In Christ, Can Women Not Receive Office?

2Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things, and hold firm the traditions, even as I delivered them to you. 3But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. 5But every woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered dishonors her head. For it is one and the same thing as if she were shaved. 6For if a woman is not covered, let her hair also be cut off. But if it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut off or be shaved, let her be covered. 7For a man indeed ought not to have his head covered, because he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. 8For man is not from woman, but woman from man; 9for man wasn’t created for the woman, but woman for the man. 10For this cause the woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. 11Nevertheless, neither is the woman independent of the man, nor the man independent of the woman, in the Lord. 12For as woman came from man, so a man also comes through a woman; but all things are from God. 13Judge for yourselves. Is it appropriate that a woman pray to God unveiled? 14Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering. 16But if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither do God’s assemblies.

In the first sermon we looked at Jerome, who translated the New Testament, and at men’s outlook, which does not change however much time passes.

I also told you how women were treated as inferior human beings and how much persecution they suffered.

In this second sermon, I want to preach on the Bible verses in which the apostle Paul said that women are to be silent in the church, are not to teach men, and cannot receive office.

After Jesus Christ ascended, some 120 people, including the disciples, gathered in Mark’s upper room and began to pray. Then suddenly the Holy Spirit came upon them and filled them, and everyone there began to speak in other languages and to prophesy.

The word the prophet Joel had prophesied was fulfilled at Pentecost: that in the last days God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters would prophesy, your young men would see visions, your old men would dream dreams, and in those days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and on his handmaidens, and they would prophesy.

In the early church God did not separate men and women; he made them all members and poured out the grace of the Holy Spirit on them.

In A.D. 37, when Saul began to persecute the church in Jerusalem, Christian men and women were tried together, beaten and martyred. They were all martyred together, and from that we can see that Satan’s enemy is everyone who believes in Christ, regardless of sex or age.

Christ, the twelve disciples and the apostle Paul called them all one family of brothers in the faith. Even so, as I have said, the men who ruled the world despised and ignored women, and that thinking came straight into Christianity. So the Word itself was distorted.

That is how Jerome, who held a wrong view of women, mistranslated the apostle Paul’s letters through the lens of his own thinking.

I am not now asking you to recognize women’s faith or to treat women as equals, nor am I saying that women too can become pastors.

What I am telling you is that Jesus had already opened the way for women to preach the gospel according to their faith, and yet the narrowness of men was blocking it.

What is even more interesting is that women hold themselves back even more.

In the world too, when we look at wives who have suffered violence or people who grew up in oppressive homes, we see that rather than trying to break out of that mold, they settle into it and try harder to please the person who is violent so as not to be beaten.

In the church too, the more women are persecuted by men, the more they think it natural that they should be silent in the church and natural that they cannot receive office.

But we are all new creations in God.

We must not cling to gender but live as those who take the kingdom of heaven by force, and stand as children of faith who work together for good, so that everyone may hear the last trumpet.

There is no time now to argue over male and female.

Even if we put our heads together over how to save even one more soul, there is not enough time, and we may perhaps be sending precious souls to hell.

If women were not to become pastors, Jesus would have preached the gospel only to men, and the apostle Paul too would not have allowed Priscilla to teach Apollos, a pastor.

If believers were just a little more awake, they would not waste time on such a futile issue, and they would rejoice that Christ is proclaimed, whoever proclaims him.

Galatians 3:26-29

26For you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.

People who through Jesus’ sacrifice have come into Jesus and become one with him are going out of their way to divide men and women.

That is committing the sin of separating members who have become one in Christ.

As the apostle Paul told the churches in Galatia, Christians who believe in Christ have now become new creations, with no tie to their past. Jew or Greek, slave or free man, male or female, all have become children of God in Jesus.

I wonder why brothers of faith, who were baptized into Christ and have put on Christ, can appoint only men when they appoint pastors, and only men when they give the offices of elder or ordained deacon. Sadly, this is because the world’s view has come straight into the church.

In A.D. 49-52, on his second missionary journey, the apostle Paul went to Philippi with Silas.

Because of the edict of Emperor Claudius, there was not a single Jew in Philippi. It was the gathering place of the most extreme male supremacists in the whole of the West, so it was an even harder place for Paul to preach the gospel. But God opens the door for the gospel to be preached anywhere.

In Philippi a woman named Lydia had been made ready. Even though Paul declined, she urged him to stay in her house, and she devoted her means and her time so that he could preach the gospel.

It was an age when men looked down on women and would not even let them go to the market, but Lydia of Philippi was a woman of great wealth who traded in purple cloth. With that wealth she helped Paul and devoted herself to the gospel.

Wherever the apostle Paul went, there was the sacrifice of women for the gospel, and that is why churches could be founded among the Gentiles.

I find it very sad that I have to search out the devotion of women in the Bible at all, because it should not matter who was faithful as long as Christ is proclaimed, and yet I have to spend time proving it and persuading people.

1 Corinthians 11:3

3But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

Before saying this, Paul clearly told them to be imitators of him, even as he also was of Christ.

Look at the letters of Paul, who said this. On the matter of women in particular, he keeps saying things that do not hold together, so we must know the reason.

To do that, it is important first to know what kind of city Corinth was.

Corinth was a city of mixed cultures and races.

Easterners lived in the east, and Italians and Romans lived in the west of the city.

And Greeks lived in the middle, so the people who came to church were Easterners, Italians, Greeks and Jews, all mixed together and worshiping together.

Greeks influenced by Aristotle, hot-blooded Italians, Easterners who kept their feelings to themselves, and strict Jews were now living the life of faith in one church, each with their own culture and customs. With their different views of women, they came to quarrel in the church.

The Greeks held that women had no right to meddle in anything and must not go outside the house. Married women had to wear something on their heads, while unmarried women wore nothing, so a woman with nothing on her head was unmarried. And the Easterners thought that women must always cover their heads.

But Roman women, like Priscilla, were in charge of their own lives: they engaged in commerce and trade, owned land, and ran businesses actively. The only time a Roman woman covered her head was when she performed a religious rite in a pagan temple.

Because their cultures were so different, the church was always in an uproar, and they consulted Paul about this problem.

It is not certain which of these people put the question to Paul, but Paul did his best to give each question an answer that fit the situation.

In verse 16 Paul answered that this matter about women they had consulted him on had never once happened in any other church; it had happened only in theirs.

In other words, it had happened only in the Corinthian church, where many peoples with different customs were gathered.

Paul said this to tell them that the purpose of their being in the church was to give glory to God, and that it was not right for them, people of different customs and cultures, to gather and judge right and wrong by human thinking.

1 Corinthians 11:10

10For this cause the woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels.

Here the word ‘sign’, which the Korean Bible has in this verse, is not in the original.

And the Greek word ‘exousia’, which Jerome translated as ‘authority’, can be translated ‘having the right’, ‘having the privilege’, ‘having dominion’, ‘having power’, and so on.

So if we take out Jerome’s male supremacism and read verse 10 again, we have interpreted Paul’s words correctly only when we interpret it as ‘Therefore, because of the angels, the woman has privilege, dominion and power over her head’.

This means that whether she covers her head or uncovers it, the choice is entirely the woman’s to make.

Because the very personal ideas Jerome put in were fully accepted by the Catholic Church, many believers have not interpreted the Bible correctly to this day.

If we look closely at the apostle Paul’s letter from within his faith, we can see that verses 8 and 9 repeat the Corinthians’ question once more.

And if we see verse 10 as Paul’s answer to that question, he concluded that though the Corinthians were asking whether woman was created for the man, all those decisions are for women to make.

What exposes the mistranslation of verse 10 is verse 11, which says that nevertheless, in the Lord, neither is the woman independent of the man, nor the man independent of the woman; and then verse 12, which says that as woman came from man, so a man also comes through a woman, and all things are from God. These prove that verse 10 was mistranslated.

It is certain that verses 8 and 9 are the question and verse 10 the answer, because right after saying that all are from God, Paul says something contrary in verse 13.

1 Corinthians 11:13

13Judge for yourselves. Is it appropriate that a woman pray to God unveiled?

And then in verse 16 he says something with a completely different meaning again, that such a dispute of theirs does not exist in other churches. From this we can see that Paul is setting their questions and his own answers one after another.

It is said that the original text of Paul’s letters has no spacing and no marks such as commas or question marks at all, so its sentences could be quite different from the book we read now.

Because all the characters were written run together, it is hard to tell the questions and the answers clearly apart.

That is why it seems as if Paul says we are all one creation in Christ, and then suddenly says inconsistent things, that women must not teach men, must always wear a covering on their heads, and must be silent.

If you read the Bible, God’s will, his saving work and the final judgment all together, you will very easily see that these words belittling women are not Paul’s thinking.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

34Let the wives be quiet in the assemblies, for it has not been permitted for them to be talking except in submission, as the law also says, 35if they desire to learn anything. “Let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for a wife to be talking in the assembly.”

Just before the apostle Paul told women to be silent in the church, he urged the Corinthians to earnestly desire spiritual gifts, and especially to strive to prophesy, and when speaking in another language or interpreting, to do it in turn.

Becoming one member in Christ and receiving gifts to speak in other languages and to prophesy is a gift that God gives by his own choice alone, so it is not something a person can choose to receive.

That is why, at that time, Philip’s four daughters were all women who prophesied, and many women had received gifts and were actively at work.

Paul knew these facts, and yet here again he says that women are to be silent in the church, adding that if they want to learn anything, they should go home and ask their husbands.

What does it mean, then, to earnestly desire other languages and prophecy? And what does he mean by saying that speaking in church is shameful, so women should go home and ask their husbands about everything in the church?

This too can be clearly understood only when we read it through Jerome’s thinking.

When Paul said to be silent, he did not mean to forbid teaching, proclamation, lectures or speeches, but simply to forbid talking. In other words, it meant only not to chatter or make idle talk.

The early church did not come to a sanctuary and worship in an order of service as we do now; it gathered and worshiped in a house that one of the believers had opened.

Men and women, masters and servants, all under the name of one body in Christ, sat mixed together in a cramped house to worship.

At that time the apostle Paul had founded the churches, but the Gentile churches had no settled structure and no elders, so there was no one to consult about the work of the Holy Spirit. That is why they would have had a great many questions about the gifts they had received.

Look at how he urges them again in 1 Corinthians 14:39-40: “Therefore, brothers, desire earnestly to prophesy, and don’t forbid speaking with other languages. Let all things be done decently and in order.” He is saying that even if they were curious about the grace Almighty God had given, they should share it with one another decently and in order.

I do not really know whether a certain woman had received a gift. But seeing that Paul suddenly inserted this remark while speaking about gifts, I think this woman may have kept pressing her own opinions alone without even giving others a chance to speak.

There is a verse in Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” In translations, the words ‘be subject’ in this verse are printed in italics, and the reason is that Jerome, in translating the Bible, inserted this word, which is not in the original.

The apostle Paul described the relationship of husband and wife as that of Christ and the believers, and he wrote it to mean that they should love and respect each other.

But by inserting the word ‘subject’, Jerome made it a sentence that stresses that the wife’s position is beneath her husband’s.

In the church of that time men and women worshiped together, so a husband could not use his authority to force his wife to submit. Even so, Jerome was uncomfortable with women serving God together with men on an equal footing.

Paul said that husbands must do their very best to love their wives, as Christ, who gave his life, did for the church.

He was teaching what a husband’s mission is: to do as Christ did when he became a shield for his bride, served in the low place and protected her until she reached salvation. But Jerome cast aside this heart of Paul’s and belittled women.

1 Timothy 2:11-15

11Let a woman learn in quietness with full submission. 12But I don’t permit a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over a man, but to be in quietness. 13For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience; 15but she will be saved through her childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety.

In the letter, when Paul said that he does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, he had seen a strong-willed woman in one church in Asia Minor dominating a certain man, much like the particular incident that happened in the Corinthian church, and he was telling her to stop.

‘Authenteo’, the word addressed to that woman, means ‘to dominate’ or ‘to overpower’. It was not a discussion of a duty or a position, but concerned that woman’s conduct.

Paul did not tell women never to teach men; he gave a one-time instruction to a particular woman not to dominate a certain man.

Given the social mood of the time, men did not treat women as full human beings, so even if it happened in the church, there would have been much resentment toward a woman who was dominating a man. Paul’s letter was his answer to such men’s questions.

Of course, there were small problems like this too, but what we can learn through this problem is that even in so hard-hearted a society, women were not merely passive in the church and in the world.

Women of faith helped Jesus and carried out the mission together with Paul and the disciples. Even so, the wrong thinking of men distorted the will of God.

A little examination easily shows that Jerome’s translation was wrong, and yet even now there are denominations that do not permit women to be ordained as pastors.

However outstanding their grades while studying at seminary alongside men, women are not given ordination as pastors, and these denominations have made it their law that women in the church serve as visitation evangelists and only assist male pastors.

Of course, given the times, women could not work as actively as men in either the Old or the New Testament. For in a patriarchal society the sphere in which women could be active was far narrower than that of men.

But though they were not given the opportunity, women kept the faith, and they are still striving to preach the gospel today.

That is because they met God, who is above men.

1 Timothy 3:1-13

1This is a faithful saying: if a man seeks the office of an overseer, he desires a good work. 2The overseer therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, modest, hospitable, good at teaching; 3not a drinker, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; 4one who rules his own house well, having children in subjection with all reverence; 5(but if a man doesn’t know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the assembly of God?) 6not a new convert, lest being puffed up he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. 7Moreover he must have good testimony from those who are outside, to avoid falling into reproach and the snare of the devil. 8Servants, in the same way, must be reverent, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for money; 9holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. 10Let them also first be tested; then let them serve if they are blameless. 11Their wives in the same way must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. 12Let servants be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. 13For those who have served well gain for themselves a good standing, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

This verse, about being without reproach and the husband of one wife, is cited to say that women cannot be pastors, because a woman can never be the husband of one wife.

Listen carefully to what Paul says. He said that overseers must be the husband of one wife and live rightly as Christians, that a new convert must not be appointed, and that those with good testimony should be appointed.

And he said that in the same way deacons too should be those who hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, that they must first be tested, and that they should be given the office of deacon when they are blameless.

And in verse 11 he said to appoint women likewise who are reverent, not slanderers, temperate, and faithful in all things.

The apostle Paul speaks naturally of women having been appointed as ordained deacons, but denominations today do not appoint women as ordained deacons.

Among the requirements for an overseer, the words ‘the husband of one wife’ rebuked the conduct of people who kept concubines, because there were many such people at that time.

What is interesting is that after saying in verse 11 to appoint women who are faithful as deacons, he says in verse 12 that ‘deacons’ must be ‘the husband of one wife’. He wrote this not to say that only men should be appointed, but to say that those who are an example should be appointed.

Yet to this day this verse is used to oppose the ordination of women.

Paul wrote the qualifications from overseer through to ordained deacon as though in one continuous sentence. In verse 9 he said that in the same way deacons, like overseers, must be upright people who hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, that is, people who carry Christ in them, if they are to receive office; and he wrote that women too are the same as men when they receive office.

But although Jerome was at fault for mistranslating the Word, the wrong prejudice of men accepted this mistranslation as it was rather than trying to correct it.

Professor Lim Tae-woo of Dong-A Theological Institute wrote a paper called ‘A Study on the Ordination of Women Pastors’. The paper describes the process by which the Tonghap, the largest General Assembly in our country, came to ordain women pastors, and it says that in 1955, in order not to ordain women, the assembly created a new office of senior deaconess (kwonsa) without ordination.

Paul clearly said to appoint women as ordained deacons, and yet because they did not want to appoint women as ordained deacons or elders, they created the office of kwonsa.

What is even more pitiful is that to become kwonsa, women pay money to the church to receive that office. This foolish thinking on the part of women is lowering the position of women even further.

Over the years many women worked to see women raised up as pastors, but the proposal was voted down without even being discussed. Only in 1995 did the ordination of women pass and women pastors come forth. It was nearly two thousand years after Jesus ascended before women could become pastors.

But even now there are many denominations that do not appoint women pastors.

They talk as if they were keeping the Word rightly, but because they are ignorant of the Bible, they insist that only men should be pastors.

I am not claiming that women must become pastors or must teach men in the church.

What I want to say is that anyone who understands the will and love of Christ well should teach.

On the last day the sea will give up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades will give up the dead who were in them; each one will be judged according to their works, and the day is coming when Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Yet believers who must prepare for that day have not broken free of human thinking.

If each one is judged according to their works, then rather than dividing into men and women and quarreling, brothers of faith who are members of Christ ought to do their best to build one another up in faith.

People who still divide into men and women and quarrel, and who point the finger and call it heresy when a woman minister serves, prove that they know nothing of the Bible and have not been born again as new creations in Christ.

From now on I will not preach on the futile question of whether office should or should not be given to women, because we do not have much time.

The world keeps showing the signs of the last days, and as we see the gospel entering Israel and prophecy being fulfilled, all we must do is strive harder to know the Lord’s will, preach the gospel actively and carry out our mission.

If you can hear the truth, what does it matter whether the pastor is a man or a woman?

If they reveal only the glory of God, preach the Word rightly and help souls come to a whole faith, then even if only men are ordained, that is entirely welcome.

Members of one body have nothing to gain by fighting.

Only Satan will delight and rejoice when believers fight among themselves and block the gospel.

I hope you who are wise will not spend your time in vain, but will live as people who fight Satan for the sake of the truth.