Yes, Women can be Leaders, Too!

 

In my recent article on “What is Biblical Womanhood?” I emphasized the point that the egalitarian and complementarian camps are both wrong in certain areas, and I issued forth the clarion call for all of us to return back to the Word of God alone for our definition of Biblical womanhood and our beliefs on what women should and should not be doing. I’m going to be continuing along the lines of that same concept today as we look at what the Word of God actually says about women in leadership.

This is where we will see yet again that both camps mentioned above are wrong. The egalitarian side tends to say that women can and should exercise rightful leadership and authority in any and every sphere - home, church, community, etc. They will typically emphasize the fact that they do not believe in the concept of a woman submitting to her husband (even though we clearly see this taught repeatedly in the Scriptures - Colossians 3:18 and Ephesians 5:22-24, specifically). On the other side, however, we have the complementarian camp which holds so rigidly to the Biblical belief that it is men who are to hold the authority and responsibility for the paths taken by the home and church, that they then begin to take verses such as 1 Timothy 2:11-12 (which says women should learn in silence and not exercise authority over nor teach men) and run with them, taking them to unBiblical ends.

This is why we are looking to the Word of God alone today, emphasizing the importance of allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture and remembering that we need to know the whole 66 books of the canon rather than merely pulling out the pet verses and chapters we like the most.

 

Female Leadership in the Garden

In an excellent lecture entitled Raising Daughters Beyond Stereotypes given at the 2014 Gospel Coalition’s womens conference (you really should go listen to it at the link above!), Jen Wilkin aptly pointed out that both man and woman were given leadership responsibilities at the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 1:26-28 says this:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (emphasis added)

This is clearly leadership language. Woman was not created to be a mamby-pamby pansy of a person, good only for doing the laundry and cleaning the house (we already looked at the actual meaning of the Hebrew word “ezer”, which is translated as “helper” in Genesis 2:18). Now don’t get me wrong - household tasks are incredibly important and they carry with them Kingdom significance; they are not “mundane” in the true sense of the word. They are not “beneath us”. However, we do both men and women a great disservice when we limit the sum total of God’s purpose for women to simply being the completion of housework and nothing else.

Are women called to be leaders in certain capacities? Yes, I believe the plain teaching of Genesis 1:26-28 makes it clear that this is so. This is actually part of God’s design.

 

Deborah, the Judge and Prophetess

This passage from Judges 4 and 5 is one I used to try to explain away with all my might because it just simply did not fit into my ultra-conservative, legalistic, hyper-complementarian box I had made for myself all those years ago. So, to write these words to you today, some eleven years after the onset of that legalistic season, feels a little strange for me. Fourteen year old Rebekah would quickly tell twenty-five year old Rebekah that she must now be a feminist or at least an egalitarian to believe these things I’m about to say. Let me quickly set the record straight, however: for many reasons, I do not adhere to either of those labels (but neither do I hold to the strict complementarian label any longer, either!). If I were to ever be “labeled”, I would hope it would be only with the term Biblicist (though even that label, as with all others, can be misconstrued!). With this in mind, let’s turn first to Judges 4:4-5 where we are first introduced to Deborah:

Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.

Contrary to what is taught in complementarian circles, nowhere does the Word of God say that Deborah was only in this position of leadership because the men of Israel were failing in their responsibilities to lead. It may be true that the men around her were being unfaithful to their callings, for we see Deborah rebuke Barak for his insistence that she lead the army into battle instead of doing it himself (Judges 4:6-9). However, we are not once told pointblank that Deborah was only in this position in order to fill what was a void of godly men in Israel. Therefore, we cannot make that claim if we are being careful to not add to Scripture. In fact, read these words from the next chapter, Judges 5:

verses 1-2: “Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying: “When leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves, Bless the Lord!”

verses 6-9: “In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were deserted, and the travelers walked along the byways. Village life ceased, it ceased in Israel, until I, Deborah, arose, arose a mother in Israel. They chose new gods; Then there was war in the gates; not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel. My heart is with the rulers of Israel who offered themselves willingly with the people. Bless the Lord!”

end of verse 31: “So the land had rest for forty years.”

God clearly blessed His people through the leadership of this faithful woman, this mother in Israel. Judges 2:18 makes it clear that God Himself is the One Who rose up Deborah and put her into this position of leadership. Contrary to what those folks will say who cherry-pick passages of Scripture out of context (passages such as Isaiah 3:12 - “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths.”) and then try to say that female leaders are only ever a scourge on a society, we see this was clearly not true in Deborah’s case.

God so clearly raised her up in the midst of a dark and dreary time in Israel’s history and used her to be a light to His people. She called them back to Him, the result of which was a fourty-year-long rest for the land. We see again, here in Judges 4 and 5, that women can indeed be used by God to be leaders.

What we oftentimes forget in conservative circles that believe women shouldn’t be leaders is that they are already leaders every single day. We simply cannot get around that fact. The question is not “Will you be a leader?”, but “What kind of leader are you already?” We see in the Proverbs 31 woman the proof of what Proverbs 14:1 teaches - “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.” Women carry with them such power of influence (Satan knew this - why do you think he went to Eve first?), such leadership capabilities in the home and family simply by nature of their being women created by God according to His design. The Proverbs 31 woman leads her servants (verse 15), leads and contributes to her family’s finances (verse 16), leads by example with her speech (verse 26), and leads household affairs (verse 27).

Women who are living out the Titus 2 model in their church and community are also leaders. They are leading their fellow sisters-in-Christ towards the Lord as they equip and encourage them to love their families, prioritize their marriages, lead holy lives, and love the work of home. So, are women leaders? Again, we have a resounding yes! Now we are going to turn to a quick study of a prominent woman in the New Testament to see how women also led in the early church era, as well.

We repeatedly hear throughout the New Testament of Paul’s friends and fellow ministers of the gospel, Aquila and his wife Priscilla (see Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Romans 16:3, and 1 Corinthians 16:19). This couple hosted a church in their home and were both well versed in theology and right doctrine. So much so that we read the following account in Acts 18:24-26:

Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (emphasis added)

Passages like this and others (such as when the prophetess Huldah taught God’s law to the High Priest and his men - see 2 Kings 22:8-20 and 2 Chronicles 34:21-23) make it clear that women are allowed to teach men the Word of God in appropriate situations. To say otherwise is to ignore the clear passages of Scripture which may not fit into one’s complementarian box. I do believe we see that only men are to hold the “senior pastor” position in the church and I do believe they carry the ultimate responsibility before God for the condition of the congregation (see 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 5:1-9). We likewise see in Colossians 3:18 and Ephesians 5:22-24 that wives are to submit to their husbands. But to say that this appropriate headship of men continues so far as to mean that women can never teach men anything (specifically the Word of God), is to be unfaithful to the text of Scripture. Women can -and should!- lead men closer to the Lord with the words they say, the lives they lead, and the actions they take. We see this repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments.

The bottom line is this: yes, there are differences between the genders, different responsibilities to be undertaken by each, and different spheres of authority. However, to take this truth so far to an extreme as to say that women can never lead in any capacity, can never teach men the Word of God in any context, and can never exercise great influence over the church is to be an unfaithful student of the whole of God’s Word. It’s as simple as that.

Please know, as we close this brief survey of female leadership in the Bible, that I am speaking to myself just as much as I am to you (if not more so!). I made the mistake for years of intentionally putting on blinders to certain passages of the Word because they did not fit into my man-made box. I no longer want to make that same unwise and dangerous mistake. Why would I? Why would I want to adhere to the “wisdom” and perspective of man when I could instead simply rest in the full canon of God’s perfect, alive, and active Word? It just doesn’t make sense.