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| Ritual Bath (Mikveh) |
We’ve been
talking a lot about leadership in the church.
And the simple reason for that is that we need to establish some kind of
structure in order to be a church. But
for that to work, we need to be in agreement with the Bible’s plan for leadership. We need to agree with Jesus’ instruction that
he alone is the head of the Church, and that all the rest are brothers—all the
rest are equal under him. He alone is
our rabbi and leader.
Jesus taught
us that to be great in the Body of Messiah, you must be a servant to everyone
else in the Body. He said, “It will not be this way among you; rather
whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to
be first among you will be your slave” (Matt. 20:26-27). Why? Because
God’s plan is for us all to submit to each other. God’s plan is for us all to serve each other.
We’ve also
seen that a key part of the structure of the local church is the elders of the
church, who are pastors to the others—they help and serve all the others. But why does the Bible say that elders should
be men, and in fact married men (“It is
necessary therefore that the overseer [another name for an elder] be above
reproach, a husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable,
able to teach,” 1 Tim. 3:2)?
In Judaism, one of the reasons for male elders is that the religious requirements for Jewish men are much more strict than for the women. The men have more religious duties to fulfill, which includes attending meetings. The women are freed up from many of these requirements because they have another extremely important ministry to perform: the ministry of bearing and raising children. Also, according to some rabbis, women are more prone to do right: it’s the men that have to be constantly reminded to behave themselves.
In Judaism, one of the reasons for male elders is that the religious requirements for Jewish men are much more strict than for the women. The men have more religious duties to fulfill, which includes attending meetings. The women are freed up from many of these requirements because they have another extremely important ministry to perform: the ministry of bearing and raising children. Also, according to some rabbis, women are more prone to do right: it’s the men that have to be constantly reminded to behave themselves.
One practical
reason that we’ve found over the years for men elders is that men need male
role models. When women are in charge of
a church, fewer men show up. This was
the way our church in the Philippines was when we first started. It was mostly women. We even appointed women elders, because they
were the longest attending, most faithful and most knowledgeable members of the
church. But we couldn’t get men to
come. So finally I was convicted that we
needed to do it God’s way, and all the ladies agreed, and resigned their
positions. So we started appointing men
to positions of leadership. In half a
year, the church was filled with men. It
was an amazing change! This also led the
men to take more seriously their duties in the family. When men are given responsibility, they step
up to the plate and do the job.
Also,
remember that those in positions of leadership in the Body of Messiah have to
serve all the others. This means that
the elders can be called on by the brothers for help at any time. But if you put women into the position of
being a servant to men like that, it could create some improper
situations. So it’s better to avoid any
problems like that from happening.
AREAS OF
AUTHORITY
The Bible’s
view about the relationship of men and women is closely connected to the idea
that every created creature has its own proper realm of authority. Different angels, for example, have their
different areas of authority, but when they stray from that area of authority,
it creates problems. Do you remember
when the angels began to marry human women in Gen. 6:2 (“And the sons of God saw the daughters of man that they were good and
they took for themselves women from all that they chose”)? They had strayed from their proper domain and
were punished (“And angels that did not
keep watch over their own domain, but left their proper dwelling place, he has
kept under watch in darkness for eternal bonds on the judgment of the great
day,” Jude 1:6).
This is also the problem with homosexuality and men acting effeminate (Rom. 1:27). If God made you a man, but you act like a
woman, you are straying from your created realm.
So what then
does the Bible teach about the position of women in the Church? You’ve probably heard the verse, “but I do not permit a woman to teach or to
have authority over a man, but rather to be in silence” (1 Tim. 2:12). This sounds severe. But what is it actually talking about? Clearly, Paul thought that teaching, in other
words, doctrinal teaching of adult men, and having authority over adult men were
two areas of authority that should be in the domain of men. But what about being “in silence”?
If we look
at this in context with the previous verse (“Let
a woman learn in silence in all submission,” 1 Tim. 2:11), it clearly means
that the women were to be quiet while someone was teaching. This is also the meaning when this topic
comes up in 1 Cor. 14:34,35. What was
the reason for this? Women were usually
not educated in those days. Only the men
received formal education. Many of
the women were not used to being in a formal setting. So just like in areas where there is little
education today, some of the ladies would start chit-chatting during the
message, which clearly was annoying to Paul.
But does
this mean that women always have to be silent in churches? In 1 Corinthians 11:5, Paul himself mentions
women praying and preaching in the services (“But every wife praying or prophesying…”: remember that prophesying in the Bible means preaching
a message from the Lord). He mentions
this as a normal thing in the services. These
are obviously extremely important parts of the service that women were
participating in.
Even in Old
Testament times, Miriam the sister of Moses was a prophetess (Exo. 15:20); so
was Deborah in the time of the judges (Judges 4:4), and Huldah in the time of
the kings (2 Kings 22:14). Anna was a
prophetess at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36). And so were the four daughters of Philip in
the book of Acts (Acts 21:9). So Paul is
clearly not telling us that women can never speak in the churches. It’s just that they should be orderly in the
services, and with regard to doctrinal teaching and positions of authority,
they are not to be put over men.
Why is Paul
so insistent on this point? He traces it
back to the Bible where it says: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1
Tim. 2:13). This is a reference to the
Creation, when Eve was created to be a helper for Adam (“And the LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a helper similar to him,”
Gen. 2:18). Here’s that whole idea of a
created position and purpose again. Eve
was created to be in the position of a helper to Adam, which implies that putting
her in authority over man would be to reverse God’s intended purpose.
Paul
continues: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman is, having been deceived into
transgression (or overstepping)” (1 Tim. 2:14). Now this is quite a strange verse. The first question we have to answer is, is
it true that Adam was not deceived? To
answer this, we have to turn back to Genesis 3.
The first five verses of this chapter are the conversation between the
serpent and Eve. There is no mention of
Adam. So I think it’s safe to say that
Adam was not there for this conversation.
Then, in
verse 6, she ate. “And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was a
delight to the eyes and the tree was desirable to look at (or to give wisdom)
and she took some of its fruit and she ate, and she also gave some to her
husband together with herself, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6). So they both ate the fruit together. But it doesn’t say that Eve said anything to
Adam about it. She just gave him some
fruit, and he ate. So as Paul
understands this, she didn’t convince him to eat by repeating the lie of the
serpent and talking him into it. She
just handed him some fruit, and without thinking, he accepted it and ate
it. This means that Adam didn’t sin by
accepting the lie of the serpent, he wasn’t deceived, he only sinned by eating
the forbidden fruit. So this is why Paul
says that Adam was not deceived in the way that Eve was.
But Paul
doesn’t just say that Eve was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14 above). He says that women today are deceived
because of what Eve did in the past. This
is very clear in the Greek. What does he
mean by this?
Perhaps you
remember Paul’s teaching in Romans that through Adam sin entered the world and
led to spiritual death for all, right up until today (Rom. 5:12). Here we see that he had a similar
teaching about Eve, that through her, women today (and here he’s talking about
women in general) are deceived into transgressing or overstepping God’s plan
for the family. They are deceived into stepping
out of God’s created order. Eve, who
should have been a helper to her husband Adam, stepped out of that position by
receiving instruction from the serpent and taking action on her own, without
checking with Adam first. So how can this
inherited sin, or tendency to sin, be fixed?
1 Tim.
2:15: “but (the woman) will be saved (i.e. from this sin) through the bearing
of children if they remain in faith and love and holiness with self-control.” The bearing of children is a reference back
to the created order again, and to one of the key differences between men and
women, the ability to bear a child. So
by living a godly life and bearing and raising children, through being a
mother, the married woman can be saved from this sin or temptation to sin—because
she’ll be plenty busy with lots of other things to do that are within her area
of authority.
HEADSHIP AND
SUBMISSION
To really
understand this idea of created position and authority, we need to look in a
little more detail at the relationship between men and women in general in the
Bible. As we’ve seen, the Bible calls
for mutual submission in the Body of Messiah.
But there are two relationships in the Body of Messiah that are not
described as relationships of mutual submission. The first is our relationship to Jesus. We must submit totally to him, because he is
the head of the Church.
The second
is the relationship of the husband and wife.
This is in Eph. 5:22-23: “Wives (submit) to their own husbands as to
the Lord. For a man is head of his wife even as the Messiah is head of the
Church, being himself the Savior of the Body.” But what does this ‘headship’ really
mean? Many people think of headship as a
simple relationship of human authority:
I’m the boss, you’re not. And
because of this, the Bible’s teaching about men and women gets a lot of bad
press. But as we’ve seen, Jesus’ ideas
of authority and leadership are just the opposite of the world’s ideas. So what does it really mean that the
husband is the head of the wife, and that Jesus is the head of the Church?
Now first of
all, we need to notice that this relationship of submission is only between a
wife and her husband, not anyone else (except the Lord of course). So this has nothing to do with women in general
being subject to men in general. It’s
only between a husband and wife in the marriage relationship. Nor is it talking about leaders having
headship over the members of a congregation.
The Bible teaches that there is only one head of the Christian Church,
and that is Messiah Jesus himself. Jesus
said that he alone is the head of the church, and we are all
brothers.
This is also
the message of 1 Cor. 11, which is often used to try to prove human headship
over the Church. But what does it actually
say? “But
I want you to know that the head of every man is the Messiah, but the head of a
wife is the husband, and the head of the Messiah is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). It doesn’t say that the head of every man is
the church leadership. It says that the
head of every man is the Messiah. The
wife, too, is not just subject to anyone.
She is subject only to her husband and to the Lord, not to anyone else.
But what
does this headship mean? Well, how did Jesus
come to be in the position of head over the Church? Because he saved us (“being himself Savior”). How
did he do that? “Husbands, love your wives, just as the Messiah also loved the Church
and gave himself up for her,” (Eph. 5:25).
Jesus became our Savior by giving himself up for the Church. What does that mean? That he gave himself up to torture and death
for her sake.
This is the
part of the husband: to do “just as” Jesus did, to give up your
life for your wife. We men enter into a
position of headship in our marriages when we give up our lives for our
wives: when we give up having our own
way and doing our own thing for her.
This is true headship, this is godly leadership.
Eph. 5:26: “that
he might make her holy, having cleansed her for the bath of water [baptism] by
his word.” This is a fascinating
verse, and widely misunderstood and mistranslated because most Christians don’t
know the Jewish custom Paul is referring to here. In Judaism, to be cleansed from ritual
impurity (like those in Lev. 15), you had to take a ritual bath, and then you
had to wait until sunset to be clean.
To do this,
you would go to a ritual bath, which at the time was kept full of water and was
usually in a dark basement or room. You
would then take off your clothes—it was a private place—walk down the steps on
the unclean side, all alone, into the water, and dip yourself three times. Then you would walk up the clean side and get
dressed again. But this was not to get
the dirt off. For that they used a
regular bathtub first. So first you
would take a bath to become clean, then you would enter the ritual bath for
ritual cleanness. This ritual bath is the
origin of our practice of baptism.
Baptism is a ritual bath, a source of ritual cleanness. But what people don’t understand is that this
was a two step process: first a regular
bath, then a ritual bath.
This is what
Paul is getting at in Eph. 5:26: that
Jesus washed us with the words of his teaching first to get the dirt off, and
only then after that are we ready for baptism.
This paints a beautiful picture of Jesus washing and cleansing us, just
like he did at the Last Supper when he washed the feet of his disciples. It’s a very beautiful and tender picture of
Jesus’ care and concern for us.
Why did he
do this? Why does he take the time to
wash us with his Word? It’s to make us
holy, to set us apart from the world (Eph. 5:26). In the same way, husbands have the
responsibility to wash their wives in the Word of God, that they might be holy
and set apart from the world. This is true
Biblical headship.
Eph. 5:27: “that
he might present the Church to himself as glorious, not having a stain or
wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and blameless.” The goal of all this is that we will be found
holy and blameless when Jesus returns and we are presented to him. Are you ready for that?
Eph. 5:28: “In the
same way, husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. The one who loves his own wife loves
himself.” Why is the wife the
husband’s own body? This is an allusion
to Genesis. I’m sure you remember how
God made Eve. “And the LORD God made the rib that he took from the man into a woman,
and brought her to the man” (Gen. 2:22).
Eve was made from Adam. And what
did Adam say? “This time it’s bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this one will
be called woman, because this one was taken out of man” (Gen. 2:23). The woman literally was from his own
body. So there’s a very literal sense to
the idea that when a man loves his wife, he is loving his own body.
Eph. 5:29: “For no
one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the
Messiah also does the Church.” Husbands
are to nourish and cherish their wives, just as Messiah does the Church. The husband cherishes his wife because she is
part of his body. The Messiah cherishes
the Church because it is his body.
Eph. 5:31: “For this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united with (cleave to) his wife, and the two will become one
flesh.” Here Paul is quoting
from Gen. 2:24. In the Hebrew of
Genesis, it says “cleave to,” in
other words, the man should stick to his wife.
The marriage relationship takes priority over fathers and mothers. It takes priority over our birth
families. We are to leave them, and
cleave to our wives. We are to ‘leave
and cleave.’
Eph. 5:32: “This mystery is great; but I speak with
regard to Messiah and the Church.” Even
though Paul has been speaking about Genesis and the relationship of the husband
and wife, it’s only to help us understand the relationship of Jesus to the
Church. That means that in the same way
that the marriage relationship takes priority over our birth families, we are
to give priority to our relationship to the Messiah over our birth
families. Here, too, we are to leave and
cleave.
This helps
us understand one of the difficult sayings of Jesus: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and
wife and children and brothers and sisters and even his own life, too, he is
not able to be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
Have you ever wondered about this one?
Isn’t it against the Ten Commandments to hate your father and
mother? Well actually, the Ten
Commandments says to honor your mother and father. It doesn’t say you have to agree with them
about everything. It is possible to
honorably disagree with someone.
But what
does Jesus mean by this difficult saying?
Does he really mean we should hate our families? Well, how did Jesus treat his own
mother?
Do you
remember when Jesus’ mother and brothers came to get him from one of his
meetings, what he said when someone told him they had arrived? “But he
answered and said to the one speaking to him, ‘Who is my mother and who are my
brothers?’ And stretching out his hand
toward his disciples, he said, ‘Look! My
mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in the heavens,
he is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:48-50). Wow. This
was very radical. Do you see what Jesus
is saying? Who are his true family
members? The ones that do the will of
God. Our true families are our spiritual
families. And what about his own natural
family? It seems that they were not
following God at that time, so they were not yet part of his true spiritual
family. He had left them behind to minister
to his spiritual family.
So what does
he mean when he says that we must hate our family? We have to remember that at that time, Jesus
was talking to the very first believers.
None of their family members was yet saved. This means that their family members were not
yet part of God’s true spiritual family.
So if they’re not yet saved, if they’re not yet part of God’s family,
whose family are they part of?
As Jesus
said in Jerusalem, “You are of your
father the devil…” (John 8:44). It’s
not a pleasant fact, but it’s true. We
need to recognize that unsaved family members are on the wrong side of the
spiritual world. Either you’re with
Jesus or against him. We can’t hide from
this or cover up this basic fact.
Do you
remember what Jesus said to one young man that wanted to follow him, but said “Lord, let me first go and bury my father”
(Matt. 8:21). First let me bury my
father, and then I will follow you. What
did Jesus say? “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:22). To some people, the words of Jesus sound
cruel. Why wouldn’t he let the young man
bury his father? But you have to realize
that this doesn’t mean his father was dead or even that he was sick. He’s actually saying, let me wait until my
father dies, and then I will follow you.
His father was standing between him and following Jesus. So Jesus points to the spiritual reality that
the young man’s father was not a believer.
He was spiritually dead. But
Jesus calls us to life, leaving the dead behind, and entering the family of God. We must leave and cleave.
Does that
mean we don’t care about these people who are our physical family members, but
who are not yet saved? Well, let’s look
at what Jesus himself did. He drew a clear
line between himself and his unsaved family members. He denied that they were his true family in
public before a crowd of people. But
later, many of them accepted and believed, including Mary his mother and his
brothers James and Jude. What if he had
not drawn a line between himself and them?
What if he had not made it clear that they were not yet part of the
family of God? Then they would have
thought they were okay and there was no need to change. Would this have been a loving thing to do? Would it be loving to let them think they’re
okay with God when they are not? Or
wouldn’t that be a terrible deception, a lie that would keep them from entering
into eternal life and would encourage them on their path to destruction?
Jesus even said
the gospel is intended to divide families: “Do not
suppose that I came to bring peace on the earth: I did not come to bring peace, but rather a
sword. For I came to divide ‘a man
against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law’” (Matt. 10:34,35). Here Jesus is quoting from Micah 7:6. It’s a passage in which Micah is weeping over
the land: There is not a grape to eat,
the godly person has perished from the land (Micah 7:1). It was a time when the nation, God’s people,
were in rebellion against God.
This is
also how Jesus understood his own generation:
it was a perverse and adulterous generation. Into this wicked generation, Jesus brought
the gospel, just as we also preach the gospel to a perverse and adulterous
generation. And the truth, the light,
divides people. The darkness hates the
light and turns from the light. The
truth divides families. So we must leave
and cleave. We must hate the works of
darkness and all those that do them. But
all the while we must hope and pray for their salvation. We must continue to do good even to those who
oppose us.
What did Jesus
say? “Love your….”? Enemies.
“Pray for those who…”? Persecute you (Matt. 5:44). God does good to the righteous and the
unrighteous (Matt. 5:45). And we must do
the same.
Why is it so
important to leave everything behind to follow Jesus, to leave and cleave? Just look at what happened to Jesus when he
went back to preach in his home town of Nazareth. Was he successful? No.
Why not?
He said, “Amen I say to you, that no prophet is
welcome in his home town” (Luke 4:24).
Now why did he say that? The
people had welcomed him with great pride:
“And all were bearing witness of
him and were wondering at the gracious words that were going out of his mouth,
and they were saying, ‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph?’” (Luke 4:22). What’s wrong with that? It sounds like they were being very friendly
and nice to him. But you see, that was
the problem. They were receiving him back
as a home town boy. They could only see
him as the “son of Joseph,” not as the Son of God. And so he couldn’t do many miracles there
(Matt. 13:58).
Jesus could
just have accepted this situation. But
he didn’t. Instead, he confronted them by
comparing them to the sinful generation in the time of Elijah, which also
received no miracles (Luke 4:25,26).
That’s when what started as a welcome home celebration turned into an
angry mob dragging him to the edge of town, ready to throw him off a cliff.
There’s no
record that Jesus ever returned to Nazareth after that. But do you know that in the years after he
died, a strong Jewish Christian synagogue grew up in Nazareth, descended in
part from his own relatives. What if he
had not drawn the line with them? What
if he had not challenged them? But
because he did and almost died there because of it, many of his relatives were
saved.
Jesus shows
us in his own life what it means to leave our earthly families and cleave to
our spiritual family. This is what we
are called to do as Christians. It’s also
a picture of how it should be in our marriages.
We have to leave and cleave.
Jesus laid down his life for his spiritual family. In the same way, husbands should lay down
their lives for their wives. This is
true spiritual headship. They should
wash their wives and their families in the Word of God. This is when men fulfill their destiny and
calling as the heads of their family.
This is when they fulfill their created purpose. And that’s when a wife’s submission to her husband
becomes a joy and not a duty.
God’s plan
for the relationship of men and women is such a beautiful thing. Yes, it has often been distorted by
abuses. But if we restore it to God’s
original plan, it can be one of the most intensely beautiful things in our
lives. It’s
the same way with leadership in the Church.
God has a wonderful plan for all of us to work together to achieve God’s
purposes. This includes the gift of
elders to the Church, elders that can serve and shepherd the others. And it works when we all submit to one
another and to the Lord. Amen?
