Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. In all your emails to us over the years, Romans 9:22 is the most asked-about text of all time. It’s a hard text, so there’s no surprise that it raises so many questions in our minds. But our second most asked-about text is 1 Timothy 2:12. We read it this week in our Bible reading, and it’s on the mind of at least one woman listening to the podcast right now, and probably many others as well, I’d bet.

“Dear Pastor John, thank you for APJ. In 1 Timothy 2:12, Paul writes, ‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.’ I’m trying to understand exactly what Paul is forbidding here. Does this mean women should never teach men, even in Bible studies or classrooms? Is he only referring to the formal role of pastors or elders? What about women sharing insights or asking questions in small-group discussions? I know women are praised for prophesying in both the Old and New Testaments.” (Verses given include Exodus 15:20; Judges 4:4–5; 2 Kings 22:14–20; Isaiah 8:3; Luke 2:36–38; Acts 21:8–9; and 1 Corinthians 11:5.) “So, how do we reconcile these realities to Paul’s prohibition in 1 Timothy 2:12? And how can I faithfully live out this teaching in a way that honors God’s design for men and women in the church?”

Here’s the key text that we’re all more or less concerned about, and rightly so: 1 Timothy 2:11–14. “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Now, there are not many passages in the Bible more out of step with modern culture than this one. That’s one of the reasons why we get so many questions about it.

“Women flourish under the strong, humble, spiritual leadership of men.”

This text raises at least fifty questions, which is why Wayne Grudem and I tried to synthesize our big blue book about manhood and womanhood into a little book called 50 Crucial Questions About Manhood and Womanhood. It’s less than a hundred pages, and I recommend it because that’s his and my best shot at putting in a small compass fifty kinds of questions people can ask about this issue. So, seriously, I would love for people to get it.

(And just remember, I don’t get any royalties from these books. This is not a pitch to make my books sell. It doesn’t sell much. You would be doing a nice treat to yourself, I think, if you plugged in and plowed into those fifty questions.)

I may be able to answer one or two of those questions in this episode, which will leave 48 questions unanswered. And I really do hope that listeners will seek out biblical answers, not just culturally acceptable answers.

Authority and the Created Order

So, here’s where I start. When Paul supported his statement that a woman should not teach or have authority over a man, his support was not to argue from culture but from creation. That’s where I start. He did not say something like, “Well, in this culture, in this first-century culture, it’s expected that women be submissive — so, since the church shouldn’t put a stumbling block in the way of the gospel, we should go along with this for the time being.” He did not argue like that; that’s not the way he argued. He argued by pointing to Adam and Eve and God’s design for manhood and womanhood in the way he created and ordered the world at the beginning. This design cuts across all cultures (though of course it is inevitably influenced in its form by those cultures; we’ll see that in just a minute). That’s where I start.

The Bible is very aware of the role of culture in shaping the symbols of man’s headship and woman’s submission. You can see that in 1 Corinthians 11:3–16, where Paul deals with head coverings and length of hair. God expects us to have spiritual discernment so we don’t throw out the baby of God’s designs for sexual differences with the bathwater of changing cultural symbols and all the implications that has for how we live.

Then I turn from the foundation of manhood and womanhood in creation to Paul’s explanation of how it worked itself out in the home, in the church, and eventually in all of life. In Ephesians 5, Paul argues from creation again that, in the family, men are to be the head of their wives and love them as Christ loved the church, and women are to be subject to that leadership the way a glad and glorious church is subject to Christ.

“Spiritually qualified men, rather than women, should be the overseers, elders, pastors of the church.”

And then in regard to the church, in 1 Timothy 2:12, women are not to teach or have authority over men. And I think the first and clearest implication of that verse is to realize that these two actions, teaching and having authority, are the very two actions that distinguish an elder or overseer or pastor (those are the same office in Paul’s mind) from the other office of the church — namely, deacons. If you compare the list of qualifications required for the elder or overseer or pastor, “able to teach” and “able to govern” (or exercise authority) wisely in the church are the two that distinguish the elder from the deacon. We see the first qualification in 1 Timothy 3:2 and the second qualification in 1 Timothy 5:17: “Let the elders who rule well [govern well] be considered worthy of double honor.”

So, I conclude that, for Paul in the church, the first and clearest implication of the created order of male and female is that spiritually qualified men, rather than women, should be the overseers, elders, pastors of the church, and their central job is to provide guiding, authoritative teaching to the church as part of their overall authority and leadership.

Women and Fruitful Ministry

I think a good argument can be made that when Paul said women shouldn’t teach, he didn’t mean every kind of teaching in every situation, but, rather, he saw teaching in 1 Timothy 2:12 as combined with exercising authority over men. And so, the teaching in view was specifically toward men, and even more specifically a teaching in such a way that embodies a kind of authority that would make it unfitting toward men if a woman did it.

The argument for this would include, for example, observations like Proverbs 31:26, which speaks of a woman having “the teaching of kindness” on her lips. Titus 2:3–5 speaks of women teaching younger women. First Corinthians 11:5 speaks of women prophesying in church with appropriate symbols of submission. Acts 18:26 speaks of Priscilla and Aquila setting Apollos straight in a private setting with him to give him more accurate teaching. Second Timothy 1:5 and 3:14 remind Timothy of the life-shaping teaching that he got from his mother and grandmother. And 1 Peter 3:1–6 describes a woman’s submission to her husband in such a way that she is clearly thinking for herself in not following her husband into unbelief or into sin.

So, what does that imply about the wider ministry of women, especially as it regards teaching and leading? Remember, there are 48 questions left unanswered, but I will try to close with a general statement that I hope will provide guidance for the wider application of this biblical truth that we’ve seen.

Spiritually mature womanhood should disincline a woman from taking opportunities to teach men (including mixed adult groups) wherever that role would embody the kind of authoritative engagement that would be like the teaching and authority of an elder in the church. That’s the principle that I try to follow.

Or, to put it positively, spiritual women should fill their lives with Christ-exalting ministries that come alongside the leadership of spiritual men and find their fruitfulness in ways that support and complement that leadership. There is a fitness in the nature of things, by virtue of creation and God’s design, that causes women to flourish under the strong, humble, spiritual leadership of men, which is not true about men under the leadership of women. I think that’s implied in these texts. And this is not at all a matter of competence and skills. It’s a matter of what goes deep into the soul of a man and a woman as they discover the way God designed them to relate.