Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

390 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

“man,” may also be translated “husband.” With such a translation, then, the teaching would be that a wife ought not to rule over her husband.

This doctrine of a woman who, in choosing to marry, makes herself voluntarily submissive to “line up under” her husband is entirely con sistent with the gist of the NT teaching on the role of authority in the Christian home. The Greek word hupotasso , which means to “line up under” refers to a wife’s voluntary submission to her own husband (cf. Eph. 5.22, 23; Col. 3.18; Titus 2.5; 1 Pet. 3.1). This has nothing to do with any supposed superior status or capacity of the husband; rather, this refers to God’s design of godly headship, authority which is given for comfort, protection, and care, not for destruction or domination (cf. Gen. 2.15-17; 3.16; 1 Cor. 11.3). Indeed, that this headship is interpreted in light of Christ’s headship over the church signifies the kind of godly headship that must be given, that sense of tireless care, service, and protection required from godly leadership. Of course, such an admonition for a wife to submit to a husband would not in any way rule out that women be involved in a teaching ministry (e.g., Titus 2.4), but, rather, that in the particular case of married women, that their own ministries would come under the protection and direc tion of their respective husbands (Acts 18.26). This would assert that a married woman’s ministry in the church would be given serving, protective oversight by her husband, not due to any notion of inferior capacity or defective spirituality, but for the sake of, as one commen tator has put it, “avoiding confusion and maintaining orderliness” (cf. 1 Cor. 14.40). In both Corinth and Ephesus (which represent the contested Corinthian and Timothy epistolary comments), it appears that Paul’s restriction upon women’s participation was prompted by occasional happenings, issues which grew particularly out of these contexts, and therefore are meant to be understood in those lights. For instance, the hotly contested test of a women’s “silence” in the church (see both 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2) does not appear in any way to undermine the prominent role women played in the expansion of the Kingdom and development of the church in the first century. Women were involved in the ministries of prophecy and prayer (1 Cor. 11.5), personal instruction (Acts 18.26), teaching (Titus 2.4,5), giving testimony (John 4.28,29), offering hospitality (Acts 12.12), and serving as co-laborers with the apostles in the cause of the Gospel (Phil. 4.2-3). Paul did not relegate women to an inferior role or hidden status but served side-by-side with women for the sake of Christ “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel,