2138.—Women in the Church.
Read the whole clause together, “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man.” What the apostle evidently designs to reprove was the assumption of authority on the part of woman. God in the beginning made them equal. Woman was made an help meet for man. Sin came in; our first mother yielded to sin; Adam yielded because he loved his wife. The Lord tells us, not that He decreed it, but from that time forward the woman’s desire should be to her husband and he should rule over her. In other words, his very nature would make him the stronger of the two and the one better fitted to lead out and control in matters of business. So in the church of God the apostle lays down the rule that he does to correct the abuses that might spring up from a misunderstanding of proper relationships. We do not understand by this that woman did not have her field of work in the church, because the same apostle commends Phoebe and other noble women in the Gospel. Woman has a field, and a mighty strong one, and that is in the affections. Her faithfulness and devotion, her intuition and sympathy, are more potent many times than all of the strength and natural leadership which man may possess.