Women pastors / deaconesses

[kenrch]

In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination

May be you should read the scriptures again

[Jill]

Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:49)

In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination May be you should read the scriptures again

Okay…you are right and I am wrong. Anything you say bro.

[Jill]

Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:49)

In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination May be you should read the scriptures again

Okay…you are right and I am wrong. Anything you say bro.

[kenrch]

Quote (Jill @ Aug. 02 2006,21:53)

Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:49) In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination May be you should read the scriptures again Okay…you are right and I am wrong.  Anything you say bro.

That is just the point I'm not right!

[Jill]

Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:58)

Quote (Jill @ Aug. 02 2006,21:53) Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:49) In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination May be you should read the scriptures again Okay…you are right and I am wrong.  Anything you say bro. That is just the point I'm not right!

Oh…don't be so modest. You are always right. If you think it…it is fact.

[kenrch]

Quote (Jill @ Aug. 02 2006,22:02)

Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:58) Quote (Jill @ Aug. 02 2006,21:53) Quote (kenrch @ Aug. 02 2006,21:49) In any relationship respect, compassion and communication are of utmost importance, not control or domination May be you should read the scriptures again Okay…you are right and I am wrong.  Anything you say bro. That is just the point I'm not right! Oh…don't be so modest.  You are always right.  If you think it…it is fact.

You missed again!!!

But don't leave your fun

[seekingtruth]

Jill
I do not dominate over my wife, she submits to me (most of the time anyway). She completes me, as I do her.

God gave us different gifts and we perceive things differently hence we are bound to dis-agree at times. God’s method to prevent irreconcilable difference is to have one that makes the final call and He choose man. That does not make the man right by any means, it just means he made the call.

The woman pleases God with her submission. For my part, right behind pleasing the Lord, I try to please my wife whom I love dearly, I rarely do anything of consequence without first discussing it with her, I am totally committed to her as much as the Lord allows.

You seem to be well studied for someone of your age I would like to commend you but also caution you, there are wolves in sheep clothing and our only defense is scripture. Please compare what you’re taught not to what I or anyone else says, but only to what scripture says.

May the Lord bless you

[Jill]

Quote (seekingtruth @ Aug. 02 2006,22:31)

Please compare what you’re taught not to what I or anyone else says, but only to what scripture says.

I will keep that in mind. Thank you.

[NickHassan]

Hi Jill,
As always the first step is to ensure your own security before looking at any aspect of fellowship because God does not want us fellowshiping with demons.

“seek ye first the kingdom of God and eveything else will be added to you”

Dig deep to the rock of the Word.
Lay the foundation stone of Christ by being reborn into him.
Build up your faith feeding on the Word.
Follow the Spirit.

God will do the rest and place you as a living stone into the building we make up together in the Spirit [Eph 2.20f]to worship our Father God.

[Mercy]

Men are suppost to love their wives with the same love Christ had for the church. I am sure you have heard this many times before, Jill. But seriously look at what that is saying.

Yes women need to respect their husbands, but the husband should be acting in a manner that could only result in that respect. I believe that men are even to give their own lives for their wives. The burden is far greater on the husband I think. It actually places us in the role of a suffering servant for our families and our wife.

It is not a one sided issue of the wife respecting her husband. It is the husband also considering his wife and her needs more important than his own.

It is beautiful if not twisted and misused.

Our God is not a God of confusion. He is a God of order. He has established an order for our benefit. How do two married people resolve a conflict in a godly manner without a structure from God. Well God gave us this structure and it is good.

[He’s Coming in the Clouds]

Dear Jill,

I didn't mean to upset you. Please forgive me if I did. For when it comes to faith, does it matter if it is a man or woman? Cannot a woman have more faith then a man? What about the relationships where the woman is the spiritual person of the household because the husband may not be saved or may not be grounded in the Word. What matters is faith.

Although women are weaker in the flesh, that does not mean they are weaker in faith. What matters is we keep our eyes on Christ. Matters such as this will work themselves out if we stand steadfast in his love and faith.

Yet, we still must abide by his Word. By doing this, all things will become clear.

[NickHassan]

Hi debra,
You may find interest here

[Debra]

Hi Nick, I most certainly do.
I agree with you all, NOw.. but there was a time I would fight this issue just as Jill is doing, if she is only 16 she is, as seekeroftruth said very knowledgeable she must have been studing since birth. But that's neither here nor there. The idea of submitting to a man horrified me, this was a huge battle I went through with my husband, for many years, but it the the most intense study of Corithians, we both studied, disscussed and argued to the point of separation for a time. Then one day a lovely lady gave me a very old looking Bible study from India. I don't know what I think about Angles yet, it's still a bit cloudy for me and I havn't had any prompting from the Lord to study it yet,but her gift was from God, I won't go too far into it yet, but to say there is alot of discussion in it. But I will write this (from the study) There are laws of God for the home-for husbands, wives and children. Before ANYONE can minister effectivly, a man, women, young person- Gods “chain of comand” must be operating in the home. A loving patient husband and father. A wife Willingly and joyfully covered by her husbands headship, obeying him and guiding the children. Children obeying their parents in the Lord.
YOU MUST BE IN DIVINE ORDER IN THE HOME, IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL LIFE FIRST. BUT WOMEN ARE CERTAINLY NOT EXCLUDED FROM PUBLIC MINISTRY BY 1 TIMOTHY 2:12.
To say that this phrase says women cannot teach at all, is just as rediculous as stating men need not teach either, because it says in 1 JOHN 2:27″ you need not that any man teach you.” I would love to chat to Jill.. Thanks for the thought Nick.

[Cubes]

The question I have is, if men and women are to have the same roles (in authority), then why did Jesus not include women among the apostles in the first place? Why Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah…Benjamin, and not Dinah? Why no queens in the lineage of King David?

For sure, The prophetess Miriam was noted to be a leader of Israel, together with her brothers, but their positions of authority were such that Moses was in foremost authority, followed by Aaron, who was anointed as highpriest by Moses.

Mic 6:4 For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Exd 15:20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.

Jesus himself as our high priest, is male, after the order of the King of Salem, Melchizedek. (Gen 14:18)

[Debra]

Hi Cubes
That's a good question, I never really thought about , but I will do some study and get back to you later.
A thought..What of Junia, a women who Paul identified in Romans 16:7 as a fellow countryman and ” of note among the apostles. While “apostles” here is used in it's weaker sense as “missionaries” the fact that a women bore this title around A.D. 55 is significant.

[Mercy]

In Romans 16:7, Paul wrote, “Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.” Isn't Junias a woman? And wasn't she an apostle? And doesn't that mean that Paul was willing to acknowledge that a woman held a very authoritative position over men in the early church?

Let's take these three questions one at a time.

1. Was Junias a woman? We cannot know. The evidence is indecisive. We did a complete search of all the Greek writings from Homer (B.C. ninth century?) into the fifth century A.D. available now on computer through the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (Pilot CD ROM #C, University of California at Irvine, 1987), which contains 2,889 authors and 8,203 works. We asked the computer for all forms of Iounia- so that we would pick up all the possible cases. (We did not search for the possible first declension masculine genitive Iouniou, which morphologically could come from a masculine Iounias, because there is no way to tell if Iouniou might come from the man's name Iounios; so that all these genitive forms would be useless in establishing a masculine Iounias.)

The result of our computer search is this: Besides the one instance in Romans 16:7 there were three others.

Plutarch (ca. A.D. 50-ca. 120), in his Life of Marcus Brutus, wrote about the tension between Brutus and Cassius, ” . . . though they were connected in their families, Cassius having married Junia, the sister of Brutus (Iounia gar adelphe Broutou sunoikei Kassios).”

Epiphanius (A.D. 315-403), the bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, wrote an Index of Disciples, in which he includes this line: “Iounias, of whom Paul makes mention, became bishop of Apameia of Syria” (Index disciplulorum, 125.19-20). In Greek, the phrase “of whom” is a masculine relative pronoun (hou) and shows that Epiphanius thought Iounias was a man.

John Chrysostom (A.D. 347-407), in preaching on Romans 16:7, said in reference to Junias, “Oh! how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!”

What we may learn from these three uses is that Junias was used as a woman's name in the time around the New Testament (Plutarch). The Church Fathers were evidently divided as to whether Paul was using Junias that way, Epiphanius assuming it is masculine, Chrysostom assuming it is feminine. Perhaps somewhat more weight may be given to the statement by Epiphanius, since he appears to know more specific information about Junias (that he became bishop of Apameia), while Chrysostom gives no more information than what he could deduce from Romans 16:7).

Perhaps more significant than either of these, however, is a Latin quotation from Origen (died 252 A.D.), in the earliest extant commentary on Romans: He says that Paul refers to “Andronicus and Junias and Herodian, all of whom he calls relatives and fellow captives (Andronicus, et Junias, et Herodion, quos omnes et cognatos suos, et concaptivos appellat)” (Origen's commentary on Romas, preserved in a Latin translation by Rufinus, c. 345-c.410 A.D., in J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 14, col. 1289). The name Junias here is a Latin masculine singular nominative, implying-if this ancient translation is reliable-that Origin (who was one of the ancient world's most proficient scholars) thought Junias was a man. Coupled with the quotation from Epiphanias, this quotation makes the weight of ancient evidence support this view.

Masculine names ending in -as are not unusual even in the New Testament: Andrew (Andreas, Matthew 10:2), Elijah (Elias, Matthew 11:14), Isaiah (Esaias, John 1:23), Zacharias (Luke 1:5). A. T. Robertson (Grammar of the Greek New Testament [New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914], pp. 171-173) shows that numerous names ending in -as are shortened forms for clearly masculine forms. The clearest example in the New Testament is Silas (Acts 15:22) from Silvanus (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Peter 5:12).

So there is no way to be dogmatic about what the form of the name signifies. It could be feminine or it could be masculine. Certainly no one should claim that Junia was a common woman's name in the Greek speaking world, since there are only these three known examples in all of ancient Greek literature. Moreover the fact that Andronicus and Junias, like Prisca and Aquila (16:3), are given as a pair does not demand that they be husband and wife, because in 16:12 two women are greeted as a pair: “Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.” Andronicus and Junias could be addressed as two men, since Tryphena and Tryphosa are addressed as two women.

2. Was Junias an apostle? Possibly so, but this is not certain. Grammatically “of note among the apostles” could mean that the apostles held Andronicus and Junias in high regard. Thus they would not be themselves apostles. But this is unlikely because Paul himself is an apostle and would probably not refer to them in the third person. On the other hand, since Andronicus and Junias were Christians before Paul was, it may be that their longstanding ministry (reaching back before Paul's) is precisely what Paul might have in mind when he says of note among the apostles. They may well have been known among the apostles before Paul was even converted. Here again we cannot be certain.

3. Did Junias have a very authoritative position in the early church? Probably not. The word apostle is used for servants of Christ at different levels of authority in the New Testament. Revelation 21:14 refers to “the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (cf. Matthew 19:28; Acts 1:15-26). The twelve had a unique role in bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Paul counted himself among the privileged group by insisting on having seen and been called by the risen Christ (Galatians 1:1, 12; 1 Corinthians 9:1-2). Very closely related with this unique inner ring were the missionary partners of Paul, Barnabas (Acts 14:14) and Silvanus and Timothy (1 Thessalonians 2:6), as well as James, the Lord's brother (Galatians 1:19) and perhaps others (1 Corinthians 15:7).

Finally, the word apostle is used in a broad sense as “messenger,” for example, of Epaphroditus in Philippians 2:25, and of several “messengers of the churches” in 2 Corinthians 8:23. Therefore, if Andronicus and Junias were apostles, they were probably among the third group serving in some kind of itinerant ministry. If Junias is a woman, this would seem to put her in the same category with Priscilla, who with her husband seemed to do at least a little travelling with the Apostle Paul (Acts 18:18). The ministry would be significant but not necessarily in the category of an authoritative governor of the churches like Paul (2 Corinthians 10:8; 13:10).

copied from this link
HERE

[Debra]

Thanks Mercy, you did the ground work for me. the first Bible I had was my families old KJV, but I found it afterawhile a big hard to understand, so got myself a good study Bible an NIV. and went on to buy other versions, I found them all including the KJV differant from oneanother in small ways but what I'm getting at is it might be a small differance but it's really a huge one. Take Junia and Junias, I believe that Junia was a women she might have been Andronicus wife, sister, cousin, I don't know, I think it's irrelavent what their relationship was.If I had only looked at the NIV I would have thought Junias ( as the name is in the NIV) was a man, because of the s on the end, which I believe signifies male, but my KJV the first one I read says Junia, so I concluded a women. What a differance a name makes…

[Cubes]

Hey Debra & Mercy,

Thanks a lot.  Very informative question and response, respectively.

The issue of male and female is similar to that between Jews and gentiles.

Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

At the same time, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that Salvation is of the Jews (John 4).
Now we know that Christ receives gentiles and gives them authority, and we are in him.  Still, salvation is of the Jews and not of the gentiles.  In fact, the New Jerusalem to come down from heaven has foundations and gates after the Jewish patriachs and apostles.  All male, BTW.  I am sure you've heard of the erroneous teaching that the gentiles have replaced Israel, spiritually.

We must bear in mind too that Christ said we shall be as angels, who do not marry.  But I can't remember whether or not angels are without gender.  I am pretty sure they have gender.  Michael, the arch angel is male, it sounds like.

Paul who was an apostle unto the gentiles and who wrote Gal 3:28 above, also writes Romans 11.
Romans 11:18 do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.
19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” 20 Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either.

Similarly, there is neither bond nor free in Christ.  And yet, it is Paul who says that servants are to obey their masters and that not with eye service, for it is Christ we serve.  (Col 3).  In heaven, God shall remain God and Jesus, Lord forever.  So authority would still come into play… and the servants of Jesus shall rule and reign with him.  

Finally, there is no male nor female in Christ, and yet it is Paul who also reminds us that the man is head over woman as God is over Christ.  These are eternal truths.    

My gut feeling is that God is no respector of persons and doesn't love Jews more than he loves gentiles or men more than women, or masters more than servants.  He loves whoever does his will and rejects whoever would knowingly continue to reject him.

Jesus has the holy spirit.  As do those that are in him.  He cast out demons as have those that are in him.  However, its a case of an authority structure and the recognition of the same:  there is an interrelationship and yet, one is weaker and depends on the other more, and can do nothing without the other.  Recognizing and honoring the authority structure (in mutual loving submission –Jesus is Lord but he washed the disciples feet and said the greater should be the better servant), is indispensible.

Anyway, these are my thoughts and I welcome yours.

[Debra]

Hi Cubes
Yes I agree with you.
I read this today….

God wants us to understand that men and women share the same essential identity. While there are differences between men and women, these are not differences of essence.
The essence of humanity, the thing that sets humankind apart from all other living creatures, is that only humanbeings have been created in God's image and likeness.

[Mercy]

I have heard some use this verse to say that women are not made is God's image but in mans image.

I Corinthians 11:7-8
7A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 8For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

Here it appears that both are created in God's image. But the way it is worded is not 100% conclusive.

Genesis 1:27
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them

Here though it seems to nullify the question in the first place. Since it is rather apparent that in God's eyes he does not have favorites.

I Corinthians 11:11-12
11In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

It seems to me that the main issue is a matter of divine roles established by God. These exist because God knows best. He made us and knows how we work. He knows men have egos that need fed, he knows women have need of being loved and cherished. He establishes order because he is not a God of confusion.

I Corinthians 11:3
3Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

I think this next passage clarifies how much God truly understands our natures as male and female. This pattern outlined in scriptures if followed precisely simply cannot fail. It is beautiful if not warped and twisted by a selfish spouse.

Ephesians 5:22-33
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Please understand I am not posting these to cause any woman grief over whether they are made in God's image or not. I am just posting scripture since it is our only authority on all matters.

However, even if woman was made in the image of man and man was made in the image of God then what really is the difference. They would both be in God's image. An image of an image is the self same image. The only difference would be a descending established order.

God beget Christ who beget man who beget woman who completes the cycle so that God is in all.

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