Equal in Dignity, Unique in Calling | 1 Timothy

Some of Paul's words about men and women are among the hardest passages for modern readers, and Pastor Cameron meets them head-on. Working carefully through 1 Timothy 2, he unpacks how Scripture holds together two truths at once: that men and women are created equal in dignity and value, and that God has designed them to serve in distinct and complementary roles within the worshiping community.

1 Timothy 2:9-15 | additional: Genesis 1:27, Luke 10:38-42

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Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

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Let's pray. Let's pray for Pastor Cameron. I know he has worked hard on this sermon, so let's pray for the preaching of the Word. Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for this community, so thankful for everyone in this room, or we're thankful for Pastor Cameron and his service to us. Lord, this morning, I pray that as we open your Word together, we would speak through it. Pray that your Holy Spirit would lead Pastor Cameron, that he would be sensitive to your leading, and Lord, that your Word and ultimately you would be magnified this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Well, good morning. It's been a few weeks since I've had the pleasure of preaching. I'm so grateful to be back up here. We have been preaching out of the book or the letter of First Timothy. This is Paul's letter to his protégé, Timothy, who is pastoring a church in Ephesus, which is where we get one of the letters of Paul to the Ephesian church. That's the church. So we have lots of connections in Scripture here. So as is our pattern and our custom when we preach through a book here, I am going to take just the next portion of Scripture that is in this letter. And what I'm going to do

Is I'm going to read it all for us first, and then we're going to dive in. And if this is your first Sunday at Conduit, welcome. I pray that you're blessed by God's Word this morning. We're in First Timothy chapter 2, starting at verse 8, and we're going to go First Timothy 2, 8 through 15 this morning. If you remember from last week, just to tee us up here a little bit, Pastor Luke was preached the first six verses or seven verses, I'm sorry, of chapter 2. And let us know that the context here that Paul is describing to Timothy is the worshipping context. So Paul would be writing to Timothy about a gathering or a context like you and I are in right now. Hey, Timothy, when the church is gathered, when everyone is together, right, when you are pastoring this place that you have been called and appointed to pastor, I want you to give urge that all supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people. That's the passages that Pastor Luke preached on this week. So it's the same context and the same flow of thought here.

And in verse 8 through 15, Paul says this in that context. "I desire that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. Likewise, also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach her to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first and then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control." Welcome to Conduit this morning and to Paul's letter to 1 Timothy. Now I think I can confidently say that these verses are perhaps or at least among some of the most significantly controversial passages of Scripture to a modern reader. Much of this is really due to the context that you and I find ourselves in today. Our modern Western values have generally taken

The task of diluting any differences that exist, especially in the genders, especially between men and women. Now I'm going to say a lot, I'm going to do my best to preach for you a faithful representation of God's Word with some commentary, some limited commentary here. But a few things that I will say here at the outset. As people who follow Christ, we must, absolutely must reject the notion that God's Word is controversial because we have come to a place of cultural enlightenment that no longer needs to be subjected to this ancient type of wisdom that no longer applies. We must reject that notion. Instead, we must work tirelessly to both protect and regain and reinstill both in the church and in the culture the Word of God as the baseline for all truth. Instead of judging the Word of God against the values of our culture, the values of our world and finding it rather controversial or not very politically correct. As followers of Jesus, we should instead turn the table around, judging not with hearts of animosity, but judging with wise and discerning eyes and ears the values of the world against the truth of God's Word, which finds the

Values of the world sorely in need of both correction, rebuke and redemption. Now I want you to know that as your pastor, I commit. Sometimes we need to be, sometimes even pastors need to be reminded of this by restating it publicly, even as a measure of public accountability. I commit to you as your pastor, as the one in whom will stand before the judgment seat of Christ on your behalf. For what I have said and what I have not said, I commit to you to always do the most faithful job that I am capable of doing, to fill this pulpit with the truth of God's Word as I and the other elders best understand it and as it has been delivered, believed and practiced throughout the traditional history of the New Testament church. It's my commitment to you. One more note about the context in which we pick up a scripture like this and we read it and then we're like, wow, that's heavy or different. One particular scholar that I read this week had a very appropriate, I think, not analogy, but example for how this may be for us different than it is for others to hear something. He says this, he says regarding

How hard these verses are to interpret, an anecdote and query may be permitted. Australian New Testament scholar, Claire Smith tells of a new Christian, a university aged woman in a ethnically based Southern Hemisphere church who read First Timothy chapter two for the first time. And when asked whether she found it difficult, she replied, no, it's easy. Paul is saying women shouldn't teach in church because that's the way that God wants it. It would be easy, Smith notes, to suppose that her ethnic or cultural background probably made it easier for her to believe that and say it so clearly. But Smith continues, can you see that the opposite might also be true, that our cultural influences, our reading of the text and that many of our difficulties we might find in it may exist because of our culture and our personalities rather than the text itself? And I think the task for us as people who follow Jesus and desire faithfulness to God's word is to do our best to silence the biases of our culture and the influences that has had upon our belief and our thought

And allow the word of God to speak clearly and truthfully its life into us. No matter how controversial it may feel, think or be. Now we're going to get into a fairly verse by verse study or exegesis of this in just a moment. But if you were to go maybe after this sermon and start to do a little googling and researching around this topic and around these verses, you're going to kind of run into, and rightfully so, run into a couple different viewpoints that I want to help, that I want to describe to you because I believe it helps to paint a picture of what the tension actually is here. These two viewpoints are generally called a complementarian viewpoint and an egalitarian viewpoint. I'll go back to the slide before that. Do we have complementarian? Yeah, complementarian and egalitarian. Now, the question is what are these things and why do I care? Well, I'm going to tell you what they are. Whether you care or not is up to you, okay? But what they describe is essentially the two positions, two main positions, that an individual or a person can take regarding

Gender differences in the created world, like the differences between man and women. Complementarian versus egalitarian. You might get a little bit of what they are. A complementary and a general definition of what a complementarian would believe is that men and women are different and meant to be complementary to one another in the order and work of creation, okay? They are equal in dignity, honor, and the image of God, and they are different in role and responsibility. That is the first position, the complementary position. Admittedly, it's a little bit of an oversimplification. You could fill this room with the books on this topic, okay? The egalitarian view is similar but is different in one main way. Men and women are the same and equal in every way. They are equal, again, in dignity, honor, in the image of God, and they are equal in role and responsibility. So the difference is, although significant in their practicality in the life of the church and in life in general, are very small when you kind of read them up on a screen like this. Now, what my contention

Is as your pastor, what I believe and see in Scripture in as much study as I can muster in, you know, 25-ish years of studying the Scripture professionally, is this is where I believe that Scripture falls in regards to, like, "Oh, well, is it complementarian or is it egalitarian? Are men and women different or are we the same? Do they have all the same roles and responsibilities or do they have different roles and responsibilities?" And here's what I think that Scripture ultimately comes down when you look at the whole of it in a comprehensive way is this. Number one is I think that men and women, I believe that the Scripture tells us that men and women are created equally in dignity, value, and in the image of God. And also, they are created equally in dignity, value, in the image of God, and they are also created uniquely to serve in different roles with different responsibilities. Now, there is a mountain of information on the differences between men and women in Scripture. What we often do, and this is not just with gender, but what we often do is that we look

At maybe small differences. We end up magnifying them beyond their natural limits, and then we use those differences to pit one side versus the other. This is not the position of Scripture when it comes to the differences between men and women. Any Scripture that is used to degrade or demean or subjugate specifically women in order to elevate the moral or eternal superiority of all men over all women is a sinful use of that Scripture and should be rejected wholeheartedly. But what is often, what often is the response of reading verses like this, like we've read this morning, is that, well, when Paul says, "A woman should learn in all quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach her to have authority over man. She must be silent." What often is the response in a very non-charitable way is that women, therefore, across the board are lower and lesser than men, especially in the roles of leadership in the church, and that this patriarchal, authoritarian understanding of Christianity must be fought and rejected. It's often what happens here and makes it a very contentious

Situation very quickly. But again, I want to bring us back to this maybe truth or permission to allow the Scripture to speak on its own accord rather than taking a small section and making it speak for a volume of things that it never actually addresses. We must let the Scripture speak, and not just one Scripture, but all Scriptures. We must allow it to say what it does say, and not take part of a truth, of its truth, to places where the Scripture itself did not go. Now, while it is beyond the scope of our particular text this morning, because we're in 1 Timothy, while it's beyond the scope of our particular text this morning, the New Testament especially goes, I would say even, out of its way to elevate the role, dignity, responsibility, and ministry of women far above the contemporary culture that it itself was placed in. We see that this is true for Jesus. We see that this is true for Paul. We see that this is true for many early church leaders. Women were and are critical and vital to the life, the health, and the leadership of the church, both then

And now. But there is more than just the improper or maybe illicit use of Scripture to comment on here. When we often come to passages of Scripture that are difficult to read, that are difficult to hear, there are generally two responses that the human heart has to difficult Scripture. That's to submit yourself to it and before it, trusting it to be God's word in your life, and placing yourself willingly in an obedient posture to follow it, understanding it's God's best for you, or to essentially, in a simplistic form, to reject its authority for whatever reason you might have. I don't want to do that. I don't want to think that. I don't want to believe that. I don't want to act like that, or it's too difficult, or I can't, or I don't believe it, or in probably what is the most foundational way of response to it, is that we reject the word of God's authority in our life. Well, I know that's what that says, but I don't believe it. That's not the God that I serve. We, in general, and I'm not just talking about us in this room, humanity, in general, has an authority problem.

We have an authority problem. Not a single person that I know just wakes up in the morning and is like, I cannot wait to be under the authority of someone else today. It is a modern Western value to be autonomous, independent, and at the top of the heap of your own personal life, decisions, beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, but it goes beyond a Western value. It is a value of sin that says, I reject the authority of God and his word over me. I will not believe it. I will harden my heart against it. I will find someone who's preaching a different message and believe that. Sin is ultimately an authority problem. Modern culture seeks to dismantle every view of authority as being domineering, abusive, or autocratic. How dare you tell me what I should do, believe, or think? But being, listen, being someone under authority is the condition of every single person, whether you want to be or not. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ are under his authority as Lord of your life and the word of God's authority for the practice of your life. Those who do not express faith in Jesus Christ have not

Surrendered their lives to him are under the authority of sin and Satan. You are not an autonomous, we are not autonomous people living lives with our own authority. And the more we try to squirm and wiggle out from underneath the authority that you are rightly under as a man or woman of God, the more your own autonomy becomes an idolatrous figure that you pursue. The more that you try to squirm out of the authority that is rightly underneath you or rightly over top of you, the more you become your own idol. When we do not submit to the authority that is over us, then it is very, it is a natural progression to simply do whatever we think, whatever we feel or whether whatever we believe is essentially true. We follow the God of our own creation and it is usually ourselves. So as we get into the exegesis here, like the actual study of the passage this morning, I want you to understand, I want you to understand this one, maybe this one kind of thing. You know, I have spent the better part of my life studying the scripture and almost preaching

The word as a calling on my life longer than I haven't been preaching the word. I'm not going to tell you how old I am, but we're getting there, we're getting close to that tipping point, okay? And I will tell you if you could fill this room with all of the scholarly books and information on the complimentarian versus egalitarian argument or discussion, you could fill the city of Jamestown with the scholarly information or writing that is out there on the meanings of these passages and possible meanings and background context and what could Paul possibly be saying here or there or wherever. This is not something that I can faithfully say this is not something that I'm just regurgitating from whatever author I personally believe in or think. This is your pastor, someone who loves you and who understands and holds the spiritual responsibility for you. This is the fruit of decades of study in the word to present to you a faithful understanding of what I believe these passages to be about. So in 1 Timothy chapter 2 we're in the context of the worshipping gathering again, just like we would be right now. Hey Timothy, I, Paul,

Your mentor, when you get together with your worshipping, like when the church is gathered and when you're like prayers, petitions, thanksgiving for all leaders, this is good and glorifying to God, right? And in verse 8 he comes down more, more instructions on the worshipping gathering and he says this, he says, I desire then that in every place the men should pray lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. Now a big question with all of these passages is, is Paul giving Timothy and the Ephesian church? Is he giving them directives that only apply to them and them alone? Or is he offering universal directives that Paul intends to be spread abroad in the New Testament church at the very least of which he is the apostolic leader? What we can see here is that Paul's intent right now is to expand his direction not just in the, not just in, in Ephesus itself or with Timothy, but that everywhere Paul wants men to be lifting their hands in prayer, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. I desire that in every place, not just this place, Timothy, not just Philippi or Galatia,

Not just Ephesus or Thessalonica, everywhere. I desire that this would be a thing that men would do everywhere. It assumes a universal application. Well, the, the, the question is, well, what must have been happening here in Ephesus for Paul to write such a very specific thing? Well, we don't know exactly, but we can make some assumptions based on what Paul does say, right? What does he tell the men to do? How does he tell them to pray without quarreling or without anger? What would be the assumption that could be made here? The issue with men's prayers, at least in this instance, is that there seems to be some arguing and quarreling going on. Now I know that Ephesus church, they just must not have had their stuff together because how would anyone ever argue or quarrel within a church, right? You've never seen that, right? That's never happened. There's never been disagreement about anything like that, has there? It's an angry men, likely passionate about being right, are a primary, what Paul says by, by, by like inference, angry men, passionate about being right, are

A primary threat to acceptable worship, as well as to the wider relational dynamics that should contribute to harmony, both in Christian homes and congregations. Paul's like, Hey men, why don't we focus a little bit more on lifting holy hands in prayer, rather than demanding that your position be the right one, the prominent one, the primary one. This is not the way that men act in the context of worship. We're not here to argue with one another. We're not here to quarrel. We're here to lift our hands in holy prayer. So get after it guys, Paul says. Now, as he goes on in verse nine, he, he, he doesn't just talk to the men and he doesn't just talk to the women. But in verse nine, there's this transition verse. It says likewise. So like in the same context, Hey, it's not just the men who are quarreling or angry, who are, who are disrupting the flow of worship and the heart of worship. Likewise, Paul says that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold pearls or costly

Attire. Now listen, if your hair is braided, if you've got gold on or pearls on, don't start taking that stuff out right here. Okay. It's not what we're, that's not what we're asking. That's not what we're saying. And that's not also not what Paul is saying here. While, verse eight certainly singles out anger and disputing among men as unhealthy male tendencies. These verses, verse nine and 10 balance off of this instruction with a mention of a female tendency. What can be sometimes and in some situations an unhealthy concern with bodily appearance. Just now, now just as in verse eight, Paul was not accusing all men of being hotheads. So here Paul is not accusing every woman of simply being vain. Like the likewise here indicates that Paul is not offering a sweeping condemnation against women, but a corrective for both of them. What we do and how we show up in worship, man or woman matters to the heart of God and matters to the worshiping community. Now this is not a foreign idea in scripture. In fact, the writer of Proverbs, the book of wisdom, says this about in Proverbs

Chapter 31 verse 30. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. It's Proverbs 31 30. The prophet Isaiah in the very beginning of his, in the very beginning of his book, Isaiah chapter three, Isaiah spoke out against in a very direct way, the haughty woman women, that's his word, haughty women of Zion who walked around with ornaments jingling on their ankles. His description of their jewelry and finery makes Paul's references here honestly look really dull and flat by comparison. But none of this is Paul's deeper and actual fundamental point. It doesn't end up being about the color, what kind of jewelry you're wearing or how your hair is braided or up or down or not. Like Paul, Isaiah's concern is not to demonize feminine fashion in any way, but to depict I'm sorry, the hazard of essentially of an ostensibly worshipful people stuck on cosmetic excess while oblivious to the holiness of God in their midst. Making what is for them, their personal appearance, the primary issue of the posture that they bring into worship.

Can we move on in this scripture? Like I said, going kind of verse by verse eight, nine and 10, we get into where Paul gets a little bit more direct. He says in verse 11, "Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness." I'm reading out of the ESV. If you have a different version it may have some different words there for both quietness and full submission. ESV is a pretty faithful translation of what the Greek seems to indicate. "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission." Now, when you and I read this, we would probably because of our culture come to say like, oh, like versus specifically verses 11 and 12, like the fact that he's telling women that they must be quiet and learn in submissiveness or later in verse 12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. She is to remain quiet." Man, that must have been like, that's super controversial. I don't know how Paul got away with saying that. And what I want to point out one thing about contextual differences between where we are right now and where Paul was in the ancient Near East.

The most controversial thing that Paul said to the people who first received this letter, the most controversial thing in all of this letter, it would be that Paul's assertion that women are to learn in the worshiping community. So in verse 11 when Paul says, "Let a woman learn, " that for a reader in the ancient Near East, been like, what are you talking about, Paul? We don't do this in our culture. We don't allow women to come into the temple to learn. We don't allow them to, like this isn't the Greek model, like only the men learn. The men are the ones who are educated. The men are the ones who are taught. And what Paul is not both insinuating, but just right out saying is like, listen, there is an expectation in the Christian community that women, just like men, should be learning, should be discipled, should be taught, should be brought under the authority of both the church and the word of God. A woman should learn was the most controversial part of scripture for Paul's own readers. And it is consistent with Paul's continual, both desire, affirmation

And practice to elevate the role of women in his context to significant positions of leadership in his own ministry. How should a woman learn? Paul says, in quietness, in full submission. Now, quietness, you might be like, well, geez, man, that is, if I told my wife to be quiet, she definitely wouldn't be. But listen, understand this in its context. The context is the worshiping community, right? We're in right now. And Paul says a woman should learn in quietness. How many people, not just women, how many people in this room are learning right now in quietness? You all are, right? All of you, right? All with raised hands are learning in a posture and a position of quietness. Quietness is the disposition of all who learn. This is often unfairly kidnapped and used to say, you see, Paul is telling all women that they need to shut up. And that's what I'm talking about when I say that we must reject any usage of the scripture that seeks to demean the dignity, value, honor, or image of God in women or in men, because that is not at all what Paul is saying here.

Quietness and full submission is not equal to, hey, women, you need to shut up. But it is a kind of quietness. This quietness is a peaceful and gentle attitude that brings full attention towards what is being taught. When Paul says women should learn in quietness, he's saying the exact thing that we're all doing right now in this moment. Putting on a posture of peacefulness and gentleness, an attitude that brings our full attention towards what is being taught. Now, Paul has already used and lifted up the disposition of quietness as a thing that all Christians should pursue within the worshiping context, within our worship context. He said this back in verse two. First of all, then I heard that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a what? Peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Quietness was not a way to bring women under subjugation, but to say, hey look, in the midst of being discipled by the word of God, a quiet and gentle spirit is the disposition

Of all who come to learn. Remember, Paul and Timothy's context here is the worship gathering. And so Paul is describing what he considers normative and instructive for the local church. A lack of quietness is inappropriate, or would be inappropriate, and would not display the heart of someone who is eager to sit under the teaching of the word. We all understand that, right? We all understand that. Quietness as a demeanor is what the goal is here, not silence as an ultimatum. Elsewhere in scripture, like I said, we don't have time to deal with all of the scripture on it this morning, but elsewhere in scripture, women were known not just to speak up in worship, but to pray in worship, to prophesy in worship. It wasn't that their voice was completely and utterly diminished or erased in the worshiping context. But when we come to this type of context here, Paul is like, it's time to be, everyone is time to be quiet, and what he says, fully submit. Now back when we studied Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, or the letters of Ephesians, I think this was last year, we dealt with this word submission. Again, this is all a word that each one of you, your eyes open,

Your feet hit the floor in the morning, or like, I can't wait to submit to someone today. Right? Again, in our context, a word that's like, I don't like, I don't like to submit. I don't, I don't, it's not who I am. That's not what I, it's not what I'm trying to build into my life. But listen, this, the word submission, the Greek word for submission is the word hupatasso. And this word literally means to order or arrange one's oneself under someone or something else. What does that mean? Well, the word submission here in the Greek is in something that we call the middle voice. Meaning when the, like the word is in the middle voice and we say something like fully submit, we're not talking about someone up high on the hierarchical ladder who is forcing submission down upon someone who is lower in dignity and value. What the middle voice suggests is that the attitude of submission or the position of submission is one that someone voluntarily puts themselves in as a measure of honor to those that are above them. Meaning that, no, I, in an effort and posture of honor, I put

Myself underneath this. I submit myself to this teaching, to this person, to this organization, to this place. Submission is not indicated even towards a specific person here in this verse. In the Greek, there is no noun that the person or the woman must submit to. And so from the context, we understand that the implication is that the, is that women, just like men, have a quietness of their disposition and a submission, not to a specific person as it's not indicated here, but to the teaching that is offered and exercised in authority that we're going to see next. That the, that we, that women are to learn in quietness and full submission is a way in which Paul is saying, hey, look, women are to learn. First off, Timothy, make sure you get that right. Second, as a posture of quietness and attentiveness to be, to what's being taught. So make sure you maintain this environment in worship so that they may both hear, understand, and fully submit themselves to the teaching, just as anyone else would. This is why Paul is so insistent with Timothy to guard against false

Teaching, because a cornerstone value of Paul's life as an apostle is to encourage the elders to teach sound doctrine and that people would fall under submission to sound doctrine. So he wanted them to be, he wanted to make sure, right, that it was being done correctly. Now, listen, both of these axioms were demonstrated in Mary and Martha, the story of Mary and Martha that pastor Luke mentioned in a prayer this morning. I was encouraged to hear that. If you even just read this, this passage of scripture from Mary from Luke chapter 10. Do I have it on the screen? Luke 10 now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house and she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen

The good portion, which will not be taken away from her. So while Martha was running around in kind of this anxious frantic type of way, Mary was sitting in quietness and submission at the feet of Jesus, ready to receive from him in a posture of humility. And Martha, who's all frantic, is like, Jesus, why don't you tell Mary to do something about this? And what's Jesus response? Like, man, she's killing it. I don't know what you're doing. She's killing it. Paul then digs deeper into his instruction here with even more detail about the specifics of the teaching role in the context of the local church worshiping gathering. And in verse 12, he says this, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. Again, the word for quiet there indicates the same type of thing. Now, it's kind of begs the question a little bit. Paul's words are, I'm gonna tell you, there's not a whole lot of interpretation that happens around this verse. There's no really kind of funny interpretive gymnastics to develop

Some other meaning other than it's other than what it is in its clarity. Okay. But does this mean that no man can learn anything from my woman anywhere? Because this is often what becomes like the kind of the domino effect of belief when someone reads this verse in isolation outside of its whole context and the whole council of Paul's word on women in ministry. Does this, is that what that means? That no, no woman ever anyone, no woman at any time anywhere has anything to teach a man. That is not what this is saying. That is not what this means. That is not what this implies. This role is not about the a woman's or the woman. It is not about a woman's lack of capacity or a gifting to teach. This specific instance here, this specific verse is about a role that is assigned to men and women in the context of the worshiping environment. The role of teaching and the exercise of the authority that comes with teaching the word of God in the public worshiping community setting is assigned to an elder and an overseer who is always described as male in scripture

And in the early church. Now there is a pun more that we could say about that. What I will tell you is that is the, that is the focus of the sermon next week. Okay. Is, is the role of the elder and the overseer in the life of the new testament church and, and, and having, and in that being whether or not it is relegated to a single gender as Paul seems to indicate in first Timothy chapter three. So the question there is where, where possibly could Paul be getting all of this from? Like where, where, how could Paul be developing this line of thinking? How could he be developing this line of like this line of information? And we might say something like, well, Paul lived in a highly patriarchal society that limited, limited the status of women. That's why Paul thinks all these things. It is true that Paul lived in a highly patriarchal society that limited the status of women. But Paul went out of his way to flood his own personal ministry with the presence and leadership of women and then list their names publicly in all of his letters, especially

The letter to Rome. Right. Jesus did the same. So Paul's own example and writing and information in scripture kind of defeats the argument that Paul was just some, some kind of chauvinist who wanted to keep women down. Paul elevated the role and status of women, especially in ministry leadership, more than any other new Testament or biblical author that we have, which we will talk about in future sermons. What is Paul's rationale for there being differences in the roles between the genders in the church? What could possibly be Paul's rationale in this instance? Well, by Paul's own words, it's what he sees as evident in the creation narrative. Or said in another way, this is how God, this is how Paul believes that God has designed it. Well, where are we getting even that information from? The very next verses Paul continues with his line of thought. He gives the instruction about submission and quietness and the exercising of teaching and authority as being one that a male should hold. And then he says for, or because of that, verse 13, for Adam was formed first,

Then Eve. So Paul begins to root his whole argument here, not in some patriarchal contextual argument, but he intentionally, and Paul's no idiot, right? Paul knows what he's doing. He's a rhetorician. He knows how to speak to people. He knows how to write. He knows how to connect arguments. And so he brings his argument all the way back to creation, essentially saying, hey, guys, this is not my idea. This is not something that I'm coming up with because I'm a bad dude. For Adam was created first and then Eve. We see this natural order written out in the creative creation narrative itself. Paul is giving a reason for his counsel on women, not necessarily Paul lying patriarchy, but a reasonable articulation of what Genesis clearly describes. And we see here kind of a reasonable articulation of the complementarian perspective, right? Which is this in Genesis chapter one, verse 27, what does Paul or what is the word say? We see that simultaneously the unity in their dignity, honor, value, and image of God is recognized in creation, but also so is their diversity. They are not the same. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of

God, he created them unity. Both men and women created with dignity and value in the image of God, right? But also with diversity. They are different. Hey, women, have you ever met a man before? Men, have you met any women before? Y'all think that we're all the same? Like we're basically just the same. Well, I'm 40 something years old now. Like I'm, we're not the same. It's clear. It is clear that in the created order, God had some differences in mind. Okay. Very clear. He goes on. So, so Paul is rooting his, Paul is rooting his argument in creation in verse 13. And then he goes further. He says, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Whatever the conclusion of these next two verses, both, both verses 14 and 15, whatever the conclusion ends up being it's clear that Paul understands the situation at hand, the life of the local church, the distinguishing between roles and genders. He understands the situation to be informed both by creation and by the events of the fall or the first sin with Adam and Eve. Now

Eve's deception, as Adam mentioned here, I'm sorry, as Paul mentioned here, does not mean that Paul was trying to magnify Eve as the sinner and minimize Adam's role or responsibility in that moment. This is not Paul saying, Hey, look, if it just, if it weren't for Eve, guys, we'd be all right. That may be the way that this particular individual verse reads separate and apart from anything else that Paul writes anywhere in any writing ever. But if you read just a small amount of Paul in any other letter that he writes, especially the letter to the to the Corinthians, Adam puts the oneness of the fall on Adam. Not on Eve. This is not a pattern in Paul to magnify the deception that Eve fell under and to minimize the deception that Adam fell under. He does not elevate the role of a woman in the fall of Genesis to the exclusion of men. In fact, the vast majority of times elsewhere, Paul writes that by a man, Adam came death or in Adam all have sinned and therefore die in first Corinthians 15. Paul clearly viewed Adam as guilty of succumbing to the serpents, wiles along with

His wife, Eve. Both were deceived, but in Eden, Eve took the lead. She was the first. Paul is stating what is for Christians in Ephesus and is for us today. Really just the clarity of the fall narrative as it plays out. Adam is not ultimately absolved or even a little bit absolved, but Paul's point is to drive home in the creation narrative that Adam, listen, Adam failed to lead with the God given authority of the creation order and the result was Eve being deceived. Even in the very first moment of sin, Adam fell out of the God created order to lead his wife in holiness and when he did, they fell into deception. This is clear even in the fall narrative of Genesis. Adam and Eve sin, they feel shame, they see their nakedness, they cover up and they go into the garden. Now who sinned first? It's described as Eve just sitting first. When God comes into the garden to find them, who does he go to look for to bring essentially blame into the situation? Who is responsible according to God? Adam. Adam, where are you? Why are you hiding? The

Responsibility of leadership here was Adam's and when God went to go find them, it was him who held responsibility and accountability. Now, I'm going to tell you what, this is the last thing we're going to do. You want a little pastoral confession here? Okay, no? All right, we're going to get it anyway. 1 Timothy 2 verse 15 might be the hardest verse that I have ever tried to understand in context and faithfulness for the work of preaching. It is like, man, I got to tell you, it'd be tricky. It'd be tricky. So, there are some things we can know about it and there are some things that we don't know about it, okay? And I'm just going to be honest with you about that. I'm going to give you my best understanding of how Paul was closing up the section, what he was trying to say, okay? So, if we start at verse 13 and keep this whole creation narrative as the reason by which Paul is offering these suggestions on leadership in the church. "For Adam was formed first, then even, " verse 13, "and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness

With self-control." This is a difficult text. What do we know? Okay, well, here's one thing that we know or we can immediately, we can pretty much immediately eliminate. We know for sure, based on all that we have that Paul wrote over the course of his ministry, we know for sure what Paul is not saying. We know for sure that Paul is not saying the act of giving birth is what brings salvation into your life, okay? Otherwise, men, sorry about your luck, right? We also know that there are women who cannot give birth, okay? And so, what we do know in context of the whole scripture is that there is a different meaning here than what we just read about, like, well, they'll be saved through childbearing. There is something else here. What's unclear in most of, in almost, I don't know a single English translation that puts this thing in there, but it exists in the Greek, okay? What's unclear in the English but is more clear in the Greek text is the inclusion of what we call in grammar a definite article right before the world, the word childbearing, okay? Now,

The most famous definite article in the English language is the word, can you guess it? The, right? The definite article, it exists in the Greek, the word the, right? So, it would read, if we were to just kind of like transliterate it very literally, it would read something like, "Yet she will be saved through the childbearing, " meaning a specific one, "if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control." See, the definite article "the" brings the meaning of the passage to something more consistent with the whole of the biblical message on salvation. "As Eve is mentioned in the account as having been deceived, thus leading to the fall and sin, so too, through the line of Eve and to the childbearing moment with Mary, through the one woman Mary, salvation is brought to all those that continue in faith, love, and holiness." So, even as Paul seeks to be clear about the plan and the purpose of women and leadership and the structure of the context of church and leadership, and he gets that, he draws that from the narrative of creation, which feels a little like hopeless or even

Possibly even like, well, man, it's all the woman's fault. He ends by saying, hey, look, right? What was initiated by the deception of Eve was solved with the conception in Mary. And the birth of the Lord and the Savior will bring salvation to anyone who has been deceived and sinned. The point is that through women, the fall did come, but also through woman, redemption comes as well. So what we have here is Paul's best teaching, instruction, and direction to his protege, Timothy, a pastor who is leading in the city of Ephesus, the church of Ephesus, trying to rightly guide the life of the church, the life of the believing Christian community, by ordering it according to what he sees and believes is evident in all of creation, that men and women who make up the church are the same created equally in dignity, value, honor, and the image of God. But they are also created uniquely with different roles, different responsibilities, different tasks, different charges from the Lord to fulfill. And this is not something that should be fought against, but rather embraced as the design of God woven into creation itself for the health, fulfillment, and glory

Of the kingdom and his church. Now, next week we will, we're gonna jump, we're gonna just keep going. It'll be chapter three, first Timothy chapter three. I am gonna, we're gonna try to do first Timothy three, one through 13, which describes the two, two, not the only ones, but two significant leadership roles within the New Testament church that Paul seeks to describe to Timothy. I would encourage you to dive into the word this week in reading those and what I, I'll tell you, I'll tell you right off the bat what Paul's main point here in describing who the leader or the elder or the overseer in the church is gonna be. We often think of, oh, we need someone who can preach really well. We need someone who can lead ministries. We need someone who's a great evangelist. We need someone who's, can do a lot of pastoral care or can pray really faithfully. And, and we, we in kind of a, in our contemporary church tends to organize the role of elder or pastor or overseer around the charismatic gifts that they present when they're in front of people.

Paul's, but Paul's instruction here to Timothy and then later to Titus is to say this, he's like, listen, it's not about the, it's not about the gifts of the man. It's about the character of the man. It's about the heart of a man. It's about the spiritual posture of the man. And so we're gonna, we're gonna look a little bit as how, what Paul and the scripture as a whole describes as a, as the leader of the church next week. Let's pray. Ask the Lord to press this word into our hearts. We go back into worship. Lord, this is our prayer. Holy spirit, you are welcomed here. Come and fill this place, like the atmosphere. Lord, your glory, God is what our hearts adore. Lord, it's all we want. Come and fill this place. Holy spirit, you are honored here. You are loved, your worshiped, in Jesus name. Conduit, you are loved. Have a great week and we will see you next time.