There is great significance to the theme of a new man drawn out in the New Testament. The bringing together of the Jew and Gentile under one body is a proclamation that the Church is Israel. In Romans 11, Paul masterfully demonstrates how the gentiles are grafted into the covenant promises contrary to nature. In line with this theme, Paul teaches that distinctions between Jew and Gentile, ethnicity and social standing are subsumed by the new man’s identity in Christ (Col 3:11). This doesn’t indicate that these distinctions are wiped out in the present age but that they are not categories of eternal significance and we shouldn’t be consumed by them, even while accepting their existence for a time (Eph 6:1-9, 1 Pet 2:18).
It is important to also be cautious as we draw out this theme. Some have used it, particularly Paul’s treatment of it in Gal 3:28 to teach a form of egalitarian anarchism. The Bible does not call for revolution against existing social structure, even encouraging the Christian to submit to them (1 Pet 2:13-18, 3:1-7). The Christian submits to every earthly institution (insofar as it doesn’t cause them to sin) no matter how warped each of these institutions have become in a fallen world. He recognizes that his ultimate identity is in Christ and he is part of the new humanity that is being renewed in His image and will inherit the world to come. That said within the context of God’s covenant nation, those previous distinctions ought not to rear their ugly head. In the Church, he who is a slave is the Lord’s freeman and the freeman is the Lord’s slave (1 Cor 7:22). Christians ought not to discriminate between each other with regards to their social standing, ethnicity or culture (Col 3:11). While we are not hoping to change the world, it is expected that God’s holy nation will not be in the pattern of the world around but a radically different body. A body where each person considers the interests of others above their own and looks at themselves in humility and lowliness (Phil 2:3-4, Rom 12:3). This means within the body of Christ there is no place for a prideful aristocracy or a favouritism for those who do well by the standards of this world. In fact that is outright condemned (Jam 2:1-7).
This again goes back to our understanding of what the kingdom really is. Since the territory of the kingdom is the Church of God, it is within the church that the realm of the Holy Spirit and God’s Divine presence operates. Therefore, within the Church, the curse of Babel cannot exist and the wicked forms of hierarchy that have developed in the cursed world cannot exist. Neither nations nor hierarchies within humanity are revealed to us as being part of God’s plan for humanity and these have all developed through human pride, greed and arrogance. Everyone who is part of the new humanity in Christ inherits kingship and priesthood through Him.
That said we do see that God by nature created man and woman to be distinct. According to Paul, man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man (1 Cor 11:7-9). He uses this to explain why women ought to cover their heads. Using similar reasoning, Paul explains that it is a shame for women to speak in the church (1 Cor 14:35) and they keep silence in the churches (1 Cor 14:34). Likewise, according to Paul there is an order in creation that shows male priority in that Adam was first formed, then Eve (1 Tim 2:13). While this might sound very archaic in our modern world where most of us have imbibed feminism and individualism in various forms, it was a natural reality to the apostle that men and women are intrinsically different. Man’s purpose is independent, in that He is to directly serve the Creator in the purpose he was created for while the purpose of the woman was to be a helpmeet in her man’s calling or purpose. The woman doesn’t exist to fulfil her own purpose but to be a helpmeet to man or as Paul puts it, woman was created for man (1 Cor 11:9). This is a fundamental and natural reality that pervades the created order and has nothing to do with the Fall or the curse.
God didn’t create humanity to exist as individuals with individualistic purposes and doesn’t view them that way. Rather, God views humanity in the base unit of the family, with a man who directly serves God and a woman who helps her husband in that service. To Paul, humanity is composed of various families and therefore the church itself is composed of families rather than individuals. These families are composed of individuals that share various bonds – husband-wife, parent-child, etc. Therefore, these relations between the sexes and the hierarchy of the family (parent-child) follows into the Church. In our individualistic and feministic milieu, a woman is simply another individual next to a man and therefore we struggle to accept any differences in how these ought to be treated within the body.
However, this is not how the apostles understood the kingdom of God. Paul draws the application that women ought to be silent in the gathering of the Church (1 Cor 14:34). Not only this, he commands that if they desire to know anything specific they ought to ask their husbands at home (1 Cor 14:35). In other words, the Church does not override the natural family that God established and the woman ought not to bypass her husband and directly approach the Church or its elders. Likewise, the Church cannot approach the wife as an individual and bypass her husband’s authority. Again, this might seem very archaic but it’s simply how the apostles understood God’s created order. These aren’t spheres that God has erased since they were part of the order He called very good.
Understanding this sphere of the household is critical to understanding the Church because as we have considered, this is the basic unit of society and the church according to the Bible. Within the household, a woman can speak, pray loudly, teach her own children and even teach other men in certain rare circumstances under her husband’s authority and presence (Act 18:26), something that would be a violation of God’s requirement outside the sphere of the household (1 Tim 2:12).
This also has implications for how we are sanctified and how we serve God. Piety is not gender neutral. Rather, piety for each gender can be quite distinct. For example, men are commanded to pray in the gathering of the church and to exercise control over wrath (1 Tim 2:8) while women are commanded to dress modestly and not adorn themselves (1 Tim 2:9). Fathers are warned against provoking their children to anger (Eph 6:4). Men are to be considerate and gentle with their wives (1 Pet 3:7). Women are to be in subjection to their husbands, chaste, honouring, modest, without outward adornments and possess a meek and quiet spirit (1 Pet 3:1-6).
In fact the very means by which the genders are sanctified is rather different. Men are sanctified by participation in public worship (1 Tim 2:8), having a stable and steady mind (Tit 2:6), sound speech that is beyond reproach, showing a pattern of good works and having a sense of gravity, soundness and incorruptibility in matters of doctrine (Tit 2:7-8). Note that each of these traits are essential for being a good priest-king, which would have been the inheritance of the sons of Adam and now is the inheritance of those who are in Christ.
Women are primarily sanctified through childbearing (1 Tim 2:15), i.e. through serving the household and raising her children in the Lord. This was the gift given to Timothy by his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice (2 Tim 1:5). Paul therefore encourages young women to marry and have children (1 Tim 5:14), knowing that the alternative is often a lifestyle of idleness, gossip and sexual immorality (1 Tim 5:13,15). It is basically assumed that young women will have husbands and children to love (Tit 2:4). Moreover, Paul commands these young women to be keepers of the home, or in modern terminology – housewives. According to Paul, refusing to keep this role causes the Word of God to be blasphemed (Tit 2:5), a serious judgement indeed. How often are these commandments disregarded in our age? The Church in its quest for respectability in the world has all but explained away and relegated these plain and simple Biblical instructions. How many Christian women sadly waste their lives in seeking to be sanctified as if they were men – by encouraging them to participate in ministries outside the household, many Christian women are withheld from the true means of sanctification God ordained for them within the household.
Some would use this to bring other kinds of distinctions within the body of Christ – like distinctions between ethnicities, cultures, rank, class, etc. However, that is a foolish endeavour. The distinctions between the sexes are natural and established by God in a pure created order. The other distinctions that we are are distinctions that have invaded the created order as part of a curse. This gives us a picture of what God’s holy nation looks like. We live in the realm of God where the curse has no effect and therefore earthly distinctions that were introduced after the curse ought not to have any bearing on the body. At the same time, we desire to keep those distinctions that God introduced and revealed as intrinsic to the created order He called very good – which includes the relationship between the sexes and the authority of parents over their children. Likewise, when it comes to the world outside the holy realm, we don’t seek to overthrow or change the system. Rather, we live faithfully and accept that the world outside the holy realm operates under the curse and is consigned for destruction.
Similarly, while the Bible does recognize that the present world has institutions that God did not institute and exist as part of the curse and a corruption of the present order (slavery as an example), it doesn’t seek to overthrow the system. Slaves are called to be obedient to their masters without grumbling (Tit 2:9-10). That said this isn’t a sanctioning of the system or any form of manmade hierarchy by any means. Masters are warned against threatening their slaves, knowing that with God there is no respect of persons (Eph 6:9). Similarly Paul exhorts Philemon to accept Onesimus as a brother rather than a slave (Phil 1:16), implying the hope that Philemon would indeed release him from bondage. Similarly, Paul permits slaves to seek their freedom if they are able but to not be consumed by the cares of it if they aren’t able (1 Cor 7:21). The undergirding principle of this in Tit 2:9-14 and 1 Cor 7:31. There is no reason for the Christian to overthrow these things because the Christian does not live for this present world but rather awaits the appearance of Christ, knowing that the present world is passing away.
Deo Vicit Mundum 