Bible Text: Micah 6:4 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |
I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. Micah 6:4
“Why not women?” ask Loren Cunningham and David Hamilton in their book by the same title. The provocative title of the book obviously addresses a divisive and often contentious issue in the church—the place of women in ministry.
Only a fool would deny that women have played dramatic parts in the flow of history. Few men have rivaled the impact of Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, and Corazon Aquino.
Then add the names of women such as Madam Guyon, Evangeline Booth, Anne Graham Lotz, Corrie ten Boom, Joy Dawson, Mother Teresa, and Amie Simple Macpherson.
For some who have grown up holding tenaciously to what Scripture says (and I continue to consider myself in their midst), the fact that God uses women presents a problem, something of a challenge to what we believe. How do you reconcile some of the very pointed statements that Paul made about women in ministry and the reality that God uses women and has throughout the ages?
Cunningham and Hamilton graciously and biblically address those issues. The fact is that what God says in Scripture is important, but our interpretation of what it says is another issue.
Both the Greeks and Romans denigrated women, considering them inferior—a necessary means of satisfying male passions and a practical means of raising children and performing domestic services, but not equals and certainly not partners in life.
In The Iliad, Homer wrote that women were the cause of all conflict and suffering. Both Plato and Aristotle, who shaped Greek thought, considered women inferior and unworthy of leadership. Aristotle, tutor of Alexander the Great, wrote that the female is a “monstrosity,” a “deformity… which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.”
The Romans didn’t do much better. Women and marriage were held in low esteem by them. Marriage was an obligation, a necessity to insure your name would be carried to the next generation. Women were known only as the daughter or wife of someone. Forget individuality. Under Roman law a male had the right to actually kill his wife for either adultery or drunkenness, since alcohol made a woman more likely to be unfaithful to her husband. (Why Not Women? p. 89).
In spite of the vast number of women who were prominently used by God in the Old Testament, the Jewish rabbis also held women in low esteem. They thanked God daily that they were neither Gentiles nor women. While they hated the influence of the Greeks and Romans, they were yet influenced by their culture and mindset which had no foundation in the law or the writings of the prophets of old.
It was into this world that Jesus came. Rejecting the bias of culture including the aberrations of the pagans of Athens and Rome, and the blindness of the rabbis who added their prejudices to the laws of Moses, Jesus was a rebel. He affirmed women, included them in His ministry, held them in esteem, and considered them equals. The longest recorded conversation that Jesus ever had with anyone was with a woman, a Samaritan who was looked down on by society, at a well at Sychar. Women were last at the cross, first at the grave.
In fact, the most important message ever given to humankind was entrusted by Jesus Christ to a woman: “Go tell my disciples that I have risen from the dead!” Wow! How can you top that?
I think it is fair to say that Jesus accepted women as equals, acknowledged their worth, and gladly received them as fellow participants of the grace of God. So why does the church today often relegate women to second-class status? That’s the topic of tomorrow’s commentary. I think you’ll want to be listening.
Resource reading: 1 Timothy 2
