Godly Order Within the Church

I don't know if you know this, but Open House Church is a Christian Reformed Church. I was waiting for someone to walk out as soon as I said that. I was like, oh, wrong church. I gotta get out of here. No.

Open House Christian Reformed Church is what we're called. And that means that our church holds to certain traditions and teachings that we, as a denomination, the Christian Reformed Churches, understand to be true of scripture. One of these teachings we hold to is that we are what is called a complementarian church. This big word simply means that we hold to a view that God has given certain exclusive roles to men and to women in a way that ultimately complements or completes the opposite gender. Complementarianism differs from another view, which is called egalitarianism, which holds that there is equality between the roles of man and woman.

Now, of particular emphasis for these two views, and the one that is, I guess, the one that is debated about the most, is the view of men and women holding leadership positions within the church. Complementarians argue that only males have been given that role. And within that, only specific males, not all males, just certain men. While egalitarians hold that both men and women should and can hold that role. Since Open House is a complementarian church, you'll only see men being put forward as elders.

You will only see men become pastors and preachers in this church. The question that I wanna ask you is where do we get that idea from? Well, the bible, hopefully, particularly, like Christian said, this morning's text, one Timothy two. But there are others as well. We're going to be exploring this key bible passage, and I'm going to be trying to argue a case for male headship in the church.

So let's turn to that now. First Timothy chapter two, and we're reading from verse eight through to verse 15. Paul says to Timothy in the Ephesian church, I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. Likewise also, that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness, with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self control.

So as we start this morning, it's important to point out that the traditional complementarian interpretation of one Timothy two verses eight through to 15 has actually been the majority view of the church for two thousand years. The complementarian view has been the majority view for two thousand years. Kent Hughes, in his commentary on one Timothy, highlights the work of professor of New Testament at Covenant College in the US, Robert Yarbrough, who reviewed scholarly articles on the discussion or the debate surrounding this passage in particular. And he says, hardly anything existed up until 1969. Since 1969, there has been an absolute flood of writing on this passage that came out claiming that Paul's understanding of male leadership in the church was actually very modern.

Surprisingly, it was very consistent with the feminist movement, which was also gaining traction in the nineteen sixties. The conclusion for Yarbrough seemed pretty clear. That there was a revisionist agenda, which found its impetus not from the text of the bible, but from popular secular culture. And so, in scholarship over the last fifty years, this agenda has driven churches, individual churches, and entire denominations to change their position on something, like I said, that has been held for centuries. So at the commencement of this morning, as a biblical interpreter myself, I think there are some major flaws with the egalitarian argument, and we're gonna say more on that a little bit later.

But firstly, I wanna say that some of us in this church have come from other traditions, and some of us may even hold to different understandings of this morning. So I wanna say at the outset that I come with a lot of respect and with a lot of humility to you as I say these things, as we try to work out and consider what scripture actually tells us about the church. Okay. So let's begin. What is the core problem within the church to which Paul is addressing this teaching?

Remember, this falls within a context. And we've been working through that context over the last few weeks. The core issue in the Ephesian church, of which Timothy was the pastor, is disruption. There is chaos. There is disunity within the church.

So having asserted that the Ephesian church is to pray for all people at the start of this chapter, chapter two verse one, the church is to pray for all people, including kings and rulers, and then to the Gentiles, in the word, to the ends of the earth, these prayers are to go out for. Paul now moves further in his addressing of the disruption within the Ephesian church. In verse eight, he begins to call on the men in every place, i.e. everywhere, men everywhere, to pray like Paul commanded them in verse one. They are to pray for all people. But it is to be done in this way, they are to pray without anger and quarreling.

Now, that assumes that there was anger and quarreling within the church. Instead, the Ephesian church is distracted, Paul says, by men who are fighting each other. Men who are quarreling and arguing with each other. At the same time as we read in verse nine, there are women who are dressing promiscuously. And Paul wants men to control their anger, to be men worthy of respect, to be men of self control, so that they could send up unified petitions, that they could pray together as a church to call on God to save all people, which is God's desire.

Likewise, Paul wants the ladies to present themselves with modesty and self control, he says in verse nine. Now, it's important to point out that Paul is not categorically forbidding women from styling their hair, or wearing jewellery or nice clothing. The issue here is that Paul and the Ephesians existed in a very promiscuous culture in the Greco-Roman world, where, it has been argued, braided hair, gold and pearls, was often tied with temple prostitution and women with loose morals. So in other words, Paul's command here would be the equivalent of Paul warning us to stay away from imitating the promiscuous pop singers or actresses of our day and age. And we're okay with that, I think.

Now, on both these commands, which I think are pretty uncontroversial, in both these commands to men and women, the same purpose is actually being pursued. Don't let your lifestyles disrupt the mission of God's church. That is the core issue. Don't let your lifestyles disrupt the core mission of God's church. In fact, let your godly lifestyles enhance the gospel mission, so that you can adorn the good news with good deeds.

Paul wants the church to be the engine room for God's people, offering prayers for the lost, ordering their lives in such a way as to reach the lost for Christ, and unselfishly longing that all men may be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, as he writes in verse four. That is the core issue. In order to talk about that more fully, point two is, Paul wants to establish godly order in the church. And Paul moves on to the issue of leadership within the church, a topic that he actually discusses in more depth in the next chapter, chapter three. But Paul moves on to leadership precisely to overcome the problem of disunity, of disruption that he found in the church.

And he begins by saying in verse eleven and twelve, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet. Now it is on these two verses where there has been so much debate these last fifty years. Now, while the words are perfectly understandable, and we can translate them pretty easily, it is nuanced by its context, and it is nuanced by its unique arrangement. I don't think we have the time to sort of work through the ins and the outs of each word and its sort of usage.

But I'm going to highlight the broad categories, the broad arguments that are being used by the egalitarian position to reinterpret these words. Firstly, there's just the people that don't believe Paul had it right. They say, well, we know what Paul is saying here, but it's just not true. Paul was incorrect, and therefore God's word is incorrect. They will argue that Paul is reflecting the culture of his day, but as more evolved people today, our views have changed and therefore Paul is out of date.

Secondly, others have tried to argue that there was a feminist supremacy movement in Ephesus at this time. This movement oppressed men on purpose. Paul was therefore trying to limit the excesses of this movement in the church, and so it was again just for that time. Unfortunately, for this view, there is no historical evidence for something like that existing in Ephesus, and this view has been debunked more lately. The third view is that there is a nuanced way in the way that Paul uses the word authority.

Paul talks about exercising authority. People argue that this word had a negative meaning to it, which means to domineer or to coerce. So women are not supposed to domineer or coerce men. Thus, Paul is preventing a destructive activity of dominating men. The problem is that the word to have authority is connected with the verb to teach mentioned before it.

To teach is in no way seen as a negative. In fact, everywhere in the New Testament, to teach is a good thing. So it sounds weird grammatically for Paul to be saying, I do not permit a woman to teach a good thing, or to domineer a man a bad thing. Grammatically, it doesn't work. It would be like saying, I don't permit you to go to the gym to exercise or to lie on the couch and eat chips all day.

Those two just don't work together naturally. A fourth position is that people have sought to reinterpret the bible for Paul to say that he's only writing to his specific context. In Paul's mind, he is never making a universal statement about God's church everywhere, but only to Timothy's local context. Grammatically, the case for that isn't very strong, but the bigger issue is that in the very next verses, verses 13 through to 15, Paul rests his entire case on the unchanging nature of creation, of Adam and Eve. So he refers to the first humans to appeal to the gender roles that God assigned at the beginning of time.

So Paul's prohibition actually does seem enduring. It seems universal. A fifth way to deflect the bible's teaching here is to translate the word for man and woman as husband and wife. And so that moves the argument not to the role of men in leadership of the church, but men as leaders of the household. But the context of Paul addressing the purpose of the church in chapter two probably suggests this is referring to the church, not to the family situation.

Stylistically, in other instances where Paul addressed husbands and wives, like in Ephesians five, he always gave teaching to both the husband and the wife. It would be weird for Paul to address just the wives and not the husbands, stylistically. So of these five main positions and arguments that are held, I think there are some major flaws. To me, it seems the most simple and face value reading of the text is still the correct one, and that is that female leadership in the area of spiritual authority and doctrinal teaching is not an option for the church. However, it is important for me to also say, and because we don't hold these tensions very well, that there is no instruction in the bible that has anything directly to say about women teaching in the marketplace, or in academics, or in the public square.

This is about a certain order within God's church. In fact, we need to point out that neither do these directives allow just any man, by virtue of his gender, to exercise spiritual authority. In the next chapter, next week, we will deal with how Paul gives an extremely high bar for the leaders of this church. Only certain men may do this, and then they are to have authority over men and women. So having understood the basic reading of verses eleven and twelve, the next question is, what is Paul actually prohibiting when he says, when he talks about teaching and exercising authority?

Well, basically, Paul refers to the office of elder. The office of, specifically also, the teaching elder, the action of preaching. It's referring to the authoritative role of defining, defending, and expounding the apostolic teachings of scripture. And again, that responsibility is not given to all men, but to those who Paul will say in the next chapter are apt to teach. What we also need to say is that this teaching does not forbid men and women from encouraging each other through general discourse on the truth of scripture.

In fact, it is expected. Paul will tell the Colossian church, for example, let the word of Christ dwell in you, plural, richly, as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your heart. Colossians 3:16. We collectively admonish one another by reminding each other of the word of Christ. And so we see God, through Paul, explaining to Timothy that in the context of the disruption within his church, the possible chaos that there was, that there is a godly order to return to, and the Ephesian church will do well to follow it. Third point. Men and women were created to complement each other.

In verses 13 to 15, Paul sees the creation account of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 as the grand design for male headship in the church. Paul writes, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. Verse 14, then Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self control. Now, these verses are notoriously tricky to translate.

So I've had a lot of headaches this week trying to work through this. But the main thrust, the main idea, the big idea of the text isn't too difficult to understand. New Testament scholar Douglas Moo writes, both the logic of this passage and the parallel in one Corinthians 11:3-10 make this clear. For Paul, the man's priority in the order of creation is indicative of the headship that man is to have over woman. The woman's being created after man as his helper shows the position of submission that God intended as inherent in the woman's relation to man.

A submission that is violated if a woman teaches doctrine or exercises authority over a man. So what about verse 14, and about Adam not woman being deceived. Does that mean that women are more susceptible to being lied to? Do women have less ability in being able to critically evaluate truth? Do women tend to sin more than men?

I don't think that's at all what the bible is saying. And I agree with Moo, where he later also says this, there is nothing in the Genesis account, or in scripture elsewhere, to suggest that Eve's deception is representative of women in general. This interpretation does not mesh with the context. More likely then, he says, verse 14, in conjunction with verse 13, is intended to remind the women at Ephesus that Eve was deceived by the serpent in the garden precisely in taking the initiative over the man whom God had given to be with her and to care for her. In other words, the problem was that Eve engaged the serpent and then made a decision which impacted her, and then Adam.

God, if you remember the account, had originally given Adam the instructions about the tree in the middle of the garden not to eat of that fruit. And Eve should have put Adam in the firing line with Satan instead of acting on her behalf. Alternatively, it's also important to point out the question, why is Adam not taking the leadership position in that situation? He was derelict in his duties as a leader. At the very least, he didn't explain God's word to Eve, which he was instructed.

And so at the very worst, you could argue that where Eve was tricked or deceived, Adam directly disobeyed God, because Adam heard God's voice on this clearly. Adam was supposed to have been the spiritual leader to Eve, which he failed. Eve was supposed to allow herself to be led by Adam, which she also failed. And that is the sad account of humanity's fall. So now, what does that have to do with verse 15 and childbearing?

Being saved through childbearing. Again, there's plenty of opinions on this. But where I land, and where I think a reasonable person will land, is that Paul is speaking about the broad lifestyle, the broad godly decisions of Christian wives. And that is to live out their salvation in this humble godly sort of way. It's the kind of idea when Paul says to the Philippians, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

It's to live out the salvation that God has given you. It cannot mean that we are saved eternally by giving birth. It cannot mean that, because we know what Paul says everywhere else in his writings. It doesn't mean that God promises to keep Christian women safe during childbirth, which is what some others have tried to interpret it as being. What Paul is saying is that a godly Christian wife, remember, it's specifically here about wives who will be in a marriage in order to bring forth kids.

A godly Christian wife shows their salvation-inspired gratitude for God by being faithful, helpful wives, who will have children if they can, and raise them to love and honour God. Paul will say later in chapter five of this letter that these women will manage their household well. And so, even in this creation account by which Paul is drawing his authority, his leadership, his headship explanation, we find these two spheres, these two areas of responsibility that God has given the two gender roles. Men are commanded to be leaders, specifically here within spiritual authority, and women are commanded to be managers, and therefore also leaders in the area of their household. And those two roles fulfil and complement one another.

They are not at odds with one another. Lastly, my closing thoughts and point number four. My personal thoughts when defending and explaining the complementarian understanding of women in ministry. I just wanna add this and I wanna say that I'm not speaking with scriptural authority on this point, but I observe things and I think about these things in this way. And that is that the teaching responsibility, the spiritual authority role which God has limited to men, and more specifically, only to certain men.

There is some reason behind this in the way that men and women are wired. We are just wired differently. Jordan B Peterson, who isn't a Christian, who is a psychologist and an academic, has caused quite a stir recently, having stated something like this again. He says that according to many studies, men and women are different. Duh.

It's amazing how controversial that statement is nowadays though. But he says that they are different in a way that impacts, in my understanding, the role of what a pastor, and preacher, and elder actually will do. Essentially, men are generally more inclined towards concepts and things. So men can be so obsessed with a thing that we are obsessed with a tiny little ball that needs to be hit across a park and towards a tiny little hole hundreds of metres away. We can become obsessed with that, can't we, Steve?

Where is he? Where women's strength and their makeup lie with relationships and people. These are generalisations because I know there will always be exceptions to these rules. But women with this nature of promoting people and relationships, that may not sit naturally with the role of preaching and teaching, because what is that role's main function? It's to resist heresy, and to stubbornly promote true teaching of scripture.

And that may fly in the face of a natural inclination to nurture or protect relationships. Alternatively, men are generally more willing to break relationships, even lose friendships over a concept or a thing that they hold to very tightly. At least, they are more willing to suffer the loss of those friendships more readily. So I wonder whether in God's design, He has given roles to men and roles to women, because all along He's created men to be better suited with their temperament and inclination towards this role. Does this satisfy people who don't hold to a complementarian view?

Probably not. But I want to end with the wise words of Bill Mounts in his commentary, also on one Timothy, where he puts his finger on what I think is probably the deeper issue at stake. But this is what Bill Mounts writes. He says, one of the foundational issues underlying most of the discussion of the role of women in the church today is the question of whether worth is determined by role. In other words, is someone more valuable because of the role that they perform?

He asked, can essential equality and functional differentiation exist side by side? Underlining much of the discussion lies an implicit assumption that a limited role necessitates a diminished personal worth. It is no wonder that the discussion of women in ministry can become so heated. Yet, the equating of worth and role is a non-biblical secular view of reality. Nowhere in scripture are role and ultimate worth ever equated.

In fact, we constantly find the opposite. The last will be first, Jesus says in Matthew 19. The suffering servant himself is not worth less than those he served. Paul's analogy of the church as Christ's body teaches that role and worth are unrelated. Paul writes, the body is a unit.

Though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body. This was done, Paul says, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. Even in the godhead, there is an eternal division of roles. But the three members of the godhead are co-equal, of equal essence. If role and worth are equated, then one must necessarily conclude that God the Son is of less worth than God the Father, because He performs a different subservient role.

Mount concludes, the good news of God's kingdom is that it does not matter what function a person performs. What matters is repentance from sins, entrance into the kingdom, and the living out of one's salvation as a regenerated human being of equal worth with all members of the same body, regardless of role. I think that is a really good way to put the finger on the issue. In finishing, as Christians, we can take a calm, unapologetic position of standing firm on God's revealed order for the church. We can do this confidently by looking to our Saviour Jesus, the Son of God, who being of equal worth, equal essence with the Father, like we read earlier, still emptied Himself, took on human flesh.

And even as the Lord Jesus would serve the Father, He remained of equal honour and glory with the Father. Even when He said to us, I did not come to you to be served, but to serve, to give my life as a ransom for many, He did not lose one iota of worth. He did not lose one bit of glory in serving us and of submitting Himself to the will of the Father. Men and women of Open House Church, we've been called to serve in our various ways. And we are called to do so humbly and with joy.

So let's get on with it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we can come to your word, and on an issue, Lord, that is now so ingrained in our culture, to hear things simply and authoritatively put, Lord, is actually like cool water for our hearts. Thank you that there is wisdom in these words. Thank you, Lord, that there is a way that is wholesome and healthy for us.

Lord, when we are tempted to try and sidestep your will for our lives. Lord, remind us, Holy Spirit, of the goodwill that you have for us. Help us to humbly bow the knee, humbly accept your authority over our lives. Father, for the men of this church, help us to never see the authority of headship in the family, and then for some of us, headship of this church as something that is to be lorded over others. Help us to see, Lord, the grand grand vision that we are heads only under you as our head.

And Lord, that we are called as Ephesians five will put it, we're called to love sacrificially as Jesus loved us. Help us to understand the enormous weight of that. Help us to be humbled to the bone because of that. Father, we also pray for our ladies and we thank you for them. We thank you, Lord, for the unique, wonderful giftedness, the nature that you have only given them.

We thank you for their generosity and their love. And Lord, we pray that, again, in a world that is moving further and further away from your will, that they may feel the great worth, the great value that is placed on them, that you have given them. That we could not be who we are without them. So bless them. Bless these women in our church.

Lord, help all of us to not cause disruption in your holy church. Men to be angry about things and concepts, quarreling and disunifying the church. Lord, help us to crucify those things in us. And, Lord, help our ladies to be godly women, adorned with good deeds. Lord, grant us a great vision for a healthy, beautiful church, we ask. In Jesus' name. Amen.