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Mission Statement
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GENDER-BASED SPIRITUAL ABUSE AND BIGOTRY RaJean Vawter Women: God’s Secret Weapon By Ed Silvoso Sexual abuse is traumatic and often accompanied by other horrendous acts. It is clearly demonic in origin. Fortunately, our society has laws against it and there are support groups and people trained to help a woman deal with the pain and its aftermath. The results of such treatment are very difficult to get over. Unfortunately, there is no such support or even acknowledgement of spiritual abuse. Women’s giftings are often not acknowledged or allowed. If a woman complains or tries to knock the system, she is labeled rebellious, not feminine, or worse, accused of having male tendencies and of even being a lesbian by church leaders. She might even be told she’s a Jezebel and leaders try to exorcise her. Then the precious Word of God is used to beat her black and blue. Why, after 2,000 years, are we still held back in most churches? Why don’t we have the same freedom to exercise our spiritual gifts and talents for the Lord that men have? Very few pastors and Christian leaders give a woman the same respect and freedom that they give the men. Gary and I have had this struggle so many times in such painful-for-both-of-us ways that Gary finally decided not to fight any more but just walk away from such situations and those kinds of people. You see, my gifts put me out in front a lot. But I’m a woman. Then when people get to know Gary and see all the wonderful qualities and wisdom he has, they start to push and shove and pull on him to do more, get out there, stand up, etc. Gary does all that they want – when God leads him to do so. He’s not afraid. But don’t push, shove, pull or try to manipulate him. This brings up a point that is often missed. Spiritual abuse of women and gender bigotry isn’t just a sin against women, it hurts the male too. We’ll see why in this lesson. Unfortunately, most men buy into the idea that their wife is supposed to take a back seat to them and then they try to be someone they’re not and make their wife be someone she’s not. Such behavior is actually and truthfully, a slap in God’s face. It’s saying He makes mistakes when he puts certain gifts, talents and opportunities in whatever gender person He wants. Example: Anne Graham Lotz is the daughter of Billy Graham. She has inherited her father’s gift for evangelism. But do you know that she is not received in many circles? I’m told that when she was invited to speak at a large Baptist gathering, a large number of pastors literally turned their backs to her as a sign that they disapproved of her daring to speak with authority to them! This was unconscionable. But it was done in the name of “scriptural accuracy.” But how scriptural is those men’s theology? Why should she have to prove her legitimacy? Why do we all have to do so over and over and over again? Why is our work automatically questioned or discounted? It’s an attitude of, “I’m right; you’re wrong. Don’t give me the facts; my mind is made up.” That’s spiritual stubbornness and rebellion. The result is exactly what the Bible calls rebellion: witchcraft. Yes, the witchcraft curse is placed on women but it is also placed on the men and their ministries. So many churches and ministries are not fulfilling the fullness of their calling because they won’t fully release the women. Oh, they might use the women to teach the children, other women, in music ministry, to clean or as secretaries. They honor women only on special occasions. When we were in our mid 20s, after we had our second child, I was the one who was up in the night several times taking care of our new born. I was also very anemic so I was constantly tired. Yet Gary expected me to wake him up in time to go to work. One too many times he got mad at me for sleeping through the alarm and not waking him in time for work so one day I fired back. “You are an adult, a father. You have the ability and the responsibility to get yourself up all by yourself. I’m not your mother and I refuse to nag you into getting up.” From that day on, we both have our own alarm clocks on our side of the bed. And you know what? We’re both happier. In this one area, Gary needed to be reminded of who he was – an adult. He just needed to be reminded. Unfortunately, many men – and women – don’t just need reminding, they need to be taught. And we women need to own our responsibility in training our husbands and sons that such behavior is OK. Such discounting, questioning, suspicion, is not only rebellion and fear on the part of men, it’s actually spiritual abuse. BUT. . . Do not despair. On the day of Pentecost, Peter quoted an Old Testament prophecy that not only talked about the giving of the Holy Spirit, but it prophesied a day when true gender reconciliation would take place to such an extent that one of the marks of the end-time revival will be men and women standing, working, fighting side-by-side until the whole world, every single person will be affected and finally, that Satan’s head will be crushed forever as predicted when God cursed the serpent in the garden. Acts 2:14-21 – But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit ON ALL FLESH; your sons and YOUR DAUGHTERS shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on MY MAIDSERVANTS I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and THEY shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. It is a woman’s strengths that have made her a target for Satan. We’ve always been told it’s our weakness but it’s actually our strengths. That’s why Satan is afraid of us and why he puts fear in the heart of male leaders. Remember, we’re not only “twice refined,” but we have the unique ability to host and nurture life so if he can get us down, he has a greater chance of keeping our natural and spiritual children, male and female, down. When Eve sinned and Adam abdicated his role and sinned too, not only did all of creation fall but the very first, immediate thing that happened was the creation of the gender gap. The two were separated. It was Adam who pushed Eve away and it will take a man to bring them back together. Jesus was that man who closed the gender gap. His desire was to bring about the fullness of Genesis 2:18 when “the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.’” Some translations use the word helpmate. The Hebrew word used here means to aid, help, surround, protect, succor. The corresponding Greek word means helper equal to him or corresponding completely to him. The early church accepted that closure of the gender gap and used women as teachers – even of men, and as elders and deacons. And what was the result? The Gospel was spread throughout the entire world. Am I exaggerating that last statement? Did the fact that men and women worked together without hierarchy in the first century, as did Priscilla and Aquilla, really make such a difference? Of course! Think about it. BOTH man and woman are made in God’s image. If you only have one, you have an incomplete, tainted, tarnished picture of who God is. Is it any wonder that children who are raised by a domineering father and a milk-toast mother tend to have an image of God as a judge just waiting to knock them down for the least infraction? They didn’t get the balancing side of what women have to offer. One parent is better than no parent but God’s design is for the balance that two parents can give. Even with two parents, this bridging of the gender gap happens only when there is true love, respect and releasing of one another between father and mother. If the father does not show respect or if he has any male chauvinism toward his wife, the children will grow up with the same attitude no matter how hard she tries or how godly a woman she is. Once lost, a mother’s respect and honoring from her children is next to impossible to regain. As long as there is a gender gap that degrades and discounts women in the Christian family and community, not only is restoration nearly impossible, the spreading of a pure, unadulterated Gospel is impossible without the intervention of God. What Jesus did when He came to earth was to undo all that the sin in the garden wrought. Creation fell. Walking in obedience to God, it is our job to restore it. The first human consequence of the fall was the position and dignity of the woman. Remember, God had blessed and commanded both Adam and Eve to fill and subdue the earth. He gave both of them the power to rule over all living beings. Genesis 1:28 – Then God blessed THEM, and God said to THEM, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have DOMINION over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Such partnership was the first thing to be lost; it should have been the first thing to be restored. The first century church made a good beginning but the progress got quickly waylaid until the last 20-25 years. (That’s my figure.) And even then, the progress has been dramatically slow. And I’m talking about within the church where women are still required to be subservient. In the late 90s I was privileged to sit under the teaching of Ed Silvoso several times. He is a powerful man of God who worked to win his own city in Argentina for the Lord. With that success, God promoted him to teaching the principles of city-reaching. Then God opened him up to cities in other countries. Now, he’s working with great success on training people to reach nations. People view him as a teacher/evangelist on a large scale. But having listened to him in person on a number of occasions, read his books and from receiving his newsletters, I’ve found him to be quite a theologian as well. I say all of this because I want to give you a quote from his book “Women, God’s Secret Weapon.” On page 57 he begins to talk about the Christian male leadership’s attitude toward women. . . “I see evidence of this when I do my seminar on city-reaching. One of the key sessions deals extensively with Paul’s exhortation, in the book of Ephesians, to restore every broken relationship in order to be able to confront the forces of evil (see Eph. 6:11). To that effect, Paul commands Christians to bridge six gaps affecting ethnic groups (chapter 2), saints (chapter 3), ministers-apostles, prophets, evangelist and pastor-teachers- (chapter 4), husbands and wives, parents and children (chapter 5) and masters and slaves (chapter 6). “When the participants are exhorted to repent of prejudice, bigotry and racism, a powerful public display of repentance takes place. Charismatics confess sins against non-charismatics. Parents kneel before children and vice-versa. Caucasians and people of color renounce racism. Each one of the gaps is promptly dealt with except one, the gender gap. “Time and again I see men in a pool of tears embracing the feet of others seeking absolution, who suddenly stiffen their backs when told to ask forgiveness of women in the audience. They adopt a defiant posture as if to say, “What do you mean when you say that we need to repent before women?” The fact that the gender gap exists and needs to be bridged eludes them completely. “This reaction becomes even more bellicose when I suggest repentance should also be directed to women in ministry. “Women in ministry?” The thought is handled with the indignation reserved for a blasphemous act. It does not matter that women have been in ministry for ages and that the imprint of their walk with the Lord is all over the Church. The notion that public acknowledgment and repentance might be called for is as disgusting as bringing a dirty family secret out into the open.” On one occasion, Ed was with a group of pastors who were talking about the gender gap. He encouraged them to begin with the notion that they were all bigoted to one degree or another and start from there. However, one by one, each pastor denounced the idea that they had any prejudice or bigotry. When they’d all spoken, they’d all absolved themselves and each other. Yet sitting in a corner, not having been given a chance to speak, was a woman. The men had pompously spoken about an issue without even consulting with one of those they’d been talking about. This reminds me of a story I read written by a woman who worked in the field of geriatrics. She was to be one of the key-note speakers at a large geriatric convention of health care providers. To prepare for her talk, she attended the first two days of the conference disguised as an old lady. She wore a gray wig, walked with a cane bent over, spent the time to apply Hollywood style makeup that made her look old and wrinkled. When it came time for her talk, she had a few choice words to say to the attentive audience. If ever there should have been a place where an old person would have been honored it should have been with a bunch of geriatric providers. Instead, she’d been ignored, left off of elevators, not invited to lunch or any of the discussion groups, booted out of taxis and, in general, discounted. That’s the way it usually is for women. A few years ago I was asked to be a leader of one of the groups doing 24/7 prayer cover for a conference of 18-24 year olds. The prayer times were exceedingly intense as God gave us what to pray for at specific times. One day, the Holy Spirit brought up the issue of the gender gap. One woman began to weep and cry with intense pain because of what she’d suffered from men. All of the women in the group knew that God wanted to use this woman’s pain as a catalyst for us to deal in prayer with the same kind of pain the young women in the conference had experienced and to pray until they were set free to flow in their ministry callings and anointings. But, as in the case with Ed Silvoso’s group of pastors, the men in the group didn’t see that it was such a big deal. My co-leader was a man and he just kept saying, “I just tell my boys, don’t even go there. Just don’t go there.” For a short time I tried to push through so that what God wanted to accomplish could be done, but since he was a co-leader and he didn’t want to even look at the issue, all I could do was give up. Here we were praying for thousands of young men and women at the conference, many of whom are now in ministry of some sort and some God showed me will be martyrs of the faith. God wanted our group to take a hard look at the gender gap, what it does to women, the damage it does to men and how it hinders the spread of the Gospel. But the men in the group were not mature enough, humble enough or brave enough to take on such an issue that is so deeply ingrained in them. It is a form of bigotry to refuse to listen and accept someone else’s pain no matter what the subject. This male leader was committing spiritual abuse right there. How are intelligent, gifted men of God able to walk in such blindness? The answer is that gender bigotry can be so incredibly subtle. Such attitudes began at the fall with Adam, got worse through the centuries, and then got better with the birth of Christianity. But the deep-rooted sin of Adam toward Eve gained momentum and legitimacy during the Reformation when much of our basic, Protestant doctrine and theology was birthed. Up until then, women could only become a nun or a martyr. During this time, the liberating message of the Gospel was slipping out of the hands of those who had turned it into a religion with ritual, organization and hierarchy. So the religious wars began. Especially between the Catholics and Protestants. Then between the Anglicans and the other Protestants. Enter John Knox – a passionate clergy, scholar and patriot. A leader in the Reformation movement. But his patriotism blinded his eyes to truth in scripture. He believed that all authority is instituted by God but he couldn’t imagine God handing the leadership of his beloved, Protestant Scotland to a Catholic. He fought this tooth and nail but, since Mary, Queen of Scots was truly the legitimate person to assume the throne, the only weapon Knox could muster against her was the fact that she was a woman. And he used scripture to argue his gender bias and his religious bias. Isn’t that how Satan often works? When people run out of arguments, be they Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Protestants or Scotsmen, they attack your personhood. Something about you that you can’t change. Let’s look at John Knox and see just what kind of a man he was. He was a very colorful character who took his religion very seriously. At the time he lived, the Catholic Church owned more than half the land in Scotland and took in 18 times the revenue as did the Crown. The leaders of the Catholic Church were anything but holy. Most of them got their positions by political intrigue. The man Knox had the most to do with was the Archbishop, Cardinal David Beaton who openly consorted with concubines and sired 10 children. When Knox was first asked to preach, he was frightened and wept openly in confusion. But he soon got the hang of preaching and was called the THUNDERING SCOT. He and a man named Wiseheart preached their hearts out. Actually, in the beginning Knox was Wiseheart’s bodyguard. But this was during what we now call the Religious Wars in which really horrible, gruesome things were done by both sides. Wiseheart was burned alive by Cardinal Beaton in front of his wife and children. In revenge, on May 29, 1546, the Protestants stormed the castle home of Beaton in the wee hours of the morning as soon as his latest prostitute slipped out, killed the guard, found Beaton with a servant locked in his bedroom, got him to open the door and assassinated him. They hung his body outside the castle for all to see, urinated in his mouth, and then his body was put in the dungeon where Wiseheart had been placed at one time. As a result of this, Knox ended up as a galley slave. After 19 months King Edward VI of England set him free and Knox spent the next five years in England as an honored guest. He was appointed Royal Chaplain which involved preaching before the King. He also contributed to the second edition of the Book of Common Prayer that was published in 1552 for the Anglican Church. He was invited to be the Bishop of Rochester Church but turned it down. He was also invited to be the Vicar of All Hallows Church on Bread Street but turned that down too. Then King Edward VI died and Mary Tutor began her reign in England. Knox opposed her because she was a Catholic and wanted to install Catholicism as the state religion instead of the Anglican Church. Knox called her “The Wicked English Jezebel.” Knox went to Switzerland where he worked briefly with Miles Coverdale on what is now called the Geneva Bible. He met John Calvin who had a group of followers, then ended up in Frankfort which was a city of religious tolerance. He didn’t like either the finished Book of Common Prayer or the order of service that John Calvin had put together so after lots of clandestine behavior over the various books of liturgy, he published his own book. It is called “The Book of Common Order” which became the official instruction for worship in Scotland. In 1555, Knox was convinced to return to Scotland to do a reforming work. He typically spent half an hour doing an exegesis of scripture, then spent the rest of his sermon applying it to the Scottish situation, getting so animated that his hearers became frightened. But he became so popular that the next year (1556) the Catholic Bishop summed him to Edinburgh to face legal proceedings. The Regent, Mary of Guise, canceled the summons so he didn’t go. He wrote her a thank you letter but when she dismissed it, he went back to Geneva. At this time, he began to publish his more controversial tracts. He asked John Calvin if it was OK to resist a Monarch who was an idolatress (which he considered all Catholics to be). John wouldn’t have anything to do with it so Knox visited all the Protestant congregations in Switzerland and asked them the same question. In so doing, he railed about Mary of Tudor such that he was accused of advocating the assassination of the queen. Mary, Queen of Scotts once pleaded with him to keep Protestants from taking up the sword but Knox had replied, “The sword of justice is Gods and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may.” William Tyndale insisted that authorities are God-ordained. Resist them and you resist God but Knox violently disagreed. And this is where the fire in his belly began to burn hot. In 1558 he wrote a tract entitled “The Monstrous Regiment of Women.” Monstrous Regiment is an Old English term for unnatural government. This tract was a ruthless assertion of male domination and an unsparing attack on women based on Bible verses and quotes from early church fathers. He concluded that no woman could be a legitimate ruler and certainly not a woman who persecuted Protestants. He called her “a rebel against God.” He wrote that those who accepted women “must acknowledge that the regiment of the woman is a thing most odious in the presence of God. They must refuse to be her officers because she is a traitoress and a rebel against God. They must study to repress her inordinate pride and tyranny to the utmost of their power.” This tract was published and distributed to the higher classes. To ordinary people, he published another tract telling them they had “the duty to rebel.” The first tract was renounced by Calvin who refused to circulate it. It was banned from Geneva. Two weeks later, Protestant Elizabeth the First came to the English throne. She was so appalled; she had a hatred for Knox for the rest of her life. This forever severed him from the Protestant Anglicans. From that point on, he became more militant. What was it about his tracts about women that were so alarming? At that time, European society believed that women were ineligible for any public office except the Head of State. So his premise was not so startling. What alarmed Europe and Calvin was his conclusion that the faithful who were “afflicted” by a female sovereign, “ought to remove from authority that monster in nature.” After calling all female sovereigns, “foolish, mad, and frenetic,” incapable of governing “the discreet and give counsel to such as be sober of mind,” he wrote, “And such be ALL women compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil regiment (government) is but blindness, their strength weakness, their counsel foolishness, and judgment frenzy.” Back in Scotland, in 1559, Knox used his preaching skills to encourage Protestant militancy. Riots broke out, religious houses were destroyed. In Perth, it got so bad that the Lords of the Congregation (Protestant nobles who were in position for the most part for economic gain) occupied the city. The Regent, Mary of Guise sent troops to restore order. Knox was convinced that only English intervention would save the day because the battles – often bloody and gruesome – continued. Finally in 1560 a treaty was drawn up and both the French and the English troops left Scotland which assured the success of the Scottish reformation. The parliament adopted a confession of faith which Knox and five others had written up. His book, The Book of Common Order, became the official worship manual. Mary Queen of Scots came back from France so there were two churches. The Roman Catholic and the Reformed. Knox, remember, didn’t like her but by the middle of the 1560s the fight had taken its toll on him. He was a bitter man, had lost his health and historians wrote that he had “nothing of the milk of kindness” in him. When he preached, he had to be carried on a stretcher and his voice was so weak that only the closest people to him could hear. He was not dishonest intentionally by how he handled scripture. His conclusions were simply tainted by his political zealousness and bigotry against women. Just when the Protestant movement was gaining steam, authority and respect, what he did was more than come against the female Sovereigns in leadership. He infringed on all women. This set in motion, a strong, but weakly-based, restrictive theology that went all over the world and is with us today 500 years later. But this theology has some obvious holes in it if we can study the Word without bias. Let’s look at some of those holes. Look at 1 Timothy 2:8-15. The traditional interpretation focuses only on the negative parts of this passage while not even considering the positive. Restrictive: 1. Women shouldn’t wear distracting clothing in services. 2. Women should be quiet and submissive when taught. 3. Women can’t teach or exercise authority over men. Because. . .men were created first and woman was the one who talked to the serpent. Allowed: 1. Women could participate in public religious gatherings. At that time, neither the Romans nor the Jews allowed that. In fact the idea was so new that Paul had to be the one to answer the typical female question, “What should I wear?” His answer was essentially, “Keep it simple so you don’t distract either from the meeting or from letting the Lord shine through you.” 2. Since Paul is talking about public gatherings, he’s also telling the women that they can and should participate in public good works not just quiet, behind-the-scenes good works. Gotta take this passage in context. 3. And finally, he tells them that they need to be taught in the same way and in the same type of an environment as the men had been taught when they were younger. Remember, we’re talking about a time when women were not allowed to be schooled. This was a huge and a revolutionary change that has produced rumbles that are still being felt. As late as the late 1800s when Christians went to Palestine (as it was called then) and started a school for Jewish girls, the rabbis had a fit. “If we educate our girls, it will be impossible to find suitable wives for our sons,” they said. Schools for girls turned the Middle East upside down! Paul went on to give the rationale for his “new” instruction about women using both the creation of Adam and the order of when sin was introduced. The problem comes when we equate the two. If we’re going to really be scripturally accurate, we can’t do this. The creation of Adam first is unchangeable. That’s the way it happened. God is the One who decided it would be that way. But the transgression of Eve was not His choice. It was Eve’s. It was not an absolute. It didn’t have to happen that way – which means that it could have happened another way. But it was Eve’s choice that was later voided by the Cross. We need to understand this if we’re to accurately interpret what Paul is trying to say here. Think about it: If Eve was not a co-regent, equal to Adam before the fall, how could her sin have caused the fall? Adam and Eve were both punished but Eve received the greater punishment because her sin was premeditated, intentional. Numbers 15:30 – The person who does anything presumptuously (defiantly), whether he is native-born or a stranger, that one brings reproach on the Lord, and he shall be cut off from among his people. So she was demoted in that from that point on, her desire was subject to Adam (1 Timothy 2:16) She was cut off from her original standing. Men used this to not only rule over women but to keep her ignorant. In this First Timothy passage, Paul is telling them what they can do and telling the men to bring them up to par by teaching them. And, since they had SO MUCH to learn and, probably because of how the Jewish men were taught leadership from an early age, each man was to instruct his wife at home. In other words, without saying it outright, Paul is telling the men to accept and even encourage this obvious PROMOTION of the women in their household. The church – out there – wasn’t to do it generally so they could pat themselves on the back and pretend they’d truly accepted the idea of women being just as redeemed, having just as much freedom with just as many rights as they did, but EACH man was to get involved. Each man was to change his attitude. If anything, Paul is getting after the men. After all, it was Adam who gave God’s instructions to Eve. He evidently wasn’t a very good teacher because when she was asked about God’s instructions, Eve didn’t have it right. Eve got it wrong because the devil asked her his question in a deceitful, tricky way. Eve took her secondhand information and got it twisted. She herself had been misled and her answer was not quite right. Meanwhile, Adam was standing right there listening, not saying a word to either correct her or to the devil. In First Timothy, Paul is telling the men not to do that. Don’t fail your wife like Adam did. Furthermore, we have to realize that Paul was teaching a group of people who were just learning what grace was all about and what had actually been done by the Cross of Christ. It was the beginning of the Christian era. So he began at the lowest point – the demotion of women in the Garden – and told the men that it was their responsibility to bring them back up to the status Eve had before the fall. Teaching on the need to teach women is generally not needed in Western nations today in the 21st century, but in some other countries, it’s still true. It was true in this country in my Grandmother’s day. She wanted to go to high school but her parents said a girl doesn’t need any more than an 8th grade education. Anyone has to be taught before they can teach. The Lord’s death on the cross dealt with Eve’s sin as well as Adam’s so now the process was to begin. It’s just like when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. He did the hard part and Lazarus came alive again. But Jesus required the people to unbind him so he could move about freely. That’s the way it was and is with women. And Paul is here addressing the issue of women’s unbinding. The implication is obvious. Why would you teach someone something if there’s nothing they can do with their new-found knowledge? Separating the order of creation from the order in which sin was introduced is the only way we can interpret this passage with the rest of scripture with integrity. Galatians 3:28-29 – There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. In context, this passage is in the midst of instructions about how we are all SONS and HEIRS of God. Verse 26-27 – For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. It is in this context that Paul makes it clear that even though he has used the word “sons,” he is talking about Gentiles as well as Jews, slaves as well as their master, and women as well as men. In one verse, he closes the racial gap (Jew/Greek), the social gap (slave/free) and the gender gap (men/women). Because we are Abraham’s seed and Christ’s seed. 1 Peter 3:7 – Husbands, likewise, dwell with them (their wives) with understanding, giving HONOR to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and AS BEING HEIRS TOGETHER of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. Let’s look at some of the words used here. HONOR means to have high regard or respect for another. It is impossible to honor someone and discount them or put them down or consider them less than at the same time. HEIRS TOGETHER -When wills are made out so that every child in the family receives an equal portion of the estate, they are all considered heirs together. They are all equal. What each might do with their portion can vary but they are still heirs together. They got the same thing. This is such a critical point for men to grasp that Peter tells the men that if they don’t grasp it, their prayers will be hindered. Wow! In the verses before, instruction is given to women as to their attire and their attitude toward their husbands but there’s no threat if they don’t do it. Men, on the other hand, receive a very serious consequence. Combine these scriptures with Ephesians 5:25-31 and it’s clear that the Lord expects men to be the initiators of closing the gender gap. I’m happy to say that some men and some leaders are doing that. But when they don’t, if you are in a situation where your freedom is not being given to you, what do you do? Do you buy into the women-are-to-be-milk-toast theology? Here in East Texas it’s called being the “little woman.” I say, “No!” Because if you do, then you’re doing what Adam did in the Garden. He bit into Eve’s sin. You are not to bite into the sin that such behavior is. (Can you imagine a man putting up with being called "the little man?") But how do you TAKE your freedom when it’s not given? First of all, you take it, knowing that it is God who gives it to you. But you take it with. . .
Back to 1 Timothy 2, Paul is not telling women they can’t teach or exercise any KIND of authority over men. If this is what he was teaching then he was a man who talked out of both sides of his mouth. Priscilla was one of his co-workers in Ephesus and had taught Apollos. He’s the one who said there was neither male nor female. He gives general instructions to all the women in verses 9-10. But when we get to verse 11, notice that he is talking about A woman. One. He’s no longer talking to a group of women and what’s to happen in the public assembly. He’s talking to each individual woman when they are getting educated for the first time in their homes. The word “submission” used here means that she’s to be teachable, willing to learn. The word “authority” here means to act of oneself, to dominate or to usurp authority over. That’s why some of your translations read “to usurp authority over a man.” It’s one thing to be given authority; it’s quite another thing to usurp, to take what’s not yours. In other words, in our walk with God individually, in the use of our gifts and talents, we need to take our freedom if it’s not given to us. But in public, we’re to take authority only when it’s given to us, putting our trust in God and letting Him deal with the prejudice. We don’t want to turn into a female John Knox. If I were teaching a group of men, I could come up with scriptures that tell them to do the same thing. You see, it’s all about honoring one another. Now what do we do with the last verse in this chapter? 1 Timothy 2:15 – Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control. As usual, to understand this verse, we have to take it in context. So the question becomes, if she’s saved, what is she saved from? It can’t be talking about salvation because her salvation was taken care of by Jesus and she receives it in the same way a man does. By faith. So looking at the context of the verse, Paul must be talking about salvation from the curse and the consequences of Eve’s sin. Furthermore, the Greek word used here that we have translated childbearing means more than just the BEARING of children, it is the BEGETTING of children. In the natural, women bear, men beget when they deposit their seed into the woman. I believe this verse is talking about begetting spiritual children. By introducing the word picture of women bringing new life into the world, Paul is saying that by so doing, women will be doing their part in reversing the consequences of Eve’s sin. Earlier, we looked at the role men are to play in doing this. Evangelism, ministry that promotes the gospel and (in context with the first few verses of this chapter) prayer is our part. Paul is saying that when properly taught women begin to minister, their new status will be recognized by the results of their ministry, but only if they do what they do with faith, love, holiness and self-control. Let’s look at each of these characteristics. Jesus forgave and removed the curse from the sin of Adam and Eve. Now it’s up to us to walk in it and to remove the iniquity (the consequences) that came on the generations as a result of that sin. We have to unwrap our Lazarus. To do this, we have to live in the opposite spirit of Eve. Faith – Eve didn’t demonstrate that she believed God. Love – Eve didn’t love Adam enough to not tempt him. Holiness – Eve didn’t consider herself as special or set-apart. (Meaning of holiness) She didn’t fully receive who God said she was. Self-control – Eve failed to wait on God’s timing for access to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We must believe God, love others – especially our husbands – enough to not tempt them and recognize who we are in Christ and as a person made in His image. Lastly, we must be careful to be in God’s timing with every step of freedom we take or accept as we journey back into our true position of partnering with men. The women’s movement, the right to vote, started in the church with women recognizing their rights as co-heirs with men. But when the leaders of the movement got away from faith, love and holiness, they got out of control, out of God’s timing and became militant. I believe that if they’d kept to these guidelines, with their eyes on the Lord, they would have attained more biblical freedom, more quickly with fewer casualties. It is now up to us to step out and step up. Recognize who we are, what we’ve been given and follow the guidelines of scripture in faith, love, holiness and self-control.
ASSIGNMENT 1. Read Psalm 130 – If you’re a woman, receive God’s affirmation of your legitimacy because of who you are in Christ and not because of what you do. If you’re a man, accept the legitimacy of women as co-heirs with you. Repent of putting women on a performance basis with emphasis on what they do rather than who they are. 2. Women: Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the insight to identify where you’ve been wounded by spiritual abuse. Men: Ask the Lord to show you every time and place where you’ve been guilty of gender-based spiritual abuse. 3. Women: Identify and forgive each person who has either abused you spiritually or exhibited gender bigotry toward you. Men: Humble yourself and ask for forgiveness from the individual women you’ve been bigoted against as well as asking for forgiveness from God. 4. Women: Ask God to begin the healing process in your life. Let Him remove any shame or false guilt and to renew your understanding of who you are as a person and as a Daughter of the King. Men: Go and sin no more. Become a change agent on the issue of the gender gap. 5. Personalize Psalm 138:6-8 and declare every day that God will fulfill His purpose for you. 6. Pray and declare that the position of women before the fall be reinstated.
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