Men

1
Men WomenEqual Yet Different

• A Biblical look at the role of women in the church

2
Two Major Views

• Egalitarians/Evangelical Feminist View This
  view teaches that God created men and women
  equally to bear the divine image and this
  requires equal ministry opportunities for both
  sexes. Propose the concept of mutual
  submission.
• True Biblical equality assures that both men and
  women are full and equal partners.

3
Egalitarians Cont.

• Women and men are free to exercise in the church
  all the gifts they possess and men hold no
  unique, leadership-authority role simply because
  of their sex.
• Adherents of this viewpoint consider the Bibles
  statements on headship and submission to have
  been misinterpreted by past generations of
  Christians.
• No such thing as male headship.
• Mutual submission is key.

4
Two Major Views Cont.

• Complementarians This view teaches that God
  created men and women as equals with different
  gender-defined roles. These sex-defined roles,
  when lived out properly, complement each other
  and make for harmonious relationships within the
  family and within the church.
• Men and Women are fully equal in personhood,
  dignity, and worth (Gen. 126-28).
• Then God said, "Let us make mana in our image,
  after our likeness. And let them have dominion
  over the fish of the sea and over the birds of
  the heavens and over the livestock and over all
  the earth and over every creeping thing that
  creeps on the earth." So God created man in his
  own image,in the image of God he created
  him male and female he created them. And God
  blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful
  and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and
  have dominion over the fish of the sea and over
  the birds of the heavens and over every living
  thing that moves on the earth." ESV

5
Complementarians Cont.

• All believers in Jesus Christ whether male or
  female are baptized, Spirit-gifted and full
  members of the Body of Christ.
• Equally true that God created men and women to be
  different and to fulfill distinct gender roles.
• God designed the man to be husband, father,
  provider, protector. He is to be the head of the
  family and to lead the church family.
• God designed the woman to be wife, mother,
  nurturer. She is to actively help and submit to
  the mans leadership.

6
A Plea for Understanding

• I want those who are undecided about the Bibles
  teaching on gender to know that complementarians
  deeply desire that all women be treated justly
  and with dignity. We abhor male chauvinistic
  superiority and the abuse of women. We are aware
  that some Christian theologians, husbands, and
  churches have misused the Bible to say degrading
  things about and to commit crimes against women,
  for which we are ashamed. But as you will
  discover through our time together, Christlike
  love adds a divine and mutually beneficial
  character to the role differences between
  Christian men and women.

7
A Plea for Understanding

• I hope you will come to understand that although
  sinful men and women have misunderstood and
  abused the doctrine of headship and submission,
  the doctrine itself is rooted in Gods wisdom and
  love. When it is applied in love, it reflects
  Gods design for the sexes. We complementarians
  do not hold this viewpoint because we want to
  maintain archaic, legalistic traditions or male
  supremacy. Rather, we uphold it because we
  believe that Jesus Christ taught both gender
  equality and gender-based role dinstinctions.
• Human traditions can blind the minds of even the
  best people. Jesus Christ Himself was put to
  death by religious people who placed man-made,
  legalistic traditions above Gods Word. For
  complementarians, gender is an issue of thus
  says the Lord. We believe in role distinctions
  because the Bible teachers them, and the Bible is
  the Word of God.

8
The Two Major Figures in New Testament Teaching
and Their View of Women
9
Jesus Christ and Gender Discrimination

• No one who truly loves people, is sensitive to
  the Word of God, and is keenly aware of the
  unspeakable dehumanization that women have
  suffered (and still suffer) would want to
  discriminate against women. To sin against women
  is to sin against God in whose image women are
  created.
• Why, then, would any intelligent, thinking,
  sensitive, Bible-believing Christian dare argue
  for role distinctions between men and women? The
  answer is simple Jesus Christ taught that women
  are equal yet different.
• Although He taught and practiced gender-based
  role distinctions, Jesus Christ treated all
  women, even those who were considered to be
  outcasts in society, with dignity (Luke
  736-50Confrontation with Pharisees and
  Adultery). He communicated the gospel message to
  women with love and compassion. In turn, women
  followed Him and loved Him. They felt free to
  approach him.

10
Jesus and Womens Roles

• Jesus Appointed Twelve Male Apostles
• Question from Egalitarians Isnt it possible
  that excluding women from the Twelve was another
  concession to first-century culture as well as
  decorum?

11
Jesus and Womens Roles

• 1. Jesus was fearless.
• 2. Jesus was a non-traditionalist.
• Jesus teachings and actions toward women were
  new and quite untraditional. Jesus was not afraid
  to challenge male traditions nor the hard-hearted
  defenders of male-centered tradition.
• Divorce
• Adultery
• Talking with the Samaritan Woman
• Public commendation of Mary for her spiritual
  priorities
• Loyal women were constantly accompanying Jesus
• Woman caught in adultery
• Mary Magdalene and other women were the first to
  see Jesus after his resurrection.

12
Jesus and Womens Roles

• 3. Jesus didnt fail women
• During His life on earth, Jesus honored,
  defended, and elevated women in remarkable new
  ways.
• He did not fear the male chauvinist authorities
  of His day. Jesus didnt cower from anybody.
• Even so, He chose twelve male apostles. Why?
  The answer to this question is very important.

13
Jesus and Womens Roles

• If Jesus, through His work of redemption,
  intended to abolish the role distinctions as
  feminists claim, then the choosing of the Twelve
  was the crucial moment in history to act and
  appoint women to the apostolate. The apostolate
  was the foundational office of the Church, and
  Jesus choice of the twelve apostles affected the
  Church for the next two thousand years. So the
  choosing of the Twelve was the opportune time to
  break with Israels patriarchal leadership
  structure. But Jesus made no such break. He
  continued the pattern of male leadership.

14
Jesus and Womens Roles

• If Jesus is the supreme egalitarian that some
  wish Him to be, He surely failed women at a
  critical moment in history.
• As the hailed liberator of women, should not
  Jesus have chosen six women and six men apostles,
  or at the very least, one female apostle?
• One female apostle, would have forever settled
  the debate. But He didnt.

15
Jesus and Womens Roles

• Jesus Christ came to show the right way, the way
  of co-operation, not competition, the way of
  peace, not war, between the sexes. He did not
  come to change the created order, which includes
  the headship of men and the submission of women
  but rather to transform it by his love and grace,
  so that what God created can by redeemed and
  function properly. If we dont find this way,
  then both men and women will be the losers, and
  the truth will be hidden from the world.
• Alexander Strauch

16
The Apostle Paul Women

• This guy has taken great abuse as a
• woman hater.
• Key Passage Ephesians 522-25
• v.22 Wives submit (hypotasso subject to,
  subordination, yield to advice) to your own
  husbands as to the Lord.
• v.23 For the husband is the head of the wife,
  even as Christ is the head of the church, his
  body, and is himself its Savior.
• v.24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so
  also wives should submit in everything to their
  husbands.
• v. 25 Husbands, love (agape) your wives as
  Christ has loved (agape) the church and gave
  himself up for her.

17
Key N.T. Passage On The Role of Women in Ministry

• 1 Timothy 28-13
• 28 Therefore I want the men in every place to
  pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and
  dissention.
• 29 Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves
  with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly,
  not with braided hair and gold or pears or costly
  garments,
• 210 but rather by means of good works, as is
  proper for women making a claim to godliness.
• 211 A woman must quietly receive instruction
  with entire submissiveness.
• 212 But I do not allow a woman to teach or
  exercise authority of a man, but to remain quiet.
  
• 213 For it was Adam who was created first, and
  then Eve.

18
Essential Equality and Role Differentiation

• Can There Be Such a Thing?
• Can you really be equal but have a different
  role? Underlying much of the discussion lies and
  implicit assumption that a limited role
  necessitates a diminished personal worth. Thus,
  part of the heat often generated by this topic.
• Yet the equating of worth and role is a
  nonbiblical and secular view of reality.

19
Essential Equality and Role Differentiation

• Nowhere in Scripture are role and ultimate worth
  ever equated. In fact, we constantly find the
  opposite.
• Examples
• You and Dr. Altenhofel
• Jesus and those He served
• Examples from the Trinity
• Biblical Service is Exalted and Radical for men
  women.
• The Last will be first!
• Love must reign supreme!

20
The Definition of Love

• Love is patient and kind love does not envy or
  boast it is not arrogant or rude. It does not
  insist on its own way it is not irritable or
  resentful it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but
  rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things,
  believes all things, hopes all things, endures
  all things. Love never ends. 1 Corinthians
  134-8