The Strength of A Godly Woman
As my English Literature professor during Bible college waltzed into the room, she discussed one of the many eccentric topics we learned to expect from her class. She was, and would be proud to be deemed, an eccentric teacher. Following one of her always interesting tangents, she remarked, “I’m a complementarian because I’m a woman.” That struck me, and I’ve considered that comment ever since.
What Women Want
In our day, popular culture cries out for women to know they are valued, and powerful, and deserve the right to be whatever they want. Though it’s certainly true that they’re valuable and powerful, some things are limited for both men and women. So when my professor said what she said, with bold confidence and clear strength, I knew that there was a practical element to the unique roles men and women play. When thinking theologically, there’s a cut-and-dry answer in Scripture. But we also have an idea of traditional femininity in our culture. And since this series has been on the culture war, how do we engage with that?
When women get brought up, there are two sides, and only two, that people accept in literature. The ones where women are housewives that fulfill their husband’s desires to flourish the family, or some women get ahead in society and flourish in the work environment. A wife who focuses on family may have a little side business, or a working woman may want a family, but those are sidelined to their main desires. But neither side has a good answer. There’s a better answer. A way that Scripture commends and teaches.
The Holy Helper
Let’s look at Genesis 2:18-25:
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Women were created because there was a need. God saw the need for Adam to have someone to be with him. Men are not self-sustainable. God is the source of life, and the source of life found it fit to make a woman. The dynamics between men and women are planned out by God and not a mistake.
It is so clear that men are affected by women that John Angell James says:
Woman was the finishing grace of the creation. Woman was the completeness of man’s bliss in Paradise. Woman was the cause of sin and death to our world. The world was redeemed by the seed of the woman. Woman is the mother of the human race; our companion, counselor, and comforter in the pilgrimage of life; or our tempter, scourge, and destroyer. Our sweetest cup of earthly happiness, or our bitterest draught of sorrow, is mixed and administered by her hand. She not only renders smooth or rough our path to the grave, but helps or hinders our progress to immortality. In heaven we shall bless God for her aid in assisting us to reach that blissful state; or amid the torments of unutterable woe in another region, we shall deplore the fatality of her influence![1]
James has explained what 1 Corinthians 11:7 says, “[…]woman is the glory of man.” Non-Christian women have also understood much of this context. One famous quip of our culture is, “if the man is the head, the woman is the neck!”[2] Though this phrase is not perfectly accurate, there is a known need for men and women to work together.
John 15:26 talks about God being a helper. It says, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” To anyone who believes that “helper” is a word for inferiority, commit this verse to heart. God is our helper. So when God created the women to be the helper for the man, this is what he has in mind. God has in mind a holy helper. Just as God has helped us in our weakness, or how Jesus helped free us by dying on the cross, or how the Holy Spirit helps lead us and grow us in righteousness, so too have women been given the title of helper. She is not God. You are not God. Men are not gods over women, and women are not gods over men. They’re different and built to sustain one another. Don’t miss the theological necessity of women.
T. V. Moore charges men with a strong rebuke when they take women for granted. He chastises them for the evil done against them when men ignore the value and importance of a woman who has been an essential help to him. Hear these words:
She whom you thus wronged was the companion of those earlier and brighter days, when in the bloom of her young beauty she left her father’s house and shared your early struggles, and rejoiced in your later success; who walked arm in arm with you along the pilgrimage of life, cheering you in its trials by her gentle ministry; and now, when the bloom of her youth has faded and the friends of her youth have gone, when her father and mother whom she left for you are in the grave, then you cruelly cast her off as a worn-out, worthless thing, and insult her holiest affections by putting an idolater and a heathen in her place.[3]
Moore and James have properly honoured women in their God-given position. They are valuable because they are made in God’s image.
Putting It All Together
My pastor, in a recent sermon series, avoided the usual “roles” language. Instead, he focused on teaching men their mission as men, and women their mission as women. God created us to fulfill our purposes. Men are given a mission. Women are given a mission. We don’t have to focus on what each side doesn’t need to do when both sides know what they need to do. Here are the missions.
To the men: treat the women in your life well, as mothers and sisters (in purity!) as 1 Timothy 5 commands. Lead the ones whom God gives you to lead. Love them as Christ loved you, and his church when he sacrificed everything. You are not their God, but your mission is to lead them towards God, sacrificing yourself to keep them safe.
To the women: treat the men in your life as fathers and brothers (also in purity!) as 1 Timothy 5 commands. Encourage them and help them live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives (as Titus 2:11-14 tells us). You are not their God, but your mission is to keep them focused on their upward call.
What a joyful experience to do what we were made to do! We were made to love God; we were made to care for one another, and we were fearfully and wonderfully made. I hope you take these things to heart and prayerfully consider how every time you crack open your Bible, you can fulfill your God-given mission. Soli Deo Gloria.
[1] John Angell James, Female Piety, Introduction.
[2] That is to say, the man may be the one making the calls, but the woman is the reason that the man is able to look at anything. Without the neck, the head can’t do much.
[3] T. V. Moore, Malachi; This is a quote from his commentary on the second chapter of Malachi. My copy is from Banner of Truth, but the publication details are not available to me. An online version of this can be found at https://archive.org/details/prophetsofrestor00moor/page/362/mode/1up?view=theater.