“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” – 1 Timothy 2:12
When Paul tells Timothy, concerning the churches, that he does “not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” I take it to mean that he does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.
We live in a day in age in which most people, when Paul tells Timothy, concerning the churches, that he does “not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” take it to mean that he permits women to teach and exercise authority over men. The dangerous aspect of this is that when Paul does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, it is more fundamentally God not permitting a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.
I chalk the problem up to three things (though there are more), all of which are one thing: disobedience. Those three things are: biblical illiteracy, feminization, and a lost vision of the home.
Biblical Illiteracy
When families don’t have family worship and the churches stop teaching the Bible, professing Christians tend to grow up not knowing the Bible, which means of course that this tends to lead toward congregations not knowing the Bible. And when congregations don’t know the Bible, who is to say that such and such a well spoken woman cannot teach or preach at our church? And if she can teach or preach, who is to say she can’t be our pastor? When the Word of God is telling you no, and you don’t know the Word of God, well, you can see what happens next. Truly, without a vision the people perish.
Unfortunately this is far too often true of my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters. (Though the Southern Baptist Convention has not formally gone egalitarian, many churches are already there, or are heading there.) We are at a point in time where more and more southern baptist church members have been duped into thinking female preachers and pastors are quite alright because there has been years of biblical illiteracy in our churches. In these churches you will find that pastors are not preaching the Word of God by way of exposition, but instead are giving motivational, step-oriented pep-talks that are really no different than Ted Talks. Or in many circles the sermon has simply turned into an emotionally comforting message of self-esteem. And if all the sermon is is an emotionally comforting message of self-esteem, than of course a woman could do that, and do it quite better than a manly man. But that’s not preaching, or is it pastoring. This leads quite nicely into my next point…
Feminization
Often, biblical illiteracy is a perfect breeding ground for the feminization of our men. There is no doubt that has happened. The men let the pulpit in many churches become what it has become where it is occupied by either an effeminate or a woman. This is not an attack on femininity. Femininity is a good, Godly, and needed thing for women, but not for the pulpit or pastorate. Why? The shortest answer is because that is what God has said. Are you going to obey Him or disobey Him? Unfortunately many are disobeying God because there are no men who are willing to stand up in the pulpit and say what needs to be said manfully. They have been successfully feminized. Feminized men fear man (and woman) more than they fear God.
A Lost Vision of the Home
For so many, the Christian home has been lost. This is why we have female pastors. When dad wouldn’t stop looking at pornography, went out and committed adultery, and then decided he’d be better off leaving mom, that hurt, and it hurt bad. It hurt bad when dads started becoming dads without being husbands and so was never there in the first place. But it hurt way before those things. It hurt when dad lost a vision for his home. It hurt when dad never had one; or didn’t even know he was supposed to have one. When dad didn’t see the home as vital to God’s plan for discipleship and Christian advancement in the world, or as an important gospel outpost to be protected at all costs, or he didn’t see his children has a heritage from the Lord or as arrows in the hands of a warrior, or when he didn’t love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, it hurt.
Faithful and quiet obedience to God in these areas is one of the most powerful and subversive actions to the prince of the power of the air. It is a great act of faith to be a Christian husband and father, faithfully leading your family. And 1 John 5:4 tells us that it is our faith that overcomes the world. Well, dads have left their posts and so instead of overcoming the world our homes and our churches are being overcome.
If you can’t see the connection, here it is: if dads can abandon their homes, then why can’t the moms? And they are. They’re abandoning their homes for the pulpits. If it hurt when dad left the home, do we think it will be better when both dad and mom leave the home? Hardly. If mom can leave the home to go work for a boss in a corporate office, why can’t she leave home to go be a pastor? We’ve lost a vision for the home. After all, why do we need a home when the state can babysit, educate, feed, and discipline our kids?
Dad wasn’t there to give mom a vision for the home, and so now mom doesn’t have one. Now, like dad, she does not see the home as vital to the great commission or kingdom advancement in this world. The only place she believes she can do that is in the pulpit, so she goes there. Thus she has become much more like that man she swears she hates than she would like to admit.
But what if the home is absolutely vital to the great commission, and abandoning them leaves unattended gates for the enemy to walk right in? To paraphrase something Rebekah Merkle said, when Jesus gave us the great commission of baptizing and discipling the nations, and He put women in the home, that must mean that the home is absolutely vital to fulfilling the great commission. So it must.
To that point, I find it interesting that in Titus 1 we are given the qualifications of an overseer (pastor), and immediately following in chapter 2 we are told, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.“
Christians are on a mission of world conquest through gospel preaching, discipling, and baptizing. Men and women are both called to do this. But that doesn’t mean they are to do it in the same way; because they’re not. This is what we see in Titus, “Men, you disciple this way; women, you disciple this way.” In a world where men can be women and women can be men, you can see why people would fall for the egalitarian lie. But we don’t actually live in that world; it doesn’t exist. This is God’s world. And it’s a much better place.
It’s a beautiful vision of womanhood that we are given and all is not lost. When women understand the responsibilities in the home that God has charged to them, and they see the vision of the home, they will see they cannot leave it. They must be there. They will see that working in the home as a wife and mother is far too important to leave to go preach. She will see that she is needed far too much in being a woman than to leave and try to go be a man.
Thankfully, a vision for the home is being found again. A new generation is rising up and restoring men and their bibles to our pulpits, and wives and mothers working in the home. The biblical vision is being raised up again, though it was never really lost or dropped. We are thankful to those who have passed it down to us despite no one else around them doing so. Now it is catching fire. We are not afraid. We are not alone. We stand on the authority of Christ and His Word. He is risen and reigning and so are we. The world is ours.
If you have failed, and we all have, there is never a bad time to start doing the right thing. There is mercy and forgiveness in Christ for those who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You can be made into a new creation with new eyes to see a new vision of the home and its place in God’s plan of redemption. If you are woman in disobedience by preaching or pastoring, there is mercy yet for you. Repent, stop sinning, and seek forgiveness in Christ. He loves to forgive.
Not criticizing, just a genuine question- if women are supposed to be homemakers, how do women of the Bible such as Deborah who was given authority as a judge over the men and women of the land, or Lydia the businesswoman that started the first Christian church in Greece fit in with all this? Is it wrong to assume God could call a woman to do something outside of the home?
An important question, that deserves an article of its own. In short, homemaking does not mean a woman must stay locked up in the house. Indeed that would not be good homemaking. I think faithful homemaking looks unique to each woman. The principle behind it, is that the woman’s home must be her priority, there are innumerable ways you can be faithful to that priority. Could God call a woman to do something outside of the home? If by woman we mean wife and mother, and by outside of the home we simply mean the four walls then sure. But if a woman is a wife and mother, she can be sure that God has called her to be a wife and mother.