If God endowed men and women with different biological roles specific to their gender, does that make God a sexist? If so, you are offended with God and not with the Church. Still, a distinction can be made between God’s intent and Christian interpretation. Did God intend for gender-based roles when He created “maleness” and “femaleness,” or are those roles the flawed expectations and human definitions that have been imported after sin corrupted our relationship with one another? These are difficult questions to answer.
Because the world does not accept God’s authority, it will label any innate gender roles or differences as sexist, despite how loving or complimentary those roles may be. While it may be offensive to the church, “sexist” is an accurate definition of the world’s way of viewing gender roles. The church, however, doesn’t live for the world’s approval but for God’s. The question the church still must answer for ourselves is, Did God create innate gender-based roles? Before we attempt to answer this, however, let’s make one important clarification.
Equal in Value
Women are equally valuable. Nowhere does the Scripture insinuate that God values women less than men. Womanhood was created by God and is a gift from God. Eve was different from Adam. She was a “suitable helpmate”—complementary and capable of rescuing him, which is a literal interpretation. Together, they are fashioned in the image of the Divine: “So God created mankind in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female” (Genesis 1:27; see also Genesis 5:1–2).
Despite the gender expectations of the Jewish and Roman world, Jesus did not discriminate against women when He ministered to people, but conversed with them, healed them, and ministered to them as equals to men. On at least three occasions, Jesus shielded women from social humiliation by stepping in and absorbing the shame Himself. He did not deprive a woman of the right to sit at His feet and become educated as a disciple (John 10:38–42). His ministry was subsidized by the financial gifts of wealthy women, which He gratefully received (Luke 8:3). Jesus elevated women’s rights in divorce court and indemnified them against male exploitation (Matthew 19:1–12). Jesus commissioned Mary as the first ambassador to communicate the good news of the empty tomb (John 20:11–18).
The Apostle Paul also gave uneducated women the opportunity to learn (1 Timothy 2:11). Paul labored and partnered alongside women ministers [diakonos] to advance the gospel (1 Corinthians 11:5; Romans 16:1–3). Paul partnered with women in all of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12, 14; Romans 12:3–13). And Peter and Paul called women heirs of the riches of God’s Kingdom alongside men (1 Peter 3:7). Scholars have uncovered 107 references to women deacons in the early church, and early church fathers validated the understanding that Phoebe had an extensive ministry.
Paul’s anthem statement, “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), reveals the gospel’s universal grace to all people in all stations of life. Society may rank us with its racism, classism, or sexism, but Christ Jesus loves, values, and saves all of His children with equal intensity—doctors and nannies, daughters and sons, Guatemalans, Swedes, and Chinese. Therefore, we can throw away the notion that women are an afterthought or that men are more important to God’s Kingdom. Women, too, are God’s special edition. The question is still unanswered; however, is it possible that we have equal value but are assigned different roles? Let’s look at two texts that seem to indicate some level of gender specificity.
Headship
Twice, Paul refers to Christ being the “head” or authority over men, and men being “head of a woman.” He says it in 1 Corinthians 11:3, “the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” Paul says a similar thing to the Ephesians in 5:23 “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” The messaging is that both the man and the woman are under an authority structure, similar to the fifth commandment, where children are under their parents’ authority, and the parents are submitted to God. Therefore, parents act as delegates of the Lord’s laws, protections, and provisions to their children. In this sense, both women and men are now under the Headship of Jesus.
In Roman law, the man was legally responsible for his family and slaves. Wives were legally required to submit to their husbands, and unmarried daughters to their fathers. Women could not conduct legal or business transactions without men acting on their behalf. [1] But Paul was reinterpreting the household code [2] —instead of men possessing the authority and responsibility from Rome to rule their house as they wished—Christian men and women are under Jesus’ jurisdiction. Jesus is the master of the house, not the man. Longenecker explains the impact of Paul’s reinterpretation of the Roman household code, “Those in power are reminded they are not independent moral agents who can act indiscriminately with no accountability.” He continues, “This household code challenges, the Greco-Roman notion of household management as a constituent part of the state, replacing the rationale of loyalty to the state with that of submission in Christ.” [3]
The men are not permitted to dominate the women and children under them or use their authority to suppress them. The man is only an extension of Jesus and may only act in ways that represent Jesus. The woman, too, is under Jesus and acts in ways that represent Jesus. When the Corinthian women, for example, are instructed to submit, they are being told not to live carelessly, immodestly, and cavalierly. Rather, live in unity with the conduct and attitude of Jesus within His community. At the very least, the household code reinterpretation displaces male autonomy and repositions the man-of-the-house as a man under Christ, a man who also submits to his wife (Ephesians 5:21) as she submits to the Lord and her husband. Still, if both men and women are under Jesus’ authority, and if men, in some innate way, uniquely represent that authority, maybe we should observe how Jesus used His authority to clarify how men should use theirs.
How Jesus Used His Headship
In Philippians 2:6, Paul says that Jesus, being God, possessed all of God’s authority and yet Jesus did not cling to it, jealously wield it, or use it “to his own advantage” (NIV). He did not act out of “selfish ambition or vain conceit” (v.3). He did not look to His own interest but “to the interests of the others” (v.4). Rather, He took on the nature of a “servant” (v.7). Jesus used the authority of His name to protect God’s people (John 17:12) and to set people free (Mark 16:17-18). In the same way, Ephesians says, husbands are to give themselves up for their wives and “love” [agapaō] their wives. Paul uses that word [agapaō] seven times in three verses. Men are to use their authority in the service of loving, protecting, and caring for their families.
The man does not rule or dominate his wife. Authority is not used to crush or control people. The man’s authority “to rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the air” in Genesis 1:26 was not given to rule over his wife, who was different from the other animals (Genesis 2:18–20). Adam and Eve were given authority to rule over creation together; the word used there is [rāḏâ]. And Jesus came to undo the curse of sin when men militantly dominated women (Genesis 3:16), the word used there is [māšal]. We can conclude that godly men should use their spiritual authority and superior physical strength to value and protect women as the gift that they are. The man is only God’s delegate sent to care for God’s people, not “Lord over them as the Gentiles do” (Luke 22:25–26).
A woman is not voiceless and powerless under the thumb of a man. Her first allegiance is to Jesus; she does not blindly follow her husband. The woman is not obligated to submit to abuse. She is permitted to be opinionated and powerful. Rather, she is asked, in the same way as the man, to submit to God’s good laws and operate within a loving authority structure. Because she is as valuable as the man, she is equally responsible as the man.
The Corinthian church women were flaunting a spirit of entitlement and libertarianism—I’m free in Christ, so do whatever I wish. In the conversation about modesty (1 Corinthians 11), the modern reader often misses Paul’s guiding principle, “in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman.” (1 Corinthians 11:11–12). We are to have equal concern for each other because we are interdependent. Therefore, stop thinking only of yourself and be considerate of others.
A woman’s rebellious attitude is just as much a manifestation of sin and disorder as a man’s inclination to dominate. Men can too easily override their wives’ interests, or women can be quick to defy or disregard their husbands’ considerations. This is more than an issue of sexism; this is the manifestation of sin’s sickness in our hearts. We’d rather act in self-interest than surrender our independence and cooperate in unity. Conversely, Ephesians provokes us to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21).
Pause, Until Next Week
We still have some big questions to answer. And we are not ready to fully address the question—Is the Church sexist? In the world’s eyes, any gender distinctions would be “sexist.” But we want to have a healthy view of men and women according to God’s plan and his definitions.
So far, we have said that men and women are equally valuable, yet distinct. Women and men are equally responsible to submit to Jesus and to each other. Yet there does seem to be an innate principle of “headship” that men carry. The way men should express “headship” is to imitate Jesus and be an extension of Jesus’ selfless devotion to His people. The difficult questions we still need to answer are these: Do men and women have neatly defined roles? If men are the “head,” does that mean women can’t serve in roles of leadership? And what are the permissive limits to how churches organize around maleness and femaleness? These we will address in Is the Church Sexist? Part 2.
[1] Barr, Beth Allison. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.
[2] Wikipedia offers a helpful description of the household code terminology and its origin @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_household_code#cite_note-:3-5: “The concept finds its linguistic and cultural antecedent in the Greek notion of οἰκονομία (household management), a compound of οἶκος (house) and νέμω (to manage).[4] In Greco-Roman society, the household (oikos) was widely regarded as the fundamental building block of social and political order, and numerous ancient writers produced literature on its proper management. New Testament household codes are thus seen as early Christian engagements with this larger Hellenistic conversation, reinterpreted “in light of the Gospel.” [5]
[3] Longenecker, Bruce W., and Todd D. Still. Thinking through Paul: An Introduction to His Life, Letters, and Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.
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