Dec 9, 2020 | FAQ5 |
There are two main passages in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul in his letters describes the church as the Body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12:1-13 he says that the church is to function and grow as Christ’s Body through each person using the spiritual gifts given to them by the Holy Spirit. This is in fulfilment of Joel’s prophesy quoted by Peter in his Pentecost sermon: ‘In these last days, God says: I will pour out my Spirit on all people . . . sons and daughters . . . young men . . . old men.’
Paul talks of these spiritual gifts, given by the grace of God, as like the arms and legs and eyes and ears that are important to the functioning of a human body. In Christ’s Body, we are all either an arm or a leg or some other part. The emphasis is on each person receiving and using their gift(s). Otherwise, the whole church is poorer. We minister through our spiritual gifts, working in unity to bring glory to God and serve in his world. We are not meant to relate to God just as isolated individuals but as a community of believers.
Paul gives a list of spiritual gifts in these passages. Each list is a bit different, so it looks like they are examples, rather than meant to cover everything. But no distinction is made between people of different status, ethnic background or gender. All receive at least one gift and have the responsibility to develop and use it. This includes women. In fact, in the 1 Corinthians passage, Paul urges us to especially encourage in using their gift those not thought of favourably by others. And in Romans, he warns us not to think too highly of ourselves, whatever gift or gifts we have been given. It is God’s grace alone that we have them. Rather, we are to pursue cooperation and service through the Holy Spirit.
Later in Ephesians 4 (the last letter we have from Paul before he was martyred), he says a bit more about the roles played by different people in the church, but again the teaching is that there is one Body and one Holy Spirit and all are to work together to reach unity and knowledge in the fullness of Jesus Christ for the good of the Body. In Colossians and Ephesians, Jesus is described as the head of this Body, the church. All flows undeserved from him, at his choosing and with his timing.
Sometimes people ask what the relationship is between our natural talents and these Holy Spirit-given spiritual gifts? We need to remember that it is the same God who gives both the talents and the spiritual gifts, so it is likely that they are related. But Christ determines what is needed in his Body at any one time and place, and so he has the final say. We may have a creative ability, for example, but if it is not what God is calling us to do in that time and place, then it will not be our spiritual gift. If it is our spiritual gift at that season in our life, however, we and others will be able to recognise that because it will come with spiritual power, and others will be blessed through it.
A helpful terminology is to call natural talents, creation gifts. And call spiritual gifts, grace gifts. All gifting is Christ’s to bestow and we are urged to respect and encourage one another in use of our gifts. Ask someone who knows you well what creation and grace gifts they see God using in you.
For more on spiritual gifts for all, see
Holding up half the sky: A biblical case for women leading and teaching in the church by Graham Joseph Hill (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020)
And for stories of male leaders impacted by observing spiritual gifts of leadership in women, read
How I changed my mind about women in leadership: Compelling stories from prominent evangelicals by Alan F. Johnson (Grand Rapids, IL: Zondervan, 2010)
Questions in this series:
1. How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
2. What principles of interpreting Scripture should we apply to understand the passages that are used to limit women’s leadership in the church?
3. What roles did women play in the early church?
4. Did Jesus have female disciples?
5. Does the Holy Spirit give spiritual gifts to all Christians?
6. How can men pave the way for women to have greater opportunities in the church?
7. Why is it important to hear women preach and teach Scripture?
8. I am uncomfortable with the fact that women are restricted from leading and teaching men in my church. What advice can you give to help me raise this issue at my church?
Dec 9, 2020 | FAQ4 |
A disciple is an apprentice who learns from the master, and Jesus had women among the many who hung on his every word in his three years of earthly ministry, welcoming his teaching them in a new way about God. Luke 8 tells us there were women among those who travelled from Galilee with Jesus. Most of these female disciples were drawn from families of fishermen or subsistence farmers in the north of Palestine, but others such as Joanna and Susanna came from households with more resources and were an essential part of supplying his support team. As unusual as this was, it apparently gave no cause for scandal and illustrates how comfortable they and Jesus’ other disciples were in this mixed company, taking their cue from Jesus’ own attitude. It was some of these women disciples who were later entrusted with the earth-shattering good news of Jesus’ resurrection and commissioned to share it with the other disciples. Gospel writer John singles out Mary Magdalene as the first to encounter the risen Christ and give witness to his living reality (20:11-18). This was in a society where a women’s testimony was not acceptable in court. Moreover, Mary Magdalene was known to have had a chequered past.
Earlier in his travels, Jesus had already shown unusual acceptance of women – of the ‘sinful’ one caught in adultery, the haemorrhaging ‘unclean’ woman healed of a 12-year flow of blood who was not supposed to be out in public; the ostracised woman at the well in Samaria; the Gentile woman pleading with him to heal her child, the woman (maybe two) who let down their hair in public to anoint and wipe his feet. This was greatly countercultural in a strongly patriarchal society whose religious leaders modelled a very low view of women and ascribed to the Talmud teaching: ‘Do not speak excessively with a woman lest this lead you to adultery.’
In the episode in Samaria, we can see the surprise of Jesus’ disciples coming back from fetching lunch and finding him speaking at length to a disreputable woman. In his friendship with Mary and Martha, unmarried women living with their brother in Bethany, Jesus again challenged the contemporary view of women. He engaged Martha in theological debate and in one notable interaction he specifically commended Mary for wanting to learn at the feet of the Master. The ethos of the time said women should not be exposed at all to the holy Scriptures nor expect to learn in the same way men did.
First-century Palestine is not our world, and so we often do not notice how radical Jesus’ actions and words were. In a patriarchal society, he clearly did not treat women as second-class people or dangerous to his purity. He welcomed them into his circle and defied the restrictions his culture and the hyper-religiosity of the Pharisees imposed on them. He raised the eyebrows of those observing him. They were quick to see he was offering women a different way to think about themselves. His enemies even tried to use his known sympathy for women to trap him, expecting him to condemn the woman caught in adultery.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, followed Jesus’ public ministry, often puzzled by what he was doing. But she was clearly a disciple, at the cross silently witnessing the gruesome spectacle of her oldest son dying in a most shameful way. She was also with other women among Jesus’ loyal followers in the upper room praying after his ascension. Presumably, these women were also there when the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost.
Given the attitude of the founder of the Christian faith, it is not surprising that Acts records the early church having many women contributing to the rapid spread of Christianity as, under the impetus of the Holy Spirit, the church moved its focus from Jerusalem and the apostles’ leadership to Antioch and the rest of the Roman world.
Some commentators point to Jesus’ choice of males to be ‘The Twelve’, his inner circle. Having been present with Jesus in his early ministry, these apostles had an important role representing the 12 tribes of Israel in witnessing to his teaching and life-death-resurrection. But in the transition from a Jewish Jerusalem-centred faith to a whole world Gospel, other leaders emerged, most notably Barnabas, Paul, Silas, James (Jesus’ brother), Titus and Jude, to name some whose names we are familiar with. And among them were women leaders and teachers such as Phoebe, Prisca (Priscilla), Lydia, Junia, and Philip’s four prophesying daughters.
For further reading on women in the New Testament, see
Woman in the Bible: An Overview of All the Crucial Passages on Women’s Roles by Mary Evans (Milton Keynes: Authentic, 2006)
Every woman in the Bible by Sue and Larry Richards (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1999)
Questions in this series:
1. How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
2. What principles of interpreting Scripture should we apply to understand the passages that are used to limit women’s leadership in the church?
3. What roles did women play in the early church?
4. Did Jesus have female disciples?
5. Does the Holy Spirit give spiritual gifts to all Christians?
6. How can men pave the way for women to have greater opportunities in the church?
7. Why is it important to hear women preach and teach Scripture?
8. I am uncomfortable with the fact that women are restricted from leading and teaching men in my church. What advice can you give to help me raise this issue at my church?
Dec 9, 2020 | FAQ3 |
The Book of Acts is our primary source for learning about some of the roles women filled in the early church. The list of women in Acts includes Dorcas, Mary the mother of John Mark, Lydia, Prisca (Pricilla) and Philip the evangelist’s four prophesying daughters (21:8-9). Paul mentions others in his letter to churches – Phoebe, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus’ mother, Julia, another Mary, Syntyche and Euodia as being among those he had worked with in ministry. The list in Romans 16 of those he calls co-workers, has as many women in it as men.
Some of the women in the early church were apparently well-to-do owners of larger-than-average houses where churches met. Mary the mother of John Mark was an early example of these women who headed up a household and hosted a church. (Acts 12:12-17). In Jerusalem at the time, the church was already persecuted and so this church-in-a home must have been a dangerous undertaking. Lydia in Philippi was also one (Acts 16:11-15), a businesswoman dealing in luxury purple cloth and an early convert in Paul’s first evangelistic stopover in Europe. When she became a Christian, she made her house available as the meeting place for the new Christians in her city. Two other women, Nympha (Colossians 4:15) and Chloe (1 Corinthians 1:11) are also spoken of in the same way. That these prominent women were named as heads of households probably also meant they came to be seen as the leader of the house church in their home.
Later in Acts, we meet Aquila and his wife Prisca (18:1-26), who as fellow leatherworkers, shared travel and ministry with Paul and hosted a house church (1 Corinthians 16:19). It is not long before Prisca (her formal name – Priscilla is the familiar form) is named ahead of her husband Aquila, indicating that she became a widely-accepted leader and teacher in her own right, if not the leader of the team (Acts 18:18; 2 Timothy 4:19).
Paul concludes his letter to the church in Rome with a series of greetings and commendations of his co-workers. Romans 16 begins with Phoebe, whom he highly praises as a deacon (the only time in the New Testament a deacon is named) and rich benefactor. The word used in verse 1 for benefactor has the meaning of patron, leader or ruler. Paul is asking that when she comes to Rome, perhaps carrying his letter to the church there, they receive her as fitting her standing as a church leader in the city of Cenchreae. The practice of the time was that when significant letters were delivered, they were read aloud to the receiving congregation by the bearer, who then explained the latter and answered any questions raised by the hearers. So Phoebe possibly was the one who first spoke to what has been considered the most intense and comprehensive theological treatise of the early church, one we return to again and again to comprehend the depth of God’s plan of salvation for us.
Paul’s list of commendations in Romans 16 also includes Junia. She is named an outstanding apostle alongside Andronicus (probably her husband). They had suffered persecution for their ministry, even sharing a prison with Paul. Apostles at this time were not the original ‘Twelve’ but evangelists like Paul (who called himself an apostle) who had the responsibility to travel and share the gospel widely, perhaps planting churches as they went. They were travelling missionaries, frequently gifted by God to perform miracles of healing. Junia was one of these.
Scot McKnight in his discussion of reading the Bible, suggests that before we launch into the more difficult passages New Testament passages used to limit women teaching and leading in the church, we should ask the question from the Scriptures: What Did Women Do (WDWD) in those times? He even suggests wearing a WDWD wristband to remind us of this basic approach!
What roles did women play in the early church? This brief overview demonstrates there were many women in significant general leadership in first-century congregations, highly commended by Paul and the other church leaders. Their ministries included hosting and overseeing congregations in their homes, providing financial support, expounding the Scriptures, teaching publicly, travelling as evangelists, church planting, and in Phoebe’s case, explaining the writings that were emerging and which later became our New Testament.
For further reading on women’s roles in the early church, see
The blue parakeet: Rethinking how you read the Bible by Scot McKnight (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008, 2011. Kindle)
Junia is Not Alone: Breaking our silence about women in the Bible and the church today also by Scot McKnight (Patheos.com, 2011. Kindle)
Outrageous Women Outrageous God: Women in the first two generations of Christianity by Ross Saunders (Brunswick East, Victoria: Acorn, 2017. Kindle)
Questions in this series:
1. How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
2. What principles of interpreting Scripture should we apply to understand the passages that are used to limit women’s leadership in the church?
3. What roles did women play in the early church?
4. Did Jesus have female disciples?
5. Does the Holy Spirit give spiritual gifts to all Christians?
6. How can men pave the way for women to have greater opportunities in the church?
7. Why is it important to hear women preach and teach Scripture?
8. I am uncomfortable with the fact that women are restricted from leading and teaching men in my church. What advice can you give to help me raise this issue at my church?
Dec 9, 2020 | FAQ2 |
There are two specific Bible passages that people use to limit what women can do in a church, especially in leadership in the congregation – 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15. We will use them as examples to apply the principles of interpreting Scripture outlined in the FAQ: How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
The question of what women should do in the church is often discussed in terms of their moral nature. So the starting point before we look at the New Testament must be the foundational texts of Genesis 1 and 2 that present God’s intention in creating men and women. In particular we ask: What do they tell us about the nature of men and women and their relationship to one another?
Genesis 1 is quite clear that men and women are made in the image of God and given joint responsibility as stewards of the created world. Genesis 2 emphasises the oneness of the man and the woman. The focus is on their companionship in work and marriage. There is no hint of competition or separation of responsibility. They are created to inherit together God’s wonderful creation and relate to him openly in an unclouded relationship.
The disruption of this ideal comes with their sin in rejecting God’s sovereignty, seeking to be equal with him in knowledge and power. The consequences are spelled out in Genesis 3. Work will become oppressive for the man; childbirth for the woman. She will lose the open partnership she enjoyed with the man who will now rule over her. This is not what God intended for them, but God promises a future descendant would one day put things right. We understand that descendant to be Jesus. His redeeming work on the cross begins the process of restoring what the Creator intended at the beginning.
The coming of Jesus, therefore, inaugurates a new era, and the church is the place where this is to be displayed. The clearest statement of this restored order is Galatians 3:28, addressing the disruptions to human relationships of ethnic, social and gender divisions. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
With that framework of God’s intentions, we next apply to any limiting passage the principles of biblical interpretation listed in the FAQ: How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today? We will use the 2 passages mentioned above as examples.
- What kind of literature it is? These 2 passages are in letters by Paul to specific churches, probably addressing local problems.
- What do Jesus’ life and teaching say about this topic? Jesus did not treat his women disciples (Luke 8:1,2) differently from men and was not threatened or embarrassed by their presence. He commends Mary at Bethany for wanting to learn from him and engages her sister Martha in theological discussion (Luke 10; John 11). He entrusts the good news of his resurrection to Mary Magdalene as the first witness.
- How did the early church understand Jesus’ teaching on this issue? The early church had women, Phoebe, Philip’s daughters, Junia, Priscilla, Lydia and others among its church leaders and teachers. Joel’s prophecy was quoted by Peter in his Pentecost sermon says: ‘In the last days . . . your sons and daughters will prophesy.’ (Acts 2:17) Paul is generous in his commendations of his female ‘fellow workers’ (Romans 16). The early church had women leaders and teachers.
- What did this passage mean to its original hearers? Given the attitude of Jesus and the early church’ women leaders, we cannot read these passages meaning women should never speak in church. The instructions must have a local application.
- To understand verses that appear to contradict the Bible’s other teachings, we ask more questions:
- Is this part of the core message of the Bible, a universal principle that we should give most attention to? Women not speaking or leading in church is not part of the core message of the Bible.
- Is it a moral or a cultural issue? Genesis 3 gives no hint that women are more morally sinful than men, so this must be a cultural issue. In Corinth, Paul’s concern is order in the church, so he is discouraging worship being interrupted by women shouting questions across to their husbands. In Ephesus, he is encouraging the women to learn but do it quietly – surely good advice for all learners. It was a city dominated by priestesses of the fertility goddess Diana. Christian women needed to be different from them in their demeanour.
- What options are available today that were not possible in the first century? We know that first-century women had little education and much to learn in biblical understanding. Today women are as equally educated as men.
To read more on what women did in New Testament times, see
Junia is not alone: Breaking our silence about women in the Bible and the church today by Scot McKnight (Englewood, CO: Patheos, 2011)
Holding up half the sky: A biblical case for women leading and teaching in the church by Graham Joseph Hill (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020)
Questions in this series:
1. How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
2. What principles of interpreting Scripture should we apply to understand the passages that are used to limit women’s leadership in the church?
3. What roles did women play in the early church?
4. Did Jesus have female disciples?
5. Does the Holy Spirit give spiritual gifts to all Christians?
6. How can men pave the way for women to have greater opportunities in the church?
7. Why is it important to hear women preach and teach Scripture?
8. I am uncomfortable with the fact that women are restricted from leading and teaching men in my church. What advice can you give to help me raise this issue at my church?
Dec 9, 2020 | FAQ1 |
To use the Bible faithfully we must appreciate how it is put together. Its 66 books, written in Hebrew or Greek, are by a variety of authors in many different kinds of literature. Each book had come over time to be regarded by Christians as authoritative. We believe that God oversaw the putting together of these various books into one volume so that under the supervision of the Holy Spirit, there is a consistent message.
We recognise two main parts, the Old and New Testaments. Like Jews of his time, Jesus knew the Old Testament well and often quoted from it. The New Testament begins with his birth, earthy life, death, and resurrection in four ‘gospels’. Then we have a historical book, The Acts of the Apostles, followed by a collection of letters written to the first-century churches by a variety of people close to Jesus. In these, many of them written by Paul, we see Christians wrestling with what Jesus means for their time and place. The Revelation, pictures of Jesus finally ruling over everything, brings the New Testament to a climax.
When we read a part of the Bible, we first must look at where these verses come from. What kind of literature is this book? If it is full of rules and instructions for the Hebrew nation (eg Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), we can learn important principles about how God wants people to live, but the details are intended for an agrarian society very different from our own. If it is poetry (eg Psalms, Proverbs) we appreciate its pictures and images but know that Hebrew poetry follows different conventions from our own. The Old Testament historical and prophetic books need to be read in the light of symbols that the original readers understood, but that may be obscure to us today. Above all, the Old Testament must be read through the lens of Jesus. His birth, life, death and resurrection are the turning point between the Testaments and the way we interpret everything before and after him.
The four gospels that begin the New Testament give us four different perspectives on Jesus, written for different audiences. They are partly history – telling us what Jesus did and what was done to him. But they are also rich with his teachings and provide the foundation of our Christian faith. New readers of the Bible do well to start with them and we all need to come back to them time and time again to anchor our lives in Jesus who is both God and human.
The letters that make up most of the rest of the New Testament need to be read in their context. Who wrote this? What was the reason for its writing? What was the situation in the receiving church and its city that was being addressed? We must distinguish whether what is discussed is a moral matter or a cultural one. Is what is being advocated a timeless principle or advice for a specific time and place?
All understanding of Scripture should be based on important principles of hermeneutics – the science of interpretation of written texts. We can be guided in this by commentaries on each Bible book written by experts in Bible interpretation, many of them reading the text in the original language. But there are some basic principles that each of us can apply to help us see from the Scriptures ourselves how to live today.
Here is a summary of some principles to use when we want to interpret a specific passage of Scripture or look to see what the Bible says on a topic of concern to us.
- Among the 66 books of the Bible, what kind of literature are we reading in this passage?
- What do Jesus’ life and teaching say about this topic?
- How did the early church understand Jesus’ teaching on this issue?
- What did the passage mean to its original hearers?
- When the passage we are looking at appears to contradict the Bible’s other teaching on the issue, we ask more questions:
- Is the teaching in this passage part of the core message of the Bible, a universal principle that we should give priority to?
- Is it a moral or a cultural issue? If it is a cultural issue, what do we know about the city and its church receiving the letter that might help us understand it?
- What options are available today that were not possible in the first century?
Using this questioning approach, we can work towards understanding the importance and implications of a particular passage of Scripture and how it should impact our life.
To read more on biblical interpretation, see
How to read the Bible for all it’s worth by Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014)
The blue parakeet: Rethinking how you read the Bible by Scot McKnight (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018)
Questions in this series:
1. How do we read the Bible to decide what to do today?
2. What principles of interpreting Scripture should we apply to understand the passages that are used to limit women’s leadership in the church?
3. What roles did women play in the early church?
4. Did Jesus have female disciples?
5. Does the Holy Spirit give spiritual gifts to all Christians?
6. How can men pave the way for women to have greater opportunities in the church?
7. Why is it important to hear women preach and teach Scripture?
8. I am uncomfortable with the fact that women are restricted from leading and teaching men in my church. What advice can you give to help me raise this issue at my church?
