Now if you’ll take your Bibles in hand and turn with me please to Paul’s first letter to Timothy, we are considering the second half of 1 Timothy chapter 2 today. We are working our way through 1 Timothy here on Sunday mornings. You can find it on page 991 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. Chapter 1 focused in large part on the issue of false teaching in the church, but whenever error penetrates a church, penetrates the human heart, there are always practical consequences downstream from those errors that begin to show up in the life of the congregation. One fruit of the errors at Ephesus had to do with the abdication of responsibility by Christian men for godly leadership and the usurping of authority by Christian women. Paul is going to remind us that this is a favorite strategy of the devil, one as old as Eden itself – to seek to derail the designs of God for our good by disrupting the Scripturally ordered relationships of men and women in the church. And Paul sounds the alarm on that Satanic strategy as it was playing out in Ephesus, and it is an alarm we need to hear sounding in our own day and context very much as well.
We are going to tackle these verses under two very simple headings. First in verses 8 through 12, you’ll notice Paul taking corrective measures, corrective measures. Then in 13 through 15, he grounds his argument on a creation mandate. Corrective measures and a creation mandate. Before we look at each of those, let’s pray and then we’ll read God’s Word together. Let us all pray.
O Lord our God, we bow before You. We badly need, we urgently need the light of the Spirit of Christ to shine into our understanding, into our dark hearts. O Lord, teach us, instruct us, rebuke us, correct us, train us in righteousness, even by this portion of Your Word, for Your honor and glory. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
First Timothy 2 at the eighth verse. This is the Word of God:
“I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness – with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”
Amen.
I saw a headline last week about residents in Japan suing the government of that country because of the high incidences of thyroid cancers with which they allege they have been afflicted in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. As we study verses 8 through 15 this morning, we are going to see that in a similar way to the consequences of the disaster in Fukushima, Paul is addressing the cancerous consequences of the false teaching in Ephesus that had been irradiating the churches there and metastasizing in alarming ways in the behavior of men and women. And so first of all in verses 8 through 12, he offers some urgently needed corrective measures. Corrective measures. You’ll notice he begins by addressing the men. Look at verse 8 with me. “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” Now notice the phrase, “in every place.” Arguably, in every other instance in which this Greek word is used by the apostle Paul in the New Testament – 1 Corinthians 1:2, 2 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Thessalonians 1:8 – arguably it means something like, “in all the places where the church gathers.”
“In every place” is Paul’s way of signaling two things about the teaching he is about to give us. First, it signals his teaching is universal in its reach. It is for the churches wherever they gather, in every place where they assemble. And secondly, it is limited in its scope. Paul isn’t talking in this text about gendered relationships in every conceivable sphere of human society – the classroom, the workplace, and so on. No, he is addressing the conduct of men and women in every place where the church gathers. In verses 1 through 7, Paul addressed, you will remember, the urgent priority of fostering. Timothy is to foster a general culture of prayer in the church – whether that is privately or in groups or in assemblies of various sizes and for various purposes. There is to be a prayerfulness that marks the New Testament church. But here, Paul seems especially to have in view the primary assemblies of the church for discipleship and worship on the Lord’s Day. That is the narrow focus and context for these instructions.
And within the context, then, of the public assembly of the church, Paul issues both a positive and a negative command to the men. Look at the text. The positive command is that they should pray, lifting holy hands. The negative command is they are to do so without anger or quarrelling. Now remember, Paul told Timothy about the false teachers back in chapter 1. These men were engaged in “unhealthy speculations,” verse 4. They were wandering into “vain discussions,” verse 6. There was a “contentious spirit among them.” They were always being drawn into disruptive debate. They spent hours at their computer screens responding with outrage and venom to the firestorm caused by their last provocative tweet. What they weren’t doing is what we see the apostles doing in Acts chapter 6 where controversy and strife erupted in the church in Jerusalem. Do you remember their commitments in the face of contention and squabbling and controversy in the church? They did not say, “We will devote ourselves to internet squabbles and petty feuds.” What did they say? “We will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.” And now as Paul writes to Timothy in Ephesus, he is issuing a call to the Ephesian leaders who have been veering off course to get back on the path and renew their commitment to these two fundamental elements of their calling – “Teach no different doctrine,” chapter 1, and “pray down heaven,” chapter 2. Prayer and the ministry of the Word. That’s your main business. That’s your principal job. “Lift holy hands in prayer without anger and quarrelling.”
And isn’t it helpful to hear Paul pressing men in these ways? The elders and deacons here have heard me quote a mentor of mine, the late Harry Reeder, in this connection quite a lot over the years. I’m sure they already know what I am about to say. Harry liked to say that elders and deacons are called to be – Gentlemen, what are you called to be? “Thermostats and not thermometers.” The leaders of the church are to set the spiritual temperature like a thermostat, not merely reflect that temperature like a thermometer. And that’s what Paul is saying to us here, isn’t it? The core business of men God has called to lead the church is the ministry of the Word and the ministry of prayer. And so when the church gathers for these things, Paul wants to know, “Where are all the men? Where are the officers of the church? Where are the spiritual leaders?” Men of First Presbyterian Church, in light of the Word of God, examine your heart. And so there is first of all a corrective measure addressed to the men.
Now look with me at verses 9 through 12. The second part of Paul’s corrective measures are addressed to the women. And he has two things to say to the women of the church in Ephesus. The first has to do with the issue of modesty and the second with the issue of authority. Modesty and authority. Look at verses 9 and 10 and notice what he says about modesty first of all. “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness – with good works.” Okay, Strain, what does Paul have against plaits and pigtails? Is he really telling us you can’t wear nice earrings to church? Well I found George Knight, one of the commentators on 1 Timothy, to be helpful at this point. Let me read what he says. “The reason for Paul’s prohibition for elaborate hairstyles, ornate jewelry and extremely expensive clothing becomes clear when one reads in the contemporary literature of the inordinate time, expense and effort that elaborately braided hair and jewels demanded. Not just as an ostentatious display, but also as the mode of dress of courtesans and harlots.”
Philo – who was a first century Greek-speaking philosopher – Philo personifies lady pleasure, languishing in the guise of a harlot or courtesan and uses categories and language very like Paul’s words here. “Her hair,” Philo said, “is dressed in curious and elaborate plaits. Costly raiment she wears. Bracelets and necklaces and every other feminine ornament wrought of gold and jewels hang around here.” So here’s the real problem in Ephesus. Do you see it? Paul isn’t being a sourfaced old killjoy here, forbidding people to dress nicely because of some deep, pathological fear that he has that people might actually have a nice time in church. That’s not what’s going on. Rather, in the wake of the false teaching in Ephesus, it seems that these women were throwing off godly constraint and they were dressing in ways which, in that culture, were sexually suggestive and immodest.
In our context, this would more commonly show up in revealing clothing that’s designed to put the body on display. Instead, Paul says Christisn women should adorn themselves, that is, make themselves beautiful, with what is proper or fitting or suitable for those who profess godliness. Godliness has implications, he is saying, for our behavior, right down to the clothing we wear and the modesty of our attitude and stance. Our young ladies have grown up in a culture that objectifies and sexualizes the female form. And it has trained them to believe that to look pretty and beautiful and attractive means to dress in revealing or even risque ways. And so moms and dads, there is a word here for you, isn’t there, as you raise your girls in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. You need to be aware, the world is constantly seeking to catechize them in the opposite direction. And one of the ways that it does that is by leading them to believe that in order to be cute or en vogue or popular they have to show as much skin as possible. And it is your job, moms and dads, to say “No” and hold the line. I know it’s hard and I know that peer pressure can be enormous, but we must do all that we can to train our children to love what the Lord loves and value what the Lord values and to call “beautiful” what the Lord and not the world calls “beautiful.”
And what is it that the Lord calls “beautiful”? What will make the true beauty of a Christian woman really shine according to the apostle Paul? Look at the text again. Paul says it’s got nothing to do with mere appearances. It is good works that make us beautiful. Adorn your life, not just your body. Let the beauty of a godly character, remade by the grace of God in the Gospel, let it shine in the way that you live and speak and act and don’t let it ever be obscured by dressing in ways that actually project the values of the world. That is Paul’s point. Christian beauty is obscured by immodest clothing. It does not enhance. Do you believe that? That’s the teaching of the Word of God. Christian beauty is obscured by immodest clothing. It is not enhanced. So modesty, first of all.
Then the second part of Paul’s corrective word for the women in Ephesus has to do with authority. Modesty, now authority. Look please at verses 11 and 12. “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Now remember the context is the gathered assembly of the church on the Lord’s Day. We’ve noticed already that the main problem in Ephesus was false teaching, but as we work through these verses, I think there’s good reason to suspect that not only were there dangerous false teachers in the church, there was also a pervasive abdication of responsibility even by good men who have been called to teach the truth, resulting in this case in the women of the church filling the vacuum, taking upon themselves roles that are reserved in the Scriptures for the elders alone.
Twice over you’ll notice that Paul says women are to remain quiet in church, not at all meaning that they should never speak or sing or join in corporate responses and so on during a worship service. Neither does he mean that women can’t give a missionary report or speak in a non-worship context on a topic where they have special expertise. He means, rather, that the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and the leadership of the worship of God, the principle didactic elements of a Christian worship service have been entrusted to the men who have been called particularly to that task. And so verse 11, Christian women are to submit to the leadership of the men that God has called.
New Testament scholar, R. T. France, gives us, I think, some useful help, some good categories on a general concept of submission in the Scriptures. “To submit,” he says – this is helpful; listen to this – “To submit is to recognize your place within the God-given order of society and to act appropriately to that place by accepting the authority of those to whom God has entrusted it.” That’s really helpful. “To submit is to recognize your place within the God-given order of society and to act appropriately to that place by accepting the authority of those to whom God has entrusted it.” And a moment’s reflection will make it really clear that submission like that is actually the duty of every single Christian, male and female. We are all called upon to submit as citizens to the magistrate. Wives are to submit to husbands. Children are to submit to parents. Men and women both are to submit to the elders and to the deacons of the church. And the church as a whole is to submit to Christ as her Lord as He speaks in holy Scripture. In our text, submission – so, “recognizing our place within the God-given order and acting accordingly by accepting the authority of those to whom God has entrusted it” – submission is to be expressed in the church by godly women, refraining from teaching the Word of God in the mixed gathering of the Lord’s Day assembly.
Now that is by far the most controversial part of 1 Timothy, and certainly among the most controversial texts in the whole Bible. And because it is, people have spent a great deal of time and spilled a great deal of ink trying to obfuscate its teaching and avoid its conclusions. But we need to admit that while we might not like what it says, the content of Paul’s teaching here is not obscure. It’s not vague. It’s not even particularly complicated. When I was a teenager in the United Kingdom there was a brand of woodstain, you know, that you would paint on a fence, produced by a company called Ronseal. And their marketing catchphrase was, “Ronseal – Does exactly what it says on the tin.” It became a sort of byword in the United Kingdom for anything that is straightforward and plain and unambiguous. “It does exactly what it says on the tin.”
And we could stick that label on verses 11 and 12, couldn’t we? They do exactly what they say on the tin. There are no hidden subtleties here, no real complexities. The message is crystal clear. Only qualified men are to preach the Word of God and to exercise ecclesiastical authority as elders in the church. And later on we are going to begin a process of looking for new elders, and in the providence of God, next Lord’s Day, as we begin chapter 3, we are going to see Paul drilling down on the question of who ought to be elders and what will qualify them for that role. But before he gets to that, right here, he addresses a misstep in the church in Ephesus. Women were claiming a role God had not given them. “Well okay, pastor, I see that is what Paul is saying, but that was then and this is now. Haven’t we moved on from all that? And anyway, wasn’t this just really a local Ephesian problem? This isn’t a universally binding expectation on men and women for the church in every place and at every time. Surely?”
Well actually, Paul seems to anticipate the objection in verses 13 through 15, doesn’t he? In 8 through 12, we’ve seen Paul’s corrective measures, but now in the second place notice how he grounds all that teaching on a creation mandate. Look at his argument. “Women are not to teach or exercise authority over a man. For” – verse 13. Here’s the reason they’re not to teach – “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Notice he appeals first to the order of creation in verse 13. Adam was formed first, which implies a certain priority in the divine design. A priority that is born out by the Genesis account. God created Adam and placed him in the garden. He gave him the role of naming the animals, remember, an act of kingly authority under God, and then Eve was formed from Adam’s rib, Genesis says, to be a helper suitable to him. This is the creation design of God. Adam was created to exercise leadership as God’s regent in the world. And Eve was to follow Adam and assist him in that work.
But look now at verse 14. Paul appeals here not just to the creation account but also to the account of the fall. And the fall entirely subverted the creation order, didn’t it? Remember what happened. Satan approached Eve as if she was the leader and not Adam. And the serpent deceived her and then she led her husband to sin by offering him the forbidden fruit. Genesis 2:6 adds some shocking additional color. Eve gave the fruit to – quote – “her husband who was with her.” Isn’t that stunning? Adam was standing right there the whole time when Satan deceived her and distorted the Word of God to her and he was entirely passive. He did not do what he was supposed to do and stomp on the head of the serpent. He didn’t do it. Instead, he allowed the devil’s lies and Eve’s deception to proceed. He abdicated his responsibility and Eve usurped it. The order of the creation is the way things are supposed to be, reflected in the biblical role relationships that Paul is describing here of men and women in the church and in the home. That’s verse 13. But the order of the fall is the way things have turned out to be and men and women have been falling back into that same pattern ever since. Haven’t we? That’s verse 14. Men abdicated responsibility; women claim roles to which God has not called them. That’s what was happening in Ephesus and tragically it’s what happens still in churches all around us and may even be a temptation for some of us here.
And as we trace Paul’s appeal to the creation and fall narratives, don’t miss the way that he grounds his teaching not in the changeable, relative, local circumstances unique to Ephesus, but he grounds his teaching in the authoritative Word of God concerning God’s design for men and women from the very beginning. Genesis 2 teaches us that men and women are created equal – Genesis 1 and 2 – created equal in dignity, sharing the image of God, yet are nevertheless distinct in character and in calling. And this is the pattern to which Paul summons the Ephesians to return. It is the timeless, universal pattern of God’s good design for human flourishing and blessing between men and women in the church and in the home, across all ages and in every place. So verse 13 grounds the ecclesiastical roles of men and women in creation. Verse 14 highlights the way sin upends and subverts that God-given order with disastrous consequences.
And that’s all, I think, quite clear, but what in the world are we supposed to do with verse 15? If verses 11 and 12 are the most controversial texts in 1 Timothy, verse 15 is easily the most difficult. Let’s look at it for a moment and then we’re done. Verse 15, “Yet she will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” Ah-ha! There are two, basically two viable-ish schools of thought about verse 15. The first school points out that there is an untranslated definite article in verse 15. “She will be saved,” literally, “through the childbirth.” And they take the “she” there to be a reference to Eve that Paul has been talking about in the prior verses, and “the childbirth” to be a reference to the birth of one particular child – the child of promise, the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent, the Lord Jesus Christ. So she, Eve, will be saved when Messiah comes, by the work of her final son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a very attractive reading for me. I want to be sure always to preach Christ to you. And I was scratching my head, “Where was Jesus in this passage? Maybe I can shoehorn Him in, in verse 15!”
But I just can’t quite bring myself to do it, mainly because I don’t think it makes much sense of the second half of the verse which introduces a condition. Do you see that? “She will be saved – if they continue in faith and love” and so on. If this is referring to Eve, how can her salvation, even if it comes through her eventual son, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, how can her salvation be contingent on “them,” whoever “they” are, continuing in faith and love? That, to me, introduces an array of conditional complications that places this interpretation beyond possibility. In my judgment, it is better to understand the “she” – “She will be saved” – as referring yes to Eve but Eve as a symbol of womankind collectively. Paul’s already preparing to speak about her like that in verse 14. Adam was not deceived but rather, “the woman was deceived.” Eve is the symbol of womankind, and she, the embodiment of womankind, will be saved.
Now just for a moment drop the subordinate clause “through childbearing” and reread the sentence. “She” – that is, womankind – “will be saved if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control.” And there’s really nothing difficult or complicated about that now, is there? How will women be saved? They will be saved the same way anyone will be saved – by believing the Gospel and continuing to live the Christian life, all the way to the finish line. And the particular sphere within which the Lord calls godly women to live out their Christian lives and persevere and continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control is summarized and symbolized in the text by the most obvious thing that women can do that men can’t do – childbirth. Childbearing here stands for all the uniquely feminine roles entrusted to specifically Christian women by God. Live out your Christian life there. Persevere and continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control there. Don’t stray into roles God has not ordained for you. You don’t need to be elders. You need to be wives and mothers, sisters and friends, disciplers and teachers of other women, assistants to elders and deacons as they shepherd and pastor the needs of the flock, wise counselors and godly prayer warriors, faithful witnesses in the world. Men and women in God’s design, do you see, are not mutually interchangeable. We have distinct callings and roles in the home and the church. And godliness calls us to embrace those roles with glad hearts, believing them to be for our best.
One last thing before we conclude. It is striking to me as Paul addresses men and women in these quite challenging ways that he grounds his challenges in what is essentially the complete arc of the Biblical storyline. Do you see that? Creation – verse 13. Fall – verse 14. Salvation – verse 15. That’s the whole story. We are made in the image of God, male and female He created us; lost in Adam. We’ve turned against one another because of sin’s warping curse and power. But now in Christ we are redeemed, being remade in the image of God. What Paul is describing and what he is calling us to is the good life actually that the Gospel of redeeming love in Jesus Christ has secured for His people. And we shouldn’t be surprised at all that it looks nothing like the expectations and patterns that the world prefers for men and women today. But when you come to live in the wake, in the good of the work of Jesus Christ on your behalf, you begin to find that more and more your heart’s desire is, as verse 15 puts it – “continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control” in the unique and distinct spheres of calling and responsibility that God has given to each of us as men and as women. We don’t abdicate responsibility. We don’t usurp roles that are not given to us. Cheerfully we submit to Christ, and by His grace we embrace life rightly ordered by the Word of the Lord.
So brothers and sisters, if you are struggling with the teaching of this text, not because it’s hard to understand but because you don’t like what it says, verses 13 through 15 actually point you to the remedy. They invite you to trace again the wonderful story, the arc of God’s story of redemption, fall and redemption in Jesus Christ. See again what God has done for you in Jesus. Go back to the cross. And then ask yourself, “Is there anything He now can ask me to do, any role He might now ask me to fulfill or any dearly cherished conviction I currently hold that He might now ask me to forsake that is too great a sacrifice in view of His self-giving love for me?” Go back to Calvary, bow before the cross of Christ, and you will find there all the help you need to submit to God, to His teaching and His Word, to the elders of the church, to one another in love. So may God help us to do it.
Let’s pray together.
Our God and Father, as we bow before You we bless You for Your holy Word. There are portions of Paul that are, as Peter says, not easy to understand. And yet the main things are crystal clear. Help us not to use the complexities to excuse our disobedience of the clarity that we find. Instead, grant us grace now to bow once again at Calvary at the foot of our Savior’s cross and there, seeing His submission to the will of God for us, rendering obedience all the way to the cross for us, help us to rise resolved to bow our wills and shape our lives, our relationships, according to His holy Word, for His glory we pray. Amen.