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 the way men have viewed women, a view that centuries have not changed.

I also spoke of how women were treated as inferior human beings, and how much persecution they suffered.

In this second sermon I want to preach from the passages in which the apostle Paul says that women are to keep silent in the church, are not to teach men, and cannot receive office.

After Jesus Christ ascended, about a hundred and twenty people, the disciples among them, gathered in Mark’s upper room and began to pray. Suddenly the Holy Spirit came upon them and filled them, and everyone in that place began to speak in tongues and to prophesy.

At Pentecost the word of the prophet Joel was fulfilled: that in the last days God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh, that sons and daughters would prophesy, young men would see visions and old men dream dreams, and that in those days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants, men and women alike, and they would prophesy.

In the early church God made no distinction between men and women. He made every one of them a member of the body and poured out on them the grace of the Holy Spirit.

In AD 37, when Saul began to persecute the church in Jerusalem, Christian men and women alike were put on trial, beaten, and martyred. That they went to their deaths together shows us who Satan’s enemy is: everyone who believes in Christ, man or woman, young or old.

Christ, the twelve disciples, and the apostle Paul all called those who believe brothers and sisters in the faith. Even so, as I have said, the contempt and disregard with which the men who ruled society looked on women came straight into Christianity, and that is what distorted the word itself.

So Jerome, who held a mistaken view of women, mistranslated Paul’s letters through the lens of his own thinking.

I am not asking you now to recognize the faith of women or to treat them as equals, nor am I saying that women can become pastors.

What I am saying is that Jesus had already opened the way for women to preach the gospel according to their faith, and the narrowness of men stood in that way.

Stranger still, women have shrunk back of their own accord.

We see the same thing in society at large. Wives who suffer violence, and people who grew up in domineering homes, often make no effort to break out of that frame. They settle into it instead, and try all the harder to please the one who hurts them, hoping not to be beaten.

In the church, too, the more women are oppressed by men, the more they come to think it a matter of course that they should keep silent in the church, and a matter of course that they should not receive office.

But all of us are new creations in God.

We must not fix our minds on whether we are men or women. We must 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 men and women.

Even if we put our heads together over how to save one more soul, the time is too short, and we may yet lose precious souls to hell.

If women were not meant to be pastors, Jesus would have preached the gospel only to men, and Paul would not have allowed Priscilla to teach Apollos, who was himself a pastor.

If we were only a little more awake, we would not throw away our time on such empty questions. We 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.

Through Jesus’ sacrifice people have entered into him and become one with him, and yet they go out of their way to divide men from women.

That is a sin: it tears apart members who have been made one in Christ.

As Paul told the churches in Galatia, Christians who believe in Christ have now become new creations, and their past no longer defines them. Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, all have become children of God in Jesus.

Our brothers and sisters were baptized into Christ and have put on Christ. Why, then, when it comes to ordaining a pastor, or giving the office of elder or ordained deacon, may only men be chosen? I cannot help asking. Sadly, the answer is that the world’s outlook has come straight into the church.

Between AD 49 and 52, on his second missionary journey, Paul went to Philippi with Silas.

Because of an edict of the emperor Claudius, there was not a single Jew in Philippi. It was the gathering place of the fiercest male chauvinists in the whole Western world, which made it all the harder for Paul to preach the gospel there. But God opens a door so that the gospel can go anywhere.

In Philippi a woman named Lydia had been made ready. Though Paul declined, she pressed him until he stayed in her house, and she gave 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. Yet Lydia of Philippi was a seller of purple cloth and a woman of considerable wealth. With that wealth she supported Paul and gave herself to the gospel.

Wherever Paul went, women made sacrifices for the gospel, and on those sacrifices churches were planted among the Gentiles.

It grieves me that we must search the Bible for the devotion of women at all. It should make no difference who was faithful, as long as Christ is proclaimed. Yet we have to spend our 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.

Just before saying this, Paul had plainly told them to imitate him, as he imitated Christ.

Yet in the letters of the very man who said this, we find him speaking inconsistently, again and again, on one subject in particular: the question of women. That is why we need to know the reason.

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

Corinth was a city of mixed cultures and races.

Easterners lived in the eastern part of the city, and Italians and Romans in the western part.

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

Greeks shaped by Aristotle, hot-blooded Italians, Easterners who kept their feelings to themselves, and exacting Jews were all living out their faith in one church, each bringing their own culture and customs. With such different views of women, they ended up quarreling in the church.

The Greeks held that a woman had no right to meddle in anything and should not leave the house. A married woman had to wear something on her head, while an unmarried woman wore nothing, so a woman with her head uncovered was known to be unmarried. The Easterners, for their part, thought women should keep their heads covered at all times.

Roman women, however, like Priscilla, were masters of their own lives. They engaged in commerce and trade, owned land, and ran businesses with energy. The only time a Roman woman covered her head was when she performed religious rites in a pagan temple.

The clash of cultures kept the church in constant uproar, and it was this matter they brought to Paul.

We cannot be certain which of these people put the questions to Paul, but he did his best to answer each one in a way that suited the situation.

In verse 16 Paul answered that the problem they had brought him concerning women had never once arisen in any other church; it had arisen only in theirs.

It had happened only in the church in Corinth, where many peoples lived side by side with many different customs.

Paul said this because they had come into the church to give glory to God. It was not right, he was telling them, for people of different customs and cultures to gather and decide 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.

The word “sign,” which many translations place in this verse, is not in the original.

And the Greek word exousia, which Jerome translated “authority,” can be rendered “having the right,” “holding a privilege,” “having dominion,” or “having power.”

So set aside Jerome’s belief in male superiority and read verse 10 again. Only when we take it to mean, “Therefore, because of the angels, the woman has privilege, dominion, and power over her own head,” do we read Paul’s words rightly.

In other words, whether she covers her head or uncovers it, the choice in every case belongs to the woman.

Because Jerome’s deeply personal ideas won complete acceptance in the Catholic Church, many Christians to this day have failed to interpret the Bible rightly.

If we read Paul’s letter closely, from within his faith, we can see that verses 8 and 9 repeat the Corinthians’ own question back to them.

And if we take verse 10 as Paul’s answer to that question, his conclusion is this: you ask me whether woman was created for man, but the whole decision belongs to the women.

Verses 11 and 12 bear out that verse 10 has been mistranslated. In verse 11 Paul says that in the Lord neither is the woman independent of the man, nor the man independent of the woman; and in verse 12, that as woman came from man, so a man also comes through a woman, and all things are from God. With these words he shows that the error lies in the translation of verse 10.

We can be sure that verses 8 and 9 are the question and verse 10 the answer, because right after saying that all things are from God, Paul says something quite contrary in verse 13.

1 Corinthians 11:13

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

Then, in verse 16, he says something with a completely different sense again: that no other church has disputes like theirs. From this we can see that Paul is setting their questions and his answers one after another.

We are told that the original text of Paul’s letters has no spaces between words and no punctuation of any kind, such as commas or question marks, so it can be read as sentences quite different from those in the book we hold today.

Because every letter was run together, it is hard to tell question from answer with any certainty.

That is why Paul seems to contradict himself, saying that in Christ we are all one creation and then suddenly that women must not teach men, must be sure to cover their heads, and must keep silent.

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

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 telling women to keep silent in the church, Paul urged the church to desire spiritual gifts, to strive above all to prophesy, and, when speaking in tongues or interpreting, to take turns.

To become one member in Christ, to receive gifts, to speak in tongues and prophesy, is a gift God gives on his own initiative. It is not something a person can choose to receive.

So it was that in those days the four daughters of Philip all prophesied, and many other women had received gifts and were active in ministry.

Paul knew all this, and yet here he tells women once more to keep silent in the church, adding that if they want to learn anything, they should go home and ask their husbands.

What, then, does he mean by telling them to desire tongues and prophecy? And what does he mean when he says that speaking in church is shameful, so they should take every matter of the church home and ask their husbands?

Here again, we can see it clearly only by reading it in light of Jerome’s thinking.

When Paul told them to keep silent, he was not forbidding them to teach, to make declarations, to lecture, or to give addresses. He was simply forbidding idle talk. He meant, in other words, that they were not to chatter or gossip.

The early church did not come to a sanctuary and worship by an order of service, as we do now. They met in the home of one of the saints who opened their house, and they worshiped there.

Men and women, masters and servants, sat mingled together in a cramped house and worshiped, all under the name of members of one body in Christ.

Paul had planted those churches, but the Gentile churches had not yet found their order. There were no elders, and so no one with whom to talk over the work of the Holy Spirit. They must have had so many questions about the gifts they had received.

In 1 Corinthians 14:39-40 Paul urges them once more: “Therefore, brothers, desire earnestly to prophesy, and don’t forbid speaking with other languages. Let all things be done decently and in order.” However eager they were to understand the grace Almighty God had given, they were to share it with one another in a fitting and orderly way.

I cannot say for certain whether one particular woman had received a gift. But since Paul suddenly inserts these words in the middle of speaking about gifts, I suspect that this woman kept pressing her own views, alone, without giving anyone else a chance to speak.

Ephesians 5:22 reads, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” Translations print the words “be subject” in italics, because Jerome, when he translated the Bible, put in these words that are not in the original.

Paul described husband and wife in terms of Christ and his people, and he wrote it to mean that they were to love and honor each other.

But by inserting “be subject,” Jerome made it a sentence that stresses the wife’s place beneath her husband.

In the church of that time men and women worshiped together, so a husband could not use his authority to force his wife’s submission. Even so, Jerome was uneasy at the thought of women serving God on equal footing with men.

Paul said that a husband must do his utmost to love his wife, as Christ, who gave his own life, loved the church.

Christ became a shield for his bride, served her from the lowest place, and guarded her until she came to salvation. In just this way Paul was teaching husbands what their calling is. Jerome cast aside Paul’s heart 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.

When Paul writes in this letter to Timothy that he does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, he is telling one woman to stop. Much like the particular incident in the church in Corinth, he had seen a strong-willed woman in one church in Asia Minor dominating a certain man.

The word he uses of that woman, authenteō, means “to dominate” or “to overpower.” It does not speak of a duty or a position; it concerns what that woman was doing.

Paul was not telling women that they must never teach men. He was giving a single, one-time instruction to a particular woman not to dominate a particular man.

Given the social climate of the time, when men did not treat women as full human beings, there would have been considerable resentment toward a woman who dominated a man, even if it happened in the church. Paul’s letter was his answer to the questions those men raised.

Small problems of this kind did arise. But what this one shows us is that even in so harsh a society, women were not merely passive, in the church or outside it.

Women of faith helped Jesus and shared in the work of their calling alongside Paul and the disciples, and yet the false ideas of men distorted the will of God.

A little study shows plainly that Jerome’s translation was wrong, and yet even now there are denominations that will not ordain women as pastors.

However outstanding a woman’s record at a seminary where she studies alongside men, they will not ordain her. They have written it into their rules that a woman may serve in the church only as a visitation evangelist, assisting the male pastors.

Admittedly, given the age they lived in, women in the Old and New Testaments could not work as actively as men. In a patriarchal society the sphere in which women could act was far narrower than that of men.

But though the opportunity was not given them, women held fast to their faith, and they are still laboring today to spread the gospel.

They do so because they have met God, who stands 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, which speaks of one who is without reproach, the husband of one wife, is taken to mean that a woman can never be the husband of one wife and therefore can never be a pastor.

Listen carefully to what Paul says. The overseers must be the husband of one wife and live rightly as Christians; a new convert must not be appointed; those who have good testimony are the ones to appoint.

In the same way, he said, the deacons appointed must be those who hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience; they must first be tested, and when they are found blameless they may be given the office of deacon.

Then in verse 11 he said that women likewise should be appointed who are reverent, not slanderers, temperate, and faithful in all things.

Paul speaks quite naturally of women being appointed as ordained deacons, yet today’s denominations do not appoint women to that office.

Among the qualifications for an overseer, the words “the husband of one wife” were a rebuke to the conduct of the many men at that time who kept concubines.

The striking thing is that after telling them in verse 11 to appoint faithful women as deacons, Paul says in verse 12 that “deacons must be husbands of one wife.” He wrote it this way not to say that only men were to be appointed, but that those who set an example were to be appointed.

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

Paul wrote out the qualifications, from overseer down to ordained deacon, as if in one continuous sentence. In verse 9 he says that if deacons, like overseers, are to receive office, they must be upright people who hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, that is, people who carry Christ within them. In writing this, he showed that women who receive office stand on the same footing as men.

Jerome mistranslated the word, and yet men, in their misguided prejudice, accepted the mistranslation as it stood rather than working to correct it.

Professor Lim Tae-woo of the Dong-A Theological Institute wrote a paper titled “A Study on the Ordination of Women Pastors.” It traces how the Tonghap general assembly, the largest in our country, came to ordain women, and it records that in 1955 the assembly created the office of senior deaconess, an office without ordination, so as not to ordain women.

Paul plainly said to appoint women as ordained deacons. But because they did not want women made ordained deacons or elders, they invented the office of senior deaconess.

Worse still, women pay money to the church in order to receive that office. This folly is lowering women’s own standing further.

Over the years many women labored to see women ordained as pastors, but the matter was not even brought up for discussion, or it was voted down. Only in 1995 was the ordination of women passed, and the first women pastors ordained. It took nearly two thousand years after Jesus ascended for a woman to be able to become a pastor.

Even now, many denominations still refuse to ordain women.

They speak as though they were keeping the word faithfully, but it is their ignorance of the Bible that makes them insist only men may be pastors.

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

What I want to say is that anyone, whoever they are, who understands the will and the love of Christ well ought to teach.

On the last day the sea will give up the dead who are in it, and Death and Hades will give up the dead who are in them; each one will be judged according to their works, and Death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire. That day is coming, and those who ought to be preparing for it still cannot free themselves from human thinking.

If each one is judged according to their works, then brothers and sisters, who are members of Christ, should do their utmost to build one another up in faith rather than split into men and women and quarrel.

Those who still split into men and women and quarrel, who point a finger and cry “heresy” when a woman serves in ministry, prove by that very attitude that they do not know the Bible at all and have not been born again as new creations in Christ.

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

The world keeps showing the signs of the last days, and as the gospel enters Israel we watch prophecy being fulfilled. All that is left for us is to strive all the harder to know the Lord’s will, to proclaim the gospel with vigor, and to fulfill our calling.

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

If they reveal God’s glory alone, preach the word rightly, and help people come to a whole faith, then even if only men are ordained, they are more than welcome.

Members of one body have nothing to gain by fighting.

When Christians fight among themselves and block the gospel, only Satan will be glad and rejoice.

Wise as you are, may you waste no time on empty things, and live as saints who fight Satan for the sake of the truth.