When I hear the phrase biblical patriarchy today I can’t help but think of Mark Twain’s comment, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Last night, from the Jesus Without Baggage website, I read an article entitled, “How Christian Patriarchy is a Misguided and Harmful Belief that Does Tremendous Damage.” It claimed:
"Christian Patriarchy oppresses and denigrates women and girls. They are expected to submit meekly to whatever the husband demands. This is wrong, oppressive. The idea is that men are directed by God and have the responsibility to direct their wives. But Women can follow the voice and direction of God just as easily as men can. Christian Patriarchy develops an environment for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against women and misrepresents biblical passages. (The author then cites 5 biblical texts that teach that men are to lead their homes and churches.) These passages are used as if they are the very word of God—eternal propositional truth. But these opinions were written by people (not God) to address issues in particular congregations and based on the culture that existed at the time. They are not the eternal Word of God."
These words are but another example of the phenomenon we examined last week, i.e., the way critical theory’s oppressor/oppressed lens has corrupted so many people’s views of God’s perfect gender design. Also consistent with what we said last week, she is a woman, like way too many, who has been harmed by abusive men. I begin this way because this author and many, many egalitarians believe things about God’s design of gender roles that just ain’t so. The opening words of Paul’s letter to Timothy about spiritual leadership in the church and home directly refute the claim that God’s role assignments inherently harm women. To the contrary, the very aim of his leadership charge to Timothy, Paul states, “is LOVE.”
As we continue our May series, Portrait of Effective Spiritual Leadership, today we uncover three aspects of the spiritual leadership charge Paul begins to give Timothy in chapter 1.
- Your charge is to teach others to avoid useless theological speculations but instead stay focused on ordering their lives to accomplish God’s mission.
- The aim of your charge is love.
- The love you need to fulfill your charge springs from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
TEACH OTHERS TO AVOID USELESS THEOLOGICAL SPECULATIONS: INSTEAD FOCUS ON ORDERING THEIR LIVES TO ACCOMPLISH GOD’S MISSION
Just as I urged that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now... (I Tim 1:3-4).
Paul comes down hard on theological mind games. The false teachers were not only deviating from the true gospel taught by Paul, they were adding things referred to as myths and endless genealogies. The Greeks loved argument for the sake of argument and intellectual centers in Rome were always looking for the latest teaching. These kinds of man-made theological games, says Paul are useless speculation, which is in sharp contrast to teaching that advances the plan of God, which is of faith. Paul uses a fascinating word for advance the plan, also translated stewardship, (OIKONOMOUS), from which we get economy. It is usually used for household management, a cognate from OIKOS—house + NEMO—to arrange. Useless speculation is the opposite of teaching that empowers stewardship, i.e. ordering our world to accomplish Christ kingdom agenda in every sphere.
Paul’s use of OIKONOMOUS points to his insistence that God’s true Word be applied in Christian’s everyday lives. Just as James calls believers to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, Paul expects us to manage our outward lives in such a way that we implement biblical teaching, i.e. shape our lives by it. Paul would have agreed with Gordon MacDonald, author of Ordering Your Private World, who astutely observed, “If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual MUST GOVERN the outer world of activity.” So, our private, inner world requires ordering, so that it can shape the outer world of activity. “Good teaching,” says Paul, "must help Christians implement their faith plan for seeking first the kingdom in all their lives, living as transformed creatures."
THE AIM OF YOUR CHARGE IS LOVE (1 Timothy 1:5)
Think of how this stated AIM of spiritual leadership refutes the arguments of those who are brainwashed into thinking that biblical male leadership is oppressive. It just ain’t so. Anyone who looks into God’s gender design objectively, who casts off the dirty oppressor/oppressed lens of critical theory, will see that the consistent call throughout the Bible is for men to love those under their care by devoting themselves to whatever it takes for them to thrive, to die to themselves so those under their care flourish. Consider:
Adam is placed in the garden to cultivate it (AVAD) and to protect it (SHAMAR). His wife, Eve, and their children are in the garden. AVAD means to supply whatever his wife and children (and those he serves in business) need to flourish. He sweats. He dies to himself so that they may reach their full potential. Adam not only is to sacrifice his labor to care for them, his commission is to protect them spiritually, emotionally, and physically. If necessary, he dies to protect them. This vocation of Adam is the definition of AGAPE, self-giving LOVE. It is giving of yourself sacrificially to meet the needs of another.
Jesus, the Second Adam, models the manhood that Adam was to fulfill. He came to earth to free us from the tyranny of sin that was destroying us, giving his life in love so that we might be set free from the penalty, power, and presence of the spiritual cancer, sin. He pours out the Holy Spirit who sows in us the seed of godliness, who cultivates new life on the path of righteousness to which Jesus calls us. And Jesus fulfills the role of protecting us (SHAMAR). He defeated Satan at the cross, ascended to the Father and poured out the spiritual gifts and the weapons of warfare. Jesus interceded for us in John 17 to be kept from the evil one an, in fact, he and the Holy Spirit intercede for us every day. Jeus the head of his bride perfectly LOVES her.
Timothy, likewise, is called to be a leader, in his case of the church. Where does Paul start with his charge? The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The purpose of male leadership of the home and church given in the creation design and for his covenant people is crystal clear; The aim of our charge is love. Our spiritual leadership, like that of Adam and Jesus was given for the purpose of loving those under our care. And Christian men have been doing so for two thousand years. Nancy Pearcey, in her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, reveals objective data that prove that the most loving, caring husbands of any subgroup in America today, are devout men who hold the biblical view that they should lead their homes. She writes,
“Many people assume that the most theologically conservative men are patriarchal and domineering. But sociological studies have refuted that negative stereotype. Compared to secular men, devout Christian family men who attend church regularly are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce and astonishingly they have the lowest level of domestic abuse and violence.”
THE LOVE YOU NEED TO GIVE ARISES FROM THREE WELLSPRINGS
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (I Tim 1:5). Every Christian man I know wants to love well his wife and kids. But we often don’t. How can we increase our capacity to love? Paul tells us that the very AGAPE, self-sacrificing love we need arises from 3 sources.
A. A pure heart. The word heart (KARDIA) refers metaphorically to the inner place where our motives, desires, and loves reside. These are the same two words used in Jesus’ 6th beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Pure (KATHAROS) is also translated clean. It means free from impure admixture, unmixed. Sexual purity means directing my sexual appetite singly towards my wife, unmixed with fantasies involving other women. However, it is incorrect to understand the call to a pure heart as only, or primarily the call to sexual purity. Here are 2 observations about having a pure heart:
1. A pure heart is governed by pure MOTIVES--where concern for the loved one TAKES PRIORITY over love for oneself. Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friend. A pure heart is selflessness combined with an understanding of, and commitment to another’s needs. God so loved the world that he gave up what was most precious to him—his Son—to meet our great need for salvation. Self-love is normal and instinctive. We ought to be concerned about our own needs, take responsibility for meeting them ourselves, as adults should, and take those we can’t meet to God. But a pure heart prioritizes the other’s needs over our own. Tim Keller explains how this view of the heart shaped Augustine. In fact, he linked moral virtue to putting concern for another a priority over love for the self.
“Courage is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than your own, even when the truth will put you at a disadvantage. Look at injustice. You may say that you believe in social equality and justice and think that you do, but if you make business decisions that exploit others, it is because at the heart level, you love your own prosperity more than your neighbor’s.” (Making Sense of God, Tim Keller).
A pure heart is unselfish to the core, always putting others ahead of ourselves. That is why it is so tough, why Jesus said that to follow him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow him. Such denial, though temporarily painful, is very satisfying. We find pleasure in giving love. But only Christ can empower us to keep giving and giving, when we receive nothing or even pain in return.
2. A pure heart orders all of its loves correctly. Impure hearts are also those whose loves are not ordered properly. Keller continues to explain,
“Augustine also observed that the heart’s loves have an order to them, and that we often love less important things more and the more important things less. Therefore, the disorder and unhappiness of our lives is caused by the disorder of our loves. How does this work? There is nothing wrong with loving your work, but if you love it more than your family, your loves are out of order and you may ruin your family. Or if you love making money more than you love justice, then you will exploit your employees.”
Of course, the ultimate disordered love, and the ultimate source of our discontent is the failure to love first things first, a failure to love God supremely. Purity of heart begins with making God our first love, which is why the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. A pure heart is an undivided heart. Supreme allegiance is given to our first love. Augustine rightly believed that human beings are created for a degree of delight and fulfillment that nothing in creation can produce. His famous words to God from the beginning of his Confessions ring true, You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds it’s rest in you. Humans harm themselves when we love anything more than God.
“If you love your children more than you love God, you will essentially rest your need for significance and security in them. You will need too much for them to succeed, be happy, and love you. That will either drive them away or crush them under the weight of your expectations because they will be the ultimate source of your happiness, and no human being can measure up to that. If you love your spouse or romantic partner more than God, the same things occur. If you love your work and career more than God, you will necessarily also love them more than your family, your community and your own health, and so that will lead to physical and relational breakdown and often…to social injustice. If you love anything more than God, you harm the object of your love, you harm yourself, you harm the world around you, and you end up deeply dissatisfied and discontent” (Ibid).
So, the first wellspring from which AGAPE love flows is a pure, unselfish heart where our loves are properly ordered. The second wellspring is:
B. A good conscience. The Greek word for conscience (SUNEIDESIS) comes from the word knowing and with. Thus, we carry with us an all-seeing part of us called our conscience. Here are two reasons why a good, or clear conscience is a wellspring for genuine love:
1. True love never disregards the voice of conscience. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. (1 Cor 13:6). Agreeing to have sex before marriage because your fiancée wants to is NOT genuine love. It is never worth violating your conscience to obtain a benefit for another. Satan tempted Jesus to hit his knee once, a one-second act of bowing to Satan and Satan would let Jesus spread his benevolent rule over the earth (or so he said). True love does not violate what our conscience tells us is untrue or morally wrong out of sympathy for another. Rosaria Butterfield, in her book, The Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, points to the way that in our culture empathy has mistakenly been elevated to the highest form of love. She observes, “Empathy means standing in someone else’s shoes. In a world where kindness is the most important virtue, empathy is the highest manifestation of this love.” But empathizing is NOT the highest form of love. If you see a person drowning, you can empathize with the drowning victim all day; but love pulls the victim out of the water. Similarly, when your daughter comes home from college claiming that she is a male in a woman’s body, the LGBTQ+ propaganda says your highest moral virtue is empathy, trying to understand how she feels and not making her FEEL WORSE. But love recognizes the truth: something is terribly wrong with your daughter.
2. A good conscience is vital because a guilty conscience causes us to hide, as Adam and Eve did, when they sinned. Meaningful relationships require transparency. When my conscience tells me I have sinned against God, I need to seek his forgiveness, be restored, and continue to fill my soul with his unconditional love, the only source for the love I need to pour into others. But a good conscience is not only one that keeps short accounts with God (confessing my sins quickly and getting back in the fight) but keeps short accounts with humans we offend, also. If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matt 5:23-24).
C. A sincere faith. A hypocritical faith is one that feigns faith to enjoy the benefits of the faith community. In contrast, Paul says real faith is a wellspring from which AGAPE love flows. Real faith is trusting God. It is taking God at his Word, knowing his promises can be 100% trusted. Why are sincere faith and selfless love so closely interconnected? Because I will not be free to fully focus on devoting myself to another’s needs when I am concerned about my own. When I trust God’s promise, My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:19) I can give generously to alleviate a need or display my love for another. I can find freedom from needing to impress others when I am confident of 1 Pet 5:6. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. When facing complex decisions that can preoccupy me, I can relax and focus on the needs of others when I am certain of James 1:5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. When I am consumed with anxiety, I can keep from overburdening my loved ones when I know God’s promise, You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern (I Pet 5:7). When my frailties and the tasks in front of me overwhelm me, I can find inner power to still reach out to others with love when I rely on God’s promise to Paul, He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Cor 12:9). When I give in again to sin, am down on myself, feel disrespected at home, and unworthy of all I have been given, I recover strength in the promise that shaped Paul’s life, I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 8:38-39).
The calling of all Christiann men to lead our homes and churches is God’s good, perfect design; there is nothing about the prescribed leadership of men that even hints at oppression. To the contrary, it is a design rooted in the calling to love sacrificially and in the wisdom to know the three sources from which such self-giving love flows.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- In your own words why does sacrificial love issue from a pure heart?
- In your own words why does sacrificial love issue from a clean conscience?
- In your own words why does sacrificial love issue from a sincere faith?
