The topic of women submitting to male leadership in the Church and in the Husband/Wife relationship seems to continue to come up everywhere. And it came up again in one of the Forums.
Here's my post:
Christian leadership is not the same as secular leadership, so let's not equate control with leadership.
Christian leadership is illustrated in the Husband/Wife relationship as described in Ephesians 5.
In Ephesians 5:21, Paul wrote "Submit to one another", first. Then he delineate how that's accomplished.
In Ephesians 5:22: "Wives submit to your husband as to the Lord"
In Ephesian 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the Church and gave himself up to her"
Too often we forget what love means, equating it with that warm fuzzy feeling that we get when we are "in love".
Love is a verb, an action word. In fact, it is a transitive verb. When we say, "I love you", it means I do something to you.
This transitive verb, "love", means the subject, "I", puts whats best for the object, "you", ahead of what's best for the subject, "I".
So the Christian leader's role is trying to accomplish what is best for his follower(s) and putting it ahead of what's best for him, willing to even give up his life for her (them).
Since God's plan for us is what is best, it would mean that the leader is there to help his follower(s) pursue God's plan for them.
It is because of the leader's motive that his followers submit to his leadership.
So, why did God imposed such a seemingly unfair relegation of roles on the Church (men lead, women follow)?
Let me give you my take on this issue:
We'll need to look at a broader context by first examining several fundamental Biblical principles:
- God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent and does not need our help to accomplish His goals.
- The reason he gave us the privilege of participating in his work is to accomplish His goal of bringing us to full spiritual maturity.
- Death entered the world through Adam (1 Corinthians 15:21)
The first two, I don't think I need to explain. If you truly need me to supply you with Biblical references, let me know and I would do so.
So what does number 3 have anything to do with anything?
Why did death come through Adam and not through Eve? After all, it was Eve that took the first bite out of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Yes, Eve sinned; but, there was another sin before Eve's.
Adam failed to demonstrate spiritual leadership!
- Adam was given the leadership role. Adam was created first and was directly instructed by God. Eve was created to be his helper.
- Adam was not away somewhere else when the serpent was having his conversation with Eve. Adam was standing there and he failed to refute the serpent's lies.
- Then Adam continued to forsake spiritual leadership by eating the fruit that Eve gave to him.
Fast forward to Abraham. God promised Abraham that he would be a father of many. When Sarah wasn't able to conceive, she presented Abraham with her maid. Abraham, instead of saying, "God never said anything about having extra-marital sexual relationship!", he said, "OK! Let me take her to bed."
Failure in spiritual leadership!
Fast forward to Exodus
Moses was up in the mountain. The people down at the foot of the mountain were getting restless and demanded Aaron (who is the high priest [Exodus 29:44]) to make idols for them to worship. Aaron said, "Give me your golden earrings to make the idol".
Failure of spiritual leadership!
Fast forward to Judges.
The men of Israel were so spineless that God had to raise up Deborah to send the Army of Israel to defend the people.
Fast forward to today.
Look around the Church today and count the number of husbands who are exercising spiritual leadership and count how many are not. Which is the greater number?
Go to the missions field, today and ask the missionaries how hard it is to raise up male leaders from within the new believers in the field.
In ministries with which I have been involved, I can not remember a time in which recruiting women leaders was a problem. With male leadership, how often did we have to plead to men to even pray about it!
It seems that, inherent to the male gender, there exists a problem with spiritual leadership.
Although the Bible does not spell it out, I think we can infer that God reserved the leadership position in the Church for men because men need it.
Perhaps we can say that God gave all the souls, which need to perfect their ability to exercise spiritual leadership, lives with male gender and reserved the leadership role for the male gender.
God calls us to our own special role, not because he needs us accomplish his goal. These roles are uniquely crafted to mold our spiritual character. He does it so that we can become complete and mature and not lacking anything.
On the other side of eternity, there will not be husbands and wives (i.e., gender distinction in the roles) for we would have been made perfect by the "practice roles" that God gives us on this side of eternity.
Matthew 22:30
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
p.s., The biggest problem with the whole scenario is not that there are leaders and there are followers. The biggest problem is the misconception that one position is better than the other. That was never the intent.
The Christian leader is a servant leader. e.g., Jesus [the leader] served the disciples by washing their feet.
When God made a helper for Adam, the word for helper used, in Genesis 2:18, is the Hebrew word "ezer". It is the same word as the one in Psalm 33:20 when it referred to the Lord.
We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help [ezer] and our shield.
The word ebenezer comes from the word eben [stone] and ezer [help]. It is a stone used to commemorate God's help.
Do we say that God holds a lesser position when he helps [ezer] us? Of course not!
When God created a helper for Adam, it just means that Adam needed help.
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