Professing Godliness, Practicing Good Works

I desire therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting; in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection... nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

When a "difficult" passage meets a watching culture, the question is not whether God's Word is good — but whether we will trust that it was written for our good.

A Privilege I Don't Take for Granted

For my entire adult life I've had the privilege to live and work in an environment with coworkers who are seeking to live their lives in line with the Scriptures. None of us do that perfectly — we aim at the target and miss the mark — but as much as we can, we seek to live after the pattern of the Scriptures, treating one another as brothers and sisters, as equals.

We work here at the church in a bit of a sheltered environment, and I count that a privilege. What we've seen in the news over the last month — workplace harassment, sexual harassment, mistreatment due to gender — is something I've thankfully never had to work around. I'm not naive, though. I know that is the daily experience of many people. What I've experienced as normal is not normal to our society.

A Sad Testimony, and a Greater Hope

The "Me Too" movement online is a sad and shameful testimony about our culture. It reminds us that, even in a relatively equal society that has made huge strides in recent decades, we still have a long way to go. We may be light years ahead of some cultures, but I never want my daughters put in a situation where they'd feel they need to put "Me Too" on anything.

My wife works in a secular corporate hospital environment and has shared experiences that clearly qualify as harassment — things that go on regularly, are often laughed off and shrugged at because "that's just the way it is." And it isn't only men against women. It's a sad blight that reveals the pulse of our culture.

When I see these things, two considerations come to mind. First, just as the Bible says, we live in a broken world — broken because of sin, under the curse since Genesis 3. Second, there is hope, because Scripture declares a coming day when the King of righteousness rules and reigns in true justice. We have an optimistic vision of the future when the King of kings establishes His righteous rule and there will be no inequality, inequity, or indignity.

Approaching a Difficult Passage: Our Assumptions

It just so happens we arrive at this passage at this moment in our culture, which makes it all the more difficult. There is a vocal — perhaps minority — group that looks at this text, along with 1 Peter 3, Ephesians 5, and others, and says these are the reason we have such mistreatment. I push back against that. Mistreatment exists even in places where the Bible has no influence, so the Bible is not to blame.

When we approach a passage like this, we first have to take into account our assumptions, which fall into roughly four categories. First: the Bible is good, and any disagreement I have is based on a misunderstanding or misuse of the text. Second: the Bible is mostly good, but its writers were overly influenced by their own culture, so we can throw some parts out — a dangerous place that many in the "Christian church" today occupy. Third: the Bible is merely an ancient understanding, mostly unhelpful for today. Fourth: the Bible is wrong and even dangerous, and we've progressed beyond any need for it — the position championed by atheist Richard Dawkins, who says teaching the Bible to your child is child abuse.

You can assume my assumption is the first: the Bible is the message of a good God written for our good, so any disagreement I have is due to my misunderstanding or misuse.

Nothing Good Can Come from a Bad Heart

We must honestly acknowledge that, over 2,000 years, people have misused passages like this — whether out of ignorance or malice — to perpetuate the mistreatment of certain groups. But we must also look at church history objectively and admit that, predominantly, where the Bible has gone it has brought freedom and liberty — setting free different races, classes, and genders. So the problem is not the Scriptures themselves, but people who misinterpret or misapply them.

This reveals point number one: nothing good can come from a bad heart. If a person has wrong motives and a heart untransformed by the grace of Jesus Christ, they can take the good Scriptures and twist them. This is why the work of the gospel matters. 2,500 years ago God said through Ezekiel, "Behold, I will give you a new heart." That is exactly what Jesus does by the gospel of grace — His saving work begins on the inside and moves outward.

Understanding the Context

Second, we must understand the context, found in chapter 3:

These things I write to you... so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

These things are written so we would know how to conduct ourselves in the church when we gather as God's people. Across our weeks in 1 Timothy, Paul has been telling this pastor, Timothy, how to set in order a church that was off course: the priority of sound doctrine (chapter 1), the priority of prayer (chapter 2), and the proper conduct of men in verse 8. The principle there is that a man's godly conduct in the church should also be his conduct in the workplace, marketplace, and home — there should be no hypocrisy.

Now Paul turns to the proper conduct of women — specifically "what is proper for women professing godliness." If you are a woman professing with your lips that you follow Jesus, this is a message for you, just as there was a message for the men.

We Seek to Please God More Than Ourselves

This brings us to point number two, which applies to men and women alike: we seek to please God more than ourselves or our society. Before you were a Christian, your desire was to please yourself. When God gives you a new heart, new desires come with it — among them a desire to please God. We don't always fulfill that desire; Paul cried in Romans 7, "The good I want to do I don't do... O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" If you've walked with Jesus for any length of time, you know that experience.

We also seek to please God more than our society. The cultural drumbeat of 21st-century American culture — especially here in Southern California — is that your entire life is about making yourself happy. But when God indwells your heart by faith, there is a transformation, and the Christian's aim becomes pleasing God above self and society.

Inward Beauty Over Outward

Paul writes, "In like manner... that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works." When Paul visited the church at Ephesus, he found the women not conducting themselves in a manner honoring to God when they gathered. So he calls for modesty, propriety, and moderation.

Where in 21st-century culture is there any place that values modesty, propriety, or moderation? And let me tell you, this was not the culture Paul wrote into either. We assume the first-century world was hopelessly repressed, but Rome was an "anything goes" society, philosophically much like ours. They lacked our science and technology, but they shared our worldview.

The mindset of our day is that the only thing out of bounds is to say something is out of bounds. Everything else is "free" — as the 90s song says, "I'm free to do what I want, any old time." That same song even lifts "I'm a new creation" right out of 2 Corinthians 5:17 to mean "no restrictions." Listen to Elsa's "Let It Go" — "no one's gonna hold me back, I'm gonna do my thing." When my five-year-old started singing along, I thought, maybe I should rethink this song.

Our culture is focused entirely on the external. But point number three: godly women are more concerned about inward beauty than outward — especially when we appear before God in His church.

Godliness Is Not Ugliness

This does not mean godly women have no concern at all for outward beauty. Our God is into aesthetics — my wife and I just spent a week in Maui, and looking at a sunset you realize God makes things beautiful. Godliness does not equal ugliness; holiness does not equal homeliness. Certain Christian traditions have taught that a godly woman cannot look pretty, but that is not what Paul preaches. (I think my wife is a righteous babe — and I'm grateful she reserves that for me.)

The point is that you should spend as much, if not more, energy on inward beauty as on external beauty. If you spend more time on makeup than on God's Word, more time on the hairdo and the outfit than on time with God transforming the inner you, it will show.

The immediate objection is that Paul was simply speaking out of first-century Jewish cultural repression. Not so fast. Historians tell us first-century Ephesus exalted and revered women. This was the culture from which the legendary Amazon women came — and "Amazon women" is not a girl who shops well online. The dominant structure in the city was the temple to Diana, the goddess of war, and its overseers were priestesses. So this was not a culture that repressed women.

Be Different from the World

What is Paul doing? He is speaking to a culture that had thrown off all restraint — zero moderation, no propriety, no concept of inward beauty — and saying that among the people of God it must be different. He had said the same thing about ten years earlier in Ephesians 4: "I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk." The cultural norms for men and women in your society are not the norms for God's people. As he told the Corinthians, "Come out from among them and be separate... you were once darkness, but now you are light; walk as children of light."

So a woman's adornment should not be purely external — gold, pearls, costly clothing — but good works. That is the chief beautifying adornment for a woman professing godliness.

I once did a wedding at Ashford Castle in western Ireland. The groom and I arrived at a beautiful restaurant in shorts and were stopped: "Where is your dinner jacket? You cannot come in without it." They lent us blazers, we walked thirty feet to the table, and the host immediately helped us take them off and fold them over the chair. The point was simply that there is a certain dress required for that place. In the same way, when the people of God gather before God, there is an adorning that is proper — an adorning with good works.

A Woman Learning — and Submitting

Verse 11: "Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection." Notice first that Paul says, "Let a woman learn." This is intriguing, because the Babylonian Talmud — developed when the Jewish people began gathering in synagogues some 2,500 years ago — taught that a woman could come to hear the law but could not learn it. Paul speaks of an equality not normal to that tradition.

Point number four: godly women are learners of God's Word and ways with men in the Church of God. That's a good thing, and most of you women here do exactly that.

He continues, "in silence with all subjection." One of the good works that adorns the women of God is willing submission to God's created order. God has ordered how the home is governed and how the church — the pillar and ground of truth — is governed. We can acknowledge that this created order is difficult; our fallen nature, by definition, lives contrary to God's order. So we are fighting against our nature and against a culture that is itself fighting against God.

How do we wrestle with this? By believing that God is good, that His Word is therefore good and for our good. Can you accept that the worldly philosophy you've been pressed into since birth actually leads to more bondage and death than the philosophy of the One who came that you would have life more abundantly? Look at where the cultural philosophy leads — read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Left to itself, throwing off all restraint, it descends into chaos.

Submission as a Beautifying Work

Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 3:

Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they... may be won by the conduct of their wives... Do not let your adornment be merely outward — arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel — rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves.

This submission, Scripture says, is a beautifying characteristic for a godly woman.

Teaching, Authority, and the Office of Elder

Then it gets harder: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." If there was ever a fight in the church, this is it. The most-frequented Christian website, GotQuestions.org, reports that over the last five years its number one question of the top twenty concerns women and ministry.

I believe — and we'll see more as we get into chapter 3, which goes in context with this passage — that "teaching" and "having authority" go together. Therefore there is one office in the church reserved for men: the office of the overseeing elder, those who teach and have authority together. Paul is not saying women never teach, nor even that they never teach over men, but that they do not occupy that office.

This is why our position at Cross Connection is, has been, and will continue to be a complementarian one: all ministry is open to all believers except the office of the overseeing elder, because we are following the created order God has given.

Point number five: godly women yield to God's ordained order as an act of worship and good works. Ephesians 5:22 says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." Submission in the home and church is worship offered to the Lord — and worship is given willingly, never forced.

An Appeal to Creation, Not Culture

Notice that Paul does not appeal to culture. Verse 13: "For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." He appeals to creation — exactly as Jesus did when teaching on marriage, and as Peter does. God the Creator has set up a creative order. My fallen nature may fight against it, but if I believe God is good and writing for my good, I can step out in faith and say, "I'll trust You, God, and do this as unto You."

The Hardest Verse

Then comes verse 15, considered by many the hardest verse in the whole Bible: "Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control." Gather the top twenty-five commentaries and you'll likely get fifty opinions. We cannot be dogmatic, but I'll give you the two most common interpretations.

First, this points back to Genesis 3:15, the very first prophecy of the coming Savior, who would come from the seed of the woman. The salvation God desires is impossible without childbearing — the Savior, Jesus, would come through the line of a woman.

Second, while women are not called in God's order to be overseeing pastors and teachers over a church, this desire is in some way satisfied — "saved" — in the area of motherhood and childbearing. Here it's vital to note a sad reality: in 21st-century progressive Western culture, motherhood has been diminished and treated as a detriment to a woman's potential. But the Bible says children are a heritage from the Lord and motherhood is an honorable, high, awesome calling. Many Bible teachers believe that in motherhood there is a satisfying of this gifting for leading and overseeing that women are especially equipped for. I see it in my wife — she's especially gifted to be a mom. I would be a terrible Mr. Mom; the kids would starve and the house would fall apart.

One Office, One Calling — Both Honored

So in God's created order there is one place set aside for male leadership — the office of overseeing, teaching pastors — and there is one area in all of creation set aside for women alone, which no man will ever be able to do: childbearing. Both are honored positions, and both should be lifted up.

And here's a small comfort: because you're not called to the overseeing pastoring office, you don't have to receive the emails about this message. Is this a challenging passage? Yes. But God has called and gifted all of us to serve within the body. There's just one area He has reserved in His created order for male leadership; everything else is open for women to serve in every capacity God has gifted and called for. Yes, our culture has a problem with this, but it is ultimately an issue of worship. As learners of the Word and ways of God, may we take the step of faith and say, "God, we trust You, though we may not perfectly understand all things; we seek to follow You by faith."

Closing Prayer

God, we read in Hebrews that Your Word is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It cuts deep and it's challenging, and this inspired Scripture was given for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man or woman of God would be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Lord, sometimes when we are challenged, rebuked, or corrected it's hard, but I pray that You would help us approach Your Word — this passage and every other — with the mindset that You have written it for our good, that we would know You and Your ways and live in a way that honors You and is most satisfying for us. Give us humility in approaching Your Word, and teach us by Your Spirit so that we would know You more fully and know how to walk with You as You have ordained. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.