Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

From the outset of this series which we have titled “Flesh and Blood,” it has been our focus to unpack the Scriptures and define the roles of:

Covenant Members

Elders and Pastors

Deacons

and today we will look specifically at the role of women in God’s church.

We are doing this in an effort to check ourselves and our leadership structure and weighout if we are being a Biblical church or simply a church who follows “man-made” tradition and continue in the “that’s the way its always been done” church model.

It is our desire to be a Biblical church.

With that said this is today’s Big Idea:

Men and women serve as co-equals, cooperatively, and contributively to Christ’s Church in mutual submission.

Our belief by definition on the roles of men and women within the church:

Complementarian:  The position toward gender roles in the church that argues men and women were created to serve the church and each other in different but complementary ministry capacities and that some leadership roles are intended only for men, such as pastor or elder.

our probing question: What is the Biblical role of Women in Christ’s Church?

And are we as a church submitting to Christ’s obedience as presented in the Scriptures?

Men and women serve as co-equals, cooperatively, and contributively to Christ’s Church in mutual submission.

1. Co-equality (; , ; ) The role of women in the church is set forth primarily in the New Testament where God created His Church through the New Covenant and gospel ministry of Jesus Christ.

However, it actually started from the beginning of God’s creation narrative.

Gen

In an article written in Christianity Today, back in 2008, John Koessler writes this:

When God created humankind in his image, he created them to be male and female ().

It is often said that men and women bear the image of God equally.

But it might be more accurate to say that men and women bear God’s image together.

Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one without the other is incomplete.

In addition, the Book of Genesis affirms men and women’s joint mandate to exercise dominion over creation.

Men and women share this responsibility; neither can fulfill God’s mandate alone.

Koessler’s article continues to challenge our pre-conceived prejudices in this article, while also asking a very challenging question:

2. Co-operatively (; ; )  The understanding of mutual submission and the creation narrative are extremely important to rightly understand when understand both roles of men and women.

The relationship and mutual submission to God and one another by God’s design helps us (the church) better understand how God views the role of women within Christ’s Church.

Too often, complementarians approach theology only through a male lens.

But in order to see the complete picture of what’s being taught in Scripture, we need the theological perspective of both sexes.

If it is true that men and women see things differently, as we complementarians often assert, then stifling the feminine perspective can only lead to an inadequate theology.

Adam’s first sin was his silence in the garden when Eve was being tempted.

His subsequent sin has been to silence the voice of his God-given partner.

…why didn’t Jesus commend Martha instead of Mary ()?

After all, her work in the kitchen reflected a woman’s traditional role.

While complementarians assume that men and women both have roles to play in society and in the church, we often give the impression that we are most interested in telling women what they can’t do.

A colleague of mine, who is a complementarian, recently described her experience to me:

“When people talk about the role of women, I often hear a note of anger over my decision to have a career and be a mother,” she said.

“Yet I see no such concern about my male colleagues who are fathers of young children while working long hours.

I think part of the problem is that complementarians often extend the designated roles of men and women in the church into all areas of male-female contact—that is where it starts to get offensive.”

Gen 2:18-

This Scripture speaks to the creative order of men and women.

Man in created first, and women second, yet both are image bears of God.

So, it also speaks to the co-equalness in which they were and are to live together.

Men and women serve as co-equals, cooperatively, and contributively to Christ’s Church in mutual submission.

2. Co-operatively (; ; )  The understanding of mutual submission and the creation narrative are extremely important to rightly understand when understand both roles of men and women.

The relationship and mutual submission to God and one another by God’s design helps us (the church) better understand how God views the role of women within Christ’s Church.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Church of Ephesus:

Eph

And Paul’s disciple, the doctor and historian Luke who’s gospel account is taken from gospel writer Mark and Paul, records this in Acts:

J.I. Packer a great pastor theologian of the 20th century puts it this way:

“Submission means that you put yourself at the other person’s service to act toward him or her in love with a purpose of making that person great in the way that God reveals that He means that other person to be great.”

— J.I. Packer

Men and women serve as co-equals, cooperatively, and contributively to Christ’s Church in mutual submission.

3. Contributively (; ; ) How we as a complementarian church interpret these Scriptures are how we determine as a church how we allow women to contribute to church.

These Scripture must be taken into proper context and where Scripture is not clear, me must use Biblical discernment as we see certain text in context within the entire canon of Scripture.

Within this section we will explore both arguments for women serving as deaconess, and why they should not be allowed to serve in this office.

We will begin with the latter.

This has been fleshed out in two ways that we must consider:

How the text has been traditionally interpreted.

How the text can we interpreted given the biblical context of  the Apostle Paul’s reason for dealing with the churches of the 1st century, versus how it can be interpreted in light of our current context without abandoning the central truth of Scripture.

Traditionally, the role of women (as they existed in the cultural setting of the Scriptures) where often viewed as J.I. Packer puts it as “second-class” citizens.

The way we as a society often operate is one of extremes, not balance which leds to overcorrection, due to societial pressures verus instead of a return to Biblical instruction.

Out of the surge of the feminist movement, due to “women who have been hurt” and treated like “second-class citizens,” has developed into what, Packer calls a “rivalry” between men and women.

Packer says, that movement has turned into a battle “to upstage men.”

He also says, “At the heart of [the feminist movement] are hurt women…whose very energy in the cause arises out of the bad experience that they have had.”

He goes on to say:

[Because of this experience] the question which the world [clashes and battles] over [is in what is the correct response in] relation to the position of women.”

Alongside of that for us in the Christian Church, there is a parallel question that needs to be distinguished quite sharply fromt he first one: How are we to secure the use of women’s gifts in ministry among the people of God.

Then in the Christian church the [extremists] rise up, take over the discussion, and lead it into fields of exploration which are not always fruitful.

There the liberal response is to call for the church to follow the world, to embrace the world’s wisdom and the world’s fashionable thoughts…Climb on the secular bandwagon; that is the deepest motivation of liberal ethics.

[That path is] undiscerning and worldly in spirit.

In practice, it is disastrous…Following the world in this matter is not the way to go.

Wayne Grudem who is known for his work titled Systematic Theology, says in his book entitled, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, (where Grudem seems to almost give a tone of hard-line of complementarianism as if women are not able to teach at all based on , but as we will see, he is primarily guarding the office of elder to be held by men only.

Then the other extreme there is the conservative reaction, which is no more than a reaction…

As we open the Scriptures, Packer advises us to see:

...there are two interpretive guidelines to note.

We are servants of Jesus Christ, and we had better say to ourselves explicitly that in this quest of ministry in the church.

Christ honored women as friends and disciples in the same way that He took men as friends and disciples.

That is a clue.

The mind of Christ, when we find it, will take the form of an interpretive scheme that does justice to all the Scripture, all the Scripture teaching about women, including Scripture testimony to the way that Jesus regarded women in His only life.

Scholars and theologians alike (like Packer) will say somewhere in the late 2nd century we saw and un-Christlike view and even the Apostle Paul’s words taken out of context by the Church leaders.

Which lead to “what I would call a heretical misunderstanding of God’s created order, which removed the Co-Equal language of & 2. (let me caution just because someone misunderstands one thing about Scripture, we should be careful to label them a heretic or dismiss other things in which they contribute to in the fashion of quite sound teaching—in other words don’t overreact with extremism because of one’s certain ignorance to understanding the Scriptures plainly.

We all bring baggage to our interpretation of the Scriptures…so let me remind you, “we shouldn’t always throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

3rd Century, Church father, Tertullian said:

God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and his punishment weighs down upon you.

You are the devil’s gateway.

You are she who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack.

Basically, [women] you are Eve…the cause of the fall.

Thomas Aquinas said:

As regards to individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of perfect likeness in the masculine sex, while the production of women comes from a defect…

Packer rightly responds to these early church fathers by pointing us back to the Bible.

He says:

“The Bible does not speak in those terms.

Scripture affirms the equality of the sexes in creation and in redemption…”

Wayne Grudem who is known for his work titled Systematic Theology, says in his book entitled, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, (where Grudem seems to almost give a tone of hard-line of complementarianism as if women are not able to teach at all based on , but as we will see, he is primarily guarding the office of elder to be held by men only.

He makes this observation:

In the same way, it seems that is saying that men are better suited for the task of governing and of safeguarding the doctrine of the church.

This does not mean that women could not do this task, and do it well, at least in certain cases.

But it does mean that God has both established men in that responsibility and has given inclinations and abilities that are well suited to that responsibility.