This message was delivered at the Women in the Church Intensive Bible Study, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Cleveland, MS, on Saturday, March 18, 2000.
The Loss and Restoration of True Womanhood
We've seen that God created humanity male and female with the intention that the man and woman within the institution of marriage have a harmonious relationship analogous to the relationship of the Father and the Son within the Godhead. Like God the Father and God the Son, the man and woman are equal in dignity and worth. And also like God the Father and God the Son, the man and woman have different roles and missions in life, and the wife is to submit to the leadership of the husband.
In this session, we are going to see how harmony was replaced by disharmony, how order was replaced by disorder and even worse. And we also are going to look at how paradise can be restored.
I want to look at three different stages in the loss of true womanhood, and I have a Scripture passage associated with each of them. The three stages are rebellion, confusion and perversion. I'll begin by looking at rebellion, and the associated Scripture passage is 1 Timothy 2:12-15:
In this passage, Paul is arguing for male leadership not only in the family, but also in the family of faith, the church. And Paul is not giving time bound, situation specific instructions that no longer apply to us. We can see this is the arguments he uses. His arguments are rooted not in the local and the temporary. He doesn't tell the Ephesians under Timothy's pastoral oversight that the women in their church need to be temporarily excluded from church leadership because of a localized problem they are experiencing. Paul instructions here are not medicine to be administered only to the sick only in a time of contagion and only until the disease is gone. Paul's instructions are for all the church and for all times. We can see this in that his arguments for his instructions are rooted not in the local and the temporary but in the universal and the permanent. He roots his arguments in the experience of Adam and Eve, our first father and mother, in their creation and in their fall. This is universal in that Adam and Eve are the parents of all humanity. And this is permanent in that the principles and lessons of creation and the fall are valid for all time.
12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.
Paul's first argument for male leadership in the church is based upon the order of creation. Adam was created first, and Eve was created second. Now Paul's argument is not based solely and strictly on chronology. As the skeptics point out, the animals were created chronologically prior to Adam, but that doesn't mean that God gave the animals authority over humanity. No, Paul's argument is not from chronology alone but from chronology as it relates to God's purposes as revealed in the creation account. Adam and Eve were created chronologically after the animals because Adam and Eve, the creatures created in the very image of God, were the apex of God's work of creation. And Eve was created chronologically after Adam because she was created to be his helper under his authority and leadership. That is what Paul is reminding us of when he says in verse 13, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve." We'll not go into the significance of Eve's creation at this time because we looked at that in our first lecture. In this lecture, we are going to focus on verse 14, "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression."
Now how is this an argument for male leadership in the church? Some interpret this verse to mean that the ordained leadership of the church is to be limited to men because men are more intelligent and less gullible than women. But that is not what Paul says here, nor is that taught anywhere in the Bible. Anyway, that would be a very shaky basis upon which to argue for male leadership in the church because I have no doubt that there are a multitude of women in the church who are more intelligent and less gullible than many of the male ministers I know, myself included.
All Paul does here is to state the bare historical fact that when humanity fell into sin, it was Eve whom the devil deceived and not Adam. And Paul's point is not the question of which was the more intelligent of the two. His point is that the fall into sin occurred upon the first occasion in history when a man abdicated his God given responsibility to lead, and a woman simultaneously usurped it. Whenever a woman becomes an ordained officer in the church, she is following the example of Eve in the garden when she took the role of spokesman for humanity. Many feminists recognize this. I remember reading about a meeting of feminists in a church in Dallas, Texas, back when I lived there years ago. The newspaper said that these woman had a special communion service as a part of their meeting. They did not use bread and wine, and they did not remember Christ's death. They substituted apple juice, and they commemorated Eve's first act of feministic freedom when she, not Adam, spoke for humanity and when she took the lead in first partaking of the forbidden fruit.
Let's examine the circumstances surrounding man's fall into sin. First, Adam was there. Genesis 3:6 says,
"She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate."Notice those two little words, "with her." Where was Adam when Eve took the lead and negotiated with Satan? He was with her. This was not a case of a woman bravely standing in the gap in the absence of her husband. It was a case of male abdication and female usurpation.
Second, the responsibility for confronting Satan belonged to Adam. Before God had created Eve, He gave Adam the responsibility to tend and keep the garden (Genesis 2:15). To tend means to cultivate, to develop all the good potential within God's good creation. To keep means to protect, to guard against any invasion of evil. It was Adam's responsibility to confront Satan when he invaded the garden sanctuary. When he allowed Eve to do this in his place, he abdicated his duty as head of the household. He is no longer cherishing Eve as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He is now using her first as a surrogate and then as a guinea pig. He lets her confront Satan in his place. And then he lets her eat the forbidden fruit first to see what happens. God had said, when you eat of the forbidden fruit, you will die. Satan then said, no, you won't. Adam didn't partake until he saw Eve eat and continue to breath. Adam was there, and he abdicated his responsibility for cowardly and selfish reasons.
Third, Eve's responsibility was to serve not as Adam's leader but as Adam's helper. God created Eve to be Adam's help comparable to him, not to be Adam's new boss. And after God created Eve, He brought her to Adam, just as a father in a wedding ceremony brings the bride to her new husband and gives her to him, transferring her from the umbrella of her father's authority to that of her new husband. When Adam received Eve from God's hand, he immediately gave her a name: "She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." In the ancient near east, the giving of a name was a symbol of authority. God told Adam to give names to the animals, and that was a symbol of Adam's authority over the animal realm. When Pharaoh Necho took Eliakim and made him his puppet king on the throne of Judah, Pharaoh Necho changed Eliakim's name to Jehoiakim as a symbol of his lordship over him. When Nebuchadnezzar made Mattaniah his puppet king in Judah, Nebuchadnezzar changed Mettaniah's name to Zedekiah as a symbol of his lordship over him. We see the same symbolism when a man gives a woman his surname at the time of their marriage. Many feminists recognize the symbolism of this act and some refuse to take their husband's surname. The point is that Eve was under Adam's authority at the time of the fall, and she should have acted consistently with her position.
Paul says that a woman is not to teach men with the authority of ordination. The minister is to function as a representative of Jesus, the second Adam. But when a woman takes this position, by her very action she unavoidably represents not the second Adam but the first Eve when she usurped Adam's God given authority.
We have seen the loss of true womanhood by rebellion. Now I want to look at the loss of true womanhood by confusion. And the Scripture I have for this point is Genesis 3:16:
Now what I want to examine is the statement, "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." The key to interpreting this statement is finding the correct meaning for the word here translated desire. The Hebrew word here translated desire is used in only two other places in the Old Testament. It is found in Song of Solomon 7:10 where the Shulamite says
16 To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
"I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me."Here the word desire refers to a man's sexual desire for his wife. Both Genesis 3:16 and Song of Solomon 7:10 are statements related to the marriage relationship. But if this is the correct meaning of the word in Genesis 3:16, then how is a woman's sexual desire for her husband a part of God's curse upon humanity at the fall? And how does this differ from the state of marriage before the fall as a creation ordinance?
The only other verse using this word is Genesis 4:7, which is a warning to Cain to control his anger. In the next verse, Cain is overcome by his anger, and he kills his brother Abel. Here is the statement in Genesis 4:7 containing the word desire:
... sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."The KJ and NKJ say that sin lies at the door, but the NIV, NAS, ASV, TEV, RSV and NJB all use the word crouch. The NRS has the word lurk, and the NLT says, "Sin is waiting to attack and destroy you." This word translated crouch here in Genesis 4:7 is also found in Genesis 49:9, which in the NIV says:
In Genesis 4:7, in God's warning to Cain about the sin of anger, sin is personified as a wild animal that is ready to spring upon Cain as its victim. The verse says that sin's desire is for Cain, but Cain should rule over the sin. Here desire means a desire to overcome, to dominate, to conquer.
9 You are a lion's cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness-- who dares to rouse him?
Now what are the strengths and weaknesses of using this meaning of the word desire in Genesis 3:16, which says: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you"? The main weakness is that Genesis 4:7 isn't talking about marriage, whereas both Genesis 3:16 and Song of Solomon 7:10 are. There is that weakness, but this view has many strengths.
First, there is the author and the time of writing. Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7 were both written by Moses in the same book with only 14 verses separating them. Song of Solomon was written by Solomon about a five centuries later. Also, Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7 are quotations from the same speaker, the LORD God.
Second, there is the parallel word structure. I have before me the statements from both verses in the Hebrew, and the parallel word structure between the two statements is very obvious, more so than in the English translation. Let me give you a very literal translation of the Hebrew so you can see how close the two statements are.
The same author, the same speaker, the same book and only 14 verses apart, the strongly parallel word structure. And the clincher is that the resulting interpretation makes sense and fits the context well.
Genesis 3:16 and to your husband [is] your desire and he rules over you. Genesis 4:7 and to you [is] its desire and you rule over it.
Let's say that the word desire in Genesis 3:16 means a desire to dominate. The resulting meaning of the verse is an example of what we call poetic justice, justice with a good dose of irony in it. In the fall into sin, Eve usurped the authority of her husband. Now a part of God's judgment upon her is that now that she has a sin nature, she will always have to struggle with an inner desire to usurp her husband's authority, an inner desire to dominate the marriage relationship, an inner desire to wear the pants in the family.
And the husband's sinful response will be to exercise his headship with coercive force. The passage says, "And he will rule over you." The word translated rule both here and in Genesis 4:7 is used a total of 7 times in the book of Genesis. It is used once of the sun's rule over the day and the moon's rule over the night (Genesis 1:18). It is used once of the rule of Abraham's chief steward over Abraham's household (Genesis 24:2). And it is used three times of Joseph's rule over Egypt (Genesis 37:8; 45:8; 45:26). Look at its use in Genesis 37:
You might remember that later in the book of Genesis, Joseph imprisoned his brother Simeon, and Joseph's brothers recognized that Joseph had the power to execute them if he chose to. The word translated rule in Genesis 3:16 and have dominion in Genesis 37:8 contains the idea of rule backed by coercive force. This image of bowing down before another found in Genesis 37 well represents the status of a large number of wives before their husbands during much of history and in many parts of the world.
5 Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. 6 So he said to them, "Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: 7 "There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf." 8 And his brothers said to him, "Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
The meaning of Genesis 3:16 is then, the woman will desire to dominate her husband, but he will dominate her with force.
Lastly, this interpretation fits the pattern of the other curses in Genesis 3. Each of the curses upon Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 is a curse restrained by grace. They are not absolute curses. God tells Adam and Eve that in their fallen state,
The battle of the sexes proclaimed in Genesis 3:16 is rooted in the sin nature we all inherit from fallen Adam, and it is a part of the common curse on all creation. The Bible also tells us about a loss of true womanhood that goes beyond the common curse. We read about this in the last half of Romans chapter one. I don't have time to go into that in any detail, but allow me just to give a general summary. Romans one talks about people who refuse to acknowledge God as God, who refuse to give Him the glory due His Name, who refuse to thank Him for His many blessings. They worship not their Creator but the creation. Romans one teaches that God judges this sin with a special curse which goes beyond the common curse. And the judgment is poetic. These people have rebelled against God. And so God's judgment is to remove His restraining hand and to give them over to their rebellion. He permits them to widen their rebellion against God to include a rebellion against the image of God within them. And the image of God within them involves human sexuality rightly understood (Genesis 1:27). Rebellion against the image of God within leads to an enslavement to sexual sin, even to an enslavement to sexual perversity. As a special judgement, God gives them over to unclean lusts, to vile passions and to a debased mind (Romans 1:24,26,28). That's all I will say on that point. I would encourage you to read Romans one for yourself.
We have looked at the original definition of true womanhood, and we have looked at its loss in the fall, in the common curse and in the special curse. Now let's conclude by looking at the redemptive restoration of true womanhood. Now what people want at this point is some easy formula or some short check list. I can't give you that, and even if I did, I don't believe it would do you any good. The solution is not found in the law but in Jesus Christ.
True womanhood was lost when the image of God within us was corrupted by sin. The solution is a restoration of that image, and only Jesus can do that. Here is our Shorter Catechism's definition of sanctification:
Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son ...
Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.When we first come to Christ, there is definitive sanctification. The image of God within us is renewed to the point that sin no longer lords it over us. There is a definitive break with sinful living. And then after that, there is the long work of progressive sanctification, a progressive dying unto sin and a progressive coming alive unto righteous living.
We need to recognize that this is a work of grace, and be thankful. We cannot deliver ourself from sin's dominion. We cannot renew the image of God within us. Only God can do that through the Holy Spirit's applying to our hearts the benefits of the saving work of Jesus Christ.
We must take full advantage of those outward and ordinary means whereby God communicates to us the benefits of redemption. These involve the Word, the sacraments, prayer and Christian fellowship. It will do no good to engage in these activities with a legalistic spirit as if we were earning our salvation. Our purpose is to be to sharpen our focus upon Christ, to strengthen our faith in Christ. For it is through faith that we abide in Christ, and it is through that faith relationship which we bear the fruit of the Spirit.
We must be patient. This is a maturing process, and it usually takes some time. Just because you can't see the garden growing when you stare at it doesn't mean that it's not growing. As they hymn writer put it,
First, the blade, and then the ear, Then the full corn shall appear.Look unto Jesus. Abide in Him as a branch in a Vine. As you mature in Christ, the image of God within you will be progressively restored. And as you become a better Christian, you will in the process become a better woman. You will be freed from your rebellion against the image of God within you. You will be freed from that confusion which first began when Eve usurped her husband's place as head of the household.