Context Matters.

“Every person must submit to and support the authorities over him. For there can be no authority in the universe except by God’s appointment, which means that every authority that exists has been instituted by God,” Romans 13:1.

We live in a world were people want to question everything. Our verse today tells us that when it comes to authority, our role is not to question but to submit to and support the authorities over us. Last week we were talking about women preaching and teaching and sharing the gospel and having authority over men when they operate in those roles. This week I thought we’d look at 1Timothy 2:12 in context. Every scripture is given for our edification, 2 Timothy 3:16- 17, but so we can actually be edified and not allow the enemy to confine us into a way of think that is in contrast to God’s heart, we must look at scripture as a whole.

Almost every person who says women should not preach or teach or have authority over men uses Ephesians 5:22-24 which says, “For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”

Firstly, that verse does not say women submit to men, yet we take it that way and it has been used in that context to the oppression of God’s daughters. If a man is not my husband, then I am not required to submit to him. However, if said man is in authority then Romans 13:1 says I, as well as everyone else- male or female, should submit to him.

Submitting to men in Ephesians 5 is in the context of marriage, not church leadership. So then how do we explain 1 Timothy 2 and women not exercising authority over men? I think the keyword here is context. What was the context in which 1 Timothy 2 was spoken?

My understanding is that the New Testament books of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy are letters which were written to Timothy, the Apostle Paul’s son in the faith. It is said that Timothy’s father was Greek, and his mother was Jewish. Timothy was first taught about faith from his mother and grandmother, 2 Timothy 1:5-8.

We know that Timothy was ministering in a place called Ephesus from 1 Timothy 1:3. In Ephesus, there was a mix of people newly converts, gentiles, Jews and some who had been involved in idol worship. As part of the idol worship at the time, there was a Temple of Diana or Artemus or Artemesium located in Ephesus. As part of the worship of this idol, only women could be priests and minister in that church and men were subservient.

So when the Ephesians would get saved, they would adopt the same customs from the Temple of Diana and try bring them into the synagogue. These women would assume it was their right to serve in leadership positions in the church because that’s how things worked in the Temple of Diana. So Paul says, in 1 Timothy 2:12 TPT, “I don’t advocate that the newly converted women be the teachers in the church, assuming authority over the men, but to live in peace.”

Phew! That clears up a few things! Paul was speaking to a specific audience and he was addressing a particular problem in that city and with those people. Does this principle of not allowing newly converted people be leaders in the church only apply to women? No. 1 Timothy 3:6 tells us that an elder or leader in the church, “should not be a new disciple who would be vulnerable to living in the clouds of conceit and fall into pride, making him easy prey for Satan.”

It’s God’s protection to say hey, if you are new to this thing, sit under someone first. Be a disciple, learn and grow and then if you are called to it, you step into leadership. 1 Timothy 2:12 was not a cover all, women sit down and say nothing principle. It has to be taken in context and applied in context.

I’ll leave you with this, Galatians 3:25-29, “But now that faith has come we are no longer under the guardian of the law. You have all become true children of God by faith in Jesus Christ! Faith immersed you into Christ, and now you are covered and clothed with his life. And we no longer see each other in our former state —Jew or non-Jew, rich or poor, male or female—because we’re all one through our union with Jesus Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you are now Abraham’s “child” and a true heir of all his blessings because of the promise God made to Abraham!”

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.