IS IT ILLEGITIMATE TO MAINTAIN ROLE DISTINCTIONS?

 


Scripture teaches the legitimacy of role distinctions, even within the Trinity:

• But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3 ESV)

This doesn't mean that the Father is greater in essence than the Son, or even that He is more important. This merely means that there are role distinctions.

It should also be obvious that there are role distinctions between parents and their children. This doesn't mean that God loves parents more than children, but that He has designated parents as authorities over children.

Likewise, there are role distinctions between elders and congregants and even between wives and their husbands:

• Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:22-25)

Likewise, the Bible prescribes role distinctions between male and female within the church:

• Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11-14)

This distinction is not grounded in the alleged unruly behavior of certain women but, instead, in both the creation order and in the Fall.

Paul even specified that this distinction applied to all the churches:

• As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:33-35)

(Nevertheless, I think that there is room for interpretive disagreement about the meaning of "keep silent." Perhaps, it only applied to contentious talk? Certainly, it was permissible for women to pray and sing in church, and even to prophesy.)

And yet there are areas of sameness or equality amid the role distinctions. The king was also to be equally under the law. The same restrictions and punishments applied to him as it did to others:

• “And when he [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.”(Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

Even though he was the king, he too had to obey the law. Although we take this for granted, this had not been the case in the time of Moses, when the king was the intermediary between his people and God.

Notice that the king also had to submit to the authority of the Levitical priests—a division of powers. Today, we are seeing a return to totalitarianism, the total control of the government and the curtailing of the authority of the parents, which had reigned supreme in the family:

• “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)

Today, there is little respect for parental influence. It is gradually being replaced by the influence of the State. Consequently, the State has become the guardian of our children. However, the consequences of this shift have always been bad for the children.