What did women think of Jesus?
By / Sep 12

My personal study of the Scriptures has been enriched by wondering, “What was that really like?” This question feels particularly relevant to the stories of those who came face-to-face with the God-man, Jesus Christ, and lived to tell about it in the Gospels. Author Rebecca McLaughlin gives full treatment to this sort of curiosity in her book Jesus Through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord (The Gospel Coalition, 2022). 

Before we get into her masterful debunking of certain myths and stereotypes, let me deflate one on the author’s behalf: though women are in the title, this book is not just for women, and it is not even really about women. This is a book about the person of Christ, and it is for all those who want to know and follow him more. The fresh perspective it offers us is an aide to that lifelong endeavor. 

The book is also for those who are questioning—or even deeply skeptical—about Jesus and about the Bible that tells of his improbable life, death, and resurrection. McLaughlin has spent plenty of time considering the cynic’s vantage point, with books that include Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion in 2020 and The Secular Creed: Engaging 5 Contemporary Claims in 2021. She effortlessly brings them along in this project as well.

Birthed out of McLaughlin’s own inquisitiveness, Jesus Through the Eyes of Women was written at “breakneck speed” in late 2021, said Ivan Mesa, TGC’s editorial director. It reads easily, too, as if penned in nearly one sitting. Though there is plenty to underline in a print edition, the author’s British accent makes the just over 4-hour audiobook a delightful option as well.

A winsome apologist with a Ph.D. in renaissance literature and a degree in theology, McLaughlin brings an academic’s understanding of history, context, and biblical commentary to bear on the core question of this book: How did the women named in the Bible describe their interactions with a Christ who was as countercultural then as he is today? And what would we have missed had these women not told others, ‘I have seen the Lord’? (John 20:18)

“To look at Jesus through the eyes of women may seem at first like an innately modern project,” McLaughlin admits in the book’s conclusion. But “what we see through their eyes is not an alternative Jesus, but rather the authentic Jesus, who welcomes both men and women as his disciples, and who is best seen from below.”

Though she leads into the subject with mention of the Gnostic Gospel of Mary (a text from the early church period rejected as heretical), acknowledging why it would resonate with some who view the Bible as dismissive of women—don’t worry. McLaughlin’s thesis is that the first-century Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John already reflect the eyewitness testimony of women who met Jesus and that “the Jesus we see through their eyes is more beautiful, more historically accurate, and more valuing of women than anything the Gospel of Mary can offer.”  

McLaughlin’s even-handed approach would make the book a viable suggestion even for a secular book club, and questions written by TGC’s Joanna Kimbrel at the end of each chapter make such discussions even easier. Have a few academics or self-declared feminists in the group? All the better. These are the types of readers McLaughlin seems eager to bring along, graciously refuting some of the false claims they may have heard about Christianity—that it is, at best, dismissive of the female experience and, at worst, harmful to women—while introducing them to the one who “valued women of all kinds—especially those vilified by others.”

But those who would avoid the book for fear it is tainted by feminist underpinnings would do well to pick it up, too. McLaughlin is faithful to the biblical text and to history while being keenly aware of our current cultural moment. Rather, this book lands in the good company of Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly and Paul E. Miller’s J-Curve through its meditation on Christ’s momentum toward the lowly and its call that we respond.

After building inroads for a variety of readers, McLaughlin gets into the nitty-gritty details of how women’s accounts added to the picture we see the Gospels paint of Jesus. Which stories in these books were likely included only because women witnessed and relayed them? It turns out, plenty. “If we cut the things that only women witnessed, we’d lose our first glimpse of Jesus as he took on human flesh and our first glimpse of his resurrected body,” McLaughlin writes. “The four Gospels preserve the eyewitness testimony of women.” 

The book delves into what these women witnessed by dividing the stories into six broad categories, from discipleship and nourishment, to healing and forgiveness. 

Zooming in 

Asking what Jesus looked like through their eyes helps us relate in fresh ways to familiar female characters like his mother, Mary. Just as the prophecy that new life is being birthed inside her seems unfathomable when it first arrives, the Christian can also wonder just how the promised newness of life in Christ is really at work in him or her. “Through Mary’s eyes, we see the life-upending blessing of receiving Jesus,” McLaughlin summarizes.

The book introduces us to lesser-known women of the Bible, too, like Joanna, the wife of Herod’s household manager and a likely source of inside information from the halls of power (Luke 9:1-3; 9:9). In his Gospel account, Luke would have named Joanna and other women who were with Jesus “in order to flag them as eyewitness sources” for some of the stories he includes, McLaughlin writes. McLaughlin also revisits biblical women we think we know, from Mary Magdalene to Lazarus’ sisters. 

Perhaps my favorite of these is the author’s take on the well-known story of Mary and Martha. When Jesus tells Martha, who is “distracted with much serving,” that her sister Mary “has chosen the good portion” by sitting at his feet, McLaughlin doesn’t see it as an indictment of the domestic anxieties that can plague women (how often have you heard a woman confess to “being a Martha”?). Rather, his words are a “validation of female discipleship,” of Mary’s and Martha’s access to Jesus as thinkers and students, not just servers. 

Through the eyes of these sisters, “we see [Jesus] as the one who welcomes women and defends their right to learn from him. We also see him as the one who gives us so much more than we could ever give to him.” 

It’s paradigm-shifting, then, to consider that this Martha is the one to whom Jesus later speaks some of his “most world-transforming” words: “I am the resurrection and the life.” McLaughlin points out that almost all of Jesus’ ‘I am’ statements are spoken to groups, but the two that are spoken to individuals are spoken to women. 

Besides John, women are largely the consistent witnesses of Jesus’ excruciating death, burial, and resurrection as well. In a chapter on life, McLaughlin focuses on these women’s accounts to winsomely argue for, not against, biblical soundness at several points, anticipating opposing views. She even quotes a resurrection skeptic and politely refutes his claims. 

She reminds us that, in that culture, the only reason to say that women witnessed all this is that they really did. 

Bringing Christ into focus

In her chapters on healing and forgiveness, McLaughlin acknowledges the messier stories, too. Jesus’ interaction with the bleeding woman, in particular, “shows he doesn’t shy away from femaleness.” This is often in sharp contrast to the responses of those around him. When this woman reaches for his cloak, “Jesus does not recoil.”

As he is with these women, he is also with us. “Jesus is no more put off by our inevitable uncleanness than a mother who has just given birth would be put off from holding her blood-smeared newborn. Before long, Jesus would bleed for this woman.”

Her chapter on the theme of forgiveness brings into focus Jesus’ infamous interactions with women of ill repute. These stories show a Jesus who “welcomed prostitutes: not like the other men of his day, and of ours, but like a loving brother, searching for his sister in the slums to bring her home.” Why does he welcome them? Not because of permissiveness, McLaughlin writes, but because of their repentance. 

Through the eyes of the sinful woman who crashes Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party (Luke 7:36-49), at last we see Jesus as “the one who defends” the woman wetting his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. Rather than tearing this woman down along with his host, Jesus lifts her up “as a shining, tear-stained paragon of love to humble the self-righteous Pharisee.”

All this goes to show that those who throw themselves at Christ’s feet are the ones who will enter his kingdom. In this way, Jesus Through the Eyes of Women bridges the growing gap between how cultures—both the New Testament’s and our own—treat women who equally bear God’s image, and how the Jesus of the Bible did. We would do well to ingest, imitate, and marvel at the latter.

What is a woman? 
By / Jun 6

Editor’s Note: Among many of the most pressing ethical issues of our day is deep confusion over what it means to be human. From questions over abortion and racism to technology and sexuality, human anthropology lies at the heart of contemporary cultural debate. In light of the ongoing sexual crisis seen throughout our society, certain realities that once seemed common sense to most are being challenged in what is a failed quest to define our own existence and live independent of God’s created order.

As part of the ongoing research efforts at the ERLC, the following article, as well as the corresponding piece, “What is a man?”, offer a detailed look at these central questions in light of theological anthropology and philosophy. Each article is followed by a response from the corresponding scholar in hopes to further robust dialogue on these important questions of “what is a man” and “what is a woman” rooted in truths that cut to the heart of the important ethical questions being posed today.

—

As many a man has discovered, most women don’t like being called “emotional.” The term is at once a dismissal and a putdown, an implication that she is melodramatic, irrational, or even unhinged. Ironically, men are equally as emotional as women; they just express their emotions differently. Despite cultural stereotypes, the presence or intensity of feeling does not exclusively belong to women. Nor does the presence or intensity of a feeling exclusively define women. A woman’s emotions are not the sum of her identity. She is more than her feelings. 

Every person is more than his or her feelings. Personal identity is not determined or proven by our emotions or perceptions. Yet, when we attempt to determine or prove gender identity, that is precisely the measure our culture employs. To be woman, today, is a feeling. 

And this feeling is an irrefutable proof, whether it corresponds to one’s biology, and whether it changes throughout one’s lifetime (or even one’s day).1Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018), 203. Apart from one’s feeling, the medical community has no physiological, legal, medical, or physical criteria to verify a person’s gender identity.2Pearcey, Love Thy Body, 197. It is a self-reported, self-verified, and self-sustained identity. As Ryan T. Anderson describes in his work, When Harry Became Sally, the belief that a biological male can be “a woman stuck in a man’s body” presupposes that he knows what’s it’s like to be a woman, despite his male body, male brain, male reproductive capacities, and male DNA.3Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement (New York: Encounter Books, 2018),104. Even more, it also presupposes that he can separate his biological body from his gender identity. 

In other words, the physical self becomes irrelevant to determine a person’s true self. For someone with gender dysphoria, one’s sense of gender is misaligned with one’s biology. The body is a hindrance to authentic self-expression. The condition causes intense psychological distress, often causing gender dysphoric persons to seek relief through social, hormonal, and surgical changes. These changes can be anything as transient as clothing and hairstyles, or as irreparable as cross-sex hormones and organ-removing procedures. 

Recent data suggests gender confusion is affecting young women and girls at alarming and precipitous rates. Girls who identify as transgender have increased from 1/2,000 in 2008 to 1/20 in 2022.4“The Controversy Over Trans Teens,” The Week, October 24, 2021; accessed May 16, 2022; available from https://theweek.com/life/1006253/the-controversy-over-trans-teens. Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, Abigail Shrier notes the phenomenon of gender dysphoria among teenage girls runs deeper than sudden identity confusion: “For these girls, trans identification offers freedom from anxiety’s relentless pursuit; it satisfies the deepest need for acceptance, the thrill of transgression, the seductive lilt of belonging.”5Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Washington D.C.: Regenery Publishing, 2020),xxx. 

An entire generation of women and girls is searching for an answer to the question: What is a woman? And in a secularized, hyper-individualistic culture like ours that elevates sexual and gender identity as our true selves, they have little more than feelings to guide them.6Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 74. For a more detailed and academic treatment of Trueman’s research, see The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020). As gender dysphoria spreads at alarming and precipitous rates, some suggest that Christian compassion would compel us to support someone’s gender transition, even if as a temporary measure to give therapeutic relief. 

The Bible and the body

In For the Body, Timothy Tennent claims the body is not just a biological category; it is also a theological category, one that reveals its Creator. “[T]he body makes the invisible mysteries of God’s nature and redemption manifest and visible as a tangible marker in the world.”7Timothy C. Tennent, For the Body (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2020), 14. Like all of God’s creation, the human body reflects design and purpose; every part has a function, every cell is complex. 

Scripture portrays the body as good and essential to our identity (Gen. 1:26-29). If it were not both good and essential, the Lord would not have assumed a physical body (Heb. 2:13), nor would he have resurrected bodily (1 Cor. 15:3; Rev. 22:20), nor would he fulfill the redemption of his saints with a new, physical body (John 6:40; 1 Cor. 15:52; Rom. 8:23).8Tennent, For the Body, 25. “Our created bodies all point to Christ’s incarnation, and in turn, his resurrected body points to our physical, bodily (not just spiritual) resurrection at the end of time….If our bodies are untrustworthy and only serve to mask the true self that is within, then the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth cannot be trusted as a reliable means for God’s most profound self-disclosure in history.” Our bodies are not accidental or incidental to our identity as those who are created in God’s image.  

How does our biological sex relate to our gender identity? The Creation narrative gives us a clue. Genesis 1-2 tells, then re-tells, how God created humanity. Chapter 1 describes humanity in relationship to the rest of God’s creation. God made mankind—the culmination of his creative work—in his image (Gen. 1:26-29). It describes the first human beings as a male (zakar) and female (nequeba).9Tennent, For the Body, 19. Tennent also notes the entire Creation narrative is a series of binaries. “The entire creation account is set up around divinely instituted binaries. The dominant pairs or binaries in the account are ‘light and darkness’ (or ‘day and night’), ‘earth and sky,’ ‘water and land,’ ‘sun and moon,’ and ‘male and female.’” (19). This refers to the sexual difference between male and female. It also demonstrates that biological sex is binary.10This claim also considers the reality of intersex persons. Intersex refers to a biological state in which a person possesses both male and female reproductive organs at birth. The condition is the result of a chromosomal irregularity in utero. Estimations of the intersex population vary; one source claims it is as high as 1.7%, but a later study found a more precise definition of intersex conditions to be much lower. See Preston Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (David C. Cook, 2021), 117-120. As with all persons born with genetic irregularities, intersex persons deserve compassion and care. However, it is in error to conclude that congenital reproductive abnormalities disprove that sex is binary. See Deborah Soh, “Myth #1: Biological Sex is a Spectrum,” in The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society (New York: Threshold Editions, 2020). Chapter 2 describes humanity in relationship to each other, what today we would call gender identity. Instead of finding male (zakar) and female (nequeba), we find man (ish) and woman (ishah).11“Researchers identify 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and woman,” Weizmann Institute of Science, March 5, 2017, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170504104342.htm. The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel reported over 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women, many of which are entirely separate from sexual reproduction such as the skin and the left ventricle of the heart. The male and the female relate to one another as a man and a woman, respectively. 

Here we find God’s original intent for sex and gender. In both Genesis 1 and 2, the sets of terms correspond. If a human being is a male (zakar), then God created him a man (ish). If a human being is a female (nequeba), then God created her as woman (ishah). Our biological sex indicates and informs gender identity.

Prenatal development confirms this. The male and female are comprehensive and complex. At the cellular level, there are only two biological types of reproductive cells: male and female.“12Biological sex is either male or female. Contrary to what is commonly believed, sex is defined not by chromosomes or our genitals or hormonal profiles, but by gametes, which are mature reproductive cells. There are only two types of gametes: small ones called sperm that are produced by males, and large ones called eggs that are produced by females. There are no intermediate types of gametes between egg and sperm cells. Sex is therefore binary. It is not a spectrum.” (Soh, 16-17) The first evidence of sex differentiation occurs in utero, during the eighth week of gestation. At eight weeks, a male baby experiences a flood of testosterone, which shapes his brain development.13Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 15. The absence of testosterone for a female baby shapes her brain development as well. The centers of her brain that control communication, observation, and processing of emotion are larger. Female infants are born hardwired for emotional connection. 

In a female baby’s first three months, she will increase in eye contact and “mutual facial gazing” by 400%.14Brizendine, The Female Brain, 37-38. As her brain develops,15Debra Soh, The End of Gender, Chapter 2 “Myth #2: Gender is a Social Construct.” Soh debunks research that undermines assertions of male/female brain differences (41). she will process facial features more quickly and have greater sensitivity to social experiences involving faces and emotions.”16Stephen A. Furlich, Sex Talk: How Biological Sex Influences Gender Communication Differences Throughout Life’s Stages (Chatham, NJ: Bowker, 2021), Kindle Location: 811. Her brain also has larger limbic systems, affecting language, relationships, and memory,17Furlich, Sex Talk, Kindle Location: 784. as well as bonding, nesting, and one’s connection to one’s emotions.18Richard Lippa, Gender, Nature, and Nurture, 2nd ed. (Mahway, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005), 100-102, cites many of these studies; Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (London: Penguin Books, 2003), devotes an entire book to the thesis: “The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male-brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems” (5). The corpus callosum is also larger in the female brain, which facilitates transfer of information between the left and right hemispheres. The two areas of the frontal and temporal lobes that are associated with language are significantly larger in women than in men. All of this occurs before she can be imprinted by gendered social norms.19Sex differences in brain anatomy,” National institute of Health July 28, 2020, accessed May 24, 2022; available from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sex-differences-brain-anatomy. “On average, males and females showed greater volume in different areas of the cortex, the outer brain layer that controls thinking and voluntary movements. Females had greater volume in the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, lateral parietal cortex, and insula. Males, on average, had greater volume in the ventral temporal and occipital regions. Each of these regions is responsible for processing different types of information.”

The brain and the body

These neurobiological differences guide gender behavior. Baby girls prefer to look at faces (i.e., people), while baby boys prefer to look at mechanical mobiles (i.e., motion). As young as 9 months old, boys and girls will gravitate toward gender-typical toys (girls to dolls and boys to cars, for example). As Dr. Debra Soh notes, this age is before children are old enough to recognize gender as a concept, which usually occurs between 18 and 24 months.20Soh, The End of Gender, 255 

Expressions of gender differences will vary from culture to culture; what is considered masculine or feminine in a given society or era will be different from another. But, whether a child gravitates toward, and identifies with, traits that are masculine or feminine within his or her own culture is “driven by biology.”21Soh, The End of Gender, 43. The biological differences in the brain lead to differences in behavior.22Soh, The End of Gender, 41. “Social markers for gender may change as decades go by, but this doesn’t mean children are socialized into having a gender….This doesn’t disprove that gender is biological, only that the expression of gender changes depending on what is considered male- and female-typical.” (Soh, 255) This doesn’t negate individuality or people whose interests aren’t gender-typical. And it doesn’t mean women have to conform to culturally contrived stereotypes.23Sprinkle, Embodied, 152. “Men aren’t commanded to be masculine, and women aren’t commanded to be feminine. They’re both just commanded to be godly.” Nancy Pearcey summarizes this well: “We must take care not to add to Scripture by baptizing gender expectations that are in reality historically contingent and arbitrary. . . . The church should be the first place where young people can find freedom from unbiblical stereotypes – the freedom to work out what it means to be created in God’s image as wholistic and redeemed people.”24Pearcey, Love Thy Body 218. These patterns do show, however, that God’s created our physical selves and our relational selves to be a unified whole.25Walker, God and the Transgender Debate, 54, cf. 50-51. Andrew Walker elaborates: “Maleness isn’t only anatomy but anatomy shows that there is maleness. And femaleness isn’t only anatomy, but anatomy shows that there is femaleness. Men and women are more than just their anatomy, but they are not less. Our anatomy tells us what gender we are.” So, we can plainly state:

A woman is a biologically female human being

But, what if the physical body and the inner sense of gender don’t align? Which one determines who we are? Preston Sprinkle gives guidance in his book, Embodied, when he says our biological sex “determines who we are . . . and our embodiment is an essential part of how we image God in the world.”26Sprinkle, Embodied, 152.  Our created, embodied selves tell us who we are. Who we are is not determined on how we feel. The pain of gender dysphoria is real. Longing for inner wholeness is real. But the promise of peace27Littman conducted a study to explain the phenomena of an increasing and sudden prevalence of gender dysphoria among adolescents, teenagers who had previously expressed no gender dysphoric symptoms. The condition, known as “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” (ROGD) revealed an unexpected – and culturally unwelcome – pattern. Littman found the influence of an adolescent’s relationships directly affected her gender identity. Among adolescents with ROGD, 87% had friends who announced themselves as gender dysphoric, had saturated themselves with material on niche websites discussing gender dysphoria, or both. In other words, a condition believed to find its source and validation in one’s intrinsic sense of self has extrinsic factors. Lisa Littman, “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria,” PLOS ONE Vol 13, No. 8; August 16, 2018, accessed September 1, 2020; available from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330; internet. through hormone treatments and surgical procedures is an illusion.28Jennifer Smith, “Lesley Stahl Defends CBS 60 Minutes Episode About Transgender People Rushing into Treatment Then Regretting It: Young Man Was Castrated After Taking Female Hormones For Just THREE MONTHS,” DailyMail.com, May 26, 2021; accessed May 16, 2022; available from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9621959/Lesley-Stahl-defends-CBS-60-Minutes-episode-transgender-teens-rushed-it.html. Because the purpose for our sex and gender—the purpose for which we were made—will never be discovered from knowing ourselves, but in knowing the God who made us for himself.29This statement is not intended to dismiss the real and complex challenges of gender dysphoric persons. It is rather to offer hope that being reconciled to Christ is the way to inner peace.

A response to “What is a woman?” from Gregg R. Allison

At the outset, I express my thanks to Katie for tackling this important topic with me. I expect that she will agree that writing this essay was one of the more difficult tasks I have/she has ever undertaken! 

Among the many areas that I appreciate about Katie’s essay, I concentrate on four. First, she appropriately challenges the contemporary move that splits sex from gender. As she highlights, this shift overlooks or dismisses biological facts and elevates personal feelings or imagination, possibly leading to the claim that an XY individual is a woman or an XX individual is a man. Katie has assessed the current situation well: gender “is a self-reported, self-verified, and self-sustained identity,” and it carries the day. 

Second, from her vantage point of being a woman, Katie rightly defies a transgender woman’s assertion that he knows what it means to be a woman. I concur. No man can possibly know what it is to be a woman because he cannot experience typical female lived experiences such as estrogen-onset puberty, menstruation, the miracle of pregnancy, the bonding between mother and nursing child, pervasive domination by men, mistreatment and being demeaned by men, the fellowship of sisterhood, and more. 

Third, Katie compassionately laments the nightmarish experience of gender incongruence, which is increasing at an alarming rate. As she underscores, “the pain of gender dysphoria is real,” and her intent in discussing it is not “to dismiss the real and complex challenges of gender dysphoric persons.” 

Fourth, Katie strongly affirms the goodness of human embodiment and its essential role in human identity. This is a much-needed corrective to the Gnostic and neo-Gnostic deviations that are rearing their ugly heads in some contemporary societies. I wonder if she would affirm, as I do, “I am my body.”

This leads to my next section.  

Of the many questions I have, I offer two broad areas for further exploration. First, I would like to see more discussion of Katie’s point—interacting with Debra Soh—that masculine and feminine traits within different cultures are “driven by biology.”30Soh, The End of Gender, 41. How does this affirmation escape the error of biological essentialism or determinism? On the “nature vs. nurture” spectrum, Katie leans toward the “nature” side, as she explains that “biological differences in the brain lead to differences in behavior.” From my perspective, the “nurture” side often gets minimized in these discussions, and I would like to hear more from her on this point. 

Second, I would appreciate Katie expanding on her minimal definition—“a woman is a biologically female human being”—and address how a woman expresses her female biology beyond, for example, facial gazing, language, memory, and transfer of information from right and left brain hemispheres. I would like to hear her discuss how a woman expresses emotions, bonding, nesting, and relationships, specifically, (1) how cultural/contextual factors incise themselves into this biological substratum, thereby affecting its expression, and (2) how these female expressions (for example, of bonding) are not completely unique to a woman yet differ from those of a man. This topic is fascinating, difficult, and often frustrating, and I’d enjoy hearing more of her thoughts.  

Read “What is a man?” by Gregg R. Allison

  • 1
    Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018), 203.
  • 2
    Pearcey, Love Thy Body, 197.
  • 3
    Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement (New York: Encounter Books, 2018),104.
  • 4
    “The Controversy Over Trans Teens,” The Week, October 24, 2021; accessed May 16, 2022; available from https://theweek.com/life/1006253/the-controversy-over-trans-teens.
  • 5
    Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Washington D.C.: Regenery Publishing, 2020),xxx.
  • 6
    Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 74. For a more detailed and academic treatment of Trueman’s research, see The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).
  • 7
    Timothy C. Tennent, For the Body (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2020), 14.
  • 8
    Tennent, For the Body, 25. “Our created bodies all point to Christ’s incarnation, and in turn, his resurrected body points to our physical, bodily (not just spiritual) resurrection at the end of time….If our bodies are untrustworthy and only serve to mask the true self that is within, then the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth cannot be trusted as a reliable means for God’s most profound self-disclosure in history.”
  • 9
    Tennent, For the Body, 19. Tennent also notes the entire Creation narrative is a series of binaries. “The entire creation account is set up around divinely instituted binaries. The dominant pairs or binaries in the account are ‘light and darkness’ (or ‘day and night’), ‘earth and sky,’ ‘water and land,’ ‘sun and moon,’ and ‘male and female.’” (19).
  • 10
    This claim also considers the reality of intersex persons. Intersex refers to a biological state in which a person possesses both male and female reproductive organs at birth. The condition is the result of a chromosomal irregularity in utero. Estimations of the intersex population vary; one source claims it is as high as 1.7%, but a later study found a more precise definition of intersex conditions to be much lower. See Preston Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (David C. Cook, 2021), 117-120. As with all persons born with genetic irregularities, intersex persons deserve compassion and care. However, it is in error to conclude that congenital reproductive abnormalities disprove that sex is binary. See Deborah Soh, “Myth #1: Biological Sex is a Spectrum,” in The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society (New York: Threshold Editions, 2020).
  • 11
    “Researchers identify 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and woman,” Weizmann Institute of Science, March 5, 2017, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170504104342.htm. The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel reported over 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women, many of which are entirely separate from sexual reproduction such as the skin and the left ventricle of the heart.
  • 12
    Biological sex is either male or female. Contrary to what is commonly believed, sex is defined not by chromosomes or our genitals or hormonal profiles, but by gametes, which are mature reproductive cells. There are only two types of gametes: small ones called sperm that are produced by males, and large ones called eggs that are produced by females. There are no intermediate types of gametes between egg and sperm cells. Sex is therefore binary. It is not a spectrum.” (Soh, 16-17)
  • 13
    Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 15.
  • 14
    Brizendine, The Female Brain, 37-38.
  • 15
    Debra Soh, The End of Gender, Chapter 2 “Myth #2: Gender is a Social Construct.” Soh debunks research that undermines assertions of male/female brain differences (41).
  • 16
    Stephen A. Furlich, Sex Talk: How Biological Sex Influences Gender Communication Differences Throughout Life’s Stages (Chatham, NJ: Bowker, 2021), Kindle Location: 811.
  • 17
    Furlich, Sex Talk, Kindle Location: 784.
  • 18
    Richard Lippa, Gender, Nature, and Nurture, 2nd ed. (Mahway, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005), 100-102, cites many of these studies; Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (London: Penguin Books, 2003), devotes an entire book to the thesis: “The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male-brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems” (5).
  • 19
    Sex differences in brain anatomy,” National institute of Health July 28, 2020, accessed May 24, 2022; available from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sex-differences-brain-anatomy. “On average, males and females showed greater volume in different areas of the cortex, the outer brain layer that controls thinking and voluntary movements. Females had greater volume in the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, lateral parietal cortex, and insula. Males, on average, had greater volume in the ventral temporal and occipital regions. Each of these regions is responsible for processing different types of information.”
  • 20
    Soh, The End of Gender, 255
  • 21
    Soh, The End of Gender, 43.
  • 22
    Soh, The End of Gender, 41. “Social markers for gender may change as decades go by, but this doesn’t mean children are socialized into having a gender….This doesn’t disprove that gender is biological, only that the expression of gender changes depending on what is considered male- and female-typical.” (Soh, 255)
  • 23
    Sprinkle, Embodied, 152. “Men aren’t commanded to be masculine, and women aren’t commanded to be feminine. They’re both just commanded to be godly.”
  • 24
    Pearcey, Love Thy Body 218.
  • 25
    Walker, God and the Transgender Debate, 54, cf. 50-51. Andrew Walker elaborates: “Maleness isn’t only anatomy but anatomy shows that there is maleness. And femaleness isn’t only anatomy, but anatomy shows that there is femaleness. Men and women are more than just their anatomy, but they are not less. Our anatomy tells us what gender we are.”
  • 26
    Sprinkle, Embodied, 152. 
  • 27
    Littman conducted a study to explain the phenomena of an increasing and sudden prevalence of gender dysphoria among adolescents, teenagers who had previously expressed no gender dysphoric symptoms. The condition, known as “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” (ROGD) revealed an unexpected – and culturally unwelcome – pattern. Littman found the influence of an adolescent’s relationships directly affected her gender identity. Among adolescents with ROGD, 87% had friends who announced themselves as gender dysphoric, had saturated themselves with material on niche websites discussing gender dysphoria, or both. In other words, a condition believed to find its source and validation in one’s intrinsic sense of self has extrinsic factors. Lisa Littman, “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria,” PLOS ONE Vol 13, No. 8; August 16, 2018, accessed September 1, 2020; available from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330; internet.
  • 28
    Jennifer Smith, “Lesley Stahl Defends CBS 60 Minutes Episode About Transgender People Rushing into Treatment Then Regretting It: Young Man Was Castrated After Taking Female Hormones For Just THREE MONTHS,” DailyMail.com, May 26, 2021; accessed May 16, 2022; available from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9621959/Lesley-Stahl-defends-CBS-60-Minutes-episode-transgender-teens-rushed-it.html.
  • 29
    This statement is not intended to dismiss the real and complex challenges of gender dysphoric persons. It is rather to offer hope that being reconciled to Christ is the way to inner peace.
  • 30
    Soh, The End of Gender, 41.

Two things the Bible teaches us about men and women
By / Feb 14

There is a rhythm to the account of creation in Genesis 1. The work takes place over six days, with a repeated refrain coming at the end of those days: “God saw that it was good.” God is evidently not inattentive to what he is making. He doesn’t start one aspect of creation and then turn his attention to the next project. He finishes each act, steps back (as it were), and appraises it. As he assesses each day’s work of creation, he can be fully pleased with the outcome. So again and again we read, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good.”

That is, until we turn up. At the end of the day when God has made humanity in his image, male and female, he says something different: “It was very good” (Gen. 1:31). The difference male and female image-bearers make to his creation is to lift it from “good” to “very good.” Needless to say, it is not a track record we maintain through the rest of the Bible; but the fact remains, there is a deep fundamental very-goodness to the way God has designed us to be, and our being made as men and women is at the heart of it.

Of course, whenever we talk about God’s design for men and women, significant questions rush to the front of our minds. What exactly does it mean to be a man, or to be a woman? What should it look like? Or feel like? These are not abstract questions. Each of us has some story of how we experience our own sex. Each of us has some sort of instinct about what we are supposed to measure up to and whether we have reached it or remain woefully short of it. Much of how we feel about ourselves, along with our social confidence and our mental health, can ride on this. It matters.

And it is confusing. It feels as though there are so many potential and available answers to those questions, and they don’t cohere. What a man or woman should be like not only varies from culture to culture but enormously within cultures, from one generation to the next and one region to the next –– even from one locker room to the next. I’m not sure I know how to answer all those questions, but I find that two simple observations about the Bible give me the basic coordinates I need to start thinking about it.

More alike than different

The first observation is that the vast majority of what God has to say, he says to us as men and women without distinction. It is obvious to point out, but despite the best marketing strategies from publishers, there is not one Bible for men and another for women. The same Bible is given to both. And all the words within it are for both men and women to read. Even the parts addressed to men are still meant to be read by women, and those addressed to women by men. So whatever differences there may be between us, we must not exaggerate them. We are not different species. It is not the case (to use the language of a hugely popular book from several years ago) that men are from Mars and women from Venus. However much we may mystify, surprise, or delight one another, we are far, far more alike than we are different.

In fact, the very first interaction between a man and a woman in the Bible highlights this very point. We’ve already seen the repeated refrain in Genesis 1 of “It was good,” “It was good,” and finally, “It was very good.” But even more jarring than the addition of the word very is the addition of the word not in Genesis 2. In this close-up account of the creation of Adam and Eve, Adam is at this point on his own. And this time, as God steps back he declares this not good: 

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:18)

The man on his own is inadequate and insufficient. He needs an appropriate other. “Fit for him” here also carries the sense of “corresponding to him,” someone who will be his match. But God doesn’t then immediately create the first woman. Instead, he brings out various creatures before Adam for him to name. And by naming, he doesn’t mean giving each single creature its own personal name; he means taxonomy –– giving each kind of creature its appropriate name. So this involves carefully examining the nature of each species and kind so that he can give it a proper designation. Doing this only brings home to him that each creature is distinct from him. The conclusion? “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:20). The not-goodness of his original situation has not changed. On the positive side, Adam now knows what to call everything; but on the negative side, he is still without a necessary counterpart.

What first leaps out at Adam is not all the things that are different between Eve and him but the very fundamental way in which she is like him. There are differences. He’s not oblivious to that — evidenced by the one-flesh union they quickly enter into. But more fundamental than the obvious differences between men and women is the more fundamental likeness. Our human commonality precedes our sexual difference.

So our shared likeness as human beings is seen in that the vast majority of what God says to us in the Bible, he says to us as men and women without distinction. We’re not directed into separate rooms; we share the same holy Scripture. There may be ways in which we think or behave differently, but this should not be stressed at the expense of how alike we are.

Different and complementary

The second observation is that while it is essential to know that the vast majority of what God says is said to us without distinction, it is not true of everything God says. So while we have obvious differences of biology, the fact that at times we need to hear slightly different words from God indicates these differences extend beyond biology. It does not seem to be the case that, biology aside, men and women are indistinguishable from one another.

How we identify what these deeper, nonbiological differences are requires great care. With an issue so sensitive and far-reaching, we want to make every effort to go only as far as the Bible goes –– no further and no less.

It is very easy for Christians, often without realizing it, to go further than the Bible says. We each have our own deep sense of what constitutes true masculinity and femininity, and we can all too easily assume that sense has come from the Bible, especially if we’re holding it in contrast to what a wider, secular culture around us might be saying. But what seems obvious and instinctive to us about the nature of men and women might reflect our own cultural prejudices more than what the Bible actually says.

We want to say what the Bible says; we also want to say it only to the extent that the Bible says it. Sometimes we can take a genuinely biblical idea and run with it in a way that the Bible itself never does. What we end up saying might not be contradicted by Scripture and may well be consistent with one aspect of what the Bible says, while not actually being biblical. The Pharisees give us a number of examples of how easily this happens. They rightly took the Old Testament law seriously. But they often mistook their application of God’s law for the law itself. So those who didn’t obey the law in the exact way that they did were regarded as disobedient.

I suspect the same often happens when it comes to discussions of what Christian men and women are meant to do or be like. Principles found in Scripture get applied in prescriptive ways that exceed the scope of the original text, and anyone who disagrees is accused not of disagreeing with the application but with the Bible itself. I’ve seen this sort of thing numerous times, particularly in the conservative churches from which I have come. I think of one church where, in mixed prayer meetings, women were discouraged from praying at the beginning because it would discourage men from taking the lead in prayer. I can imagine (just about) this being well-intentioned to start with (perhaps seeking to apply 1 Timothy 2:8 –– “I desire then that in every place the men should pray”?), but by the time I encountered this practice, it had already been hardened into a rule about what men and women should do: men should always be first to pray in a mixed gathering; women should always hold back and wait until the men have prayed first.

So those of us (I include myself) who believe that Scripture teaches that only certain qualified men should serve as pastors or elders in the church need to be careful not to then take this teaching and start applying it to contexts the Bible never speaks to, such as women leading in certain secular contexts. Or those who take the Bible’s teaching to husbands and wives and then end up prescribing from this which spouse should be doing which tasks in the modern home.

Saying what the Bible doesn’t say or overextending what it does say are both forms of adding to Scripture. But we must be equally careful not to subtract from Scripture. And if (in my experience) adding tends to happen more in conservative churches (perhaps an unintended consequence of wanting to take the detail of Scripture seriously), then (also in my experience) subtracting tends to happen more in less conservative churches (perhaps an unintended consequence of not wanting to be bound by rules and conventions that aren’t biblical). Either way, all of us are in danger of both.

The fact is, it is clear from Scripture that differences between men and women are not just physiological. And while we mustn’t over define what these differences are, neither must we deny they exist at all. This is especially important given that it is increasingly common to think that being equal must mean being the same in every respect –– that equality cannot properly exist where there is any kind of difference. But the Bible challenges this way of thinking. Our very difference is what makes each gender distinctly glorious. We can’t simply hope to swap out a man for a woman, or a woman for a man, and assume it will make no difference.

Content taken from What God Has to Say about Our Bodies by Sam Allberry, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Believers never get a pass for disobedience
By / Jun 24

Last week there was a considerable amount of conversation generated after multiple screenshots of comments posted in a Facebook group began to circulate on the internet. The name of the group is not important, but both the content in question and the makeup of its members is. In the screenshots, very critical comments were captured about Aimee Byrd, the author of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. And judging only from the handful I looked at, the comments were obviously intended to mock and belittle. Moreover, they were mostly posted by men. 

That men would take to social media to openly mock and ridicule a woman is disturbing, but worse still is the reality that a large number of the members of the Facebook group in which it was posted are pastors and ministers. To be fair, many people are members of discussion groups on Facebook and elsewhere that they never even visit. And some of these groups have such active participation that even those who engage more frequently can’t possibly be held responsible for the content or comments featured in every post.

But with those caveats aside, the issue is bigger than a small number of men attacking a woman on the internet. Consider for a moment, why some would object to Byrd’s work. In her books and other writings, Byrd questions a lot of established norms. Though she remains substantially aligned with more conservative positions on the roles of men and women in the church, her work has challenged practices that (she believes) wrongly portray Scripture’s teaching in this area and stifle the ability of women to utilize the gifts God has blessed them with. And in making her case and criticizing the status quo—specifically among conservative Reformed evangelicals—she has also criticized things this group holds in esteem. 

Byrd, for instance, has been a vocal critic of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), which is perhaps the main exponent of complementarian theology. But more than criticizing the organization, she has leveled specific criticisms at the theology undergirding portions of CBMW’s approach to gender roles and has at certain points questioned the orthodoxy of theologians like John Piper and Wayne Grudem.

Markers of fear and immaturity

Anytime a person questions an established norm they can expect pushback. And it’s generally true that the more significant the object of one’s criticism is, the more intense the pushback will be. When it comes to Byrd’s work, I have found myself challenged by her criticisms but largely in step with those she criticizes. But honestly, I wasn’t surprised by the kinds of mean and misogynistic comments that were leveled toward her, not because those kinds of things are acceptable, but because they are easily explained. In this case, the personal attacks that were leveled at Byrd can be explained, at least in part, by the same reasons that similar attacks are often wielded against other women in conservative theological circles.

Belittling, demeaning, or in this case, making a public spectacle of one’s ideological opponent is more than some kind of cathartic exercise. The truth is that all of us are more fragile than we like to pretend. And when we feel attacked, the natural response is to seek to protect ourselves. Often, when we turn to insult rather than engage someone who questions our beliefs, it’s about reassuring ourselves that we have taken up the right cause. Mocking an opponent instead of engaging their ideas is a way of saying to ourselves and those we agree with, “Look at them. They couldn’t possibly be right. Right?” 

That kind of behavior is a marker of fear and immaturity. It’s a way to stay safe in the retreat position. Besides, if you never actually engage someone you disagree with, you’ll never lose. Not only that, but sometimes we’re threatened by more than a person’s ideas. Sometimes it’s their popularity we find intimidating. We’re concerned too many people are coming under their influence, so we take every opportunity to tear them down in hopes that others would be too ashamed to be associated with such a controversial person or group.

No pass for disobedience

But whether one is surprised or not by this behavior, the point is that none of this conduct is becoming of a Christian. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught those gathered before him to treat others as they desire to be treated (Matt. 7:12). We know those words as the golden rule. And for most of us, they have grown familiar, as though it were Christianity 101. But what is so interesting to me is that many of us tend to act as though the longer we’ve been in the faith, the less important these “elementary” teachings are. In reality, this could not be further from the truth. A believer never gets a pass for disobedience, no matter how many theology books one has read or acts of service one has rendered.

Byrd deserves an apology. And she’s not the only one. No matter how embattled a person or group may feel, if they claim to be followers of Jesus, there is never just cause to treat another person with anything less than the dignity and respect every image-bearer deserves. If anything, this standard is raised even higher when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Christ  (1 John 3:14). And certainly this kind of charity and respectful engagement should be modeled by those in Christian leadership, especially if one believes (as I do) that God reserves specific pastoral and leadership functions for men. Believing this means men are called not only to protect women, but to show honor to them as well. And in this case men failed in spectacular fashion.

Aimee Byrd is not my enemy. She is my sister in Christ, and the cruel treatment she’s been subjected to is wicked and inexcusable. Those with the courage to put forward ideas and offer constructive, if critical, feedback will help make the church stronger. Man or woman, those who would speak and act in good faith, even when it dissents from the status quo, deserve to have their voices heard and their words taken seriously. They don’t deserve to become a punchline, and certainly do not deserved to be mocked or ridiculed on the basis of their sex or appearence.

Seeing this play out on the internet ought to give each of us pause. The sinful desire to mock or shame our opponents is not limited to men or to those with certain theological beliefs. It runs through all of us. We are broken, sinful, and fragile people. We want not only to protect ourselves, but for people to think well of us. But if we are a part of the family of God, we are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44) and turn the other cheek when we are wronged or mistreated (Matt. 5:39). And if we can do those things, surely we can love and bear with one another even in the midst of disagreement.

What resources would you recommend to women who desire to learn theology in the midst of everyday life?
By / Jan 7

What resources would you recommend to women who desire to learn theology in the midst of everyday life?

How can pastors and leaders better utilize women’s giftings throughout the church?
By / Dec 17

Katie McCoy shares how pastors and leaders can better utilize women's giftings throughout the church. 

How the Gospels show that Jesus values women
By / Aug 13

The portrayal of women in the Gospels—particularly in Luke’s Gospel—is stunningly countercultural. Luke constantly pairs men with women, and when he compares the two, it is almost always in the woman’s favor. Before Jesus’s birth, two people are visited by the angel Gabriel and told they are going to become parents. One is Zachariah, who becomes John the Baptist’s father. The other is Jesus’s mother, Mary. Both ask Gabriel how this can be. But while Zachariah is punished with months of dumbness for his unbelief, Mary is only commended. The prominent role of women in Luke continues as Mary and her cousin Elizabeth prophesy over Jesus in the womb, and as a prophet (Simeon) and a prophetess (Anna) prophesy over the infant Jesus. 

The adult Jesus consistently weaves women into his preaching. In his first sermon, he enrages his audience with two Old Testament examples of God’s love reaching beyond the Jews: one is a woman, the other is a man (Luke 4:25–27). In Luke 15, the female-oriented parable of the lost coin is nestled between the male-oriented parables of the lost sheep and the lost (or prodigal) son. In Luke 18, the female-oriented prayer parable of the persistent widow is paired with the male-oriented prayer parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Even as he approaches crucifixion, Jesus stops to address female mourners (Luke 23:27–31). In a male-dominated culture, his attention to women throughout his preaching is remarkable. 

This male-and-female thread works its way through Luke’s healing accounts. First, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit (Luke 4:33– 35). Then he heals Simon’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:38–9). In chapter 7, Jesus heals a centurion’s servant and then raises a widow’s son, out of compassion for the grieving mother. In chapter 8, Jesus heals a man with a demon, then a bleeding woman, and then a synagogue ruler’s daughter. Jesus’s last healing in Luke is of a woman with a disabling spirit. She praises God. When the male synagogue ruler objects, Jesus calls him a hypocrite and reminds him of the woman’s status as a “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:16–17). 

Jesus’s elevation of women as moral examples is yet more striking. In Luke 7, he is dining at Simon the Pharisee’s house, when a “sinful woman” (likely a prostitute) disrupts the party. She weeps on Jesus’s feet, wipes them with her hair, and anoints him with ointment. Simon is appalled: surely if Jesus were a prophet, he would know this woman is utterly unworthy of touching him! But Jesus turns the contrast on its head and holds this woman up as an example to shame Simon. In cultural terms, Simon has every advantage. He is a man; she is a woman. He is religiously admired; she is despised. He’s hosting a dinner party; she is a weeping, prostrate embarrassment. But according to Jesus, she surpasses Simon on every count (Luke 7:36–50). Jesus elevates another low-status woman as a moral example in Luke 21, when he commends the poor widow for her gift of two small copper coins. In Jesus’s eyes, this offering exceeds the much larger gifts the rich are putting in the offering box (Luke 21:1–4). 

Jesus’s valuing of women might seem to be compromised by his choice of twelve male apostles, mirroring the twelve tribes of Israel. But Luke emphasizes the women who followed Jesus too: “The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for him out of their means” (Luke 8:1–3 mg.). Like Jesus’s male disciples, these women were in for the long haul (see Luke 23:49, 56). They were there at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and at the end. But can these women legitimately be called disciples? 

Jesus answers that question for us in Luke 10 when we first meet two of Jesus’s female friends: Mary and Martha. Martha is playing a traditionally female role, serving her guests, while her sister Mary is assuming a traditionally male role, sitting at Jesus’s feet with the other disciples. Martha asks Jesus to correct this, to tell Mary to get up and help with the serving. But Jesus affirms Mary: “Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). 

Luke’s final comparison surrounds Jesus’s resurrection. In Luke 24, some of his female disciples visit the tomb to anoint his body. There, they encounter angels who announce the resurrection. The women report this to the apostles, who don’t believe them. Peter runs to the tomb to check the facts. But even then, they are not convinced. When two male disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus, they recount the women’s tale but do not seem to have absorbed it. Jesus rebukes them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25). 

Luke is not the only Gospel to elevate women. In a moving account in John, Jesus shocks his disciples by crossing ethnic, religious, gender, and moral boundaries to talk with a sexually compromised Samaritan woman, who becomes an evangelist to her people (John 4:1–30). Later, Jesus saves a woman caught in adultery from being stoned, forcing her male accusers to acknowledge that they are not morally superior to her (John 8:7). Then, in John 11, we see Jesus’s tender interaction with Martha and Mary after the death of their brother, Lazarus. Jesus speaks some of his most famous recorded words to comfort Martha, and then cries with her and her sister before miraculously raising Lazarus from the dead.8 In Matthew 9, Jesus commends the faith of a woman suffering from unrelenting menstrual bleeding who touched him to be healed. In Matthew 19 he protects women from unwarranted divorce, which would in many cases leave them destitute. 

Jesus’s valuing of women is unmistakable. In a culture in which women were devalued and often exploited, it underscores their equal status before God and his desire for personal relationship with them. 

Content taken from Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin, ©2019. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Pastor, do you have a Priscilla in your church?
By / Jun 21

When men are preparing to enter the ministry, we often talk to them about the importance of surrounding themselves with faithful men. We teach them how to identify future leaders. We teach them how to preach. We encourage them to remain faithful to the Word.

But when was the last time you heard a seminary commencement message encourage future pastors to also surround themselves with biblically literate women?

Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. But I hope by the end of this article you will see the importance of it.

The help of women in the Bible

When Paul ends his letters, he often speaks of those who are meaningful to him. He speaks of those who have helped him, sometimes he speaks of those who have left him, and he speaks of those who are partners in ministry. While Paul does provide qualifications for men in pastoral ministry, those verses are few compared to the general commands to all that he provides in his letters. And his general tone as he closes out his letters is one of community effort, rather than a male-only endeavor. Paul’s ministry is upheld by men and women serving faithfully, and as a result, the church is upheld by men and women serving faithfully.

Just consider how he speaks of Priscilla in Romans 16:3. He calls her a “fellow worker.” In Acts 18, he goes to see Priscilla and her husband, Aquila, and then travels with them to Syria. Then at the end of Acts 18, we learn that both of them helped explain the “word more accurately” to Apollos. And she is not the only one. In Romans 16 alone, numerous women are mentioned, alongside men, as being a help to Paul and to the church. Colossians 4 speaks of Nympha and the church in her house. This isn’t even including the many women who were useful to Jesus in his time on earth.

The overarching message of Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is that both men and women are necessary for the ministry of the local church. The message of the gospel goes forward by both genders working together (Matt. 28). Yes, qualified men are called to lead and preach, but the local church is a body, so everyone contains something necessary for the body to flourish.

The value women add

But I want to talk for a moment about the value a woman might bring to a pastor in the local church.

Pastors are tasked with the great responsibility of shepherding the flock of God (1 Pet. 5:2). This involves first and foremost, the preaching of the Word. But on any given week, there are many other things a pastor might do that fall under shepherding. He may meet with a young believer, teaching him how to read his Bible. He may visit an elderly member, encouraging her to persevere to the end. He may disciple a new father or perform pre-martial counseling. The shepherding work of a pastor is vast and often overwhelming.

But what about the woman in the church who recently miscarried? Should she be shepherded by the pastor too? Or the woman in the church who needs encouragement to press on in mothering? Or the woman in the church who is struggling in sin and needs counsel? What about the woman in the church who needs discipleship in her understanding of Scripture or application of Scripture to her work in the marketplace? And even more serious, where does the abused woman go? Does this fall on under pastoral shepherding?

Yes and no.

Pastors will give an account to God for how they handle the Word and how they serve God’s people. So in that sense, this is absolutely their domain. But in another sense, I would argue that pastors best serve the women in their church by having biblically literate women they can turn to for the female shepherding needs in their church. As vast as the needs are in the church for men, the needs for women are equally vast. And we have a biblical basis for encouraging these needs to be met through the care of other women (Titus 2:3-5).

Part of good leadership is delegating responsibilities to those under your care. Part of good pastoral leadership is delegating the shepherding ministry to others as well.

But this is hard isn’t it? Because it assumes that the women in your church are biblically literate enough to handle such responsibility. It assumes the women in your church have a desire to serve in this way (which I bet they do). It assumes that you have a working relationship with women in your church. But it is a work worth taking on.

Priscilla was useful to Paul because she knew her Bible, and out of that knowledge came fruit. Our women can’t shepherd other women if they don’t know their Bibles. But our women also can’t shepherd other women if they don’t have opportunities and encouragement from their leadership.

Pastors have a lot on their plate. And depending on the size of your church, the responsibilities and needs far outweigh what you can feasibly handle. But I think one way to alleviate some of this burden is to partner with the women in your church in this way. Find women who display an aptitude and a desire to teach the Bible. Use them in the ministry of the Word to the women. And then watch the Word do its work in the lives of your people.

Paul was thankful for Priscilla (and many other men and women) because he was one man, albeit an incredibly fruitful one. He might be the one praised for his missionary travels and establishment of churches, but his ministry was upheld by the faithful work of other brothers and sisters. God’s purposes haven’t changed. He still uses the entire body of believers to spread his glory throughout the world—from the preacher on Sunday morning to the woman meeting with a broken sister in her living room. We need everyone in this mission.

Do you have a Priscilla in your church? I bet you do. You just have to look for her.

Kathy Litton on women in ministry and leadership
By / May 21

Better Together captures our desire to partner together as men and women in the church and beyond to advance the kingdom with mutual support and care. Better Together will address a wide range of topics from sexual abuse, leadership, women and work, women’s ministry, and more. Today’s podcast features Kathy Litton. Litton is the Director of Planter Spouse Development at the North American Mission Board. Listen in as we discuss women in ministry and leadership.

Better Together with Jennifer Kintner
By / May 7

Better Together captures our desire to partner together as men and women in the church and beyond to advance the kingdom with mutual support and care. Better Together will address a wide range of topics from sexual abuse, leadership, women and work, women’s ministry, and more. Today’s podcast features ERLC’s Office Coordinator and Adjunct Professor of Women’s Ministry, Jennifer Kintner. Kintner shares about equipping women through higher education and advanced degrees.