Peaceful worship

When someone faces a threat, whether real or perceived, it is generally considered that one of three things will happen, namely fight, flight or freeze. These reactions tend to happen instinctively even before you have a chance to think about it.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, fight, is the reaction to face the threat face on, flight is when you run away and do all you can to avoid the situation, and freeze is sometimes what happens when your brain can’t quite keep up and make a decision and so you just don’t do anything.

Well, I want to suggest that this same sort of idea also happens when the church comes under threat. A sad reality about churches is that conflicts handled poorly are all too common.

What generally happens is some matter is raised, whether it’s a theological matter, something to do with church practice, or even a matter relating to the church property. Then for whatever reason, whether rightly or not, someone will take exception.

This is where that natural reaction takes place. Unfortunately, the fight reflex is usually not a constructive one, rather it is to attack the perceived opponent until the threat is gone.

The flight and freeze reactions unfortunately also don’t really help. The issue remains unresolved and has a tendency to grow and become more destructive. People who study such things have identified different levels of conflict, and unfortunately there is a point in which conflict has gone so far that there is little hope for any sort of positive resolution.

Link with passage

I’ve raised this concept for two reasons.

Firstly, because we’re going to see in the first half of the chapter we have in front of us, that Paul is urging for peace, and he’s doing so in the context of the previous chapter where he has identified people who are taking them off track.

But secondly, because in the second half of this chapter Paul raises some matters that have proved quite controversial in the contemporary church. In particular, I’m talking about restrictions placed on women. For those whom this clashes with there understanding of the equality of women, there can be a tendency to react strongly against it, or try to just ignore this passage.

I am going to look at this shortly, but regardless of whatever your current view point is, I’d advise you to become aware of your natural tendency to react, but allow a spirit of humility to take over.

Context of passage

Well more on that later. In the meantime, I want to consider how this second chapter fits into the letter as a whole.

To do this, we need to recap the previous chapter, which we’ve looked at over the last two weeks.

The central idea was actually given to us back in verse 3 of the first chapter. It is in this verse that Paul gives the command to Timothy to stop certain people from teaching false doctrines any longer. Now we weren’t specifically told exactly what these false doctrines were, although we had some clues with the references to myths and endless genealogies. In some ways, it doesn’t matter exactly what they were, other than the fact that they took away from the true gospel, which is a gospel of grace, based on the love of Jesus as demonstrated by his death on a cross.

Well, as we come into chapter 2, I believe that Paul is still on a similar theme. He might not specifically mention false doctrines, but he does seem to be concerned about behaviour that disrupts the peace that should be attained.

Now I’m going to look more specifically at the context that likely brought on the more controversial verses 8 to 15 as I get to that part.

Praying for Peace

But first, let’s look at the first 7 verses. Sometimes I think it can be very easy to skip over this part in our eagerness to try and figure out what women can and can’t do. But he is really setting the scene here for us.

And so it starts with Paul urging Timothy, and through him, the church at Ephesus to have petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving for all people.

Now on just a really brief side note, some people try to distinguish between petitions, prayers and intercessions. There might be some differences but I wouldn’t get too caught up in it.

But these prayers, were told in verse 2, are directed to the kings and those in authority, and it’s important to remember at this time that there was no such thing as Christian kings at this time, so this is not just a prayer aimed at Christian leaders.

But verse 2 also gives us the point of these prayers - and that is, that they may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. In fact, I want to suggest that this is a bit of a theme throughout this chapter.

When it talks about what men are to do in verse 8, he specifies without anger or disputing - in other words, in a peaceful way.

When he talks about women, you might notice the word quiet there. Actually, if you have the older version of the NIV then in verse 12 it might say, “she must be silent” - in actual fact, it is the same Greek word there as it is in verse 2 when he’s asking for prayers of peacefulness and quietness.

You see, this is the point. Though we live in a chaotic world where sin abounds, Jesus actually came to bring peace, and it is peace that we should be working towards. As we focus our eyes on Jesus, that chaos should falls away while peace and quietness gets closer. The fact that it doesn’t always happen is more a reflection that we loose that sight of Jesus.

But also note that it is not just peace and quiet

This prayer for peacefulness and quiet then leads Paul into a short reflection on what God has done for us. To be honest, I’d love to spend some time reflecting on this now, as this is so important to all we do, but there is quite a bit in the next section that I want to cover so I’m going to have to suffice by just highlighting a few main points.

You see, this peacefulness comes from none other than Jesus Christ who has acted as our mediator. I started by talking about conflicts in churches, and the truth is that often human mediators need to be brought in - it’s sad when that becomes necessary, because we have the perfect mediator that has already worked for us. And he worked in the most amazing way, by giving himself as a ransom.

What Christ has done for us should be it for all of us. There is one truth and as we submit to God we should realise the unity that comes with that.

Unfortunately, sin is in the world, a fact that will remain until Christ returns, and so until then we do need to face the disunity that the enemy creates.

Hermenutic interlude

As I said, I would love to stay reflecting on what God has done, but Paul moves to further instructions in verse 8 which I want to move to now.

The first few of these instructions don’t usually cause too much confusion, but nevertheless, because we are about to get into some tricky territory, it’s worth stopping briefly to consider some basics of interpreting the Bible

You see, the bible was not written in a cultural vacuum. It does speak of timeless truths, but those timeless truths are given to us within specific cultures.

Unfortunately, for us reading it some 2000 years later, it is not always as easy as we might like it to be.

So when we attempt to interpret what it means for us today, there are basically two extremes that we can take.

At one extreme we completely ignore the cultural context and try and fit every instruction into our own context.

At the other extreme we see think of the words only applying to the culture in which it was written, which if taken to its full extremity, leaves the Bible as little more than an historical artifact.

I’m going to suggest that both these extremes are problematic.

Take for starters the extreme that ignores the cultural context. What you’ll find is that as you read through the Bible, there are all sorts of things we ignore, after all, no one greeted me with a Holy Kiss this morning!

But more importantly, when we ignore the context, we miss the message that is being given and run the danger of being legalistic.

But the other extreme has its problems. Even when we don’t go to its extremity, we can weed out the parts we don’t like. Certainly we saw that in the recent same sex marriage debate. One such argument went that they didn’t understand the nature of homosexuality back then, so given our cultural context has changed, that prohibition no longer stands.

So we need to avoid both extremes, but how do we navigate our way through?

Well, it takes a great deal of discernment, and this needs to be done prayerfully and with great humility.

What we need to discern, is the difference between God’s essential revelation which is changeless, and its cultural expression which is changeable.

If you take for example when Jesus washes his disciples feet. The changeless revelation he is giving us is about servantship, and the cultural expression is the washing of feet.

As we move through the instruction in 1 Timothy, we’ll find that initially this process won’t be too hard, but particularly as we get to verses 11 and 12, we’ll find that godly,, bible-believing scholars will come to different conclusions. For this reason, it is essential that we approach it with great humility.

But with all that in mind, let me remind the bigger picture that these instructions fall in, namely, that Paul is striving towards worship that is peaceful and quiet, and to live in godliness and holiness.

As I do however, I want you to avoid seeing these as random commands, but instead see them in the context of trying to bring that peace. The peace that should come when we stop fooling around with the gospel and just let it be.

Men

The first instruction goes to the men. Let me read verse 8 to you:

1 Timothy 2:8 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.

The interesting thing here is that if we ignore the cultural element to this, then we should be insisting that when men pray they should be lifting up their hands. We just had a prayer time a moment ago, and I did not see any men lifting their hands.

That’s because, by my argument, lifting up their hands is the cultural expression needed to achieve the timeless objective.

The objective is what we’ve already talked about, namely finding peace. And if you look closely, you can see that in this command.

Firstly, the very act of prayer is one of submission - we can’t pray without submitting to God.

Now when you lift up your hands, that in itself is a sign of surrender to God. Rather than having closed fists - a sign of aggression, we open ourselves up to God.

Paul even spells that out by saying - “without anger or disputing”.

So this one isn’t too hard. Whether you actually lift your arms or not in prayer is not the point, it’s about the way we approach it.

Women

In verse 9, Paul then addresses the women. As we apply this principle, verse 9 isn’t too hard to grasp though.

Essentially, Paul is calling for women to dress modestly, and then largely the details he goes into is the cultural expression of this, namely, not having elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes.

Now is it wrong for a woman today to have a fancy hair do? Or to wear some gold or have some pearls?

Well it could be, depending on why you are doing it, but if you do, you are not necessarily going against the bible.

Cultural context

Now, part of the difficulty in actually figuring out what Paul is warning the Ephesian women about, is actually trying to piece together what the cultural context was. This isn’t always as easy as it might seem.

You see, both the Greek and Roman culture did not allow much freedom for their women. The men had a lot of freedom, but not the women.

And so it is curious to think why the Christian women needed to be warned against something that wasn’t too much of a problem anyway.

Well, there is growing evidence that around this time there was a growing sub-culture of women which scholars today are referring to as “New Roman Women”. From the evidence it sounds somewhat like the sexual revolution that we saw in the 60’s. Like in the 60’s for us, sometime prior to this letter being written, some women revolted against their lack of freedom.

They dressed in provocative ways and pushed the sexual boundaries.

It would seem that in Ephesus in particular this was a bit of a hot-spot, particularly given its proximity to the Temple to Artemis. Now this temple is actually recorded as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Artemis, or Diana in the Roman religion, was a goddess and much beloved by all.

It seems that she essentially gave licence to this new movement of women pushing the boundaries.

Now, we’re reading a bit between the lines here, but with Paul’s warning, perhaps the Christian women, with there new found freedom in Christ, felt that they could exploit their freedom along with the other New Roman Women.

But this goes against the Biblical view that we should be living peaceful and godly lives. The freedom we find in Christ is not to be exploited, but rather used for the good of the kingdom, which is exactly where Paul goes in verse 10.

You see, Paul isn’t holding women back here. Women have a place and there is much good work in which they can do, but this work should be there focus, not exploiting any misfound freedom.

The main point here is that modesty is still important if we are going to honour God, but what modestly looks like will differ from one culture to the next.

Can Women teach?

Now as we get into verse 11, this is where we start to see big differences in understanding.

Verse 11 starts with Paul telling women that they should learn in quietness and full submission.

Verse 12 the message gets stronger, saying that he does not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man.

And so, this begs the question, is Paul making a timeless command, or is it a cultural application that fits in this context.

I should preface this with the fact that this question has been debated a lot. I’ve even seen a whole book written just on verse 12.

I’m going to give my opinion, but I do so humbly knowing that others have come before me and have concluded differently.

Well, to explore the question, there are a lot of different angles that we could look at - most of which, in the interest of time, I’m going to either give a very gloss overview or in some cases skip over entirely.

For example, much has been written about Greek words used that have been translated as teach and authority. What do those words actually means? Well, unfortunately you’ll have to look at the literature yourself if you want to explore that.

Well, there are two main ways we can go with this, although certainly there are a lot of nuances and variations that can be made to either.

Case against women

Some have argued that Paul is here making a case against women preachers or women in authority which would still apply today. One of the difficulties with this argument is the number of women that Paul himself had in prominent places. One particularly notable example is Priscilla who not without significance gets named before her husband and seems to play a big role in the early church.

Paul also lists other women who seem to have a role of authority, including Phoebe and Junia. In the book of Acts, we see as Paul comes near to Jerusalem after his third missionary trip, four unmarried daughters of Philip start prophesying. There is a bit of a debate about this, but some argue that prophesying in those days is equivalent to preaching today.

Case for women preachers

However, the other argument people make today is that Paul is addressing a specific issue, in this case, women who want to flaunt there new found freedom and think they should have as much say as men. In which case, Paul is only speaking against the women in this day, and it has no bearing on what we do today.

The problem with this understanding, particularly when taken too far, is that it can start to lose the distinctiveness of the two genders. God has made us different and these differences should be celebrated, not denied.

Conclusion

So what do I think?

Well, I think Paul is addressing a particular problem, which has most likely been exacerbated by these “new Roman women”.

It would seem that women who had not had much, if any education, suddenly want to assume a position of authority and this was very disruptive to the peace that is being sough after.

Now remember at the end of verse 12, the words “she must be quiet”, which some translations have as “she must be silent” - the word “quiet”, is the same word we saw back in verse 2 - which I’m arguing is what Paul wants all along.

For this reason, I would argue that in the right set of circumstances, this passage does not prohibit a women from taking from the pulpit and expounding God’s word.

Now there are a few caveats I’d place on that. The first is one that would apply to anyone who stands behind the pulpit - all preachers, whether male or female, need to submit to the authority of the word of God.

But the second, is that while I don’t see the pulpit being closed to women, the issue is much larger than this and requires much closer attention, something that time does not allow now.

Creation

But I do want to briefly look at verses 13 to 15, which are really tricky in themselves.

In verses 13 and 14, Paul brings into the argument Adam and Eve, which seems to suggest greater significance in the order to which they were created.

Now that is a big topic right there, however one could argue that the purpose of bringing this up isn’t to remind you about the superiority of men, but rather to show the problem of being deceived.

You see, remember the bigger context starting back in chapter 1 of false teachers - when one who is deceived starts teaching, we have big problems.

I’ll leave that one for you to ponder over.

Child bearing

And then finally we have the really puzzling verse 15 which talks about being saved through childbearing.

There have been many ways to understand this. Some have suggested that Paul is comforting those saying that they will survive when they give birth - but that seems really random, and besides, many godly women have died in child birth.

Another suggestion is that this is a reference to the birth of Jesus, which of course is how we are saved, but again, I personally think that doesn’t fit the flow of the argument.

Personally, I think what Paul is arguing is essentially against the idea that women think they need to step out and break the mould just because of the new freedom they have. Rather, they should keep doing what they are and instead focus on faith love and holiness.

Conclusion

There is of course a lot more that could be said about all of this, but I’ve already spoken longer than I normally do.

We remember this passage because of what it says about women, but I believe that actually distracts from the much bigger picture.

Paul is concerned about the lack of peace that is starting to happen, particularly as a result of the false teachers. Paul gives very specific examples of how this should be addressed in his culture, some of which is directly relevant for us today - but the most relevant part is that we will find peace, whether male or female, when we submit to God and his word.