as well.² Both readings tie the two verses together, since the same verb is either understood or repeated. Hence verse 21 needs to be considered in its transitional role.

Three ideas are so inherent to the thought of this verse that we must consider them in order to properly understand this verse and its relevance for the passage as a whole. They are (1) the meaning of “submit to one another,” (2) the significance of the qualifier “out of reverence for Christ,” and (3) how this call for submission to one another relates to the specific instructions to wives and husbands.

What is Meant by “Submit to One Another”?

In the admonition “submit to one another,”³ the verb (hupotasso) has as its basic meaning “to subject or subordinate.” Here Paul’s use of the middle voice focuses on what one does to oneself: one submits oneself to others. The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker Greek-English Lexicon rightly describes this as “submission in the sense of voluntary yielding in love” (p. 848, section 1bb). This voluntary yielding to others is a characteristic of the Christian community and is urged elsewhere in the New Testament. Compare, e.g., “In humility consider others [allelous, the same word as in Ephesians] better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).⁴ This admonition is based on the example of Jesus (Philippians 2:5), who insisted on a servant mentality in imitation of Him: “… whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:26-28; cf. Mark 10:43-45; cf. also Luke 22:26, 27).

Furthermore, the Apostle Peter, like the Apostle Paul, both urges particular people (younger men) to submit to particular people (elders) and all to submit to one another: “Young men … be submissive to (hupotagete) those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another (allelon again) …” (1 Peter 5:4-5). Similarly, Paul urges masters to “Treat your slaves in the same way” (ta auta, Ephesians 6:9) as their slaves were to treat them, i.e., “with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart” (verse 5). This implies reciprocity between masters and slaves. The exhortation to Christians in Ephesians 5:21 is thus, like these other passages, a general exhortation to mutual submission to “one another.”

Submission in Reverence for Christ

The motivation for submission to one another is to be “reverence (phobo) for Christ” (5:21). Reverence, or fear (phobos), here is not dread, because Scripture elsewhere teaches that God’s love in us casts out such fear (1 John 4:18; cf. also Romans 8:15). Rather, it is respectful reverence for Christ that recognizes who has asked this of us and that He will hold us accountable for our actions (cf., for this sense in Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:11; 7:1). This statement reminds us that—because in our sinful rebellion we would not obey our Lord—we will only submit to others when Christ has made us subject to Himself, and then we will submit to one another because He insists that we do so. Paul makes this point elsewhere when, in writing about interpersonal relationships—including those of men and women—he says forcefully, “What I am writing to you is the Lord’s command” (1 Corinthians 14:37). Thus verse 21, explicitly insisting that believers submit to one another, sets the tone for the entire section.

How Verse 21 Is a Transition

But then the question naturally arises, how is the content of verse 21 related to verses 22-33? At least two answers have been given. First, one might answer that this verse is a general statement of the specifics spelled out for wives, children, and servants. That is, certain ways in which Christians are to submit to others are then specified.⁵ It is argued that the key word submit is picked up with reference to wives in verses 22 and 24 and for children and servants by the concept of obedience (6:1, 5). Furthermore, this would seem to parallel Peter’s approach when he urges Christians, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men …” (1 Peter 2:13) and spells this out in terms of the submission servants (2:18ff.) and wives are to give (3:1ff.). Even if the following answer is more adequate, this suggestion need not be rejected so long as it does not exclude the more comprehensive understanding.

Second, one might answer that the relationship of verse 21 to verses 22-23 is that verse 21 states a general and comprehensive principle before Paul moves to the specific roles of husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and slaves, so that the specific is considered in the light of the general. On this view, Paul reminds all in the congregation of their need for mutual submission in the Body of Christ before writing of the specific duties each has in his particular situation. This seems to do more justice to the explicit reciprocal pronoun used, “one another” (allelon). Furthermore, it is in line with the contextual understanding found elsewhere in Paul and Peter where a similar exhortation is given (Philippians 2:3, “let each of you regard one another …” [NASB]; 1 Peter 5:5, “all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another” [NASB).⁶

First Peter 5:5 is particularly instructive, because there Peter urges all of you to be humble toward one another immediately after urging the younger ones to be subject to their elders. Thus Peter calls on the elders among all of you to be humble toward younger men at the same time as he calls on younger men to submit to those same elders. Just as Peter expresses both ideas in one verse (1 Peter 5:5), so also Paul expresses the general note of mutual submission in verse 21, followed by the specific submission of wives to husbands, for example, in verses 22ff. So Paul wants to remind all Christians, men and women, of their duty to be submissive to one another before reminding wives of their particular responsibility to their husbands in marriage. This puts particular, unidirectional submission in the context of general, mutual submission and relates specific duties, roles, and responsibilities to the general Christian concept of mutual submission.

It is sometimes urged that mutual submission alone is in view in the section on wives and husbands, and that therefore wives are not being called to a unique or distinct submission to their husbands.⁷ Since, however, verse 21 is a transition verse to the entirety of the section on household responsibilities, consistency would demand that the sections on children and parents and on servants and masters also speak only of mutual submissiveness and not of different roles. Since this is self-evidently not so for the section on children and parents, on the one hand, and masters and servants, on the other, the implication is that distinguishable roles and specific submission are also taught in the section on husbands and wives. Of course, it could be argued that the command given husbands to love their wives is but another way of calling them to mutual submission. But even if that were so, Paul still calls the husband “the head” of the wife and therefore the one to whom she should submit in everything (verses 22-24). Thus this section cannot be teaching only mutual submission rather than the specific submission of wives to husbands in the overall context of mutual submission. The mutual submission to which all are called and that defines the larger context and sets the tone does not, therefore, rule out the specific and different roles and relationships to which husbands and wives are called in the verses addressed to them.

Submission and Headship

In the main portion of the section addressed to wives and husbands (verses 22-30) and the concluding summary (verse 33), Paul delineates his teaching along three lines: (1) the role each has (submission, headship), (2) the attitude with which each fulfills his or her role (love, respect), and (3) the analogy of marriage to the relationship of Christ and His church.

• The Roles of Wives and Husbands

Paul commands wives to “be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (verse 22, NASB). The operative verb “be subject to” or “submit to” (hupotasso) reappears in verse 24, where Paul writes that wives should submit “to their husbands in everything” “as the church submits to Christ.” This is the essence of the apostle’s teaching to wives, since in Colossians 3:18 it is the entirety of his charge: “Wives, submit (hupotasso) to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”⁸ Furthermore, this particular exhortation to the wife to submit to her husband is the universal teaching of the New Testament. Every passage that deals with the relationship of the wife to her husband tells her “to submit” to him, using this same verb (hupotasso): Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1; Titus 2:4f.⁹ Sampley summarizes the matter when he says concerning the household instructions for wives that the form reduced to its barest details would include: Wives, be submissive to (possibly ‘your own’) husbands.¹⁰

The meaning of hupotasso, used consistently in the charge to wives, is the same as its meaning in verse 21, that is, “submission in the sense of voluntary yielding in love.”¹¹ This is no abandonment of the great New Testament truth also taught by the Apostle Paul that “there is neither … male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Rather, it is an appeal to one who is equal by creation and redemption to submit to the authority God has ordained. Her equality is evident in the verb form always used in this admonition and in the fact that it is wives who are addressed, not husbands. (The New Testament never commands husbands to subordinate their wives, i.e., to force them to submit.) The voice of the verb is not active but middle/passive, with the meaning either of subjecting oneself (middle) or of allowing oneself to be in subjection (passive), with the middle voice most likely here. Thus the admonition is similar to the request in Hebrews that Christians (who are equal in creation and redemption to one another and therefore also equal to elders) are to “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority” (Hebrews 13:17) and Peter’s instruction that young men be submissive (hupotagete) to those who are older” (1 Peter 5:5). Just as certain men can be given authority in the church, implying no superiority for them or inferiority for those subject to them, so also wives may be asked to subject themselves to their husbands without any suggestion of inferiority/superiority. The Apostle Peter makes this clear when he insists that husbands, to whom he has asked wives to submit (1 Peter 3:1ff.), “treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life” (1 Peter 3:7).

• The Nature of Wives’ Submission

The submission wives are to render is delineated by four key concepts: (1) “to your own husbands” (in the Greek text, left out of the NIV; see NASB), (2) “as to the Lord” (both of these first two concepts appear in verse 22; for the second cf. also Colossians 3:18, “as is fitting in the Lord”), (3) “for the husband is the head of the wife” (verse 23), and (4) “as the church submits to Christ” (verse 24).¹² Paul does not ask every woman to submit to every man, but rather asks wives to submit to their own (idiois) husbands. Paul is not insisting that every relationship between a woman and a man is one of submission and headship, but that where leadership is an ingredient of the situation, as in marriage, the woman should submit to that leadership (headship) of the man. Similarly, for example, in the family of God, the church, where leadership is involved, Paul insists that women not take on that role but submit to the leadership of men (cf. 1 Timothy 2:11, 12; 1 Corinthians 14:34ff. and the chapters in this volume dealing with these passages). Here specifically he commands each wife to submit to the headship of her own husband.

• The Nature of Husbands’ Headship

Paul gives the basis for his charge to wives in verse 23: “For (“because,” hoti) the husband is the head ) of the wife.” It has been assumed already that this word head ) implies authority. Not all agree. Some say that it means “source.” I refer the reader to the chapter by Wayne Grudem on this subject as well as the standard Greek lexicons for the data. Suffice it to say here that Paul indicates the significance of “head” ) by saying that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church (verse 23). It is evident that Christ is the head of the church as the authority over it because the following verse speaks of the church as submitting to Christ. The two concepts mutually explain one another: the church submits to Christ’s authority because He is the head or authority over it.

This reference to Christ as head follows two previous references to Him as head where the note of authority is equally present. In the first, Ephesians 1:22, Paul writes that Christ is head over “everything” and that God has “placed all things under (hupotasso) his feet.” In the second, Ephesians 4:15, Christ is designated the head of the church, His body, and it is His authority and power that cause the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. It is virtually certain that in comparing the headship of the husband over the wife to the headship of Christ over the church, the apostle is using the term kephale for the husband as he does for Christ, namely, as one who has authority and is the leader.

When we ask how that headship was established, we are aided by Paul’s treatment of this question in 1 Corinthians 11:1ff., where he explicitly relates the headship of a man over a woman to that of Christ over every man and of God over Christ. In this context, Paul refers to Genesis 2:21-24 and states that the order of creation of man and woman and the fact that woman was created to help the man (and not vice versa) demonstrate that God had established man as the head over the woman by this divine action and its inherent intent (1 Corinthians 11:8-9). Paul thus affirms that male headship is a divine appointment. This understanding certainly informs his use of the same term kephale in Ephesians and is therefore the basis on which he commands the wife to submit to the husband as her head. It is evident in Ephesians 5 itself that Paul has Genesis 2 and its principles in mind, because he quotes Genesis 2:24 at Ephesians 5:31. What he has explicitly said in 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9 informs his statement in Ephesians 5:23, and his quotation of Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31 demonstrates that the principles of Genesis 2 inform his statements in Ephesians.

• The Extent of Wives’ Submission

Paul concludes this section to wives, verses 22-24, by indicating that wives should submit to their husbands “in everything” (en panti). The phrase is all-encompassing: submission must encompass all aspects of life. This removes the misunderstanding that some may have had, or others may still have, that Paul is speaking simply about submission in sex or some other narrow realm. Since by God’s decree marriage partners are “one flesh,” God wants them to function together under one head, not as two autonomous individuals living together. Since Paul is concerned about that unity, we should be concerned about it too.

Paul does not feel it necessary to add to the phrase in everything that all disobedience to God is excepted (cf. Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men!”; cf. also Acts 4:19, 20).¹³ This goes without saying. Nor does he mean by this to stifle the wife’s thinking and acting. Rather, he wants that thinking and acting to be shared with her husband (as his is to be shared with her) and for her to be willing to submit to his leadership “in everything.” The wife should not act unilaterally. Just as the church should willingly submit to Christ in all things and, if it does so, will not find that stifling, demeaning, or stultifying of growth and freedom, so also wives should willingly submit to their husbands in all things and, if they do so, will not find that stifling, demeaning, or stultifying.

But does this mean husbands can rule their wives insensitively? Of course not! Paul rules out elsewhere the idea that anyone in authority should “lord it over” those he leads (2 Corinthians 1:24), just as Peter insists that the elders to whom young men submit must not lord it over those under them (1 Peter 5:3). Paul takes this for granted here. He handles the question of the use (or misuse) of the husband’s authority shortly in his words to the husband. To that we will turn momentarily. The important thing for the wife to know is that she should submit to her husband “in everything,” that is, that her submission is coextensive with all aspects of their relationship.

With the words submit to and head, the apostle states the basic roles of wives and husbands, respectively. God established those roles at creation, and they have as their analogue the roles of Christ and His church. Thus Paul can urge this special relationship of wife and husband because God in creation established it and Christ in His redeeming love to the church models and substantiates it for the redeemed community. W. J. Larkin puts this consideration adeptly when he says that “the instruction for conduct in marriage in Ephesians 5:22-33 becomes unquestionably binding when seen as a reflection of Christ’s relation to the church.”¹⁴

Instructions to husbands and wives in the New Testament always focus first on wives and their responsibility to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1ff.). Both Peter and Paul reaffirm the role relationship God established by creation before they deal with how men and women should conduct themselves in that relationship. The divinely instituted form must come first, before one talks about how to live within it. This is a permanently significant lesson.

Furthermore, Paul always addresses those under authority before those in authority: wives before husbands, children before parents, servants before masters (Ephesians 5:22-6:9; Colossians 3:18-4:1). The rationale for the first two of these relationships¹⁵ would seem to be that the divinely instituted relationship is best preserved when the divine order inherent in it is made plain by urging compliance on those under authority first, before addressing those in authority. The apostle may then command those in authority to exercise their authority with loving concern that does not run roughshod over those under authority, tempting them to challenge the divinely established relationship. Having established the divinely given character of the institution and the divinely given roles, the apostle now spells out the attitudes with which those in that institution should fulfill their respective roles.

The Attitudes of Love and Respect

On this backdrop Paul addresses husbands: “Husbands, love your wives …” (Ephesians 5:25; Colossians 3:19). The key word, love, appears six times in Ephesians 5:25-33. It denotes the husband’s duty to his wife. Interestingly enough his role, headship, was stated in the section addressed to his wife (verse 23), not in the section addressed to him. Paul does not say to husbands, “Be head over your wife!” Instead he commands them, twice, to love their wives (verses 25 and 28): “Husbands, love your wives,” and, “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” The command is explicated by reference to the analogy of Christ’s love for the church (verses 25ff.) and by the way one loves one’s own body (verse 28): by nourishing and cherishing it (verse 29). In the comparison made with Christ’s love for the church, Paul emphasizes the self-giving character of that love (verse 25) and its concern to benefit the other so that life together will be wonderful (verses 26, 27).

• Loving as Christ Loved

Paul’s direct command to husbands is to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her …” (verse 25). This is clearly how the apostle demands that the husband exercise his leadership in everything as the head over his wife. He is to love her “just as” (kathos) Christ loved the church. Just as the church, in submitting to Christ, was the model for the wife in submitting to her husband as her head (verses 23, 24), so now Christ, in His love for the Church, is the model for the husband in loving his wife. The character and description of that love are stated in the words “and gave himself up for her” (verse 25). In these few key words are contained the description of what the love of a husband for his wife should be.

First, the loving husband gives of himself. In his leadership role as head, he seeks to lead by giving of himself to his wife in ways analogous to how Christ gave Himself to His bride. Christ’s giving of Himself was personal and sacrificial. This great principle of self-giving sets the tone and points toward the many ways in which this love can be manifested and realized.

Second, Christ’s giving of Himself was for the benefit of His bride—He gave Himself up “for her.” Just so, the husband’s self-giving should be for his wife’s benefit. In short, we may speak of this love as a giving of oneself for the benefit of the other.

Paul specifies the intended result of Christ’s giving up of Himself for the church in verses 26 and 27: “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Here we see two forces at work. First, Paul writes of Christ’s redeeming work for us. Paul always delights in explicating this, and so he seizes on this opportunity to develop these ideas. Yet the uniqueness of the redemptive work of Christ means that these aspects cannot be imitated precisely by the husband. Nonetheless, second, Paul uses the imagery of marriage to tell of Christ and the church: Christ serves her “to present her to himself as a radiant church” (verse 27). Is it not likely, therefore, that he intended to teach that the husband’s love, like Christ’s, was to be beneficial to the wife, just as Christ’s love was to the church?¹⁶ Just as Christ works to present His church to Himself as a glorious bride in a glorious marriage, should not the husband work to make his wife glorious and their marriage glorious?

• The Implications of Being One Flesh

The apostle continues with his insistence on the husband’s loving his wife by restating the charge in verse 28. This time he states it in terms of a husband’s loving his wife as he loves his own body and thus as he loves himself. Thus he not only introduces a new dimension to that love but also intertwines it again with the imagery of Christ’s love for the church, His beloved, His body.

The new element is that the husband “who loves his wife loves himself” (verse 28b). Many commentators have suggested that this reflects the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18; compare the reflexive “himself” in Ephesians 5:33).¹⁷ More importantly, Paul first states the command by speaking of husbands’ loving “their own bodies” (verse 28a). This use of “bodies” instead of “themselves” may have come about by the influence of Genesis 2:24, quoted in verse 31, which speaks of the couple as “one flesh.” The analogy of Christ and the church may also have influenced the choice of words, since it is body (soma) rather than flesh that Paul has already used in Ephesians to denote the church (1:23; 2:16; 4:4, 12, 16, and, most importantly, in the beginning of this account in 5:23) and that he reiterates shortly (5:30). Thus the command to “love their wives as their own bodies” reflects the love of Christ for the church, His body (verse 30). At the same time, the word body provides a link to the one-flesh concept of Genesis 2:24, a verse Paul quotes in verse 31.

Paul does all this while applying the general commandment of Leviticus 19:18, “love your neighbor as yourself,” in a very direct way to the love the husband should have for his nearest and dearest neighbor, his wife. In so doing, Paul ties together the creation ordinance about marriage (Genesis 2:24), the great commandment about loving one’s neighbor (Leviticus 19:18), and the sublime pattern of Christ’s love for His bride, the church. No greater combination could be conceived of than the combination of God’s sanctions in creation, commandment, and redemption.

Having joined these concepts together, the apostle shows how this love is to be expressed by reminding the husband that he “feeds and cares” for his own flesh (verse 29). With these two verbs, ektrephei and thalpei, Paul uses the emotionally evocative language of nurturing care to communicate what it means to love one’s wife. The word thalpo literally means to keep warm and, figuratively, to cherish and to comfort. Paul’s only other use of this verb is in 1 Thessalonians 2:7, where, in powerful imagery, he speaks of his love for the Thessalonians: “we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares (thalpo) for her own children” (NASB). He develops his thought in the next verse by saying: “Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart¹⁸ to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear [beloved]¹⁹ to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8, NASB). In Thessalonians we see again the same elements we find in Ephesians, although in a different but similar setting. The one “cherished” is the one to whom one gives not only the highest good, the gospel, but also one’s very own life because that one is “beloved.” Ephesians says that because a husband loves his wife, he will give his life for her good and will express his love by nourishing and cherishing her, the beloved. The terms feed and care communicate these truths with a delightful fragrance that must be worked out and applied in the numerous, variegated, nitty-gritty situations of life.

• The Tenderness of Godly Headship

Paul also addresses the danger of husbands’ being overbearing toward their wives, or “harsh with them” (Colossians 3:19). Paul alludes to that attitude in Ephesians in his remark that “no one ever hated his own body” (Ephesians 5:29), and in the Colossians account (where he does not develop the concept of love as he does in Ephesians) he explicitly demands as a corollary to the command, “Husbands, love your wives,” the parallel command, “do not be harsh with them.”

In so doing Paul emphasizes that the headship of the husband over his wife must not be negative, oppressive, or reactionary. Instead, it must be a headship of love in which the husband gives of himself for his wife’s good, nourishing and cherishing the beloved one who, as his equal, voluntarily submits to his headship. Paul has thus given two great truths with respect to the husband: first, that he is the head of his wife, and second, that he must exercise his headship in love.

• Submitting as the Church Submits

Similarly, Paul has given two great truths with respect to the wife’s role and how she should carry it out. The introductory verses of this section, with which we have already dealt in part, insisted that her role is to submit (as an equal) to her husband as her head (verses 22-24). We have left aside for the time being Paul’s instructions about how this should be done, except to note the helpful analogy of the church’s submission to Christ. Now we need to return to this matter.

The key phrases in this portion of Paul’s instructions to wives are “as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22), “as is fitting in the Lord” (Colossians 3:18), “in everything” (Ephesians 5:24, which we considered above under the role itself), and “the wife must respect her husband” (Ephesians 5:33).

Because the headship of the husband is established by God, the husband who fulfills that role does so as a servant of God, and the leadership given to him in this role expresses God’s authority in the marriage. Hence Paul finds it appropriate to appeal to the wife to submit to her husband “as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). “As” (hos) indicates the manner of her submission. She should submit to her husband as she submits to the Lord. The comparative “as to the Lord” conjures up what should and does characterize the godly submission a Christian renders to the Lord Jesus. This one qualification says it all, even though Paul goes on to explicate it in the verses that follow. (In view of Paul’s calling for submission “as to the Lord,” we gain a better appreciation of Peter’s commendation of Sarah’s calling Abraham “lord” and, particularly, of the fact that, as evidence of her submission to her husband, Sarah “obeyed Abraham” [1 Peter 3:6.])

The phrase “in everything” (Ephesians 5:24)²⁰ denotes the comprehensiveness of her submission. In view of the previous use of the word Lord with specific reference to Christ (verse 20), “the Lord” in view in Ephesians 5:22 is undoubtedly Jesus Christ, a fact reinforced by Paul’s writing next of Christ’s Lordship over the church and the church’s submission to His headship as the model for how the woman is to submit to her husband.

The words in Colossians 3:18, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” are qualified by the words “as is fitting in the Lord” (the Greek for “in the Lord” is en kurio²¹ ). Here again as (hos) is used. Therefore to say that such submission “is fitting”²² “as … in the Lord” means that it is appropriate to being under the Lordship of Christ²³ or, to paraphrase, of being a Christian.²⁴ The apostle thus asserts that such submission is proper for Christian wives because it is what our Lord expects. The best illustration of this is another passage commanding this submission, Titus 2:4, 5. There also wives are urged to “be subject to their husbands”²⁵ (verse 5). Paul insists that this exhortation is “in accord with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). Thus the submission of wives to their husbands is not some concession to contemporary mores but is that which abides by scriptural teachings of Christianity (including the doctrine that in Christ there is neither male nor female, which Paul taught in Galatians 3:28).

To return to Colossians 3:18, to “submit to your husbands” is “fitting” or appropriate to the standing wives have “in the Lord.” To put it theologically, redemption in Christ undergirds and commends the wife’s submission to her husband according to God’s design at creation rather than, as some feminists claim, overturning a submission rooted only in the fall. Since Paul warns husbands against sinful abuse of their headship through harshness (Colossians 3:10), perhaps this admonition to wives to submit “as is fitting in the Lord” is not only an encouragement to them to render voluntary submission but also a warning lest they presume that their standing in the Lord justifies their acting as if there were no distinguishable roles for wives and husbands “in the Lord.”²⁶

• Showing Respect for the Husband’s Headship

The last exhortation to wives about how they should submit to their husbands is found in Ephesians 5:33: “. . . the wife must respect her husband.” The key word here is the verb respect (so rendered by a number of modern English translations, e.g., RSV, NASB, NIV, NEB).²⁷ This rendering of the Greek phobeo is proper. Paul uses respect here in the sense of treating the husband’s leadership with dutiful regard and deference. The Greek verb is used similarly in an analogous situation where one human is urged to render respect (or reverence) to another (Leviticus 19:3, LXX: “Let every one of you reverence his father and his mother”). There, as here in Ephesians, the respect called for is primarily to the role the person occupies and not to the particular merits of the person.

Probably Paul chose phobeo in his final charge to wives to correlate his exhortation to them with his exhortation to all Christians, “Submit to one another out of reverence (phobo) for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). By using a concept he had previously used of the Lord Jesus Christ, he also correlates this concluding exhortation to wives with his initial one (verse 22), which said that they should be subject to their own husbands “as to the Lord.”

The respect asked of a wife recognizes the God-given character of the headship of her husband and thus treats him with dutiful regard and deference. Just as husbands have been asked to display their headship through likeness to Christ’s headship over His church, that is, through a love that cherishes and nourishes (verse 25, 28, 29), so now wives are asked to render their submission in a way that is most like that of the submission of the church to Christ, that is, a truly respectful submission because it is rendered voluntarily from the heart. A wife’s respecting her husband and his headship therefore implies that her submission involves not only what she does but also her attitude in doing it. As with the husband, so with the wife, it is the heart’s attitude of grateful acceptance of the role God assigns to each and the determination to fulfill the particular role with all the graciousness God gives that Paul is urging on both wives and husbands in this last verse of his instruction.

The Analogy of Christ and the Church

Before concluding this discussion, we need to call attention to one more remarkable aspect of this passage. After quoting Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31), Paul gives an interpretation that shows God’s purpose in marriage: “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (verse 32).

Unbeknownst to the people of Moses’ day (it was a “mystery”), marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be a picture or parable of the relationship between Christ and the church. Back when God was planning what marriage would be like, He planned it for this great purpose: it would give a beautiful earthly picture of the relationship that would someday come about between Christ and His church. This was not known to people for many generations, and that is why Paul can call it a “mystery.” But now in the New Testament age Paul reveals this mystery, and it is amazing.

This means that when Paul wanted to tell the Ephesians about marriage, he did not just hunt around for a helpful analogy and suddenly think that “Christ and the church” might be a good teaching illustration. No, it was much more fundamental than that: Paul saw that when God designed the original marriage He already had Christ and the church in mind. This is one of God’s great purposes in marriage: to picture the relationship between Christ and His redeemed people forever!

But if this is so, then the order Paul is speaking of here (submission and love) is not accidental or temporary or culturally determined: it is part of the essence of marriage, part of God’s original plan for a perfect, sinless, harmonious marriage. This is a powerful argument for the fact that Christlike, loving headship and church-like, willing submission are rooted in creation and in God’s eternal purposes, not just in the passing trends of culture.

Wives, Children, and Slaves?

It is argued sometimes that this list of duties and responsibilities simply reflects the cultural approach to these matters found in the New Testament period and that the apostle is simply asking for conformity to the practices of the day so that the gospel itself will not be hurt by Christians’ violating contemporary mores. The argument is then pressed by saying that if we today do not maintain slavery on the basis of Ephesians 6:5-9, we should also not argue from this passage about the differentiating roles of wives and husbands, because we now know (better than the first-century Christians, and Paul) that they are on a par. That is, the existence of slavery and slaves’ submission to their masters and the submission of wives to their husbands stand or fall together.²⁸

Space does not permit a full response to this argument here,²⁹ but certain remarks are necessary. It is true that these three relationships (husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves) are dealt with here as a kind of unit. They are treated one after another as different relationships within the larger household moving from the most central (husbands and wives) to the next most crucial (parents and children) to the extended relationship that might exist in some households (masters and slaves). But if the argument advanced above is true, then it cuts all the way across the board. Not only would the teaching about husbands and wives cease to be normative and fall away with slavery, but so would the teaching about parents and children, which is positioned between the other two relationships! The argument would have this effect by insisting that these three are on a complete par. But that aspect of the argument is flawed. It assumes that these relationships treated one after another in this section are thereby placed on the same level and are presumably handled by Paul with the same kind of considerations. Further reflection on these different relationships shows that this is not so.

Take, for example, parents and children. Paul appeals to the Fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12, cited in Ephesians 6:2) to substantiate his command, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). Thus Paul reaches back to a permanent moral command from God (given in a time and place much earlier than and quite different from that of Ephesians) as the linchpin for his instruction to children. Thus the demise of slavery does not sweep this permanent moral command for children away, for the two relationships are not inseparably connected as to their essence, but only exist side-by-side because slavery fit into the larger household setting of that day.

The inherent differences are seen also by noticing that no permanent moral command or any other moral absolute with reference to slavery is used in Paul’s instructions to slaves. He simply gives them instructions on how to carry out appropriate work duties and relationships with appropriate Christian attitudes as they find themselves in the then existing institution of slavery. This is analogous to the way Moses is represented by Jesus as having given instruction about what a man must do when he divorces his wife (“because of your hardness of heart”) without thereby indicating (as some then and there implied to Jesus) that Moses approved of or encouraged divorce (see Matthew 19:7—8). Furthermore, Paul elsewhere indicates that a slave could properly become free (1 Corinthians 7:21) and therefore he does not treat slavery as a divinely ordained institution as he does that of parents and children—and as he does that of husbands and wives. For both the existence of the marriage relationship and the roles required of each one in it are in the Ephesians passage (and elsewhere) related by Paul to the creation account and God’s decisive actions and instructions in that most basic and foundational event. Thus there is a great divide between husband and wives, and parents and children on one side of this list of household relationships, and masters and slaves on the other side.

So we see that the appeal to the fact that slavery is handled alongside the relationships of husbands and wives and parents and children and that therefore they must be regarded in the same way is an error which is popularly referred to “as comparing apples with oranges” and also as the error of “guilt by association.” Each relationship must be evaluated in terms of the degree of absoluteness and permanence the apostle intended for it. It certainly is evident that he was both treating marriage as a permanent and absolute institution ordained by God and teaching respectively a specific role for the wife and a specific role for the husband as a divinely prescribed duty for each.

Conclusion

The instruction about wives and husbands found in Ephesians and Colossians, expressed in the key terms “be subject” for wives and “head” for husbands, teaches distinctive roles for wives and husbands. That instruction may be summarized both as a divinely mandated leadership role for husbands in the marriage relationship and a divinely mandated submission to that leadership for wives. The fact that Paul appeals to the creation activity of God with reference to husbands and wives in Ephesians and that in 1 Corinthians 11 he grounds the headship of men in that creation activity of God shows that the apostle regards these roles and the pattern of the role relationship itself as divinely given. His instruction also demands that the respective roles be expressed and fulfilled according to the analogue of the relationship between Christ the head and the church his body. Thus the roles should reflect the actions and attitudes appropriate to that wonderful relationship between Christ and His church. Husbands must therefore exercise their headship with a “love” that “nourishes and cherishes” and that puts aside all “bitterness.” Wives must voluntarily submit themselves to their husbands “as to the Lord” with “all respect” because this is in accord with their standing “in the Lord.”

The apostle has expressed in Ephesians (5:21-33) and Colossians (3:18-19) the same pattern as that which is found elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 11:1-3, 8-9; Titus 2:4-5; 1 Timothy 2:11-14; 1 Peter 3:1-7). And he has also demanded, as was done similarly by the Apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:1-7), that the respective roles be carried out with all the graciousness that the redeeming grace of Christ has brought to each and continues to accomplish in each in their respective roles as a wife and as a husband. In short, as analogues of Christ and His church, the husband is asked to exercise, with love, a headship over his wife and the wife is asked to submit, with respect, to her husband.

Copyright 1997 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. All rights reserved.

¹ The summary statement of verse 21 is of course also a transition to his treatment of other groups found in the enlarged household, children and parents, 6:1-4, and slaves and masters, 6:5-9.

² For the manuscript evidence, see the textual apparatus of The Greek New Testament of the United Bible Societies.

³ The other occurrences of allelon in Ephesians are 4:2, 25, 35.

⁴ Noted by F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (NICNT, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 382.

⁵ For example, James B. Hurley, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, and Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1981), pp. 140ff., with the qualification that it is “appropriate if it is addressed to the congregation at large and exemplified in these three relations in which one member must yield to another” (p. 141). The first part of this qualification (“addressed to the congregation at large”) seems almost the same as the mutual submission position that is suggested above. The second part of this qualification, however, moves away from the idea of mutual submission by indicating that the submission called for is in specific relationships, i.e., “exemplified in these three relations in which one member must yield to another.”

⁶ Editor’s note: Dr. Knight presents a clear argument for the view that verse 21 teaches mutual submission of all Christians to one another and that verses 22ff. teach specific kinds of submission. This interpretation is widely held and its implications are consistent with the overall argument of Dr. Knight’s chapter and of this book. It is also consistent with the overall ethical teaching of Scripture that we should submit to one another in the way Dr. Knight defines submission, that is, to act in a loving, considerate, self-giving way toward one another. However, within the broad range of agreement in this book, there is room for another interpretation of Ephesians 5:21: that it does not teach mutual submission at all, but rather teaches that we should all be subject to those whom God has put in authority over us—such as husbands, parents, or employers. In this way, Ephesians 5:21 would be paraphrased, being “subject to one another (that is, to some others), in the fear of Christ.”

The primary argument for this alternative view is the word hupotasso itself. Although many people have claimed that the word can mean “be thoughtful and considerate; act in love” (toward another), it is doubtful if a first-century Greek speaker would have understood it that way, for the term always implies a relationship of submission to an authority. It is used elsewhere in the New Testament of the submission of Jesus to the authority of His parents (Luke 2:51); of demons being subject to the disciples (Luke 10-17—(clearly the meaning “act in love, be considerate” cannot fit here); of citizens being subject to government authorities (Romans 13:1, 5; Titus 3:1, 1 Peter 2:13); of the universe being subject to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:27; Ephesians 1:22); of unseen spiritual powers being subject to Christ (1 Peter 3:22); of Christ being subject to God the Father (1 Corinthians 15:28); of church members being subject to church leaders (1 Corinthians 16:15-16 [with 1 Clement 42:4]; 1 Peter 5:5); of wives being subject to their husbands (Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:5; cf. Ephesians 5:22, 24); of the church being subject to Christ (Ephesians 5:24); of servants being subject to their masters (Titus 2:9; 1 Peter 2:18); and of Christians being subject to God (Hebrews 12:9; James 4:7). None of these relationships is ever reversed; that is, husbands are never told to be subject (hupotasso) to wives, the government to citizens, masters to servants, or the disciples to demons, etc. (In fact, the term is used outside the New Testament to describe the submission and obedience of soldiers in an army to those of superior rank; see Josephus, War 2,566, 578; 5.309; cf. the adverb in 1 Clement 37:2. Cf. also Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek- English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, suppl. E. A. Barber, et al. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], p. 1897, which defined hupotasso [passive] to mean “be obedient.”) The word is never “mutual” in its force; it is always one-directional in its reference to submission to an authority. This does not seem to be contradicted by the passages cited by Dr. Knight, because in none of those passages is the person in authority told to “submit” (hupotasso) to the person under that authority—rather, other words are used to encourage love, thoughtfulness, etc. So we may ask, why should we assign hupotasso a meaning in Ephesians 5:21 that it is nowhere else shown to have?

Therefore it seems to be a misunderstanding of Ephesians 5:21 to say that it implies mutual submission. Even in Ephesians 5:22-24, wives are not to be subject to everyone or to all husbands, but to “their own husbands”—the “submission” Paul has in mind is not a general kind of thoughtfulness toward others, but a specific submission to a higher authority. But should not the verb hupotasso in verse 22 (whether implicit or explicit) take the same sense it does in verse 21?

The reason the mutual submission interpretation is so common is that interpreters assume that the Greek pronoun allelous (“one another”) must be completely reciprocal (that it must mean “everyone to everyone”). Dr. Knight has cited some texts where allelous does mean “everyone to everyone,” but that is not the case in all of its uses, and it certainly does not have to take that meaning. There are many cases where it rather means “some to others;” for example, in Revelation 6:4, “so that men should slay one another” means “so that some would kill others” (not “so that every person would kill every other person,” or “so that those people being killed would mutually kill those who were killing them,” which would make no sense); in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens” means not “everyone should exchange burdens with everyone else,” but “some who are more able should help bear the burdens of others who are less able”; 1 Corinthians 11:33, “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” means “some who are ready early should wait for others who are late”; etc. (cf. Luke 2:15; 21:1; 24:32—there are many examples where the word is not exhaustively reciprocal). Similarly, in Ephesians 5:21, both the following context and the meaning of hupotasso require allelous here to mean “some to others,” so that the verse could be paraphrased, “those who are under authority should be subject to others among you who have authority over them.” Therefore, according to this (alternative) interpretation, it would seem best to say that it is not mutual submission but submission to appropriate authorities that Paul is commanding in Ephesians 5:21. (This view of Ephesians 5:21 would be consistent with how James Hurley views the structure of the passage, as noted in footnote 5 above.)

⁷ Cf., e.g., Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), pages 153ff. There is much to commend and agree with in Bilezikian’s expression of his understanding of the New Testament teaching about mutual submission. What is terribly erroneous is that he plays this off against distinguishable roles so that, in effect, it serves for him to negate the distinguishable and different roles that Paul sets forth for the husband and the wife. Although one might not choose to use the word hierarchical, it seems evident that Bilezikian is attempting to use mutual submission to rule out role differences in the following quotes: “By definition, mutual submission rules out hierarchical differences” (p. 154), and, “We conclude that mutual subjection … renders hierarchical distinctions irrelevant within the Christian communities of church and family” (p. 156; cf. also his title Beyond Sex Roles).

⁸ Cf. J. E. Crough, The Origin and Intention of the Colossian Haustafel (FRLANT 109, Gottingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht, 1972), p. 110, who indicates that this is a voluntary submission based on one’s own recognition of God’s order.

⁹ The respective passages in abbreviated form read as follows: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands”; “Wives, be subject (hupotassesthe) to your husbands”; “wives be submissive (hupotassamena) to your own husbands”; “the young women … subject (hupotassamenas) to their own husbands.” When Paul deals with role relationships and leadership in the family of God, the church, he uses the related noun and expresses the same principle: “Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness (hupotage). But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:11-12).

¹⁰ J. P. Sampley, “And the Two Shall Become One Flesh”: A Study of Traditions in Ephesians 5:21-23 (NTSM 16, Cambridge: University Press, 1971), p. 29.

¹¹ Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed., trans. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, rev. F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 848, section 1bb.

¹² Verse 24 begins with the word but (alla), which has caused some difficulty to commentators and has been omitted by various translations. F. F. Bruce’s handling of the significance of this is so helpful that it merits quoting at length. His treatment incorporates statements of J. A. Robinson in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (London: James Clarke Co., n.d.), pp. 124, 205, and they are indicated by quotation marks within the block quote that follows:

J. A. Robinson points out that the conjunction need not have adversative force. It is used here rather “to fix the attention on the special point of immediate interest.” The apostle, having made the general point that “it is the function of the head to plan for the safety of the body, to secure it from danger and to provide for its welfare,” checks himself from a fuller exposition of this and resumes his main line of thought: “but—for this is the matter in hand—as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their husbands in everything.” This is the most satisfactory account of the connection between vv. 23 and 24, since v. 24 is largely resumptive of v. 22, adding a reference to the church’s submission to Christ as the pattern for the wife’s submission to her husband.

¹³ The principle that God expects His people to disobey when a human authority commands them to sin is affirmed in several passages of Scripture: see Exodus 1:17-21; Daniel 3:12-18; 6:10; Hebrews 11:23.

¹⁴ W. J. Larkin, Jr., Culture and Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), p. 109.

¹⁵ Some people argue that because the submission involved in slavery has been done away with slavery itself, so also the submission of wives to husbands should be done away, since the two relationships are both treated in the same extended passage (Ephesians 5:21-6:9). Later in this chapter we will discuss the nature of the institution of slavery and how our understanding of it relates to and may or may not impinge on our understanding of the relationship of wives and husbands.

¹⁶ Cf. P. T. O’Brien’s comment on what is entailed in the command to husbands to love their wives in Colossians 3:18. He says that the husband’s love “involves his unceasing care and loving service for her entire well-being.” (Colossians, Philemon [Word Bible Commentary, Waco, TX: Word, 1982], p. 223). His whole treatment of Colossians 3:18-19 (pp. 214-224) merits reading.

¹⁷ Bruce, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, p. 391.

¹⁸ The Greek word is metadounai (from metadidomi), which is akin to the Greek paredoken (from paradidomi), used as the key word in Ephesians 5:25.

¹⁹ The Greek word agapetoi, “beloved,” is a cognate noun to the Greek verb agapao used throughout the Ephesians 5 passage in verses 25 (twice), 28 (three times), and verse 33.

²⁰ For the phrase “in everything” see the discussion above.

²¹ The phrase is used forty-seven times by Paul. The occurrences in Colossians are 3:18, 20; 4:7, 17, with the closest use being the next occurrence, Colossians 3:20.

²² The Greek word is aneken, from aneko. For the question whether this “fittingness” refers rather to cultural non-offense, see the following section “Wives, Children, and Slaves?”

²³ Cf., e.g., 1 Thessalonians 5:12, in which Paul reminds the Thessalonian Christians that their spiritual leaders “are over you in the Lord.”

²⁴ Cf., e.g., the expression of Romans 16:11, “Greet those … who are in the Lord.”

²⁵ This statement is almost identical to that in Colossians 3:18 using the same Greek verb, hupotasso, in the sense of “submit to.”

²⁶ Notice how Paul must resist that very misunderstanding in the early church (which is virtually identical to the argument among the feminists within the Christian church today) with his teaching in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, which reminded them that the headship of the man (1 Corinthians 11:3) goes back to God’s determinative action at creation (1 Corinthians 11:8-9).

²⁷ Compare the word to wives in 1 Peter 3:2: “as they observe her chaste and respectful (Greek, en phobo) behavior.”

²⁸ Cf., e.g., Virginia R. Mollenkott, Women, Men and the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977), pp. 92ff., joining to slavery the government by kings. Cf. also Paul King Jewett, Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 137ff.; Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, All We’re Meant To Be (Waco, TX: Word, 1974), pp. 91, 107, 202-205.

²⁹ See the author’s Role Relationship of Men and Women (1985; reprinted Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian Reformed, 1989), pp. 9-15, for a fuller treatment of this question, including the matter of kings and civil government.

A Survey of Old and New Testament Examples and Teaching

This chapter focuses on the valuable ministries of women in the Scriptures. This is a crucial topic for at least three reasons. First, men often have hurt women. They have treated them as lesser citizens of the kingdom, and some men have denigrated or overlooked their contribution in ministry. An examination of the Scriptures will show that women have played a vital role in ministry. One reason for the current feminist movement, although not the only one, is that some women are responding to men who have oppressed them and treated them poorly.

Second, contemporary women should be encouraged by the women in the Scriptures who have contributed to the spread of God’s kingdom message. God does not use men alone to accomplish His purposes. Both sexes are created in God’s image, and both men and women have been used mightily by God. No woman who has a desire to please God should feel that there is no place for her ministry in the church.

Third, some contemporary evangelical writers appeal to the ministries of women in the Scriptures to support the notion that there should be no limits on women’s roles in ministry today. They maintain that women and men should have equal access to every ministry function and that any limits on women derive from culture and tradition, not from the Bible, which they believe supports the full inclusion of women in any ministry.

This third area is particularly important. We will examine it carefully in this chapter, for if the examples of ministry by women in the Bible indicate that there should be no limits on women in ministry, then the church should open the doors of every ministry to women. We should be open to the possibility that we have misread the Scriptures by imposing some restrictions on women in ministry. Perhaps our culture and tradition have drawn lines and distinctions that cannot be supported from the Bible. Thus, we should listen to and evaluate carefully the arguments of those who contend that the ministries of women portrayed in the Bible demonstrate that every ministry that is open to men is also open to women.

I. Ministry in a General Sense

This chapter will focus on the third issue since that is a matter of particular debate today. Nevertheless, we should remind ourselves that ministry is a very broad word, stemming from the Greek words diakonia, diakonos, and diakoneo, and these words often convey the idea of “service” and “ministry” in the broadest sense. For example, Martha was distracted because of her “service” or “ministry” (diakonia), and the “service” being described is preparation of a meal (Luke 10:40). In Luke 22:27, one “one who serves” is contrasted to “one who reclines” (NASB) during the meal. The “ministry” in view is simply serving tables. Luke 8:1-3 tells of a number of women who were ministering (diakoneo) to Jesus and the apostles. The specific ministry they engaged in was not preaching the gospel but providing financial resources so that Jesus could carry on His ministry. First Peter 4:10 says that all spiritual gifts are to be used to “minister” (diakoneo) to one another in the church. And Paul says, “There are different kinds of service (diakonia), but the same Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:5). So in this broad sense, anything any Christian does to help the work of the church is a ministry.

Other examples of the use of the words ministry and service in this general sense could be cited, but the point to be made is this: Not all ministries that are valuable are public or official ministries. Providing food and support for others is crucial, and this ministry should not be scorned, even if one does not get public recognition for it. Many unnamed men and women of God have quietly and humbly worked behind the scenes in this way, and they have found great joy and blessing in doing so. I am not suggesting that this is the only ministry role for women. Nevertheless, it is a crucial one that should not be overlooked. Those who denigrate such a role are downplaying the function of many men and women who have labored with love.

Women, then, have engaged in significant ministries, even if those ministries were unofficial. One thinks of Abigail in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was not a prophetess and had no other official ministry that we know of. Nevertheless, her humble and gentle advice to David persuaded him not to kill Nabal. How many unrecorded events there must be of women persuading men, humbly and gently, to pursue a more righteous course! What a good model this story is for traditionalists who think being a leader means they must always know the truth and that their opinion is always right. David was certainly the leader in this account, but his humility is evident in that he listened to Abigail and was persuaded. For women, Abigail is a model of gentle and humble persuasion. There was no stridency or imperiousness about her manner. She was winsome, yet bold.

The “unofficial” ministries of women, therefore, are of great importance, and some men, by desiring leadership for its status and power as the Gentiles do (Mark 10:42ff.), have contributed to the idea that these ministries are insignificant. Such a secular concept of ministry has done great damage in Christ’s church.

II. The Argument for Full Inclusion of Women in All Ministries

The rest of the chapter will focus on the “official” or publicly recognized ministries of women in the Bible. What ministries did they have, and what are the implications of these ministries for today? We will begin by considering the evidence and arguments of those who think there are no limits on women in ministry.¹ We will not evaluate these arguments until all the evidence for the full inclusion of women in ministry is presented. Otherwise, we may be guilty of not giving both sides of the debate a full and fair hearing.

A. Prophetesses

Those who see no restrictions on women in ministry argue that the prophets of both the Old Testament and the New Testament were authoritative messengers of God. Women clearly functioned as prophetesses in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Miriam is explicitly called a prophetess in Exodus 15:20, and she led the women in singing for Yahweh’s triumph over Egypt (Exodus 15:21). The prophetess Huldah was consulted by the messengers of Josiah in 2 Kings 22:14-20. Other women probably functioned as prophetesses in the Old Testament but are unmentioned (cf. Isaiah 8:3), and Ezekiel pronounces judgment against daughters who prophesy falsely (Ezekiel 13:17-24). Compare also Nehemiah’s words against the prophetess Noadiah (Nehemiah 6:14). The problem here was not that these women prophesied, but that they did not prophesy according to the word of the Lord.

For our purposes, the most significant example of a prophetess is Deborah (Judges 4:4-5). Evangelical feminists consider Deborah particularly significant because she functioned as a judge over Israel, which would include judging men, and she exercised authority over the man Barak, who was a commander of the Israelite troops.

In the New Testament, too, women prophesy, and there may even be some indication that it was more common for them to do so. The prophetess Anna thanked God and spoke of Him when Jesus was brought to the temple (Luke 2:36-38). Peter cites Joel’s prophecy that when the Spirit is poured out both “sons and daughters will prophesy… . Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18; cf. Joel 2:28-32).

Philip’s four daughters are one indication that this promise was fulfilled, for they all prophesied (Acts 21:9). Paul also encourages women to prophesy, with proper adornment (1 Corinthians 11:5). Those who argue for full inclusion of women in every ministry point out that if Paul thought such prayer and prophecy were wrong, he certainly would not bother to explain in such detail how they should be adorned while they were sinning!

It is concluded, then, from both the Old Testament and the New, that women functioned as prophets, and they used this gift for the edification of the people of God. In addition, prophecy, according to those who argue for no limits on women’s ministries, is defined as an authoritative declaration of God’s Word; thus, if women can prophesy, they can perform any ministry. They argue that prophecy is just as important and as authoritative as teaching. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 12:28, the gift of prophecy is ranked above teaching. Now, nearly everyone agrees that women can function as prophets, for the evidence here is clear, but if women can function as prophets, it would seem that they can also function as teachers today, because prophecy is just as authoritative as teaching.

B. Women Teachers and Spiritual Gifts

Moreover, those who contend for no restrictions on women in ministry argue that women function as teachers. When Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos teach, they took him aside and explained the gospel more accurately to him (Acts 18:26). The inclusion of Priscilla indicates that she must have taught Apollos as well. In fact, Luke mentions her first, and some suggest this implies that she did more of the teaching. Such ministry by Priscilla does not seem to be a one-time affair. In Romans 16:3, Paul greets both Priscilla and Aquila. He labels them his fellow-workers in the gospel, which implies that they shared in the gospel ministry with him. Their involvement in ministry is also confirmed by 1 Corinthians 16:19, for there Paul says that a church is in their house.

The argument for women teachers is also set forth from spiritual gifts. Teaching is a spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 12:28-29; Ephesians 4:12; Romans 12:7), and yet there is no indication that women are excluded from this gift. All Christians are told to teach one another (Colossians 3:16) and to share with the community what they have learned (1 Corinthians 14:26). Surely this must include women. Indeed, Priscilla, as we have seen above, seems to use the gift in instructing Apollos. Paul also mentions women in the role of teaching in Titus 2:3.

Those who advocate no restrictions on women in ministry say that passages like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 should not be used to impose limitations on women today. First Timothy 2:11-15, they say, was not written to forbid all teaching of men by women. Paul here is only forbidding false teaching by women, or (according to others) preventing women who were uneducated from teaching men. First Corinthians 14:33b-36 was probably written to resolve a problem in the congregation where women were disrupting the assembly by speaking in tongues or by interrupting the service with questions. Or perhaps the passage quotes a Corinthian slogan or question that Paul rejects. Some also think that verses 34-35 were not part of the original text of 1 Corinthians and that they were added by a later scribe. These two passages, therefore, are designed to correct abuses by women in teaching, it is argued, not to forbid any teaching of men whatsoever. The fact that women could prophesy, which, it is claimed, cannot be distinguished from authoritative teaching, and that Priscilla engages in teaching, shows that the prohibitions in these two passages are not absolute.

C. Women as Fellow-workers and Laborers

It has already been noted that in Romans 16:3 Paul calls Priscilla a “fellow worker” (sunergos). It is instructive to note others who are called Paul’s fellow workers: Timothy (Romans 16:21; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Philemon 1), Apollos (1 Corinthians 3:9), Urbanus (Romans 16:9), Titus (2 Corinthians 8:23), Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25), Aristarchus (Colossians 4:10; Philemon 24), Mark (Colossians 4:10; Philemon 24), Jesus Justus (Colossians 4:10), Epaphras (Philemon 24), Demas (Philemon 24), and Luke (Philemon 24). Some of those listed here we know very little about, but we know that Timothy, Apollos, Titus, Epaphroditus, Mark, Epaphras, and Luke proclaimed the gospel. Does it not follow, then, say those who espouse full inclusion of women in every ministry, that Priscilla as a fellow worker did the same? Moreover, Priscilla is not the only woman whom Paul calls a fellow-worker. In Philippians 4:2, he exhorts two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to agree in the Lord. In 4:3, he says that they struggled together with him in the gospel along with Clement and the rest of the fellow-workers. The implication is that Euodia and Syntyche were fellow-workers. They struggled together in the gospel by helping Paul spread the good news of salvation.

The point can even be made more specific. In 1 Corinthians 16:16, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to be subject to the house of Stephanas and to “every fellow worker (panti sunergounti) and laborer (kopionti).” We have already seen that three women are called fellow workers: Priscilla, Euodia, and Syntyche. Paul says that the Corinthians are to be subject to all fellow-workers and laborers. It would seem to follow, according to those who reject any limits on women today, that since Priscilla, Euodia, and Syntyche were fellow-workers, these women held leadership positions in the church and, therefore, men were subject to them.

It is also noted that Paul says to be subject to “every laborer” (panti … kopionti) as well as every fellow worker (1 Corinthians 16:16). Paul often describes his ministry using this same word for labor (1 Corinthians 4:12; 15:10; Galatians 4:11; Philippians 2:16; Colossians 1:29; 1 Timothy 4:10). Indeed, the work of other leaders is also described in terms of laboring. The Corinthians are to submit to the house of Stephanas, which labors for them (1 Corinthians 16:16). The Thessalonians are exhorted “to respect those who work hard [or labor] among you” (1 Thessalonians 5:12), and these are clearly the leaders, because Paul goes on to say that they are “over you in the Lord and admonish you.” The elders who rule well should receive double honor, according to 1 Timothy 5:17, “especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.” Clearly, then, Paul often uses the verb labor to denote authoritative ministry and instruction. But Paul also mentions women who have labored. In Romans 16:6, he instructs the Romans to greet Mary, who labored much for them. And in Romans 16:12, three women, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, are said to have labored much in the Lord. Some conclude, therefore, that women were leaders in the congregations, for the word labor is clearly used in this sense in 1 Corinthians 16:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:12, and 1 Timothy 5:17.

D. Women Deacons

It is also argued that women functioned in official positions in the church because they held the office of deacon. Many scholars have argued that this is the most probable interpretation of 1 Timothy 3:11. In 1 Timothy 3:8-10 and 12, the qualifications are given for men who are to serve as deacons. In 3:11, Paul says: “Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things” (NASB). The word for “women” here (gunaikas) could be translated “wives” (as in NIV), and that is the view of some commentators. The following reasons are given to support the idea that Paul is speaking of women deacons: (1) Paul introduces the women mentioned here in the same fashion he introduced the men in 1 Timothy 3:8, i.e., he uses the word likewise. In 3:1-7, Paul lays out the qualifications for elders, and in 3:8 Paul says likewise there are similar qualifications for deacons. The likewise in 3:11 suggests that the qualifications for men who are deacons also apply to women deacons.

(2) If Paul were speaking of wives of deacons, he could have made this very clear by adding of deacons (diakonon or auton). By leaving the word women without any modifier, he implied that he was speaking of women in general, not just of the wives of deacons. (3) The qualifications Paul mentions in 3:12 are identical with or similar to those required of deacons, and this suggests that an office is in view.²

Further evidence that women functioned as deacons is found in the case of Phoebe. In Romans 16:1, Paul says that she was “a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae” (RSV). Actually, the word deaconess here is the same as the one used in 1 Timothy 3:8 and Philippians 1:1, where Paul writes of deacons. Thus, Paul is not calling Phoebe a “deaconess,” but a “deacon,” some have claimed. In addition, Phoebe is called a leader (prostatis) in Romans 16:2. The most commonly used translations (RSV, NASB, NIV) use the word help or helper here, but it has been claimed that this term is a technical one used for a legal protector or leader. If such an interpretation is correct, Paul here recommends Phoebe as a deacon and as a leader of many.

E. Women Elders

Evidence is also adduced that women could function as elders. The letter of 2 John is addressed to “the chosen lady,” and it is claimed that this does not refer to the church as a whole because the chosen lady is distinguished from her children (2 John 1, 4). The “chosen lady” refers to a woman who had authority over her children. Such authority is similar to the office of elder. Moreover, some suggest that Paul speaks of women elders in Titus 2:3. Although this is obscured by translations that render presbytidas by “older women,” it is clear that this word is a feminine rendering of the term presbyteros (elder) that Paul uses in Titus 1:5 to refer to church office.

F. Women Apostles

Most significantly, it is frequently claimed that women also functioned as apostles. In Romans 16:7, Paul writes, “Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles… .” Some commentators have thought that Junias was a man, and that the name here is a contracted form of the word Junianus. Nevertheless, this is said to be an unpersuasive argument, for there is no example in Greek literature of this name being contracted. Thus, some have said that the name should be translated “Junia” (feminine) rather than “Junias” (masculine), showing that a woman is almost certainly included among the apostles here. Others have contended that the Greek (en tois apostolois) means “outstanding in the eyes of the apostles,” not “outstanding among the apostles.” Of course, such a rendering would exclude Andronicus and Junia(s) from the apostolic circle. The text would simply say that the apostles held them in high esteem. But it is claimed that this is an unnatural way to understand the Greek, and the most probable rendering is “outstanding among the apostles.” To sum up: there seems to be evidence here that a woman was an apostle, and this raises a serious question against those who want to deny women full participation in leadership positions in the church.

G. Conclusion

To sum up, the argument often given for full inclusion in ministry is cumulative. Women functioned as prophets, and such a ministry is just as authoritative as teaching. Women possess all the spiritual gifts, and this includes the gifts of teaching and leadership. Indeed, there is evidence in the New Testament that women held the offices of deacon, elder, and apostle. All of this evidence is in accord with Paul’s designation of women as fellow-workers in the gospel. The passages that seem to limit women in ministry can be explained from the situation that Paul addresses and thus should not be used to impose restrictions on women. The burden of proof, then, is said to be on those who want to impose restrictions on women in ministry.

III. The Argument for Some Restrictions on Women in Ministry

The preceding section has rightly shown that women participated in various forms of ministry in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The question is whether its argument establishes the case that no restrictions are to be placed on women in ministry. I think not. I propose to prove below that women participated in ministry in the Scriptures, but their ministry was a complementary and supportive ministry, a ministry that fostered and preserved male leadership in the church. Thus, the ministry of women in the church was notable and significant, but it never supplanted male leadership; instead, it functioned as a support to male leadership. This view does not rule out all ministry for women. Instead, it sees the ministry of women as complementary and supportive.

A. Prophetesses

One of the strongest arguments for full inclusion of women in authoritative positions of leadership stems from the prophetic role women played in the Scriptures. Deborah, as we have seen, stands out as an authoritative messenger of Yahweh. Nevertheless, the evidence from prophecy actually indicates a supportive and complementary role for women. It buttresses the point that role distinctions between men and women are maintained. An examination of the evidence will indicate how this is so.

That women prophesied to men is clear in the case of Deborah, other women cited above, and 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. The last passage cited, however, is absolutely crucial for rightly understanding a woman’s relationship to man as she prophecies. What is Paul’s concern in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16? It is that women who prophesy do so with proper adornment. Why is Paul concerned about how they are adorned? Because a woman’s adornment says something about her relationship with men (11:3-10). Indeed, as I show in Chapter 5 of this volume, 11:3 is the key to the passage: “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (NIV). Thus, the reason Paul wants women to be adorned properly is that this adornment shows that a woman is submissive to male headship, even while prophesying. The way she is adorned indicates whether the man is the head, i.e., the authority.

The implications for our study are clear. Paul affirms that women can prophesy, but even in the process of prophesying they are to do so in a manner and with a demeanor that will not violate male headship. Paul does not place the same limits on men, and thus upholds and preserves the notion that male leadership is God’s ordained pattern in the church. Note carefully that this does not mean that women will not prophesy in church. Paul affirms that women have prophetic gifts, and he wants them to exercise those gifts in church, but he does not want them to overturn male leadership.

The only passage that creates any difficulty for such a supportive and complementary view of prophecy is Judges 4, where Deborah commands Barak what to do and is a judge in Israel. But there are several reasons why this is in harmony with the notion of male headship explained in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16: (1) Deborah is a special case because she seems to be the only judge in Judges who has no military function. The other judges also lead Israel into victory in battle, but Deborah receives a word from the Lord that Barak is to do this (Judges 4:6-7). Deborah is not asserting leadership for herself; she gives priority to a man. (2) There is an implied rebuke of Barak because he is not willing to go to battle without Deborah (Judges 4:8). Because of his reluctance, the glory that day will go to a woman (Judges 4:9), but note that the woman is not Deborah but Jael (Judges 4:17ff.). In other words, Deborah did speak the word of God, but her attitude and demeanor were such that she was not asserting her leadership. Instead, she handed over the leadership, contrary to the pattern of all the other judges, to a man.

(3) Both Deborah and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20) exercised their gift of prophecy differently from the men who possessed the gift. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other male prophets exercised a public ministry where they proclaimed the word of the Lord. But note that Deborah did not prophecy in public.³ Instead, her prophetic role seems to be limited to private and individual instruction. Judges 4:5 says, “And she used to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the sons of Israel came up to her for judgment” (NASB). Note that Deborah did not go out and publicly proclaim the word of the Lord. Instead, individuals came to her in private for a word from the Lord. The difference between Deborah’s prophetic ministry and that of male Old Testament prophets is clear. She did not exercise her ministry in a public forum as they did. Note that even when she speaks to Barak she calls him and speaks to him individually (Judges 4:6,14). And the song of praise in Judges 5:1 was sung by both Deborah and Barak together. A confirming argument for this view is found in the case of Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20). She did not publicly proclaim God’s word. Rather, she explained in private the word of the Lord when Josiah sent messengers to her. She exercised her prophetic ministry in a way that did not obstruct male headship. The prophetic ministry of Miriam is no exception to this, because she ministered only to women. “Then Miriam, the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them …” (Exodus 15:20, my italics).

(4) It is perhaps also significant that most of the other prominent judges in the book of Judges are explicitly said to have been raised up by the Lord:⁴ Othniel (3:9), Ehud (3:15), Gideon (6:14), Jephthah (11:29), and Samson (13:25; 14:6). But in the case of Deborah, there is no explicit statement that the Lord raised her up: we simply read, “Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time” (Judges 4:4). I am not suggesting that the Lord did not raise her up, for He did bring evident blessing to Israel through her, but it may indicate that the nature of her role as a prophet and a judge was different from that of the other judges in that she did not exercise leadership over men as the other judges did. Such an observation harmonizes with the three points above.⁵

Also, prophecy differs from teaching. Prophecy is based on spontaneous revelation (1 Corinthians 14:29-33a), while teaching is an exposition of received revelation. A prophet, therefore, does not hold the same office as a teacher. Prophets speak forth God’s revelation to the people, but the people go to the priests in the Old Testament to receive authoritative instruction based on tradition (Leviticus 10:11; Deuteronomy 21:5; Malachi 2:6-7). It is instructive to note in the Old Testament that some women were prophets, but never priests. It is the priests who had the more settled and established positions of leadership in Israel. This is not to deny that the Old Testament prophets spoke with great authority. Indeed, they criticized priests who abused their authority. The point is that prophecy is a different kind of gift from teaching, and when women functioned as prophets they did so with a demeanor and attitude that supported male leadership.

In addition, Wayne Grudem has argued that the gift of prophecy in the New Testament is not the same as the prophetic gift in the Old Testament.⁶ Old Testament prophets spoke the word of the Lord, and what they said was absolutely authoritative—no part of it could be questioned or challenged. Every word was to be received as God’s very word. But the words of New Testament prophets do not have this kind of absolute authority. Paul calls on the church to sort and sift the good from the bad in prophetic utterances: “Do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21, RSV; cf. 1 Corinthians 14:29-33a). When Paul says, “Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said” (1 Corinthians 14:29), he uses a verb for “weigh carefully” (diakrino) that means “to sort or sift some things from others.” This implies that in New Testament prophecies, not every word would be understood to be the word of God. By contrast, in the Old Testament, a prophet who spoke anything untrue was to be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:1-5; 18:20-22). Instead, New Testament prophecies are handled not as authoritative words from God but as spontaneous impressions or insights that may or may not be, either in whole or in part, from God. Thus, the church must judge and evaluate prophecies in order to determine whether they, either in whole or in part, are sound.

Why is this distinction relevant to our discussion? It provides further evidence, particularly with regard to New Testament prophecy, that the gift of prophecy is not as authoritative as the gift of teaching.⁷ Teaching involves a sustained and orderly exposition of divine revelation already given, while prophecy in the New Testament occurs when someone has a spontaneous revelation or impression, the whole or parts of which may or may not be from the Lord. The church does not accept such “revelations” uncritically, but weighs them carefully. Thus, the fact that women utter prophecies in church does not logically imply that they can exercise a teaching gift over men, for the two gifts are quite different.

To sum up, those women who had the authoritative gift of prophecy in the Old Testament did not exercise it in a public forum as male Old Testament prophets did. The reason for this is that such a public exercise of authority would contradict male headship. In the New Testament, women could prophecy in a public forum, but Grudem has shown that prophecy in the New Testament is not as authoritative as either prophecy in the Old Testament or teaching in the New Testament. And even if one were to reject Grudem’s interpretation, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 makes it clear that women who prophesied in the New Testament were to do so in such a way that they acknowledged and supported male headship. Thus, the Biblical teaching on women prophets does not contradict male headship; instead, it supports male leadership in the church.

B. Teaching and Spiritual Gifts

We noted above, however, that Priscilla taught Apollos (Acts 18:26), and women have all the spiritual gifts, including teaching (Titus 2:3-4) and leadership. Several things can be said in response to this: (1) It is hard to tell from the Acts account to what extent Priscilla taught Apollos, since both Priscilla and Aquila are named. It is precarious to base much on this text, since it is an argument from silence to say that Priscilla was the primary teacher. (2) Even if Priscilla did all the teaching, this is not the same thing as teaching publicly in an authoritative position of leadership. Surely, Abigail “taught” David in the passage we looked at in 1 Samuel 25, but no one would say she had a position of leadership over men. More is often established from the example of Priscilla and Aquila than is warranted from the text.⁸ (3) The word Paul uses for teaching in Titus 2:4 is not the usual one, but derives from sophronizo, which means “to advise, encourage, or urge.” In any case, this passage does not support women teaching men, because the verses say that the older women are to teach the younger women. If anything, this text supports the traditional view that sees a complementary but distinct role for women.

(4) The argument from spiritual gifts is not phrased carefully enough. Women surely have all the spiritual gifts, but does that mean that there are no restrictions regarding the exercising of those gifts? If our interpretation of passages like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is correct, then women cannot publicly exercise their spiritual gift of teaching over men. This is not to deny that women have the gift of teaching or leadership. The point is that they are primarily to exercise those gifts among women. The idea that women are to exercise their gifts of leadership and teaching with other women harmonizes beautifully with Paul’s instructions to older women in Titus 2:3ff. It is inappropriate hermeneutically to conclude from Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts that there is no limitation on women in ministry. One must consider all of Paul’s teaching on the subject, and then what he says about spiritual gifts should be integrated with his instructions elsewhere.

C. Women as Fellow-workers and Laborers

Several texts were cited above that spoke of women being fellow-workers and laborers. Since these terms are often used of men who exercised leadership, and since in 1 Corinthians 16:16 the church is called to submit to such, it was inferred that women had leadership positions in the church. But this argument is only convincing if these words are technical terms for positions of leadership, and it is not clear that the terms are technical. That women played a significant role in gospel ministry is clear from the use of these terms, but it is unwarranted to derive from these terms alone the nature of their ministry. The terms fellow-worker and laborer are vague. There are many ways that women could have been fellow-workers and laborers without holding leadership positions over men. The clear teaching of Paul elsewhere (1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 14:33b-36; 1 Timothy 2:11-15) must be the guide for understanding the role of women rather than the appeal to terms that are too vague to support the idea of women sharing full leadership with men. Women could, for example, be prophets and probably deacons (see below) without violating male leadership, and yet surely such women would be fellow-workers and laborers.

It could still be objected that Paul says to be subject to every fellow-worker and fellow laborer (1 Corinthians 16:16). Paul says in verses 15-16, “Now, brethren, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. I urge you to be subject to such men and to every fellow worker and laborer” (RSV). What is crucial to see is that the command to be subject (hypotasso) to every fellow-worker and laborer is found in a particular context, and thus it cannot be generalized to prove that women were church leaders. Verses 15-16 make it clear that the household of Stephanas and others who worked with them were the leaders in the Corinthian church.⁹ There is no evidence in the context that any of these fellow workers and laborers in Corinth were women. In fact, the only leader mentioned, Stephanas, is clearly a man. Since the words fellow-worker and laborer are vague and can refer to men or women, there needs to be indisputable evidence that women are included here as leaders in the church, especially since such leadership is not stated elsewhere. Let me put the same argument another way: The words fellow-worker and laborer do not indicate that someone is a church leader, although that does not mean that these terms are never used of church leaders. All church leaders would be fellow-workers and laborers, but not all fellow-workers and laborers are necessarily church leaders.¹⁰

One other objection should be handled. Some may conclude that the reference to “the household of Stephanas” shows that women must be included. This argument, however, proves too much. Surely, no one would say that the children in Stephanas’s house were church leaders, and yet they were part of his house. Those who want to prove that women held positions of authority over men must prove their case with arguments from indisputable examples rather than from the vague wording that Paul uses here.

D. and E. Women Deacons and Elders

Does not the inclusion of women as deacons, however, prove that they can hold an authoritative office? We have seen that many think that Phoebe is called a deacon in Romans 16:1. It should be noted, however, that the word diakonos, as we pointed out above, is often a general term, and thus one cannot be sure that Phoebe was a deacon.¹¹ And it is very unlikely that the word prostatis (Romans 16:2) is being used to say that Phoebe was a leader, as an examination of that verse shows. Paul commends Phoebe to the Romans and says “help her in whatever matter she may have need of you; for she herself has also been a helper [this is the word some think should be translated “leader”] of many, and of myself as well (NASB).” That Phoebe is being called a leader here is improbable for three reasons. (1) It is highly improbable that Paul would say that Phoebe held a position of authority over him. He says that about no one except Christ, not even the Jerusalem apostles (Galatians 1:6-7, 11), so confident is he of his high authority as an apostle (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:37-38; Galatians 1:8-9; 2 Thessalonians 3:14). (2) There seems to be a play on words between the word prostatis and the previous verb, paristemi, in 16:2. Paul says to help (paristemi) Phoebe because she has been a help (prostatis) to many, including to Paul himself. It fits the context better to understand Paul as saying “help Phoebe because she has been such a help to others and to me.” (3) Although the related masculine noun prostates can mean “leader,” the actual feminine noun (prostatis) does not take the meaning “leader” but is defined as “protectress, patroness, helper.”¹²

With respect to women deacons, we need not come to a firm decision, for even if women were deacons this does not refute our thesis regarding male governance in the church.¹³ Even if women were appointed as deacons, they were not appointed as elders (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). Two qualities demanded of elders—being apt to teach (1 Timothy 3:2) and governing of the church (1 Timothy 3:5)—are not part of the responsibility of deacons (cf. also 1 Timothy 5:17; Titus 1:9; Acts 20:17, 28ff.). The deacon’s task consisted mainly in practical service to the needs of the congregation. This is suggested by Acts 6:1-6, where the apostles devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word (6:4), while the seven are selected to care for the practical concern of the daily distribution to widows.¹⁴ Elders were given the responsibility to lead and teach the congregation. Thus, women being appointed to the supportive and complementary role of deacons supports the major thesis of this chapter, as does the exclusion of women from the office of elder. So far, what we have seen is consistent with the Old Testament pattern. Women in the Old Testament functioned occasionally as prophets but not as priests. In the New Testament, women functioned as prophets and probably deacons but not as elders.¹⁵

Some have argued for women elders, as we have seen above, from the “chosen lady” in 2 John and Paul’s reference to women who teach in Titus 2:3ff. The “chosen lady” in 2 John is almost certainly not an individual woman but a reference to the church.¹⁶ (1) John uses the second person plural in verses 6, 8, 10, and 12. The plural demonstrates that he is not writing to one person only; he is writing to an entire church. (2) Second John is much more general and less specific than 3 John. Third John was clearly written to an individual, Gaius, but the lack of specificity in 2 John suggests that a community is being addressed rather than an individual. (3) The description of the church as a “lady” accords well with the rest of Scripture. Paul and John both portray the church as Christ’s bride (Ephesians 5:22-33; Revelation 19:7). The new Jerusalem is described as a bride (Revelation 21:2). In the Old Testament, Israel is often portrayed as a woman (Isaiah 54:1; Jeremiah 6:23; 31:21; Lamentations 4:3, 22). (4) The distinction between the “lady” and “her children” in 2 John does not suggest that she is distinct from her children. The “lady” is the church as a whole; the “children” are simply the individual members of the church.

Those who find a reference to women elders in Titus 2:3 are clearly mistaken. Paul uses the word presbytidas here, which means “older women.” The usual word for “elders” who served in church office in the Bible is related but different: presbyteros (Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2, 4, 6, 22ff.; 16:4; 20:17; 21:18; 1 Timothy 5:17, 19; Titus 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Peter 5:1, 5). Now, someone might say that Paul uses this different word because in Titus 2:3 he is referring to women elders. The problem with this is that the usual word for “elders,” presbyteros, could easily have been made feminine (presbytera) if Paul wanted to refer to women elders. Paul did not use a feminine form of the word presbyteros here; he used a distinct word that never refers to elders.

Titus 2:2 demonstrates clearly that Paul was not speaking of women elders in Titus 2:3. In verse 2, Paul addresses the “older men.” Now it is clear that Paul is not referring to elders here who hold a church office of authority, for he does not use the word that indicates such an office, presbyteros. Instead, Paul uses a word that always refers to “older men,” presbytas (cf. Luke 1:18; Philemon 9). Paul could have used the word for elders that conveys church office in Titus 2:2, but instead he used a distinct word that refers to older men. He uses the related word that refers to older women in Titus 2:3. Thus, there is no doubt that Paul is speaking of older women in Titus 2:3, not of women elders.

F. Women Apostles

Of course, if Junias was a woman apostle (Romans 16:7), then a tension is created between the apostleship of Junias (if Junias was a woman) and the other arguments adduced in this chapter, for apostles were certainly the most authoritative messengers of God in the New Testament. But it should be said from the outset that this passage is unclear. Now, some scholars contend that lack of clarity is also a problem in texts like 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15, but the passages are not analogous in one respect. The texts in First Corinthians and Timothy, although they have their difficulties, contain a sustained argument, and the basic thrust of the passages is clear. Here, however, we have a single verse, and the meaning of that verse is not altogether clear. The passage is unclear in three ways. (1) It cannot be definitely established that Junias was a woman. The name may be a contraction of a man’s name, Junianus.¹⁷ Of course, if this is true, then the text is irrelevant for the question before us. (2) Even though some scholars claim confidently that the verse means that Andronicus and Junias are outstanding apostles, it is also possible that the text is saying that they are “outstanding in the eyes of the apostles.” (3) Even if we grant that Paul is speaking of a woman and he designates her as a distinguished apostle, what does he mean by the word apostle here? It is by no means clear that he is assigning Junias the same position that he assigns to himself, the twelve, and James (1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19). The word apostle in Paul could be used in a non-technical way refer to “messengers” or “representatives” (2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25). In any case, the verse is too ambiguous to be used to establish the notion that there were female apostles in the technical sense. (See also Chapter 2, Question 38 in this volume.)

In contrast, it is remarkable that Jesus did not select a single female apostle, and the other clearly apostolic figures in the New Testament are men: Paul, James, and Barnabas. Not one indisputable example of a female apostle can be given in the New Testament. G. Bilezikian says that Jesus chose twelve men to be His apostles because of the “cultural constraints” that would have made the ministry of women “unacceptable.”¹⁸ There are at least two problems with this view. (1) Nowhere else does Jesus give in to cultural pressures when a moral issue is at stake. To imply that He gave in for this reason impugns His courage and integrity. Jesus associated with tax-collectors and sinners, healed on the sabbath, commended Gentiles who had great faith, and rebuked the scribes and Pharisees. All of these actions brought considerable cultural pressure on Jesus, and yet He continued to do what He thought was right. Thus, it is unlikely that Jesus did not appoint a female apostle because of merely cultural reasons. (2) If, as Bilezikian asserts, Junias was an apostle, then Jesus’ reluctance to appoint a woman apostle becomes even more blameworthy. For just a few years after Jesus’ resurrection, the church (according to Bilezikian) is willing to appoint female apostles. Had the culture changed so dramatically in the few years since Jesus’ ministry that now such appointments were feasible? Bilezikian’s view suggests that the early church was even more courageous than Jesus, and this is surely incorrect!

It should also be said that some who argue for no restrictions on women in ministry argue from isolated and ambiguous verses, such as Romans 16:7 or Priscilla’s teaching of Apollos in Acts 18:26. Others have appealed to the fact that there were churches in a woman’s house, but that says nothing about who the leaders of the church were. The church met in Mary’s house in Acts 12:12, but there is no reason to think Mary was the leader of the church in that situation. If a woman has a Bible study in her house today, that is no indication that she is the leader of that study. It is also irrelevant to appeal to the fact that Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman, treated women with dignity, and appeared to them first after His resurrection. Of course, Jesus treated women with dignity and respect, and we should learn from His example. But such examples are not directly relevant in discussing women in leadership roles.

G. Conclusion

In conclusion, men sometimes have gone farther than Scripture and suppressed the valuable ministry contributions of women. There are innumerable ministries with which a woman can become involved in order to further God’s kingdom on earth. The ministries women do become involved in, however, should be complementary and supportive of the male leadership in the church. Such a supportive ministry does not rule out every public ministry of women when men are present. Many borderline cases depend on the demeanor and attitude of women.¹⁹ There are inevitably some gray areas in applying any basic principle of Scripture. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is clear that Biblical writers consistently ascribe ultimate responsibility to men for the leadership of the church.

IV. Valuable Ministries of Women

This chapter should not end on a negative note, for even though there are some restrictions on women in ministry, we want to highlight the valuable ministries of women in the church today. One could get the impression from this chapter that the main burden of Scripture is to limit women in ministry. Actually, Scripture lays only a few restrictions upon women. Indeed, the possibilities for ministry for women are myriad. It is not the case that there is nothing for women to do and so they might as well while away their time watching television.

No woman could possibly say that if there are some restrictions on women in ministry, then there is nothing valuable for her to do. Surely there is more work to do than can possibly be accomplished by men alone. Billions of people need to hear the gospel (most of them women and children), many people in our culture are without Christ, or they are hurting in innumerable ways. There is so much to do to advance the gospel of Christ that no woman should fear that there is no place for her ministry.

One of the most significant ministries for women (and men too!) is prayer. Without prayer, God’s kingdom work on earth will not advance. If in practice we put prayer low on the list of our priorities, then we are actually saying that it is not crucial. How we need a revival of prayer in the church today, and a seeking after God that is intense and full of faith! What a significant ministry women can have in prayer for the work of God on earth!²⁰ Both women and men should ask God to pour out His Spirit on us so that the message of the gospel will go forth in power.

Women have advanced the gospel in missions, are advancing it, and will continue to advance it. A wife can aid her husband in innumerable ways in setting up a mission station. And as a wife she can exert, by word and quiet example, a remarkable impact on a godless culture, especially since so many people in that culture will be women and children. And I think women can proclaim the gospel to men in those cultures, for 1 Timothy 2:11-15 prohibits only authoritative teaching to a group of Christians within the church, not evangelism to those outside the church. Such proclamation of the gospel is not limited to men. She should clearly explain, however (as many missionary women have done in history), that men should assume leadership roles in the governance and teaching ministry of the church as soon as it is established.

Titus 2:3-5 indicates that mature women have the responsibility of instructing younger women regarding a life of godliness. There are more women in evangelical churches today than men, and how the church needs godly women who will instruct younger women in the Christian life! Any woman who has a gift for teaching will find great fulfillment in instructing other women in this way. The church is in great need of women who are theologically and Biblically sound to instruct younger women in the matters of the faith.

There are also some ways in which women can instruct both men and women, in my opinion, if the function of authoritative teaching to men is not involved. Thus, it is appropriate for women who travel as speakers to address a mixed audience as articulate and thoughtful representatives of a feminine perspective on many experiences of life. One thinks here of the ministry of Elisabeth Elliot, whom God has used significantly. Moreover, women can exercise their creative gifts through writing, including the writing of curriculum, fiction, non-fiction, scholarly writing about Scripture, and editing. Several of today’s most widely read Christian books have been written by women.

There are so many ministries today in which a woman can advance the cause of Christ and righteousness! I will list a few here so that one can get some idea of the wide scope available: engaging in personal witnessing and joining campus organizations committed to spreading the gospel, ministering to the sick and elderly, fighting against abortion, fighting against pornography, helping with literacy, writing to government leaders to support the cause of righteousness, helping the disabled, aiding the poor, ministering in prisons, counseling and praying with the troubled and confused, supporting missionaries and the church financially, visiting newcomers to the church, extending hospitality to the lonely, using artistic gifts by ministering in music, the visual arts, drama, and theater, helping in youth ministry, etc.

Probably one of the most significant ministry roles for women, although it is not their only role, is their role as wives and mothers. Paul says that mature women are to “train the younger women to love their husbands and children” (Titus 2:4). One thinks of the godly mothers in Scripture like Sarah, Hannah, Ruth, and Mary. What a significant role they played in the history of redemption as wives and mothers! Their influence on their husbands and children is still not fully known to us. Countless unknown wives and mothers have had a tremendous impact on their husbands and children, and the influence of these women will only be revealed on the day of redemption. What a tragedy it is that women’s role as wives and mothers is often viewed as second best today! God has ordained that most women will find the greatest fulfillment in these very callings, and those who do should also realize that the example of their lives, lived faithfully with “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4), will have a lasting effect on many others around them.

Another area in which women can have a powerful ministry is with children in the church. Of course, not all women are intended to work with children. But churches are crying out today for women to work with children, and it is harder and harder to find women who are available. I think part of the reason is that our culture, even in the church, does not think such a ministry is very honorable or significant. Now, we need men to work with children as well, but, as other parts of this book show, women are particularly fitted by God to work with children. How we need women who love children to help mold our children in churches and schools by teaching and example!

Of course, other examples of significant ministry by women could be mentioned, but as we noted, the possibilities in a hurting and lost world are endless. God has fitted women for particular ministries for their own fulfillment and satisfaction and for His glory. Such ministry builds up the body of Christ so that the church can truly accomplish its work in the world.

Copyright 1997 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. All rights reserved.

¹ The argument for full inclusion of women in ministry presented here has been set forth by many authors, although there are differences among them. For a defense of full inclusion of women in every ministry similar to the position sketched here, see the following: A. J. Gordon, “The Ministry of Women,” Missionary Review of the World 7 (1894): 910-921; A. H. Stouffer, “The Ordination of Women: Yes,” Christianity Today 20 (February 1981): 256-259; S. S. Bartchy, “Power, Submission, and Sexual Identity Among the Early Christians,” in Essays on New Testament Christianity, ed. C. R. Wetzel (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1978), pp. 64-67 and 70-74; L. Scanzoni and N. Hardesty, All We’re Meant to Be, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986) pp. 78-81 and 85-90; Patricia Gundry, Woman Be Free (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1977), pp. 89-104; E. Margaret Howe, Women and Church Leadership (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982) 30-36; Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), pp. 193-206; P. B. Payne, “Libertarian Women in Ephesus: A Response to Douglas J. Moo’s Article, ‘1 Timothy 2:11-15: Meaning and Significance,’” Trinity Journal 2 (1981): 173-175, 183-185, and 190-197; J. Sigountos and M. Shank, “Public Roles for Women in the Pauline Church: A Reappraisal of the Evidence,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 26 (1983): 283-295; K. Snodgrass, “Paul and Women,” Covenant Quarterly 34 (1976): 3-13; A. B. Spencer, Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985), pp. 64-120.

² Another argument in favor of woman deacons is that Paul says nothing about the wives of elders in 1 Timothy 3:1-7. Such an omission is hard to explain if he is speaking of the wives of deacons in 1 Timothy 3:11. One would expect that higher qualifications would be demanded of wives of elders than of wives of deacons. But if Paul is referring to women who were deacons, then the omission of women among elders is because women could not be elders, although they could be deacons. Of course, those who argue for full inclusion of women do not use this particular argument because it would exclude women from being elders, even though they could be deacons.

³ That prophetesses in the Old Testament did not proclaim the word of the Lord publicly is also argued by Origen. He thinks the same pattern was followed in the New Testament, but 1 Corinthians 11:5 and 14:29-33a make this latter assertion questionable. For the original text of Origen’s comments, see “Origen on 1 Corinthians,” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1908-09): 41-42, LXXIV.279-280. For an English translation, see R. Gryson, The Ministry of Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1976), pp. 28-29.

⁴ Less prominent judges are only treated with a summary of one to three verses: Shamgar (3:31), Tola (10:1-2), Jair (10:3-5), Ibzan (12:8-10), Elon (12:11-12), and Abdon (12:13-15). The author devotes more attention to Abimelech (9:1-57), but he was clearly wicked and there is no indication that the Lord empowered or called him. All citations from Scripture in this paragraph are from the NASB.

⁵ Isaiah 3:12 should also be noted, where Isaiah asserts that women ruling over men is a sign of God’s judgment: “O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray, and confuse the direction of your paths” (NASB). Note the theme of judgment in Isaiah 3:1-4. Surely Deborah’s role as a judge was not the same as what Isaiah condemns here. Thus, we can conclude that Deborah’s role as prophet and judge was not exercised in such a way that she ruled over men.

⁶ Such a distinction, of course, raises many questions. For a careful explanation of all the issues involved, see Wayne Grudem, “Prophecy—Yes, But Teaching—No: Paul’s Consistent Advocacy of Women’s Participation Without Governing Authority,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30 (1987): 11-23. For a more extensive treatment of the same issue, see Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Westchester, IL; Crossway, 1988).

⁷ Tertullian also made a distinction between prophecy and teaching, allowing prophetic utterances by women but not teaching. See On the Veiling of Virgins, 9,1; Against Marcion, 5, 8, 11.

⁸ The same point could be made regarding Colossians 3:16. That text refers not to public authoritative teaching by believers but to the mutual instruction and encouragement that occur when the community is gathered.

⁹ That the household of Stephanas held leadership in the Corinthian church is also suggested by 1 Clement 42:4 (95 A.D.), which reminds the Corinthians that the apostles appointed their “first fruits” (aparche) as overseers and deacons, an apparent reference to the household of Stephanas, which is called the “first fruits (translated “first converts” by RSV) of Achaia” in 1 Corinthians 16:15.

¹⁰ Moreover, the word fellow worker in 1 Corinthians 16:16 is not from the noun form (sunergos), which occurs thirteen times elsewhere in the New Testament. Instead, Paul uses the participial form of the verb sunergeo. This verbal form is not necessarily a technical term for those who possess governing authority in the church, because in other contexts in the New Testament the verb is used in a general and non-technical way (cf. Romans 8:28; James 2:22). It is also most likely in the context that the fellow workers of Paul are described as “my fellow worker(s)” or “our fellow worker” (cf. Romans 16:3, 9, 21; 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Philemon 1, 24).

¹¹ One of the problems with the otherwise fine study of E. E. Ellis (“Paul and His Co-Workers,” Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978], pp. 3-22) is that he interprets the terms diakonos and adelphos more technically than the evidence warrants. Both terms are often used in a very general way and often do not refer to specific ministry roles. Since diakonos is particularly relevant for our discussion, I list the texts where it occurs so that the evidence can be examined: Matthew 20:26; 22:13; 23:11; Mark 9:35; 10:43; John 2:5, 9; 12:26; Romans 13:4(2); 15:8; 16:1; 1 Corinthians 3:5; 2 Corinthians 3:6; 6:4; 11:15(2), 23; Galatians 2:17; Ephesians 3:7; 6:21; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:7, 23, 25; 4:7; 1 Timothy 3:8, 12; 4:6.

¹² Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed., trans. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, rev. F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979; henceforward cited as BAGD), p. 718.

¹³ Although I incline to the opposite view for the reasons mentioned earlier in this chapter, there are several good arguments to the effect that women could not be deacons. We have noted previously that the use of the word diakonos (Romans 16:1) with reference to Phoebe does not establish that she was a deacon since the word is most often used of ministry in a general sense without any clear implication of church office. And a number of arguments can be adduced for the view that the women referred to in 1 Timothy 3:11 should be understood to be the wives of deacons rather than deacons:

(1) The qualification “husband of but one wife” in 1 Timothy 3:12 would naturally exclude women.

(2) Since the subject in verses 8-10 and 12-13 is male deacons, it would be unusual to switch the subject to female deacons in the middle of the discussion (verse 11) without giving explicit indication of that fact by some phrase such as “the women who serve as deacons likewise must be serious… .”

(3) A requirement for the wives of deacons would be appropriate in this context, since Paul sees the status and conduct of a man’s family as an essential qualification for church office (1 Timothy 3:2, 4-5, 12).

(4) The word likewise (hosautos) in verse 11 does not necessarily prove that women were deacons, because Paul may be commanding the wives to have the same virtues as the male deacons without implying that they shared the same office. For example, in 1 Timothy 5:25 Paul uses the same word likewise to compare good deeds with the sins described in verse 24, but no one would claim from this comparison that sins and good deeds are the same thing. Similarly, the injunction to the older women in Titus 2:3, which is introduced with likewise, does not imply that the older women are the same as the older men of Titus 2:2.

(5) Furthermore, the lack of a possessive genitive with gunaikas does not rule out the possibility that these women are wives of deacons, since elsewhere in the New Testament the possessive genitive is not used when it is clearly the case that the women or men being described are wives and husbands (cf. Colossians 3:18-19; Ephesians 5:22-25; 1 Corinthians 7:2-4, 11, 14, 33; Matthew 18:25; Mark 10:2). In conclusion, it cannot be established with certainty that women were deacons, although for the reasons stated earlier I am inclined to think they were.

¹⁴ Actually, the seven in Acts 6 are not called deacons, but they seem to carry out the function of deacons, and the verb related to the noun deacon is used in 6:2.

¹⁵ G. D. Fee, however, in 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (NIBC; Peabody, MA; Hendrickson, 1988), p. 22, argues that the term elders was used as “a covering term for both overseers and deacons.” He says on p. 78, “It is altogether likely that both ‘overseers’ and ‘deacons’ come under the larger category presbyteroi (‘elders’).” If Fee is correct, then it would be wrong to distinguish between elders and deacons as I have done above, although one could still legitimately distinguish between overseers and deacons. But Fee’s claim that both overseers and deacons belong to the larger category called “elders” is hard to sustain and should be rejected for the following reasons: (1) The New Testament nowhere identifies “elders” and “deacons” so that the latter would be construed as a subcategory of the former. (2) There is a clear and indisputable distinction between “overseers” (episkopoi) and “deacons” (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:1-13). (3) But it is also clear that overseers and elders are two terms used to describe the same office. In Titus 1:5, Titus is charged to appoint elders in every city, and yet when Paul speaks of qualifications for this office he refers to an “overseer” in Titus 1:7. The singular episkopos (“overseer”) in Titus 1:7 (and 1 Timothy 3:1-2) is generic and there is no indication that only one overseer is in view. Thus, these two terms describe the same office. Such an identification is confirmed by Acts 20:17-38. In verse 17 Paul summons the “elders” of the Ephesian church in order to address them. However, in verse 28 these same “elders” are called “overseers.” So once again we see that “elders” and “overseers” are two different terms for the same office. (4) Fee does not give any evidence to support his claim that elders is a covering term for both overseers and deacons, and the evidence we have adduced above points in the opposite direction. Thus, Fee’s unsubstantiated assertion has no clear evidence to support it.

¹⁶ For a defense of this interpretation, see: R. E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible; Garden City: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 651-655; S. S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (Word Bible Commentary; Waco, TX: Word, 1984), p. 318; J. R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John (Tyndale New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), pp. 200-202.

¹⁷ A. T. Robertson, in A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), pp. 171-173, shows that such contraction of names was common in Greek and lists numerous examples in the Greek New Testament; cf. F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. R. W. Funk (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), henceforward cited as BDF], sec. 125). A. Spencer (Beyond the Curse, 101) responds that Iounian in Romans 16:7 could not be a shortened form of the common man’s name Junianus because Latin names formed diminutives (or “nicknames”) by lengthening, not shortening the name. But Spencer either misunderstands or inaccurately misrepresents the data here, for Paul is writing in Greek, not Latin, and Robertson (p. 171; similarly, BDF, sec. 125[2]) notes that “this custom of giving short pet-names … was used not merely with Greek names, but also with foreign names brought into the Greek.” While Spencer cites James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, [1930] 1976), p. 306, to show that “Junias” as a man’s name has yet to be found in extra-Biblical sources, she fails to mention that in that same entry (p. 306) they say that Iounian in Romans 16:7 “is probably a contracted form of Iunianus, which is common in the inscriptions.” In sum, no lexicon or grammar takes Spencer’s view that Iounias in Romans 16:7 could not be a shortened form of the man’s name Junianus, and all who comment on it (Robertson, BDF, BAGD, Thayer, and Moulton Milligan) say not only that it could be but that it probably or possibly is a man’s name. See further the discussion of this issue in Chapter 2 of this volume, Question 38.

¹⁸ Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles, p. 236.

¹⁹ This is not to deny, of course, that the demeanor and attitude of men are important as well. The point is that Scripture teaches that women should support male headship by their demeanor and attitude; men are also to be humble and servants, but their demeanor and attitude is not intended to support women in authority.

²⁰ See E. Christenson with V. Blake, What Happens When Women Pray (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1975).

The Bible teaches us to call God “our Father” (Matthew 6:9). We who are redeemed by Jesus Christ are children of God (Galatians 4:1-7). These two Biblical affirmations are among many in which the Bible employs an analogy between a human family and the church. By means of this family analogy God makes some of His most precious promises to us concerning His present love, our future inheritance, and our intimate fellowship with Him (for example, Romans 8:12-17; Hebrews 12:5-11; Revelation 21:7).

The practical implications of these “family teachings” are so deep and so many-sided that we can never fully fathom them. Let us here concentrate only on one strand of implications, those for our conduct toward one another within the Christian community. The Bible invites us to use these family teachings to draw some particular inferences about the respective roles of men and women within the church. In brief, the argument runs as follows: Just as husbands and fathers ought to exercise godly leadership in their human families, so wise, mature men ought to be appointed as fatherly leaders in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-7). A particularly important role also belongs to more mature women (1 Timothy 5:9-16; Titus 2:3-5). Like wise mothers of the church, they are to train their spiritual daughters by example and word. But just as in the case of marriage (Ephesians 5:22-33), the respective functions of men and women are not reversible in all respects. Men-and not women-are called on to exercise the decisive fatherly leadership as elders.

New Testament Teaching Comparing the People of God to a Family

Now let us look in detail at the steps in the argument. First, consider the variety of New Testament teachings comparing the people of God to a family.¹ The confession that God is our Father belongs to a most fundamental strand of New Testament teaching, beginning with Jesus’ model prayer in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9) and continuing through the many instances where God is called “God the Father.” The Bible never simply means that God is the Creator of all human beings. Having God as Father implies having intimate family fellowship with Him (Romans 8:14-17) and reflecting His holy character (1 Peter 1:14-17). Christ the only Son of God has God as His Father in a unique sense. In addition to Him, only Christians, that is, those who have received the Spirit of Christ, are rightly able to cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). Those outside of Christ have the devil as their father and want to carry out their father’s desires (John 8:44; cf. 1 John 5:19).

Thus, Christians are called “sons of God” and “children of God,” in pointed contrast to non-Christians, who are outside God’s family (1 John 5:1-5). To be called a child of God has many implications. We have intimate fellowship with God the Father (Romans 8:15). Jesus Christ is our elder brother (Romans 8:29). We are legally adopted out of a situation of bondage (Galatians 4:1-7). We are no longer slaves (Galatians 4:7; Romans 8:15). We are to receive the full inheritance from God as co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). We are conformed to the pattern of death and resurrection life established through Christ (Romans 8:11-13). We share in the common family Spirit, the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14-15). We are remade in God’s image (Romans 8:29). We are born from God (1 John 5:4; John 1:12-13). As obedient children, we are to imitate the good character of our Father (Ephesians 5:1; 1 Peter 1:14-17).

Because God is our Father in this intimate sense, and because Jesus Christ is our brother and our all-sufficient advocate to the Father, we do not need any other human intermediary to bring us into contact with God. In relation to God the Father, we are brothers to all other Christians. We are to be servants to one another, and no one of us is to lord it over the others (Mark 10:42-45). Hence Jesus specifically criticizes the use of honorific titles that might contradict our status as children and undermine our sense of intimacy with God:

But you are not to be called “Rabbi,” for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth “father,” for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called “teacher,” for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23:8-12)

Jesus’ own emphasis on humility and service and the larger context of Matthew 23, where Jesus is criticizing the Pharisees, indicate that Jesus is not setting forth a legalistic rule about the mere verbal use of the words “father” and “teacher.” Rather, He is criticizing an attitude of the heart. We must always recognize the fundamental character of Christian brotherhood. Our common status as brothers implies that we should submit to Christ and serve one another.

In fact, then, Jesus’ teaching is complementary to other teachings in the New Testament epistles that do assign a special role to pastors and teachers (for example, Ephesians 4:11). The most fundamental relationship is the Father-son relationship between God and Christian believers. But God’s fatherly care ought to be reflected in the care Christians exercise towards one another within the church. For example, Christ is our Teacher in a most exalted sense (Matthew 23:10; John 13:13-14). From the fullness of His wisdom and His teaching gifts, He has distributed gifts to the church and thereby makes some people into subordinate or assistant teachers (Ephesians 4:7, 11). Christ is our Shepherd in a unique sense (John 10:11-18). He also imparts gifts to human beings who then become undershepherds (1 Peter 5:1-4). God the Father and Christ are the ultimate models we ought to imitate (1 Peter 1:14-15; Romans 8:29). But in a subordinate sense we are supposed to imitate the good examples set by more mature believers (1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 3:17; 1 Timothy 4:12; Titus 2:4, 7).

God’s Household in 1 Timothy

The theme of family relationships is particularly prominent in Paul’s First Letter to Timothy. Paul repeatedly invokes the analogy of a family in order to enable Timothy better to understand the appropriate order and responsibilities within the Christian church. Paul calls Timothy his “son,” expressing both his affection and the discipling relationship between them (1 Timothy 1:2, 18). He advises Timothy to treat an older man “as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters” (1 Timothy 5:1-2). If a widow has children or grandchildren, they should look after her (1 Timothy 5:4). But if the immediate family is lacking, the larger Christian family should care for her (1 Timothy 5:5, 16).

The overseers or elders ought to be respectable family men:²

Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to much wine, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) (1 Timothy 3:2-5)

The requirement concerning “managing his own family well” is particularly important, because the same wisdom and skills necessary for good family management apply also to the management of God’s church.³

Finally, the Apostle Paul explicitly indicates the prominent role of the family theme in 1 Timothy 3:14-15:

Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

In fact, these verses summarize the thrust of the whole letter. The phrase “these instructions” is most naturally understood as referring to the contents of the letter as a whole. Thus the letter as a whole has the purpose of indicating “how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household.”

The reference to “God’s household” could theoretically involve either of two ideas, namely, the idea of communion with God in the “house” or “temple” of God, or the idea of a household managed by God. In some contexts within the Bible, the idea of God dwelling among His people as in a temple is emphasized (1 Corinthians 3:10-17). But in the context of 1 Timothy, the idea of household order and arrangements is obviously the most prominent. The order of the church is analogous to the order of a human household. Members of the church are to treat one another as they would members of their own family (1 Timothy 5:1-2). They are to care for one another in need (1 Timothy 5:5, 16). The overseers are to be men skillful at managing the household of God, as demonstrated by their earlier skill with their own immediate families (1 Timothy 3:1-7).

The Use of the Household Idea as the Basis for Inferences

In 1 Timothy the fundamental household analogy is not merely confined to one or two incidental illustrations or colorful flourishes of rhetoric. Rather, it used as a basis for arguments and inferences concerning Christian responsibilities. The central role of the analogy is particularly clear in 1 Timothy 3:4-5, which concludes with the sobering question, “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” Paul in effect presents an argument: good family leadership must be one of the criteria for appointment to a position of overseer because the very same skills and competencies are required for overseeing “one’s own house” and the Christian “house.” Paul does not expect Timothy simply to take Paul’s word for the fact that such-and-such a criterion is suitable for elders. He expects Timothy to see the wisdom-yes, the inevitability-of this criterion on the basis of the validity of the analogy. Indirectly, Timothy is presumably even being invited to use the same argument himself, if someone else should have doubts about the matter.

Similarly, in 1 Timothy 5:1-2 we can see the beginnings of an argument. “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” The key comparative word as might possibly be interpreted as introducing mere illustrations. But all the illustrations are of exactly the same type, in that they all use the analogy between church and family. In view of the general statement about conduct in “God’s household” in 1 Timothy 3:14-15, the comparisons in 5:1-2 are to be seen as so many ways of fleshing out the implications of being a member of God’s household. We can perceive the obligatory nature of the inferences. You must treat the older men like fathers, the younger men like brothers, etc., not only because in some very general sense you must love them, but because you are part of the very same spiritual household. Conduct toward any other member of the household must take into account not merely sweepingly general obligations to love but the concrete distinctions introduced by differences in status within the household: treating some like fathers, others like brothers, others like mothers, others like sisters. Hence, 1 Timothy 5:1-2 presupposes the structure of an argument. The church is like a family. Therefore you must treat fellow church members like fellow family members.

The household analogy appears, then, to be one constituent element in Paul’s own approach to articulating the nature of Christian church order. In fact, it might easily be one means by which the Holy Spirit led Paul himself to grasp the teaching that he presents in the pastoral letters (1-2 Timothy and Titus). Of course, we do not know for certain. Paul received spectacular special revelations from the Lord (Acts 9:1-8; Galatians 1:16; 2 Corinthians 12:1-7). But he was also one who had “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Through the wisdom and insight that the Holy Spirit had given to Paul, he understood the basic principles of Christianity in tremendous depth. Under the gentle superintendence of the Spirit, he was able to give inspired teaching in his letters even on matters that his spectacular experiences had not directly addressed.⁴ Moreover, the Apostle Paul wants all Christians to arrive at a deep, principle understanding of the Christian faith. The Corinthians are rebuked for being carnal, not having the mind of Christ as he does (1 Corinthians 3:1-4). In Romans 12:1-2, Paul urges upon all the necessity of growing in their grasp of the will of God, concluding, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Similarly he says, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:10-11).

How, then, do we know what sort of order is appropriate for Christian communal life? We know, in part, because Paul tells us in his letters. But how did Paul himself know? And how does he expect us to apply his teachings in circumstances slightly different from the ones he addressed in his letters? Paul had such wisdom partly because he had deeply absorbed the fundamental teaching of Christ about God being our Father and about Christ’s saving work on the cross. Christ’s work reconciled us to God and gave us intimate family communion with God, the communion of sons (Galatians 4:1-7). We are members of God’s family. That family structure of God’s church has definite implications about the specific forms of love to be exercised within the family (1 Timothy 3:1-7), the specific kind of management needed in dealing with family needs (1 Timothy 3:8-13), and so on.

In fact, almost the whole of 1 Timothy may be seen as a catalog of types of behavior and organization needed in a harmonious family. True doctrine is necessary because the family needs to know its own rules (1 Timothy 1:3-11, 18-20). Doctrine is therefore foundational for all the more specific kinds of organization and mutual relations within the family. Mercy and forgiveness bind the family together (1 Timothy 1:12-17). Protection is necessary from destructive outside interference and for the benefit of the family’s relations to the larger world (2:1-7). The men in the family must not generate strife among themselves but be united in petitions (2:8). The women must devote themselves to family service and not to frivolities (2:9-10) or to usurping authority over men (2:11-14). The family must have wise, competent overseers (3:1-7). It must have wise care for family needs (3:8-13). In every respect it must conform to divine order (3:14-16). Proper rules and examples from the leaders are most important (4:1-16). Family members must all treat one another with the respect and honor and sensitivity appropriate to their mutual status (5:1-6:2). Those in need must be cared for, preferably by those closest to them (5:3-10). Use of money must support family goals (6:6-10, 17-19).

In sum, the theme of God’s household runs through 1 Timothy and is validly used as the basis for inferences about Christian behavior, not merely as an incidental illustration.

Male Leadership in the Church

The central use of the household analogy naturally points toward inferences regarding authoritative leadership in the church. The leadership within a family is vested in the husband and father (Ephesians 5:22-6:4).⁵ The church as God’s household also needs wise and competent leadership. That leadership is to be sought among men who have already shown their abilities in the context of their immediate families (1 Timothy 3:1-7). Women, by contrast, are not to be placed in authority in the church, because such a role would not harmonize with the general relations between men and women in marriage, as established at creation (1 Timothy 2:11-14).⁶ Thus, the differences between men and women within the context of marriage and family carry over into differences in roles that men and women may assume within the church.

Such a set of inferences is natural, once we have noticed the decisive connection between the natural family and the church as our spiritual family. But do these inferences really hold up? Let us look at the distinct steps more closely.

First, do families have a God-ordained structure of leadership and authority? Do husbands have a unique responsibility for leadership within the family? Ephesians 5:22-6:4 and Colossians 3:18-21 indicate that they do.

Second, are there irreversible relations of leadership and submission within the church? Clearly there are. The very title “overseer” used in 1 Timothy 3:1 indicates a position involving exercise of leadership. These overseers are also described as “elders” in Titus 1:5, 1 Peter 5:1-4, Acts 20:28-31. They are worthy of honor, especially when they discharge their responsibilities of leadership well (1 Timothy 5:17). Hebrews 13:17 makes it very clear that they deserve our obedience: “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

In fact, principles of submission should operate more broadly in the relations between older people and younger. Humility should characterize everyone (1 Peter 5:5b-6). But the younger men are particularly called on to be submissive to the older men (1 Peter 5:5). Paul counsels Timothy to exhort an older man “as if he were your father” (1 Timothy 5:1). Clearly, different people are to be treated differently, in accordance with the kind of people they are.

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. (1 Timothy 5:1-2)

In fundamental matters pertaining to our relation to the Lord, all of us enjoy the same privileges.⁷ We have all been justified by faith (Romans 5:1). We have all become a kingdom of priests and share in a heavenly inheritance (1 Peter 2:9-10; Ephesians 1:3-14). We have all put on Christ and are children of Abraham (Galatians 3:27-29). We are all members of God’s family or household. But these fundamental privileges enhance rather than eliminate the distinctiveness of our gifts (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). Our privileges should stimulate rather than destroy our concern to treat each person in the church with the sensitivity and respect due to that person by reason of his or her gifts, age, sex, leadership status, and personality.⁸ Such is Paul’s point in the text of 1 Timothy 5:1-2 given above. Timothy is not exhorted to treat each person in a manner mechanically identical with every other person, but to take into account the full range of personal factors that go into an intimate family relationship. Each person in God’s household is not an abstract, faceless mask to be treated according to an invariant recipe, but a full person who is to be recognized as such-as a man or a woman, an older person or younger, an adult or a child.

Must the church’s leaders or overseers be men? The Apostle Paul assumes that they are to be men rather than women when he describes them as “the husband of but one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). But could not this expression be incidental? We must consider carefully whether Paul’s rule here is intended to be absolute.

According to Paul, the fundamental principles regarding the structures of the human family are to be applied to the church as God’s household (1 Timothy 3:15). Our personal relations to others in God’s household should take into account what kind of persons they are, whether young or old, male or female (1 Timothy 5:1-2). In particular, the structure of family leadership is to be carried over into God’s household: qualified men are to be appointed as overseers, that is, fathers of the church. A woman, however capable and gifted she may be, can never become a father of a family. As a woman, she is simply not so constituted. Likewise, a woman may never become a father in God’s household. She may indeed become a “mother” in God’s household, and exercise the roles indicated in 1 Timothy 5:2; 3:11; 5:9-10, 14; Titus 2:3-5; 2 Timothy 1:5. The life of the church never overthrows but rather enhances the life of the family, based on God’s design from creation.

Such reasoning on Paul’s part is the best context for understanding Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 2:8-15. There Paul sets out distinctive responsibilities for men (2:8) and women (2:9-15). The necessity of such distinction is best understood as flowing from the fact that men and women are not interchangeable within God’s household, just as they are not within human families. Under the topic of women’s responsibilities, beginning in 2:9, Paul includes the statement that a woman is not “to teach or to have authority over a man” (2:12). According to our previous arguments, this conclusion is a natural outcome of the analogy between the church and the human family, in which the wife is not to have authority over her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24). Paul then appeals to the background of the order of creation (2:13), in which the pattern for a husband’s authority is initially established.⁹ He also appeals to the fall (2:14), in which male and female roles were not identical. Paul concludes with a reminder of one of the central and proper services of women, the bearing of children (2:15). This particular distinctive service by women reminds us more broadly of the larger responsibilities that women have in rearing children within a family.¹⁰ Thus the whole passage organizes itself naturally once we understand the centrality of the idea of family and the fruitfulness of using human households as a basis for discerning people’s responsibilities within God’s household.

In sum, Paul bases his reasoning on general principles, going back ultimately to the Biblical account in Genesis 2 and 3. Paul has an understanding of God’s plans and purposes in creating marriage and the family. Paul teaches that in the church, God’s household, women are not to exercise authority over men, just as in a human family they are not to exercise authority over their husbands. Paul understands the position of overseer as involving the exercise of fatherly care over God’s household. Hence women are excluded from being overseers on the basis of general Biblical principles concerning the family, not on the basis of some temporary circumstances.

The Inevitability of Inferences Concerning People’s Distinctive Roles

The conclusions that we have reached concerning distinctive roles of men and women in the church will doubtless be resisted in certain quarters. Nevertheless, in my opinion, church life in line with such conclusions inevitably results from the robust practice of Christian obedience and love within the body of Christ. Only temporary circumstances and difficulties within the body of Christ and within the surrounding society make genuinely Biblical practices seem less inevitable or even counterintuitive. Let us see how the process works.

Robust Christianity begins with fervent faith in Christ. When in faith we behold Christ in His true beauty and love, we begin to respond with vigorous love for Him. Love for Christ is in turn expressed and reflected in love for fellow Christians (1 John 4:20-21).

In particular, Christian love transforms the family. Husbands and wives begin to practice the Word of God in Ephesians 5:22-33 and begin to imitate the love that Christ has for the church and the submission that the church ought to practice to Christ. Christian love at its best and most intense is not merely a general, vague sentiment of love or an undefined impulse to do good. It is love in union with Christ. Our love ought to be enlivened by the supreme example of Christ, empowered by the resurrection of Christ, embodied in the practice of following Christ. In the family, such love will never find itself able to dispense with the power generated by the Christological analogy of Ephesians 5:22-33 and the Old Testament discourses about God as husband to Israel (for example, Hosea 2; Ezekiel 16; Isaiah 54:5-6). According to Ephesians 5:22-23, husbands have responsibilities like those of Christ, while wives have responsibilities like those of the church. The responsibilities are not simply interchangeable, any more than the roles of Christ and the church are interchangeable. The Bible thus moves us away from any pure identity in the roles of husbands and wives. The husbands grow in imitation of the love of Christ and the wives grow in imitation of the submission of the church. The roles of husband and wife are not reversible. The Bible contradicts radical egalitarian philosophy, that is, a philosophy that says that men and women are in virtually all respects interchangeable and that their roles ought to have no relation to their sexual constitution.

Of course there is some degree of overlap in the ways in which we may describe the responsibilities of husbands and wives. Though Ephesians 5 does not put it this way, it is nevertheless true that husbands ought to minister to the needs of their wives just as Christ serves the needs of the church, and wives ought to love their husbands as the church loves Christ. But the duties and practices of husbands and wives are not purely identical and interchangeable, precisely because they are modeled even more deeply on the irreversible Biblical patterns given once for all in the accomplishment of redemption through Jesus Christ.

Thus Christian marital practice gradually moves beyond the pure egalitarianism of some people and the immature domineering of others. Different Christian marriages may still have many differences, corresponding to the different gifts and different personalities of the two partners. But, as Christ transforms a marriage, a responsibility of overall family leadership and “headship”¹¹ begins to be practiced by husbands in distinction from wives.

Christian love also binds together all the members of the universal church. Since God is our Father, we really are in a fundamental sense one family. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the family gives us yearnings toward our fellow family members. In the long run, Christians cannot be satisfied with nothing more than a large, anonymous meeting once or twice a week. The ties of love demand more frequent and more intimate relations, perhaps alongside a Sunday morning meeting with a very large group.

As Christians meet with one another and know one another more intimately, their sense of being one family grows. They begin to treat one another in the way Paul counsels: the older men as fathers, the younger men as brothers, the older women as mothers, the younger women as sisters (1 Timothy 5:1-2). People are no longer faceless masks, but real people, bound together by family ties. The same logic operative in natural families begins then to play itself out in the church as God’s household. In the intimacy of this spiritual family, people find that they are treating one another in a manner that respects differences of age, sex, and personality.

The presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit in God’s household, as well as God’s own Fatherhood, demands the observance of household order. Quarrels, heresies, and various kinds of immaturity must be looked after rather than simply ignored or viewed with indifference. The intimacy of the spiritual family itself calls for loving involvement when there are sins and difficulties, not merely withdrawal or soupy tolerance.

In such situations, the “fathers” of the church stand out. Mature, sober, sound, godly men with exemplary family lives are the natural leaders in this extended family. First, the whole church naturally treats them as fathers and perceives the leadership abilities they exercise in their own immediate families. Second, church leadership in a situation of family intimacy is like family leadership-a matter not primarily of laying down formal rules but of setting a good example that naturally engenders admiration and that people attempt to emulate. Paul himself functions as an example in subordination to Christ, who is the example par excellence (1 Corinthians 11:1). Timothy is exhorted to set a good example (1 Timothy 4:12). The general godliness of overseers, and not merely their doctrinal orthodoxy or speaking ability, is important to Paul for the same reason. Of course mature men and women should both function as examples in a general way (Titus 2:2, 3-5). But in the particular case of overseers, we are dealing with people who must be an example specifically in their family leadership, both leadership in God’s household and leadership in their own household. That natural qualification points the church away from looking for women and towards looking for men as overseers.

Finally, note that in situations of face-to-face intimacy, the church is largely made up of whole families who as a family come to the church meetings. The church is quite likely to meet regularly in small groups in members’ homes, and the home atmosphere extends to the whole meeting. In the church meetings themselves, the fathers continue to exercise authority over their families. In Titus 1:6, Paul indicates that the elders should be men “whose children believe,” in which case the whole family would regularly come to meetings and the obedience or disobedience of children to their father would be manifest at the meeting itself (see Titus 1:6; 1 Timothy 3:4). In fact, at a church gathering the lines between family and church are not very clearly drawn, because the family comes to the meeting as a family and not merely as isolated individuals. Family worship at home and family worship with a larger group might seem very like one another, except that the larger group is the extended family-that is, God’s household.

All these factors, then, add up to generate a firm impulse to see the mature fathers in the church as the natural people to become fathers in a more extended and official sense, namely, fathers of the church as an extended spiritual family. If church life is as robust and intimate as it should be-if it is normal family life-the church will find itself recognizing male overseers even if hypothetically it did not have the specific instructions from the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9.

The Temporary Character of Modern Doubts

Of course, large sections of the church today have doubts about these matters, and some go so far as openly to oppose Biblical principles. But the doubts and oppositions arise, as I see it, from temporary aberrations and weaknesses in the life of the church and the larger society, rather than from the force of truth.

First, the Western church is deeply infected by theological modernism or liberalism. When the Bible is no longer acknowledged to be the Word of God, it is no longer clear that there is a divine standard for the church to obey, and love for Christ (if present at all) grows cold.

Second, the pace of technological and social change within post-industrial societies has made us reserved about the answers of previous generations, and our questioning extends to every aspect of society and church life. In addition, various changes in women’s education, the nature of housework, and the involvement of women in work outside the home have raised many new and difficult questions about the nature of men’s and women’s roles in both family and church.

Third, radical philosophical and political egalitarianism, coupled with sin and envy, has generated hatred of all differences and differentiations among human beings. Many today think that the rich, the powerful, the gifted, and the possessors of official authority must be brought down to the level of the mediocrity of the mass, whether or not they have obtained their situation and function through righteous means. Such egalitarianism, when extended to the family and the church, refuses to acknowledge any differences between men and women.

Fourth, many people have become sincerely concerned about past and present oppression of women and unnecessary strictures on the use of women’s gifts. Such evils do exist and should be opposed, but they do not justify radical egalitarian conclusions.

Finally, many evangelical churches today are seen primarily as lecture halls or preaching stations. People identify the church with its building, in contrast to the Biblical emphasis that those united to Christ are the real church. Moreover, the building is viewed merely as a place for hearing a sermon or enjoying religious entertainment. Such a view impoverishes our communal life as Christians. Certainly monologue sermons are important, since they are one means of bringing God’s Word to bear on the church. But God intends the church to be much more. If we think only of sermons, we have lost sight of the riches expressed in the fact that the church is the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Each member of the church is to exercise gifts for the benefit of the rest. We are all supposed to exhort and encourage one another, based on the love of Christ (Colossians 3:12-17). We are to be tender to one another as beloved children of God (Ephesians 4:32-5:1). Christian fellowship is not supposed to mean merely a superficial social time, but sharing based on our relation to God the Father and to Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3-4). We are to express intimacy and care for one another as we would towards members of our own family, since we are in fact all members of God’s family or God’s household.

But in too many evangelical churches, people have little experience of the Biblical practice of common family life. There may also be no regard for the necessity of church discipline. The church leaders are nothing more than gifted speakers or counselors (paid ministers), or else managers of church property and/or programs (whether these people are called trustees or elders or deacons). Such “leaders” are just people whose useful gifts have brought them into prominence. In such situations, it is understandable that some people may fail to see why appropriately qualified women may not exercise the key functions they associate with leadership. In fact, Christians will not fully understand the logic leading to male overseers until they come to grips with what the church should really be as God’s household.

Household Management Contrasted with Simple Communication

The analogy between family and church also helps to make clear what distinguishes the office of overseer from other roles in the church. Consider the situation within a natural family. Within a family we may find a variety of skills, abilities, and gifts. A wise husband and father will encourage the full development and use of these abilities. His leadership, properly understood, is enhanced rather than threatened by the full flourishing of the family as a whole.

For example, in a healthy situation family conversation involves rich communion, including give and take among all the members of the family. Even the children participate actively. As they learn from God and from outside sources at school or play, they may sometimes communicate to their parents things the parents did not know. The wife, as a mature person, is in an even better position to cause her husband to learn and grow through things she communicates to him. Thus the leadership belonging to the husband does not contradict many-sided communication among all the family members.

Similarly, all the family members have, in some broad sense, responsibilities for management. Even the youngest child may help to “manage” setting the table or doing dishes or caring for the cat. Wives exercise authority over their children, but they also may have very extensive projects in which they exercise management not only over the physical domain of the household but also over transactions with the surrounding society (Proverbs 31:10-31; cf. 1 Timothy 5:14). Thus management in a broad sense is everyone’s responsibility. The father nevertheless exercises an overall authority over the household as a whole.

Advocates of women overseers are quick to observe that Christian women have many of the gifts and skills necessary for good communication and good management. If they have such gifts, they should exercise them for the benefit of the body of Christ (1 Peter 4:10). These observations are basically correct, but they are in fact just as relevant and useful to Christian families as they are to the church as an extended family. In both cases, wise leaders should encourage the use of gifts. But in neither case does the existence of gifts overthrow the legitimacy of investing unique leadership in the father. Quite the opposite: the comparison with the family shows that gifts, in and of themselves, can never be a sound reason for displacing an order grounded in other factors from creation.

Since management is crucial to the argument, let us become more specific about various kinds of management. The picture in Proverbs 31:10-31 illustrates several significant types of management: management of clothing, food, money, fields, charitable gifts, purchases, and sales. All these types of management ought to be treated as instances of stewardship, since the whole world belongs to God. We are never absolute owners, but only stewards who have been temporarily entrusted with some of God’s property. In addition, management of other people should always respect the fact that people are created in God’s image. Authority over them necessarily has a character different from authority over the subhuman creation.

Men and women may vary considerably in their skills in these various areas. Skills related to wisdom and general Christian maturity help in all types of management, but some people are still more skillful in some areas than in others. Moreover, people may improve their skills as they develop maturity and experience.

Within a family, the diversity of skills naturally results in division of labor. The husband, the wife, and the children may all have some specific areas of responsibility delegated to them. If grandchildren or other relatives are living together, they are naturally included as well. In addition, consultation and imitation help family members learn from one another. Some areas of management may work out best if they are the responsibility of the whole family rather than delegated to one person.

Ephesians 5:22-6:4 and other passages about the family clearly leave open a great many possibilities for the exact form of managerial arrangements. In these matters, a wise leader attempts to work out arrangements that best use and enhance the gifts of each family member. But Ephesians 5:22-6:4 does nevertheless draw some clear boundary lines. Children should submit to their parents, and conversely the parents have responsibility for managing their children. Wives should submit to their husbands, and husbands have managerial responsibility with respect to their wives, as well as for the rest of the household. These managerial responsibilities are fixed by God. Responsibilities can be delegated to other family members in accordance with their maturity and skills. In particular, they may all engage in various types of management of the subhuman creation. But there is still a leader where the buck stops. The roles of men and women in marriage are at this point irreversible, not interchangeable.

In sum, a wise husband leads his household using the fullest consultation and conversation, and he delegates authority. In all these practices, he is simply imitating Christ’s care for the church. Christ involves us in two-way conversation and delegates responsibilities to us. Christ is nevertheless the ultimate authority in all of life; husbands, subject to Christ’s authority, have been assigned as heads of their households.

When Paul’s instructions are abused and husbands use their authority as an excuse for selfish and domineering behavior, a reaction sets in. Many people in our day deplore the oppression of women and the foolishness involving in refusing to encourage them to test and use their gifts. If people do not have proper godly models before them, it is understandable that they should think a pattern of completely interchangeable responsibilities is the only reasonable alternative consistent with the freedom given us in Christ. Yet the actual goal of Scripture is richer.

The analogy between the natural family and God’s household therefore suggests the same procedures for God’s household. Responsibilities for management may, in a broad sense, be delegated and distributed throughout God’s household. But the overseers, as fathers in the household, possess more ultimate authority. The overseers ought to be men, in analogy with the fact that the father and not the mother of a family possesses higher authority.

Advocates of women overseers also appeal to the good that has been accomplished in the past by Christian women-in particular, by women who have exercised leadership. In evaluating this appeal, several factors must be borne in mind. First, Proverbs 31:10-31 shows that some types of leadership and management by women harmonize with a husband’s more ultimate leadership (Proverbs 31:23). Second, bold but humble communication of the truth by wives to their husbands need not undermine their husbands’ authority, any more than Paul intended to undermine general state authority by his criticisms of the actions of particular state authorities (see Acts 16:37; 22:25; 23:3-5; 25:10-11). Third, family cases involving widows, divorces, and absent fathers show that sometimes women must exercise authority in the absence of any better alternatives; but such situations are far from ideal. Fourth, family cases involving domineering wives show that by the grace of God some good can be accomplished even through people and actions contaminated by sin.

All of these cases illumine by analogy what may happen within the church as God’s household. None of these cases negates the principle point that ideally fathers are to exercise overall authority in both family and church.

In particular, we must avoid confusing leadership with ability to understand the Bible and ability to communicate its teaching to others. Such abilities are valuable within the body of Christ. But when they are present in women they obviously do not imply any lessening of their responsibilities to submit to their husbands in the Lord. Husbands on their part should encourage the full use of their wives’ abilities, and they themselves may benefit greatly; but the husbands do not thereby relinquish their own responsibilities. The same holds for the overseers in God’s household.

Evil Effects Arising from Disrupting the Order of God’s Household

Maintaining male leadership in the church is not a matter of indifference. Evil effects inevitably arise when we deviate from God’s pattern. Such effects are largely the reverse side of the picture that we have been drawing. Because of the close relation between family and church, godly family life stimulates appreciation of God as our heavenly Father, and appreciation of God stimulates godly family life. Both are enhanced by the example of mature, fatherly leaders within the church. Conversely, disintegration of household order within the church adversely affects both our consciousness of being in God’s family and the quality of love within Christian families.

To begin with, absence of godly, fatherly leadership within the church makes the affirmation of the Fatherhood of God closer to an abstraction. God’s Fatherhood is, of course, illustrated preeminently in the great deeds of the history of redemption that embody His fatherly rule, care, and discipline. But we are richer in our understanding of God because most of us have enjoyed having a human father, and we are richer still if we can see the fatherly care and the rule of God embodied at a practical level in the older men of the church (Titus 2:2) and especially in the overseers.

Church order can deviate from the ideal either by lacking overseers, by having unqualified overseers, by appointing women overseers, or by redefining the office of overseer. Any of these moves tends to make more vague people’s experience of the church as a family. The lack of genuine practical correspondence between the church and Biblically-based natural families suppresses people’s ability to see the analogy. Hence they lose some of their grip on the importance of family-like intimacy and support within the church. Moreover, they cease to understand that God’s Fatherhood is expressed in His rule over us and that His rule is exercised in part through mature, father-like overseers.

In particular, radical egalitarian philosophy, which says that we are to treat all people exactly the same, hinders Christians from having the kind of sensitivity toward the age, sex, and position of others that Paul enjoins (1 Timothy 5:1-2, 17). Relations become more impersonal, and the realities of membership in one family of God recede out of Christians’ consciousness and their practice.

The practice of Christian family life is also adversely affected. Most people learn far better from example, and from teaching closely related to their leaders’ examples, than they do from teaching in the abstract. So how do they properly assimilate teaching about family life? Ideally, they imitate the family lives of their church leaders. But this imitation is most effective if they can actually see something of the family life of their leaders. For example, in a smaller group meeting in a home, they see the way the leader conducts himself with respect to the other family members present for worship. Christian worship in smaller groups becomes something very like family worship, which ought to be the heartbeat of life for each particular family. This whole process becomes confused when the distinctions between men and women, fathers and mothers, are overlooked. Ordinary families then have no direct models to build on.

Ostensibly, the feminist movement aims at freeing women from oppression. But such freedom in the true sense can come only through the divine powers of liberation and love contained in Jesus Christ. True freedom is found in obedience to Christ; anything else only constitutes some form of slavery to sin.

The family more than any other single institution in modern society desperately needs freedom and renewal through the love of Christ. That freedom comes most effectively when we are able, under God, to harness the full, rich resources that He provides. We are to teach people above all to embody in their families the model of Christ set forth in Ephesians 5:22-23. And we are to teach them by examples that we set forth in the family-like life of the church, including the godly example of mature spiritual fathers, the overseers. Hence we hinder true liberation if we deviate from the pattern of male overseers. It would be ironic if a sincere desire for women’s liberation should be corrupted in practice into its opposite, a hindrance to the liberating power of God that is at work in His household.

Conclusion

Some Christian people think Christian marriage ideally should express a radically egalitarian pattern: a husband and wife should in every respect be able to function interchangeably. If they were right, the analogy between family and church would suggest that men and women could in every respect have interchangeable roles within the church.

But they are not right. Ephesians 5:22-23 resists them, as do the other passages comparing the relation of God and His people to marriage.¹² In time, we may hope that the Holy Spirit will use the power of these Biblical passages to generate godly marriages and so prevail over abstract egalitarian sentiments. If, as I believe, these Biblical passages do provide a warrant for assigning specific leadership responsibility to husbands and fathers, we need also to recognize the same pattern within the church. Mature men and not women are to be appointed overseers. But blind obedience to a formal rule is not sufficient. We must work towards more richly embodying in our churches the realities of our common life. We are children of God, members of one divinely ruled family. Only a full-orbed expression of Christ’s love in the Christian community will bring to realization the freedom, power, and beauty derived from the manifestation of the glory of God in His household (Ephesians 3:10).

Copyright 1997 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. All rights reserved.

¹ In a more thorough analysis of New Testament teaching, it would be proper to attempt to delineate the distinctive contributions of the various New Testament authors. Paul emphasizes our legal adoption and our present and future participation in God’s inheritance. John emphasizes that God has brought us to a new birth and transformed us into people characterized by faith and love. But these distinctive emphases are complementary contributions to a unified body of divine teaching with a single divine Author.

² Overseers” ( episkopoi) and elders ( presbuteroi) designate the same people, according to J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (London: Macmillan, 1913), pp. 95-99, and many other New Testament scholars.

³ In certain limited ways, both men and women must exercise skills in management. In 1 Timothy 5:14, women are instructed to manage their homes. Proverbs 31:10-31 indicates in some detail the virtuous character and broad scope of a wife’s management. But such management is not identical with the responsibility of fathers. Ephesians 5:22-6:4 makes it clear that while wives exercise authority over their children and over business affairs, husbands exercise authority over their wives as well as over these other areas. Thus the scope of authority is different in the case of husbands and wives. Such a distinction in scope is to be understood when we compare 1 Timothy 3:4-5 with 1 Timothy 5:14. In the subsequent argument, I aim to show that the same distinction extends to the church, since the church is the household of God.

⁴ The difficult statements in 1 Corinthians 7:12, 25, 40 are, I think, to be understood in this way.

⁵ See pp. 000-000 for further discussion of Ephesians and the leadership of husbands within their families.

⁶ See below on my understanding of 1 Timothy 2:11-14.

⁷ See further below on Galatians 3:28.

⁸ Thus Galatians 3:28 is in fundamental harmony with Paul’s teaching elsewhere. Only by reading into Galatians 3:28 a social theory about the abstract interchangeability of individuals does one subsequently read out a principle at variance with Paul’s teaching elsewhere. In fact, Paul’s teaching fully affirms the richness of persons and the diverse complexity of social relations in creation.

⁹ See the discussion of Genesis 1-2 in Chapter 3 of this volume. Also relevant, though overstated at a few points, is the article by David J. A. Clines, “What Does Eve Do to Help? and Other Irredeemably Androcentric Orientations in Genesis 1-3,” Society of Biblical Literature paper, December 7, 1987.

¹⁰ For an extended discussion of 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and for interaction with the competing interpretations of the passage, see Chapter 9 of this volume. Certainly the possibility of alternate interpretations must be considered. But my interpretation, arising naturally from the prominent family theme of 1 Timothy, has an innate advantage over interpretations that must introduce highly speculative reconstructions of special circumstances at Ephesus. When Paul’s argument is understood against the background of the family analogy, it becomes clear that it would be apropos for any situation like Ephesus where people were having trouble understanding the distinctive responsibilities of men and women.

¹¹ On the propriety of understanding headship in Ephesians 5:22-33 as involving exercise of authority, see Wayne A. Grudem, “Does Kephale ( “Head” ) Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority Over’ in Greek Literature? A Survey of 2,336 Examples, Appendix 1 in George W. Knight III, The Role Relationship of Men and Women (Chicago: Moody, 1985) pp. 49-80; also appearing in Trinity Journal 6 NS (1985): 38-59. Grudem is opposed by Berkley and Alvera Mickelsen “What Does Kephale Mean in the New Testament?” in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986) pp. 97-110; Gilbert Bilezikian, “Hierarchist and Egalitarian Inculturations,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30 (1987): 423-424; idem, “A Critique of Wayne Grudem’s Treatment of Kephale in Ancient Greek Texts” (ETS 0025; Theological Research Exchange Network, 1987); and Catherine Kroeger, “The Classical Concept of ‘Head’ as ‘Source’” (see p. 486, n. 9, above). See the recent evaluation by H. Wayne House, “Should a Woman Prophesy or Preach before Men?” Bibliotheca Sacra 145 (1988): 146-148. For a thorough study of kephale, see Appendix 1 in this volume.

¹² Genesis 2 also resists them, as Chapter 3 of this volume demonstrates. 

Appendix: Discussion Questions for The Church as Family

MEN 7/52 is a men's ministry of bible.org.  Our desire is to see all men become true followers of Jesus Christ 7 days a week/52 weeks a year.

We are including this article, and in particular this associated appendix, as a companion to Intentional Shepherding – Radical Mentoring. As a Christian man, if you have made the commitment to cleanse your temple, yourselves, and your men in godly leadership, this article, and the discussion questions prepared by bible.org, can help you. Dr. Poythress takes us through the biblical view of the family and the church and gives a clear picture of who we must select as leaders, and why.

Most importantly, as you examine and understand the qualifications for leadership in your church, you will be able to help your men attain the levels of biblical leadership that are clearly outlined in 1 Timothy. Use these questions as a tool for personal reflection or to help you as you mentor another man or work within a small group men's ministry.

Discussion Questions

1. What analogy does Paul use in teaching Timothy order and responsibility in the church?

2. Describe the fundamental character quality overseers and elders must have?

3. In 1 Timothy 3:2-5, Paul outlines specific requirements for overseers and elders. What are they?

4. What critical question does Paul pose at the end of 1 Timothy 3:4-5?

5. In 1 Timothy, Paul catalogues the types of behavior needed in a harmonious family. List twelve of these, with scripture references, and explain why they are important in your family.

6. Using the family analogy, how are these characteristics critical to the health of your church?

7. In whom is family leadership vested?

8. According to 1 Timothy 2:11-14, what are women not permitted to do and why?

9. What implication does this restriction have on the church today?

10. In your own words, describe the structure of leadership and authority that God has ordained in Ephesians 5:22 – 6:4 and Colossians 3:18-21.

11. How does your family structure compare to these verses. Be specific.

12. Paul gives specific instructions about how younger men must treat older men. Please describe.

13. How do younger men in your life treat you, especially your sons?

14. In 1 Timothy 2:8-15, Paul states the case for the roles of women and men not being interchangeable in God’s house or the human family. Please share with the group the areas in your family structure where these role have been interchanged.

15. In 1 Timothy 2:12, the apostle Paul is very direct about the role of women in leadership. What is his command?

16. Please describe, in detail and in your own words, the basis for Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 2:12.

17. Describe areas in your church where women have achieved authority over men either as leaders or teachers.

18. On what basis do you justify a woman teaching a man and how is your justification excused in Scripture?

19. How does the “absence of godly, fatherly leadership within the church make the affirmation of the Fatherhood of God an abstraction?

20. Does your leadership reveal and affirm the character and realness of God to your family? Please explain.

21. Please describe areas in your role as husband and father where the character and realness of God is not revealed.

22. Would you describe yourself as a better leader at home, or in your church? Please explain.

23. How can church and family order deviate from the ideal?

24. As a leader in your church, please rate yourself, with an explanation, on the following requirements of leadership as spelled out in 1 Timothy 3:2-5:

• Above reproach
• Husband of one wife
• Temperate
• Self-controlled
• Respectable
• Hospitable
• Able to teach
• Not given to much wine
• Not violent, but gentle
• Not quarrelsome
• Not a lover of money
• Manage your family well
• Have obedient children who respect you

25. Do you believe these qualifications continue to be requirements today? If not, which ones do you believe can be disregarded and why?

26. Are there leaders in your church who are struggling with any of these qualifications now?

27. Do their struggles disqualify them from leadership? Why?

28. As a leader in your family and your church, with which of these areas are you struggling now?

29. Using honest self-assessment, how much does your personal pride keep you from recognizing, admitting, confessing, and seeking help in the areas of your failing leadership?

30. Who is helping you overcome your biblical leadership failures?

31. What are you doing, intentionally and proactively, to help other men in the areas where they are failing in their family and church leadership responsibilities?

32. What should your church be doing, intentionally and proactively, to help men be the leaders in their families God has called them to be?

Introduction

As we have seen throughout this book, the Bible is quite clear that men and women are equally God’s image bearers (Genesis 1:27) and therefore equal before God and in relationship with one another, and also that they are fellow-heirs in the Christian life, equal in their spiritual standing before God (1 Peter 3:7; Galatians 3:28). The Bible is also clear that men and women, who are equal with respect to creation and redemption and therefore share many things in common, are called to different and equally important roles in marriage and the church. It is God Himself (as we shall see later) who has determined distinctive roles for men and women in order that thereby they may fulfill the creation mandate that He has given to mankind (cf. Genesis 1:28; 3:15-19). God has called men to serve as leaders in marriage and the church, and women to submit themselves willingly to that leadership, as they labor together in their distinctive roles (Ephesians 5:23-24; 1 Peter 3:1-6; 1 Timothy 2:12; 3:1-13). In defining how men and women are to relate to one another in fulfilling their respective roles, God has called men to exercise a headship that is loving, gentle, and considerate (e.g., Ephesians 5:25ff.; 1 Peter 3:7), and He has called women to submit to that headship in a willing, gentle, and respectful way (e.g., Ephesians 5:24, 33; 1 Peter 3:1-2).

The question we all must face is how to carry out our Biblical roles with Biblical attitudes in specific, everyday situations. But before we proceed to the positive outworkings of Biblical manhood and womanhood, we need to be more aware of the forces working against us that must be overcome and the antidotes God’s grace provides.

The Effect of Sin

The fundamental antithetical force is the effect of sin on our relationships. This we see from Genesis 3:16, in which God speaks of sin’s effect on the relationship of men and women: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (NIV; unless otherwise noted, all citations from Scripture in this chapter are from NIV). In these words, God is indicating that as a result of sin, rather than exercising a caring headship and leadership, men will seek to “rule” in an autocratic, unloving way. And He is indicating with reference to women that rather than being submissive helpers, they will “desire” to have mastery over their husbands. (We are understanding the word desire here in the same sense as that of its next occurrence [Genesis 4:7], where sin has the “desire” to master Cain.)¹ By saying this, God was indicating that just as sin, as a result of the fall, will bring pain (Genesis 3:16) to the joy of childbirth (the fulfillment of God’s mandate to be fruitful, Genesis 1:28) and sweat and difficulty to the joy of work (the fulfillment of God’s mandate to subdue the earth and rule over it, Genesis 1:28), so also it will bring strife into the role relationship God had established between man and woman at creation (Genesis 2:18). Thus, God has forewarned that sin will make the role relationship of man and woman a place beset by struggle that only God’s grace can help us overcome.

We have seen and still see the horrible fulfillment of this curse’s effect in man’s domination of woman in those places and cultures where the effects of the gospel have not been felt. In contrast, in cultures and nations where the gospel has had strong influence, the joint-heir status of men and women has emerged as a wonderful by-product. But now we see in those same cultures and nations where secularization is replacing the effects of the gospel that a by-product of equality remains, while at the same time the society is giving expression to the sinful side of the curse pronouncement-women desiring to remove themselves from any distinctive role in their relationship to men and to be as much leaders in the home and church as men are, while men become increasingly passive or abusive in relation to women. We can see these outworkings of God’s prophetic pronouncement in Genesis 3:16 on the broad scale of history and society, but we must also be aware of the presence of those very tendencies in every human heart, including the hearts of Christian men and women. Since Christians, like others, are affected by the “spirit of the age,” these sinful tendencies within men and women will be compounded by the feminist push of our age as well as by a chauvinistic and macho backlash.

The Correlation of Role and Attitude

Any discussion of the practical outworking of the Biblical principles of headship and submission must take into account these sinful tendencies that so easily subvert us and work against compliance with the Biblical norm. We need to notice again how carefully the apostles present their teaching on the role relationship of men and women so as to affirm two things simultaneously and thereby to give balance to their teaching. First, they reiterate the mandate of God about the role relationship based on creation and speak of the headship of men and the submission of women. Second, they demand attitudes and actions that will seek to overcome the sinful tendencies that work against the proper functioning of these roles. Because people in authority, as a result of sin, often seek to rule and dominate with selfish or cruel attitudes, men are instructed not to be embittered against their wives (Colossians 3:19) but to love them and give themselves to them (Colossians 3:19; Ephesians 5:25), to nourish and cherish them (Ephesians 5:29), and to honor them as fellow-heirs (1 Peter 3:7). Because people under authority, as a result of sin, often resent their role and seek to minimize or escape it, or to take the position of leadership, women are repeatedly urged to submit (1 Peter 3:1; Ephesians 5:24; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:5) because it is God’s will and should be done as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:27; Colossians 3:18) and with respect (Ephesians 5:33) and a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4).

The balanced interrelationship of these two truths must control any discussion of the day-to-day situation, since these are the operative principles that the Scriptures give to guide us in all such day-to-day outworkings of male/female role relationship in marriage and the church. Thus we must constantly reiterate the roles of headship and submission and also constantly call for attitudes and actions that enable these roles to be fulfilled, by God’s grace, in a world where sin works from within and without against those roles and against those attitudes and actions.

I. The Family

A. God’s Delineation of the Distinctive Roles of Husband and Wife in Genesis 3

We can further delineate what is entailed in the roles of husbands and wives in marriage and family by taking careful account of the focused description that God gives of each in Genesis 3 on the basis of the truths first outlined in Genesis 1 and 2 at the dawn of human civilization and in a setting that antedates any particular culture or society.²

In this chapter, He gives the effects of sin, not only as it brings death and separation from God to all humans but also in its effects on men and women in their respective maleness and femaleness. In doing so, God relates the effect of the curse respectively to that portion of His creation mandate (as already established in Genesis 1 and 2) that most particularly applies to the woman on the one hand and to the man on the other hand. God had said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over … every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28, NASB). Now He relates the curse to that aspect of the creation mandate that is the particular responsibility of the woman and of the man and in so doing indicates the particular role that He has determined each is to fulfill. Thus, for the woman He speaks of her pain in childbirth (i.e., while seeking to be fruitful) and the struggles (as we have noted above) that will surface in the husband/wife relationship (Genesis 3:16): “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’” In short, God speaks about what is unique to her as a woman, namely, being a mother and a wife. To the man He speaks of the difficulties he will have in his toil (i.e., while seeking to subdue the earth) to secure bread (Genesis 3:17-19): “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Thus He delineates what is the main calling for man, namely, the responsibility of breadwinner and provider for his wife and family. It will be helpful for all our discussion to keep this perspective in view and realize that it is the perspective God has given and not some “Victorian” or “traditional” view that has grown up out of some society or culture and been adopted unwittingly as the Biblical norm.

Therefore it is important in marriage and the family for a man to realize his responsibility as the primary breadwinner and to assume that responsibility willingly and gladly. It is equally important for a woman to realize her responsibility as the primary one to care for the children and the home, as these verses indicate, and as Proverbs 31 (see below) also indicates. This will provide the security and necessary time and energy for the woman to bear children but also to be with the children in their formative years when they are very dependent on their mother and need her presence. It is in this spirit that the Apostle Paul encourages young widows “to get married, bear children, keep house” (1 Timothy 5:14, NASB). Christ’s apostle exalts the home and women’s duties in it and encourages women to be “busy at home” (Titus 2:5).

Sad to say, when these distinctive emphases are not maintained, children often fail to develop healthy sexual identities (see Chapter 17 in this volume), and marriages tend to break up because husband and wife are no longer dependent on each other but are increasingly independent, ready to go their own ways.³

B. What About the Wife and Mother Working Outside the Home?

Some Christians have interpreted Titus 2:5 (“workers at home,” NASB)⁴ to mean that any work outside the home is inappropriate for the wife and mother. But the fact that wives should care for their home does not necessarily imply that they should not work outside the home, any more than the statement that a overseer in the church should “manage his own household” (1 Timothy 3:4-5) means that he cannot work outside the home. In neither case does the text say that! The dynamic equivalent translation of Titus 2:5 by the NIV, “to be busy at home,” catches the force of Paul’s admonition, namely, that a wife should be a diligent homemaker. Moreover, Proverbs 31:10-31 depicts a wife and mother whose support for the family extends well beyond ordinary domestic chores (cf. e.g., verses 16 and 24: “She considers a field and buys it … she plants a vineyard… . She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies belts to the tradesmen,” NASB). Since Scripture interprets Scripture and its teaching is consistent and unified, we realize that the picture of Proverbs is not contradicted by the Apostle Paul.

Furthermore, we must realize that the emphasis on the home is the very point of the Proverbs passage. The woman in Proverbs works to care for her family and to fulfill her responsibility to her family (cf., e.g., verses 21 and 27). She does this not only for her children but also to support her husband’s leadership role in the community (verse 23). She is seeking the good of her family. Furthermore, she seeks to aid the poor and needy by her labors (verse 20).

Here, then, are keys to the question of a wife and mother working outside the home: Is it really beneficial to her family, does it aid her husband in his calling, and does it, in correlation with these first two, bring good to others? Can she do it while still being faithful to her primary calling to be wife and mother and to care for her home? It must be noted that even though the woman in Proverbs has not sought to “find herself” or to make her own career, but rather to serve her family, in the end she receives praise from her family (verses 28, 29) and recognition for her labors (verse 31) because she has conducted the whole endeavor in obedience to the Lord she reverences (verse 30). The decision in this realm must not be unilateral on the part of the woman but made under the leadership of her husband as the head of the marriage and the family.

C. Decision-making by Husbands and Wives

This brings us to the question of responsibilities and processes for decision-making. The delicate balance that must be maintained is that of the husband’s leadership in a situation in which two equal image bearers of God are involved. The husband must honor his wife (1 Peter 3:7, “grant her honor as a fellow-heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered,” NASB) and respect her views, opinions, feelings, and contributions about the issue at hand, and he must do so in a way that takes into account both his and her strengths and weaknesses (1 Peter 3:8, “husbands … be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner”).⁵ He must not give over the leadership to the woman as Adam did to Eve, for then to him also the rebuke given to Adam will apply (“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,” Genesis 3:17, NASB).⁶ Neither should he act rashly and harshly as Nabal did, not seeking the sensible and wise advice that his wife could and would have given him (cf. 1 Samuel 25:2-26:38). After all, the wife is given to the husband to be his chief “helper” (Genesis 2:18). The husband and wife should seek to come to a mutually satisfactory decision after discussion and through prayer and seeking the principles of God’s Word, and they should do so under the leadership and guidance of the husband, who should initiate this process. In a world of sin in which both husband and wife are beset by the limitations sin brings to our understanding and to the evaluative and decision-making process, there will be times when a consensus may not be reached. In this situation, it is the husband’s responsibility to exercise his leadership role and make the decision. The wife needs to submit to that decision (unless the decision is clearly and intrinsically evil [cf. 1 Samuel 25:14; Acts 5:29]).

D. Decision-making as It Relates to Changing Jobs and Relocation to Another Community

In a highly mobile age, it is appropriate to consider job location change. Therefore, to illustrate the matter of decision-making, let us take the question of changing jobs and relocating the family. Let the question be compounded by assuming that the wife also has a good position. In this case, let us assume that the wife is not inclined to move because she likes the locale and she does not want to give up her own paying job. This is understandable.

The husband should give due weight to all of these concerns. The two should pray about the matter and seek to understand each other’s perspective and the good of the family as a whole, including the long-range as well as the short-range perspective. This decision-making must consider the total welfare of the family and not simply the benefits of the job. At the same time, it must include obedience to the creation mandate, on the part of the husband particularly but also the wife, who has agreed to be his helper in this responsibility, to fulfill to the best of his (and their) ability his primary calling as the one to be involved in work to support the family. A decision not to take the job and not to move, in light of the needs of the rest of the family, would be quite appropriate as long as no veto or coercion on the part of his wife has in actuality usurped the leadership or caused the husband to forfeit or surrender it. However, should he become convinced before God that the move is in the best interests of his family and will allow him and his wife to best fulfill the creation mandate and best glorify God, he should sympathetically lead the family through this transition, seeking to explain why the move is right from his perspective.

In such a case, it seems to me that two factors besides his general responsibility as leader are key elements. First is the recognition that the man, more than the woman-whose focus and energy are to be directed inward toward the family (cf. again Genesis 3:16-17 and Proverbs 31:27)-is called on to fulfill his role by directing his time and energy outward from the family in the work area (cf. again God’s evaluation of what is characteristic of man as a male, Genesis 3:17-19). Second, the woman is created to be the man’s helper (Genesis 2:18; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9). From these perspectives, the husband’s work must take precedence (when necessary) over the wife’s, and she must be willing to help her husband fulfill his calling in this realm even if it means that she must give up her position. A clear perspective on this subject will eliminate or remove many conflicts that could arise in this area.

E. Caring for the Children

The care and management of the home and children is another area in which Christians need to implement Biblical principles carefully. The Scriptures present the direct management of the children and the household as the realm of responsibility of the wife and mother. First Timothy 5:14 says that wives are “to manage their homes” (NIV). The Greek word oikodespoteo, which is rendered “manage,” is a very forceful term. Proverbs 31 indicates some of the many ways in which this management is carried out (cf., e.g., verses 26 and 27: “She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness,” NASB). The husband must recognize this calling and grant her the necessary and appropriate freedom of operation under his leadership. At the same time, the wife must recognize that her management is to be conducted in submission to her husband’s leadership, who is responsible for the overall management of the household (cf. Titus 2:5, “to be busy at home … and to be subject to their husbands”). The Apostle Paul says that the man is responsible to manage his own household well (1 Timothy 3:4-5).

Although the wife and mother will have the most contact with the children, especially when they are young, and therefore will have the most direct responsibility for supervising them, the husband and father is held responsible for instruction and oversight of the children (Ephesians 6:4; 1 Timothy 3:4). It is imperative that fathers and mothers carry out this joint task in such a way that the leadership of both over the children is maintained and the headship of the father over the family is manifest. Thus neither should allow the children to play one parent off against the other in seeking to contravene the other’s commands or prohibitions. The parents should resolve those questions in private away from the children; in public they should uphold each other’s decisions, especially the mother upholding the headship of the father. Fathers should exercise an appropriate leadership by being careful to avoid exasperating or provoking comments or commands (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21) that not only discourage or anger their children but also provide occasion for their wives to feel the necessity of intervening and make it more difficult for them to be subject to their husbands’ leadership. Exasperating or provoking comments or commands include commands that are unjust and comments that are given in a callous or unfeeling way. All parental give-and-take before children should manifest mutual respect and communicate before the children that the husband genuinely loves and respects his wife and the wife, too, respects and desires to submit to the leadership of her husband and their father. Such an attitude can itself be the best setting for the children to learn their own necessary submission to both father and mother.

The division of duties in the home and household must take seriously the respective roles of the woman and the man and their equal importance before the Lord and in the home. The direct care and supervision of the children is the specific calling of the wife/mother (cf. again Genesis 3:16; 1 Timothy 5:14; Titus 2:5). It would be unnatural in the normal family setting for the husband/father to assume this task and to surrender the task of “breadwinning” to his wife.⁷ This is not to say that he is not to be as concerned and as involved in the training of their children as she is, but rather that he does so in correlation with his responsibility as the primary provider.

F. The Allocation of Other Duties and Responsibilities

Other duties and responsibilities should be allocated in such a way that the feminine and masculine proclivities come to their natural expression and the strengths and weaknesses of each partner are recognized and their mutual dependence on each other for distinct roles are a help to both. Yet we must realize also that there are many things in the daily affairs of a household that the specific teachings and broader principles of Scripture do not categorize as either “masculine” or “feminine.” Here we must allow freedom and variation and not attempt to go beyond what is written in the principles we affirm and teach.

II. The Church

There are two basic Biblical truths relating to men and women that must be affirmed and upheld in the life of the church. The first is their equality as bearers of God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and as fellow Christians (Galatians 3:28;⁸ 1 Peter 3:7). The second is the leadership role to which men are called by God in the church so that by apostolic injunction, based on God’s creative action, women are not allowed “to teach or exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12, NASB).

A. The Use of Women’s Gifts

The first truth has as its corollary that women are to use their gifts in every way that Christians in general are to do, except for those areas explicitly prohibited by Scripture. This is seen in Paul’s treatment of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 11-14, where women are excluded only from speaking in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)⁹ where congregational “teaching” is involved (1 Corinthians 14:26; notice that the items listed in verse 26 correspond with the subjects dealt with in verses 27 and 35 [with only the first item, “a psalm,” not dealt with in these verses] and in particular notice that “teaching” [NASB] in verse 26 is the one-word description for the “speaking” Paul will deal with when it comes to women in verses 34 and 35).¹⁰ These women are recognized as properly participating in praying and prophesying, for example, but are only asked not to throw off the cultural sign of their submission when they do so (1 Corinthians 11:1-16).

Some very practical deductions and applications can be drawn from these principles. If all other members of the church participate in voting at congregational meetings, then of course women members equally share that right. If all other worshipers are participating in the worship by sharing and praying, then women also should participate equally. The church of Christ, its men and women, must be equally concerned to uphold both these aspects of inclusion and any necessary exclusion in fidelity to God’s Word.

One must not draw the false conclusion that the Scriptures are opposed to women teaching or exercising any kind of leadership. Far from it. Women are encouraged by the Apostle Paul to teach other women and to make full use of their gifts in that realm (Titus 2:3-5). Just as Paul directs how tongue speakers and prophets may use their gifts in accordance with God’s order, so he encourages women to teach other women (Titus 2:3-5).

Similarly, the New Testament commends the activities of women in various sorts of ministries except those that would violate the male leadership principle. In an earlier work I summarized this range of ministries in the following words:

Several passages indicate that women are involved in diaconal tasks and appropriate teaching situations. A sampling of those activities may be seen in the following: older women are called upon to teach and train younger women concerning their responsibilities to their husbands and children (Titus 2:3-5); wives (gunaikas) are referred to in the midst of the description of male deacons (1 Timothy 3:11); Phoebe is designated “a servant [diakonon] of the church which is at Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1); Paul refers in 1 Corinthians to women praying or prophesying (11:5); and Priscilla and Aquila, that inseparable husband-and-wife team, in a discreet and private meeting expound to Apollos “the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26).¹¹

This brief Biblical summary, as true as it is and as helpful as it is, reminds us by these examples of the wide range of ministries available to women in the kingdom of God. The Danvers Statement, Affirmation 9, in this wide-ranging perspective and broad sweep, has attempted to express that range. Its words serve as a fitting conclusion to this particular section:

With half the world’s population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world. (See Appendix Two.)

B. The Biblical Principle of Male Leadership in the Church

Alongside our insistence on women’s legitimate participation in the life of the church, we need to remind ourselves again that the apostolic teaching insists on men being the primary leaders in the church (just as in marriage) and therefore excludes women from that role. The clearest statement is 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” (NASB). The contextual setting of this statement makes it plain that the apostle is speaking about women publicly teaching men in the religious realm and exercising authority over men in the Christian community. It is the male/female role relationship based on creation that requires this prohibition (cf. 1 Timothy 2:13). And thus, since the church by definition includes both men and women, those situations where both are present are situations in which this prohibition is in effect.

1. Applied to Church Officers

When the Apostle Paul moves on from this statement of principle to a description of the qualifications for the officers in the church (overseers and deacons; 1 Timothy 3:1-13), as an outworking and application of this principle, he describes them in masculine terms (i.e., the husband of one wife; cf. both 1 Timothy 3:2 and 3:12).¹² Similarly, the church today, as it seeks to apply the apostolic principle faithfully, has insisted that the primary leadership of the church must be male. This has meant that both the minister who serves as a full-time teacher and pastor and the ruling officers chosen from within the congregation (often called “elders” in line with the Biblical nomenclature) have been males. But this would also apply to other church officers, who may not be called “elders” but who have governing authority for the whole church similar to that of elders in the New Testament. The equivalent office to New Testament elders is called by other names in differing systems of church government: “deacons” in many Baptist churches, the “vestry” in an episcopal system, and often just the “church board” or “church council” in many churches. That the office of elder should be filled by men is particularly appropriate, since their labors are designated in terms of teaching (1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:9) and of managing and caring for the church (1 Timothy 3-5)-the very roles denied to women in 1 Timothy 2:12.

Most Christians and churches who have made the application to “elders” have done so also for “deacons,” noting that they, too, are designated in masculine terms (1 Timothy 3:12; also Acts 6:3, where the Greek word used for “men” [aner] is the word used to distinguish men from women rather than one used for men as mankind whether male or female [anthropos]). They have noted furthermore that the role of deacons is still one of leadership, even if leadership in the area of service. At the same time it should be noted that women (or wives) are referred to in this section on deacons (1 Timothy 3:11). This has led to two understandings. The first is that the text distinguishes them from the deacons (who are males), does not designate them as deacons, but mentions them because they serve with and alongside the deacons in diaconal service. It is my judgment that this view understands the passage correctly and furthermore that it is the wives of deacons who are in view. A reference to wives would explain what would otherwise appear to be a seemingly abrupt statement in the midst of the passage but which, on such an understanding, is but the first of several comments about the deacon’s family.¹³ Others understand this verse as indicating that the New Testament recognized female deacons or at least deaconesses, and they appeal to Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2 for corroboration. If this understanding is correct, then the modern church should act accordingly. However, I think (as do others) the prior understanding is more likely, since the reference to Phoebe as a “servant of the church” has been widely understood to be a use of the Greek term diakonos in a non-technical and non-official sense, as it often is used elsewhere in the New Testament.¹⁴ Even though we must recognize that 1 Timothy 3:11 and Romans 16:1-2 must be considered in their interaction with one another, the hermeneutical principle is that the section dealing most fully and explicitly with the office and with deacon as a technical term must be resolved first, and then the historical statement may more appropriately be evaluated in that light. Whichever position is adopted as to whether women are to be “deaconesses,” there is still consensus that women should be involved in “diaconal” or service ministries in the church, whether they are elected as “deaconesses” or not.

2. The Biblical Principle of Male Leadership in the Church Related to Teaching Activities

Here it should be noted that the prohibition that the Apostle Paul gives in 1 Timothy 2:12 (and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35¹⁵) is not stated in terms of a prohibition of an office in the church or restricted to that sphere (e.g., a woman may not be an elder/overseer), but is stated rather in functional language indicating what she may not do (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent,” 1 Timothy 2:12).

For this reason, it seems clearly contrary to the apostle’s teaching for some to argue that the male elders in the church may give a woman the right to give the exposition of the Word of God to the church and to say that since she does it under the authority of the male leadership, this activity would be acceptable. Paul rules out such an activity and underscores this by saying that, in the public teaching situation where men are present, a woman must remain “silent” with respect to this activity and not “speak” (cf. again 1 Timothy 2:12; 1 Corinthians 14:34-35). No decision of male leadership can justify approving the exact opposite of what the apostle commands. This unqualified prohibition extends to every situation in the life of the Christian community where there is actual, recognized teaching of the Scriptures and the Christian faith to a group that includes men, e.g., a Sunday school class, a small group meeting, a couples group, etc. The statement in the text focuses on the activity of teaching and, by implication, includes the authority inherent in that activity. Other activities in which a group might be involved, such as participating in a group discussion on the meaning of a passage of Scripture or sharing the impact of the passage on their lives, which are neither teaching nor the exercise of authority, should certainly include the full and free participation of the women of the group. The prohibition is focused and specific, and thus the implication is that all other activities are open to women.

Since this is a statement of principles on the part of the apostle, it would seem that this principle extends to teaching the Bible to men in colleges, training men in seminaries, and teaching the Bible and Biblical truth to men in parachurch organizations. In women’s colleges, in schools training women to serve as directors of Christian education, and in women’s parachurch groups, according to the Scriptures (cf. Titus 2:3-5), women have every right to teach.

The question arises as to how this prohibition of women teaching men applies where boys are in transition to manhood; i.e., what is the cut-off point? It seems that the church must answer this question in terms of the society’s evaluation of the time when, in that particular society, the boy becomes a man. If the young man is still under the direction of his parents and the instruction of a woman, his mother, at home, then it would seem appropriate for him to be under the instruction of a woman in the church. If he is regarded as on his own or as having reached manhood, whether married or not, then he should not be taught by a woman. Teaching a mixed group of high school students would seem, in our society, to be one kind of “borderline” situation. In such cases, if all involved agree on the basic Biblical principles involved and then pray for wisdom in applying those principles (cf. James 1:5-8), appropriate solutions will generally be found. Where doubt still remains, since we should not want to disobey the apostolic injunction, often the best solution would seem to be not to place a woman in that doubtful situation but rather to look to male leadership.

What of the Apparent Blessing When Women Seem to Have Violated These Principles? It may be retorted that in all these situations women have served in the church and their service has produced blessings in spite of the Apostle Paul’s prohibitions. This kind of end-justifies-the-means argument surfaces more often than we think among Christians who would object to such an argument in other situations.¹⁶

But here we must realize that God often gives blessing in spite of our mistakes. We gladly admit that God’s grace is greater than all our sins, including the unwitting ones in this and many other areas. And we gladly rejoice, as did Paul, in any proclamation of the gospel and teaching of the Word of God (cf. Philippians 1:14-18). However, in this passage Paul does point out the errors in that activity and their effects (e.g., “envy and strife,” verse 15; “selfish ambition,” verse 17), and it is to be hoped that the effect of his doing so would be that such errors would be remedied. We would seek to have the same Pauline balance, i.e., to rejoice in God’s grace overcoming disobedience because His Word was present and effective. But we should not argue that such an outcome justifies the practice.

3. The Biblical Principle of Male Leadership in the Church Related to Leadership Activities

Just as we have sought to apply the principle of women not teaching men in the Christian community above, so also here in a similar way we must address the question of exercising authority over men in the life of the Christian community. Any board or committee in the local church or at other levels in the life of the church that exercises authority over that body should consist, by definition, of men who are called on to give leadership. Most denominations who hold this principle specify that the membership of denominational boards will be made up of church officers only, i.e., men. Since parachurch organizations (such as mission boards or campus ministries) and Christian institutions (such as Christian colleges and seminaries) are also part of the church universal, the body of Christ, it would seem that such restrictions should apply to their governing boards as well. They are part of the church; why should they act as though they were not? However, if a committee in the local congregation is formed to have representative input from various groups in the church, e.g., the women’s group, etc., to give a cross-sectional perspective that can be used by the officers but that does not itself exercise authority, then, of course, all segments should be included. This would also be the case for advisory councils of parachurch organizations. On the other hand, it must not be argued that men cannot possibly conduct the affairs of the church involving men and women without the presence and input of women as members of the governing bodies. We have already seen that Christ’s church, according to Scriptural teaching, is to be led by a male leadership. Thus, since male leadership can serve in the body of Christ that encompasses men and women, boys and girls, then a leadership of men also can function in other areas of the Christian community. This will entail, of course, that male leaders must be sensitive to and eagerly listen to the concerns of the whole spectrum of people whom they lead, with a special regard for the opposite sex. But that is the kind of male leaders the Scriptures call for--servants who lead with love, gentleness, and understanding as well as with strength and commitment (1 Peter 3:7).

4. Official Church Policies

Should specifications regarding male leadership in the family and church be formally included in the governing documents of a church such as the church constitution or by-laws, or in denominational affirmations of faith or statements of policies? In previous generations, such statements were included sometimes, but not usually, because male leadership was almost universally assumed to be Biblical (see chapter 15 in this volume). But in today’s situation, with so many differing viewpoints expressed even within Christian circles, it would seem appropriate to include some policy statements at some level, at least concerning the most fundamental aspects of male/female roles. This is because the principle of male leadership in the church is a basic Scriptural principle based on the most fundamental of truths, God’s creation order.

It must not be argued that only teaching about the Person and work of Christ and about salvation are teachings that can be considered fundamentals of the faith. The following Scriptural accounts, with their statements of principles based on God’s creation order, make it abundantly plain that our Lord and His apostle regarded the implications of God’s creation order as fundamental truths to be taught and observed by the people of God. Jesus makes the point that His teaching about marriage and divorce is based on God’s creation order (Matthew 19:4-9). Furthermore, Paul indicates that teaching that repudiates marriage and regards foods God created as inherently unclean is absolutely unacceptable and is so because it denies the fact that what God created is good, i.e., it attacks God’s creation order (1 Timothy 4:1-5). Because the principle of male leadership is based on the most fundamental of truths, God’s creation order, it should be clearly and explicitly stated by the church as part of its basic teaching, and adherence to this general principle, especially as it applies to the ruling and teaching officers of the church, is an appropriate requirement of all officers in the church.

III. Correlation of the Family and the Church

We have dealt with the family and the church and have sought to work out and apply the principle of male leadership in both realms. In closing we may correlate these realms again to give perspective to the Scriptural teaching in its application to our lives. Those who recognize the Scriptural teaching about male leadership in marriage, both men and women, know that the leadership role of the husband/father does not in any way detract from or decrease the equally important role of wife/mother. That insight is helpful when we appraise male leadership in the church. Male leadership in the church does not decrease or detract from the gifts and graces women bring to the life of the body of Christ. Just as the male leadership in the home does not and should not keep the woman from exercising all of her God-given abilities, so also male leadership in the church does not and should not keep women from exercising, outside of the exclusively male realm of leadership itself, all of their God-given abilities within the church.

We wisely recognize in the family that being the male head is not all there is to the family life. We also need to recognize that, in the church, leadership over the church as a whole is not all there is to what is important and pleasing to God. Just as we recognize, accept, and acknowledge that God has wisely given man and woman different roles in the family, so we need to recognize and accept that in the life of the church God has also given man and woman different roles in relation to the leadership of the church, and we should gladly confess with the Apostle Paul that “God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired” (1 Corinthians 12:18, NASB).

Copyright 1997 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. All rights reserved.

¹ See S. T. Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” WTU 37 (1974): 376-385; also Chapter 3 in this volume (pp. 108-109).

² See Chapter 3 for a full discussion of the distinctive roles of men and women in Genesis 1 and 2.

³ Cf. the observations of Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon Schuster, 1987), pp. 97-132.

⁴ Probably the KJV rendering “keepers at home” lent itself to that misinterpretation.

⁵ See Chapter 1, p. 49, for a discussion of male and female weakness.

⁶ It is obvious from the text of Genesis that Eve encouraged wrongdoing when she gave Adam the fruit. It is equally obvious that she takes the leadership role in that activity and that Adam simply follows her leadership. She allows herself, though, to be drawn into the role of spokesman by the serpent. She does not turn to her husband, from whom she had received God’s command (cf. Genesis 2:16-17, where God gives the command to the man before the woman is created, and Genesis 3:2-3, where the woman relays that command), to ask him about what God had said and meant by His command, but rather acted unilaterally in opposition to the command that her husband had given to her (Genesis 3:6). Furthermore, she leads her husband by taking the fruit and giving it to him to eat (Genesis 3:6). In both Genesis 3:6 and 3:17, the remarks about the woman are not superfluous asides, even though they easily could have been left out, as an examination of the text bears out, but they are there to indicate exactly what happened and who had assumed the responsibility of making the decision to eat. The fact that Adam was following Eve’s leadership and not simply deceived by the serpent is borne out by Paul’s inspired evaluative statement in 1 Timothy 2:14 that “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived” (NASB). Thus it seems appropriate to say that God’s first comment to Adam, “because you listened to your wife” (Genesis 3:17), is a rebuke to Adam for his failure to carry out his God-ordained leadership role, not simply a reminder to Adam that he had listened to bad advice from Eve.

⁷ First Corinthians 7:5 says a husband and wife may temporarily set aside their conjugal rights by mutual consent for a period of time in order to serve God. On this principle, a wife could properly be the primary breadwinner to assist her husband in securing his education so that he could assume, in a better-equipped way, that responsibility that is rightfully his. Of course, if the husband is prevented from assuming this responsibility by reason of health or being out of work, the wife will gladly do what he cannot do for the good of the marriage and their mutual welfare. But these should be considered exceptions to the norm and warranted either by necessity (the latter) or as a temporary situation making the norm possible (the former).

⁸ Since the first truth, especially the statement in Galatians 3:28, is often used to deny the second truth, it is necessary to understand not only the breadth of the implications of what Paul is asserting in Galatians 3:28 but also what is not being implied. Ronald Y. K. Fung wisely warns against an unwarranted appeal to this verse in the following statement drawn up after a careful exegesis of the verse in its context:

It seems precarious to appeal to this verse in support of any view of the role of women in the Church, for two reasons: (a) Paul’s statement is not concerned with the role relationships of men and women within the Body of Christ but rather with their common initiation into it through (faith and) baptism; (b) the male/female distinction, unlike the other two, has its roots in creation, so that the parallelism between the male/female pair and the other pairs may not be unduly pressed. (The Epistle to the Galatians, NICNT [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988], p. 176, n. 44.)

See also chapter 6 in this volume.

⁹ Biblical students should not follow Gordon Fee, a very able exegete and textual critic and also an “evangelical feminist,” in his argued conjecture that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is not authentically a part of 1 Corinthians and is therefore “certainly not binding for Christians.” As he himself acknowledges, “these two verses are found in all known manuscripts” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988], pp. 708 and 699, respectively). In spite of this uniform testimony to the authenticity of the text, Fee advances arguments relating to transcriptional and intrinsic probability that can be adequately answered (see Chapter 6 in this volume) and that have not convinced most textual critics, the most noteworthy recent example being the team of experts that edited the critical text for the United Bible Societies who gave these verses a “B” rating, i.e., the next-to-highest rating in terms of certainty and authenticity. Unfortunately, one reading the commentary will not be aware of many of these answers because Fee has not provided them for the reader or has denied the validity of some that he relates without, however, demonstrating that they lack validity.

¹⁰ See Chapter 6 in this volume, which understands 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 in a different way from this, but one that is also consistent with the overall perspective of this chapter and this book as a whole.

¹¹ George W. Knight III, The Role Relationship of Men and Women (1985; reprinted Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian Reformed, 1989), pp. 27ff. See also Chapter 11 in this volume, especially p. 218.

¹² This masculine description, “husband of one wife,” is not merely descriptive of the usual situation, as is the reference to his being married and having children, because it follows on the heels of the statement of principle in 1 Timothy 2:12 and therefore is normative, as are the other qualifications that do not in the nature of the case allow for a viable alternative. The New Testament commends singleness as a viable alternative (cf. Matthew 19:12 and 1 Corinthians 7:7ff.) and recognizes that Paul, who is single, is, like Peter, a “fellow elder” (1 Peter 5:1). Thus being married and having several children is not being stated as a requirement for an elder, but rather the requirement being stated is that of fidelity to his spouse if he is married and a godly oversight of his children if he has children. However, it is fair to say that the masculine aspect of the statement husband of one wife does indeed imply exclusively male elders, and particularly so (as we have noted) when it follows hard on the heels of 1 Timothy 2:12.

¹³ See author’s forthcoming commentary on The Pastoral Epistles in the NIGTC series, which treats this question at some length. See also the discussion of this passage in Chapter 11 of this volume.

¹⁴ Compare, for example, the earlier, and only other, occurrences of the Greek word diakonos in Romans, i.e., Romans 13:4 (twice) and 15:8.

¹⁵ Those who understand 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 to be Paul’s prohibition on women “judging” the prophets (cf., e.g., the very helpful book by J. B. Hurley, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, and Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1981], pp. 188-194), a view that I do not myself adopt, still concur that an activity or function is prohibited and that the text says that women should not seek to participate in that activity. Since the prohibition is related to women only, it may be said that Paul does not rule out men in general from participating in this activity. The entire section of 1 Corinthians 14 is dealing with the participation of members of the congregation in the congregational worship (see especially verse 26). The conclusion to be drawn, it seems to me, is that women are prohibited from even an occasional teaching of the church but that men, even though they are not officers, are not prohibited from this activity. This close consideration of the text evidences that Paul is concerned about prohibiting the activity of teaching and is not just concerned with a prohibition of a teaching office in the church, as is sometimes assumed--of course, the former also prohibits the latter.

¹⁶ For example, those who hold that only those who profess faith in Christ should be baptized will not be persuaded otherwise if those who practice infant baptism have spiritually successful ministries, and vice versa. God’s general blessing on a person does not prove that a particular activity in his or her life is in accord with Biblical teaching.