Submit to Leaders

Submission to leadership is a vital part of Church life. It’s not optional. It’s not a suggestion. God commands us to submit to our leaders, so we must know who they are and how they got Church authority. We will feel confidence in them if we know their authority comes from God.

Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you… Greet all your leaders and all the Lord’s people… (Hebrews 13:17, 24)

Do you know who your leaders are in church? Can you name them one-by-one? Try it. Are you submitting to them? Are you making their work a joy?

More importantly, have you considered how one earns a place of authority in the Church? Don't be afraid to ask yourself: “Have my leaders obtained their positions legitimately?” Maybe their authority did not come from God.

They Spoke the Word

According to the author of Hebrews, leaders are established by their instruction. That’s the basis for obtaining authority in God’s Church. A man who has authority is a man who has spoken the Word of God well. He has to have sound doctrine.

In addition to speaking the Word, a man authorized by God will have an exemplary lifestyle.

Remember your leaders, who spoke the Word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith… (Hebrews 13:7)

If a man does not teach the Bible rightly, he has no legitimate authority in the Church. All authority emanates from God, and God’s authority flows through the proper proclamation of his Word. By proper, we meant that it cannot be proclaimed by hypocritical lips. It cannot be preached by sinners. In addition, teaching cannot be based on human theology. It must be based on the Word of God.  

A true leader in the Church must have a faith worth imitating. They must live exemplary lives. As it says in the passage above, God’s people must both remember them and consider the lifestyle of these men.

Men Should Lead

You have probably noticed that so far in this post, when we speak of leaders, we refer to them as men. We have not referred to them as women. That’s because God has chosen men to lead in the Church.

We live in an egalitarian World. Women assume leadership roles in business, politics, government, education, family, and religion. But the Church is not here to promote egalitarianism. The Church promotes salvation. One way we do that is to live according to God’s order regarding gender roles. God has given men the role of leadership in the Church. Didn't Jesus pick twelve men to be his Apostles?

Obviously, women rarely participate in military combat, special forces, or in men's professional sports. There's a reason for that. In certain professions, female participation is practically nil (coal mining, roofing, offshore oil rigs, bricklaying, carpentry, commercial fishing, racecar driving, motorcycle racing, etc.) God’s design of females—the anatomical and biochemical aspects of womanhood—make them unsuitable for certain professions. But it's not anything physical that impedes a woman from leading in the Church.

Women are active in the Church because unlike the professions named above, service to God is not determined by physical strength or toughness. Neither are women limited by a lack of anointing. Women can have all the same spiritual gifts as men. In fact, women can have the same kinds of ministry men have—with one exception. Women should not exercise authority over men. They should not pastor men.

Salty Salt

The Church is different from the entities and organizations of this World. God has called us to faithfully represent his order—his creative design. When outsiders look at us, they must see a group of people who behave and interact according to God’s design. One of the most fundamental aspects of natural design is ‘male and female he created them’ (Genesis 2:27). Christians support masculinity in males and femininity in females. We teach masculinity to our boys and femininity to our girls.

If outsiders do not see natural gender roles in the members of a church, then the church has ceased to fulfill its role as the salt of the Earth (Matthew 5:13). May God save us from losing our saltiness. If we’re not different from worldly organizations, then we have lost our flavor. A flavorless church group is useless for God's purposes. We must be different. Like salt with no salty flavor, a church that is no different from the World around it is no use to God.

Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out (Luke 14:34-35).

The Bridegroom and his Bride

If outsiders notice that the interactions between men and women in our church are according to God’s natural design, they will see a picture of Christ and the Church. They will see the Eternal Bridegroom and his Bride!

Jesus leads the Church. The Church does not lead Jesus. Jesus is the head of the Church. The Church is not the head of Jesus.

God gave all authority to Jesus. Then he made Jesus the head over all things. Being the husband of the Church, Jesus now gives us a great advantage. Our bridegroom is head over everything and is for us!

God placed all things under his [Jesus’] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church which is his Body… (Ephesians 1:22-23)

If we truly understand the relationship between Jesus and the Church, then men and women in our churches will gladly reflect that relationship. For this very reason marriage exists: to reflect Christ and the Church (an eternal relationship) to all of humanity.

Marriage will not exist in the Kingdom! It’s main purpose, when we see it in its true form (one man, one woman, for one life), is to point us to the Kingdom. It's a sign to lead us to Eternal Life.

God designed the first couple as mortal Adam and Eve because he knew that the last couple would be the eternal Jesus and Church. God knew that Adam would fail in his leadership role, but he also knew that Jesus will succeed. Jesus will certainly lead his Church to victory, but we must (a) submit to him and (b) remain in the covenant--the exact things a woman must do with her husband if she will be blessed.

That They Might Not Blaspheme

Notice how in the next passage that the purpose why God assigns traditional roles to women is ultimately for the glory of God. It says that women should love and be subject to their husbands so that outsiders might not blaspheme the Word of God.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the Word of God will not be dishonored (Titus 2:3-5; NASB)

Christians need to strive to honor God’s Word and to honor him with our behavior. If Muslims or other traditional peoples see Christians with rebellious daughters and uncaring mothers, won’t they mock Christianity as a religion that cannot produce a healthy family? They will mock us and the Bible. They will deride his Word.

Without the testimony of good women, Christians will put a stumbling block in the way of unbelievers. Our women's behavior will cause them to blaspheme the name of the Lord. Instead, why can't we teach our women to '... love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind...' and to be 'subject to their own husbands'?

Not Allowed to Speak

The next passage is a challenging one. It causes women in many churches to wonder and even to think that God is unfair. Of course God is not unfair, but then why does he say that women shouldn’t even speak in the churches? If the Bible is God's Word, then that's what he has said.

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

To start, let’s be clear that Paul was not writing about Christian women speaking in a private meeting. He was addressing women speaking in church—that’s a public-facing meeting. Whether it be in a big house or a public space, the church meeting is not a meeting in which women should speak. Normally, women should not speak on a Sunday morning weekly service.

Many people oppose this command today, and many opposed it during the times of the apostles. The most common reaction to this passage is for people to say that Paul discriminated against women. But that can't be right. It can't be right that Paul was wrong either. He was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Paul defended himself by saying that this is the Lord’s command. In other words, the idea that women should be silent in the churches is from Jesus. The Lord Jesus gave Paul a special revelation in a dream or a vision. We don’t know how Paul heard it, but he heard this from Jesus: ‘Women should remain silent in the churches.’

… what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored (1 Corinthians 14: 38).

Paul dealt with opposition to his restriction on women by saying that if anyone ignores the rule, God will ignore them. Paul ignored people who thought that women should lead in the Church and teach men. It’s your choice how you will deal with them, but one option (the one Paul chose), is to ignore them. You can simply not address their arguments.

As the Law Says

The Law—handed down to us about 3,500 years ago from God through Moses—established patriarchy among the Jews. Male leadership has always been the rule among God’s people from ancient times. You see it all throughout Genesis, Exodus, and the stories of the Old Testament. Men led. Patriarchs guided. Prophets warned. Kings ruled.

Even when the prophetess Huldah rose up to prophesy, the Scriptures present her in relation to her husband (2 Chronicles 34:22). In other words, Huldah fit nicely into the patriarchal system God established. The Scriptures do that for Yael as well (Judges 4:17). She was subject to her husband Heber the Kenite.

Yael killed Sisera, a Syrian general who invaded Israel, by soothing him to sleep and hammering a tent stake into his cranium, but she did so with all the tact and charm her gender allowed. She behaved valiantly, but with all the femininity that made her the woman she was. She won a war, but from her home. She had no weapons, but her household supplies would suffice.

God did not designate women to official roles of spiritual leadership in the Bible but for some rare exceptions. We’ve discussed Huldah and Yael. Phoebe also comes to mind (Romans 16:1), an assistant to Paul and deaconess in the church at Cenchreae. She served under the authority of a man, but acted as a missionary--the bearer of the Letter to the Romans.

Not Feminists

The few women who wielded authority in Bible history were not feminists--that's for sure. They were not seeking equal treatment, equal rights, or equal pay. They did not want to be like men. On the contrary, each of them lived in submission to the men who had charge of them. Esther submitted to Mordecai and to King Ahasuerus. Sarah submitted to Abraham, calling him Lord, and she is praised for doing so (1 Peter 3:6).

Let's also remember Deborah, a prophetess who sat under a palm tree to judge the people of Israel. When General Barak came to her, she encouraged Barak to lead in the war effort. She told him to go out confidently with his men. However, Barak told Deborah that he wanted her to go with him, and that caused her to rebuke him.

‘Certainly I will go with you,’ said Deborah. ‘But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman’ (Judges 4:9).

Deborah prophesied that the glory of the military victory would go to a woman due to Barak's lack of masculine leadership. And it happened as she said it would. Jael won the war when she killed Sisera with a tent peg to the head.

There are still a lot of men who do not want to assume the leadership role God has assigned to them. The problem with male leadership is not always feminism. Much of the time it's the cowardliness of men. The Fall in the Garden of Eden was mainly Adam's fault, not Eve's. God puts the blame just as much on Adam as he does on Eve when he says in Romans 5:12 '... sin entered the world through one man.'

Creation Principle

Male leadership is not just a rule from the times of Moses; it goes further back. It is a principle established in Creation! When God made Adam and Eve, he established male headship. So male leadership is not based on Jewish culture or Middle Eastern traditions, as some would have us believe. It’s not a human invention. It’s a divine design.

Neither is male leadership a conspiracy which men have craftily designed so that they might oppress women. It is a law established by our Maker. You can see it stamped on the animal kingdom. Lions lead lionesses. Tigers lead tigresses. He-wolves lead she-wolves. Tom cats lead queen cats. God made Adam first, then he made Eve to help Adam, to support her husband.

To understand how God established this vital leadership principle in the Beginning, pay close attention to how the word for is used in the following passage:

Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve (1 Timothy 2:11-13; NKJV).

Paul was writing about church leadership here. What is the basis for Paul's rule that women should be silent, submissive, and not teach men or exercise authority over men? The basis is Creation. In other words, Paul wanted all men and women in the Church to relate to each other according to the model God established through that first man and woman, Adam and Eve. What goes on outside the Church is none of our business. But within the Church we follow God’s order. And, again--Paul said that it was a commandment from the Lord, not Paul's opinion!

The Weaker Vessel

Therefore, God has established an order through which men and women should relate to each other. God made man first. He did this intentionally, demonstrating that men should lead. If that truth is difficult for you, it’s your upbringing and your culture that’s hindering you from understanding. You may have been brought up in a matriarchal culture or you may have been brainwashed by feminism, but it's still the natural order of the Universe as established by the Creator.

Scriptures say that women can be deceived more easily than men. That’s a second reason why women should not have authority over men in the Church or in a Christian home.

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression (1 Timothy 2:14; NKJV).

The truth that women can be deceived more easily is reinforced through Peter who tells us that women are the weaker vessel. What Peter means by using the word weaker is that men are weak, but women are weaker.

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7; NKJV).

Note this: Grammatically, Peter is using a comparative adjective. He’s comparing two degrees of weakness.

Boasting About Weakness

Before you take offense at the principle that women are weaker than men, you do well to recall that all human beings are weak. The only power any of us has is from God. That’s what ‘When I am weak then I am strong’ means (2 Corinthians 12:10). That’s also why Paul says ‘I will boast… about my weaknesses’ (2 Corinthians 12:9).

All human beings are weak. It’s our glory to delight in that weakness so that the strength we manifest might clearly demonstrated to be from God.

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness (2 Corinthians 11:30).

I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:5).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the right kind of men should lead in the Church--men sent from God, and men who teach God's Word with sound doctrine. They must be men, and they must be brave enough to act like men.

These men should not surrender their God-given authority to women. All men in the Church, whether they be pastors or not, must recognize that they are weak. If they do, Christ will be their strength. They must lead the way Jesus leads, with humility and gentleness. Men have to love their wives the way Jesus loves the Church.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).