¹¹A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. ¹²But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

A literal interpretation of this verse is entirely out of step with our modern, Western culture. To be sure, women have been mistreated throughout history: because of differences between the sexes in physical size and hormones, women have been easily victimized by male aggression. This reprehensible treatment has been often caricatured as cavemen dragging their cavewomen by the hair, or women being treated as the legal property of men in medieval Europe or even pre-contemporary America.

Women’s suffrage has come a long way to include voting rights and equal legal status. But in the church, the women’s rights movement has extended to a push for equality of roles for serving in all ministries, including that of pastoring and leadership functions and positions. Few denominations have escaped the pressure to remove all barriers to women’s “full” participation.

The movement has extended logically to same-sex marriage (for if a man has a right to marry a woman, then so does a woman have a right to marry a woman). Thus we see in some places practicing lesbian pastors. Christians who resist this movement are considered out of step with culture, and it is said they will be found to be on the wrong side of history.

What about being out of step with God, on His wrong side? The apostles Peter and John answered that question when they were forbidden by the influencers of their day, the trendsetters, the intellectual elite (a.k.a. the religious council): “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). So we must, in the issue of men’s and women’s roles in the church, obey God and not men.

Paul’s states his teaching here clearly and forcefully, with words like “must” and “I do not allow.” Some say he is dealing with a site-specific situation: a problem with women who were false teachers in Ephesus. However, when he specifically names false teachers in this letter, they are all men! If the issue here was false teaching, why center out the women? The men teachers were guilty. Nor is Paul giving a personal preference as though uninspired, being subject to the culture of the day. We have repeatedly seen Paul referring to himself as an apostle. Further, he was perfectly capable of transcending his culture and even willing to die for the truth, namely the deity of Christ and His unique substitutionary atonement. It would be hard to see him capitulating to a false view of women’s roles in the church. More to come.

Lord, help me lean into You when it means leaning away from my culture.