The video begins immediately after the public reading of 1 Timothy 2:1-15.
Sermon Notes:
I recognize the irony of a woman being the one to preach on this chapter. These verses at the end of 1 Timothy 2 are one of two places in Scripture where Paul tells women to be silent. Specifically, he says that they are not permitted to speak, teach, or ‘assume authority’ over a man. Many Christian traditions have interpreted this at face value, understanding that women can hold no position of leadership in the church, and certainly they cannot preach from the pulpit. They may teach children and women, but not men. The age at which boys become men is in some dispute, depending on the time period or culture.
The apostle Paul writes this letter to Timothy, who is living and working in Ephesus at the time. The main point of his letter is found in verse five of chapter one:
“The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
A couple of weeks ago, Troy spent time unpacking what this love looks like by looking at the Beatitudes and the words of Jesus. Repetition is the mother of learning, I’ve been told, and so here I’ll repeat the words of Jesus again:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matt. 5: 8)
And then we reflected on the words of the prophet Micah, who told us exactly what God desires from us and what God’s goodness looks like:
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
As I was reading 1 Timothy 2, it occurred to me that these words about women are, in many churches and evangelical circles, used almost exclusively to silence or shame women. Scriptures are used as a weapon to oppress fifty percent of the population, to tell them that their voice doesn’t matter, that God doesn’t want to hear from them, and that their only duty to the world is childbearing.
Friends, that is frankly horrifying.
It occurred to me that using Scripture as a weapon to silence and shame women is the very opposite of love.It is not pure or good, though it may be sincere. If Paul’s letter is truly guided by the core principle of love flowing from a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith, then it cannot mean that 50% of the world’s population is to be kept from speaking out in worship or that the primary life calling of every woman is childbearing. Shutting up a group of people is never anything but oppressive.
Furthermore, in other places, Paul advocates for women speaking out in ministry and worship; he commends Phoebe as a deacon – a servant-leader – of a church near Corinth;[1] Priscilla and her husband, Aquila, as co-workers in ministry as they taught Apollos and others in their house church;[2] Junia, who was imprisoned because of her ministry and is commended as “outstanding among the apostles;”[3]Lydia, a merchant who led her entire household to believe in Jesus Christ,[4] and many others.[5] Not to mention Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were the first evangelists and preachers to proclaim the good news of Jesus rising from the tomb in all four Gospel accounts,[6] as well as the tradition that women were the household spiritual leaders in Jewish and Greek society.[7]
Sometimes, we read the Bible, and it appears to be saying something very straightforward. I mean, how much clearer can it get? Paul clearly says, “Women should not teach.” But when we look at the broader context of Scripture, its absolute core value of love for the other, and the ways in which Jesus and Paul support and elevate women within their own culture, we realize that women being silenced and suppressed cannot be what Paul is advocating.
Instead, what is he saying?
First of all, Paul’s concern in this chapter doesn’t at all belong to divvying up the roles of men and women in the church. Instead, he begins this chapter with this statement:
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tim. 2:1-4)
Huh. Too often, we skip past these verses to focus on the controversies further down, but they are critically important to interpreting the rest of the chapter and the rest of the letter.
Paul mentions not one or two but four types of prayer here. That’s worth paying attention to.
Petitions: This is the idea of supplication, which means asking God for what we need. It refers to aligning our will with God’s. It’s the idea of identifying what we deeply and truly desire and naming this desire to God.
Prayer: This includes public and private prayers to God. We are to be a people of prayer, and yet many of us are afraid of public prayer – and for good reason! We treat it as a sort of public speaking, in which the words you use might be criticized by those who listen. Alternatively, many of us feel that prayer is so personal that we don’t want to speak it aloud, or maybe you’ve had negative experiences of praying with others.
Friends, prayer is as much for the encouragement of others as it is about you communicating to God.Prayer unites us, gathers us together, and allows us to worship God in spirit and in truth – together.
Intercession: These are the requests that we bring to God, often in that conversational-type prayer that some of us are most familiar with. This is where we pray to God on behalf of others and the world, and this is only possible because Jesus did all the interceding for us; he is our mediator, and we bring our requests to him freely because of his generous, self-sacrificing act of love. Hebrews says,
19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:19-25)
We pray for others and in doing so, we encourage one another to continue on in faithfulness, goodness, and love.
Thanksgiving: Giving thanks should always be part of our prayers. Paul says elsewhere, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5:16-18) What is God’s will for you? To rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks.
A lot of research has been done on the effects of gratitude on our health. It’s no surprise that those who are consistently grateful and express this gratitude to others live longer, have better social networks, and are generally happier.[8] This does not mean that in difficult times we are to simply paste on a smile and say, “Praise God!” However, it does mean that we consistently orient ourselves to the amazing gifts of God in our lives – even the very breath we breathe is a gift – and we give thanks for even the smallest things, because these things matter, too.
So, prayer is important. But who are we praying for?
Paul says that Timothy and his church – and we as well – are to petition, pray, intercede, and give thanks for all people, including the kings and all those in authority. Now, remember that Paul wrote this while Nero was emperor of Rome. This was a man who made sport of Christians and killed them in incredibly brutal ways for entertainment. We who have been born and raised in Canada and North America have no idea what this kind of persecution was like. However, many of our brothers and sisters around the globe do, and some of these are in this very room. Experiences of suffering change how we pray.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who was involved in a failed assassination plot against Hitler, prayed,
O Holy Spirit,
Give me faith that will protect me
from despair, from passions, and from vice;
Give me such love for God and men
as will blot out all hatred and bitterness;
Give me the hope that will deliver me
from fear and faint-heartedness.[9]
Bonhoeffer was painfully honest about the bitterness within him against the Nazi regime, but he faithfully prayed for the people whom he struggled to love, including his prison guards.
Why do we pray?
Prayer changes us. Prayer orients us to God’s faithfulness, goodness, and love in a dark and oppressive world. Prayer breaks the power of hatred and death over our lives as we rest in the truth of God’s redemption. Prayer gathers us as a people of God who see what he is up to in this world and partner together with him to bring light into all dark places.
Paul encourages Timothy and the Ephesian church to pray instead of shouting angry protests against the evils of their government. One commentary says, “Christian public prayers for the emperor… showed Christians as good citizens of the society in which they lived.”[10] He tells them to lift their hands up in prayer instead of in hatred toward those of other classes or races. Yes, even in North American, though we do not truly know what it means to be persecuted, we still get loud and angry against our governments when we feel like we have been wronged. We still get upset against other social classes who seem to be living the plush life when we ourselves are struggling, or on the flip side, those who seem to be taking all of our hard-earned capitalist money through taxes and government programs.
Be quiet and pray. Why? So that we may live “peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God our Savior who wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.”[11] And what is the truth? “There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.”[12]
Paul packs so much into this simple phrase.
One God: To the Greeks who worshipped many gods, Paul says, “No, there is only one God.”
One mediator: To the Jews who still offered sacrifices in the temple by means of a high priest, Paul says, “No, you no longer need a high priest. Jesus is your high priest.”
The man, Christ Jesus: To the naysayers who doubted Jesus’ incarnation as a physical human being, Paul says, “No, this is truly God With Us, God made flesh. He knows what it is to be a human.”
Who gave himself as a ransom for all people: Paul re-emphasizes the power of Jesus’ self-sacrificing love for all people. Not some people. Not some classes or races above others, but all people. There is no one outside of Jesus’ love.
In our own polarized world, we know that the loudest voice seems to be the strongest. That’s the kicker – it seems to be the strongest. The Way of Jesus isn’t loud. It isn’t obnoxious. Instead, Paul encourages the Ephesian believers to pray for others so that they might live peaceful and quiet lives. This is a compelling life. In God’s economy, it isn’t the loudest voice that is the strongest, but the quiet voice. We’ve all heard it said that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. First listen, and then speak.
Paul specifically encourages the Ephesian men to pray – to lift up their hands in prayer rather than in anger, arguments, and war. They are to focus their hearts and voices on God rather than on making big fusses or noises.
With all this context of prayer and quiet, peaceful living in our hearts and minds, we realize that Paul isn’t suppressing the voices of women within the church after all. Instead, he simply expands what he has been talking about all along – that we are not supposed to be a loud distraction from the main thing, which is to love God and one another with a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith.
I’m not going to explain all of the nuances of these final five verses in this chapter; scholars have spent centuries studying it, and I could easily spend an hour trying to explain it. I will, however, suggest a few things based on the culture and time in which Paul lived.
Sometimes this phrase is translated as “women must be silent.” However, the word ‘silent’ or ‘quietness’ is the same Greek word as was used earlier when Paul said that we are to live ‘peaceful and quiet lives.’ The point then, is not complete silence, but a spirit of peace rather than arguing and division.
The Greek way of teaching was unlike how we teach now; it wasn’t someone standing up and speaking to a group of people. Greek teaching was done in dialogue with a small-ish group of people, called the Socratic method. It was a question-and-answer style of conversation. It is presumed that the early churches adopted this style of teaching as they gathered in one another’s homes. “Learning was primarily a male exercise;”[13] women were not allowed to learn past the age of 14. Paul affirms the right for women to learn, but because they were generally uneducated, they were instructed to be quiet and listen to those who have more experience and education – just as the male students did! It’s like Mary listening at the feet of Jesus. Women learning together with men. Not drawing attention away from worship, but directing it toward God as they learned, worshipped, and prayed together.
The phrase “assume authority over a man,” refers to a leadership that dominates others. Of course, we can see immediately that this kind of leadership runs contrary to the Way of Jesus. Instead, Christian leadership in the pattern of Jesus submits to one another; it is a servant-leadership. Women, like men, are therefore called to lead well, not as a domineering dictator but with meekness and love. Men and women supporting one another, not dominating over one another, but serving one another humbly.
The phrase ‘saved through childbearing’ is especially troublesome. It has been abused by the church over the centuries, telling women that their primary worth is as a child-bearer. However, if Paul really means that salvation can happen through giving birth, then we must discard everything else that he has said about salvation being by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, and we know this can’t be true. Paul’s entire message is about Christ’s self-sacrificing love on behalf of all people and that we cannot be right with God entirely on our own terms.
Instead, we might consider that in Ephesus, the primary deity was Artemis, the goddess of nature, hunting, and childbirth. Childbirth is a scary thing today, and it was especially so then. It was often fatal to both mother and child. And so, when women were at their most vulnerable, they would often cry out to Artemis to save them. Paul encourages them to cry out to the God who created and saved them instead of to Artemis. He encourages them to pray.
The point of this chapter isn’t to separate the tasks of men and women in church. It isn’t to draw a line in the sand. When read through the lens of pure, good, and sincere love for one another as demonstrated by Jesus Christ, the God-man who gave himself as a ransom for all people, we realize that we cannot use Scripture to isolate, suppress, or silence any group of people. We cannot use it to boost our ideology or wield it as a weapon against others. The point, instead, is that love is demonstrated when we pray together – with and for one another, and for our nation, governments, and all those in authority. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”[14]
[1] Romans 16:1
[2] Romans 16:3, Acts 18:18-28, 1 Corinthians 16:19
[3] Romans 16:7
[4] Acts 16:15
[5] C.f. Romans 16:6, 12, 13, 14; Philippians 4:2-3
[6] Matt. 28:1-8, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:10-11, John 20:1-2
[7] Theology in the Raw
[8] Christine D. Pohl, Living into Community: Cultivating Practices that Sustain Us, (Eerdmans, 2011).
[9] https://www.findingsolace.org/morning-prayer-for-fellow-prisoners-by-dietrich-bonhoeffer/
[10] Keener, IVP Background Commentary, New Testament, 605.
[11] 1 Timothy 2:2-4
[12] 1 Timothy 2:5-6
[13] IVP Background Commentary, New Testament, 605.
[14] Matthew 5:9
Share this post