Anyone ignoring or rejecting God’s order, then, weakens the church and dishonors Him. He has ordained order in His creation-an order that reflects His own nature and therefore should be reflected in His church. That is true not because women are spiritually inferior to men but because God’s law commands it. Women may be highly gifted teachers and leaders, but those gifts are not to be exercised over men in the context of the church. Such theology does much damage to God’s design for the home and the church. Historically, the liberals have embraced women’s liberation theology as a means of elevating women to their rightful position among men in the church. The natural man has a problem with authority, and often he seeks to avoid it or usurp authority that he doesn’t possess. When you play with fire, you will eventually get burned. This is a most dangerous approach to life in general-and within the world of theology. We are constantly asking “how far is too far” and laboring to see how close we can walk to the edge of the cliff without falling. ![]() Boundaries for Teaching and Authorityīoundaries are often viewed through a negative lens due to the nature of human depravity. It is in willing submission rather than grudging capitulation that the woman in the church (whether married or single) and the wife in the home find their fulfillment. Supreme authority in both church and home has been divinely vested in the male as the representative of Christ, who is Head of the church. Elisabeth Elliot is quoted as saying the following: This is more than a contextual issue that was bound to the church at Ephesus because of the image of Artemis in their culture or women who were teaching false doctrine-he built his argument upon God’s design in creation. As Paul writes his letter, we must remember the Holy Spirit is breathing out His Word for Timothy in Ephesus and our local churches in our present day as well. Therefore, when Paul writes about roles in relation to teaching and authority in the life of the church at Ephesus, it wasn’t merely a contextual issue that was at play. The egalitarian position was birthed in the Garden of Eden. In essence, it’s the first role reversal and it led to sin entering the world and bringing a curse of death upon God’s creation (Rom. It was Satan, in the Garden who approached Eve and, although Adam was present, it was Satan talking with Eve that led to this divisive decision of sin. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Notice how he questioned God’s plan in Genesis 3:1: Satan is crafty and understands how to disrupt God’s good design. From the very beginning, we see that God set in motion specific roles and responsibilities among his creation. ![]() ![]() 2:9), it was Adam who taught his wife Eve regarding the boundaries. When Adam was taught about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. In this scene, God not only created the man first, he gave him authority over his wife which involved her care and instruction. Adam and Eve were there in the Garden, brought together by God himself in what was essentially the first wedding where God officiated it and gave away his daughter to her husband. He created man and then from his side, he created woman. ![]() God is the divine designer, and he doesn’t operate from flippant disorganized positions. When God created the world, he did so with order and it was good. So, why should women refrain from teaching the Bible to men? Lessons from the Garden For nearly two millennia the Church understood their roles and responsibilities in regard to women teaching and exercising authority over men, and it wasn’t until the militant feminist movement of the 1960s that caused people to seriously question the boundaries of God-even among conservative evangelical circles. When we think of how women are used in the household of faith-we certainly see the value of faithful discipleship among the women who train the younger women and children (Titus 2:1-10). How many godly men have served God’s Church through the years emerging from the incubator of a nurturing disciple-making home under the tutelage of faithful women like Lois and Eunice (1 Tim. When we consider all of the blessings that God has given to us and those which are most clearly manifest in the context of the local church-the blessing of women should certainly be there near the top. The pulpit of a well known Bible teacher in recent history had a sign on the front of it that read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” In our age of inclusiveness, should the sign read, “Preacher, we would see Jesus” in order to accommodate both men and women who would stand in the pulpit? The blessings of God on his Church is multifaceted and beyond comprehension.
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