Recovering Biblical Womanhood — Paul Washer

Biblical Womanhood, Equality, and Complementary Roles

OK, we'll talk about wives, grandmothers and grandparents. And the first thing that we need to understand is if there's two things that we could say about our society. And here, I think the United States and Canada are pretty much familiar, is we are a culture that hates children.

Four thousand in my country a day are aborted. They're starting to build even restaurants that are child free, resorts that are child free, condominiums, child free, don't want any of those children around.

And we're also a society that hates women. Now you say, yeah, those male chauvinists, they hate women. No, women hate women. The people who hate women more than anybody else on this planet are feminists.

They hate women. They want women to be men. They don't want them to be women. And any woman who says, I believe that it is my desire to be in my home, to raise godly children, to support my husband and the endeavors that he has to go through in order to provide for our family, any woman who does that is considered a failure in our society.

She's looked down upon. And I know that from personal experience. I know the things that my wife has suffered, the things that people have said because, you know, they say, why don't you help your husband?

And she says, well, I do. No, why don't you get a job? I mean, as a minister, he doesn't make that much money. You could provide other things. What now we're going to look at a few things that are very, very important.

Equality in the Image of God

First of all, we go to Genesis chapter two, says, let's go to chapter one, verse twenty seven. God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them. So we see here that both man and woman were created in the image of God and both of them have an equal standing before God.

The roles that they play in the marriage has nothing to do with a lack of equality. When we will get to the point where it says that a man is head of his home and a wife is to live in submission to her husband, it does not mean that the wife is less than her husband.

It does not mean that. If you think it does, then guess what? You've just destroyed the Trinity because did not the son submit to his father? So did that make the son less than his father? If you say yes, then you have just committed heresy.

Within the Trinity itself, the son submitted to his father. And yet the Bible says the son and the father are one and they are equal. So my wife and I, we are one and we are equal. We function in different roles.

OK, now today everyone says, no, if you've got to have the same role or you're not equal, that's why there's this push by feminists and they've won the day to be honest with. They've won the day that women ought to be fighting on the front lines.

They've won the day that women ought to be doing what men do in everything. And if you deny women that, then you're not treating them as equal. No, what you're doing is you're denying that men and women are different and that they were made different by a creator God.

We are different and we were created for different roles, but we are equal. We're all made in the image of God. God blessed them in verse 28 and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

That subdued the earth was also given to the woman. But there is a different role in subduing the earth. Now, I want to just for a moment, I want you to think before we get to the idea of a woman submitting to her husband, I want you to just think about something.

And this, men, this is also for you. Let's say that there is a woman who looks at the biblical command of a woman submitting to her husband and then she looks over at her husband. He's a guy who works all the time, but he works all the time, not necessarily to provide for his family, works all the time.

And then he's with his buddies and then he's getting all kinds of things for his hobbies. And he's all about what he likes to do. And in doing all the things he likes to do with all his buddies, he's basically neglecting his wife and his children.

And a woman looks over at that and says to herself, I got to submit to that, to a selfish boy who basically lives for himself. That can really make a woman bitter now, but if a woman looks over and sees a man and imprinted upon his face is.

Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. She can look at him and she can still become embittered. Why? Because he can say that and basically say the same thing. I got to neglect you and our children because I'm all about the kingdom of heaven.

How many pastors wives have become embittered because the husband has sacrificed his family for Jesus' sake? OK, and that's amazing because Romans 12, too, says that the will of God is perfect and what it means is this.

You don't have to disobey some of God's commands in order to obey the other ones. So you don't have to disobey what God commanded you to do with your wife and children in order to obey him and what he commanded you to do in the ministry.

But if a woman looks over and sees a man and the man is thy kingdom come, thy will be done, hallowed be thy name, and he begins to live that out within his closest relationships, that he strives that the kingdom come in his wife in fullness of joy and he strives that the kingdom come into his children.

And the woman sees that he sacrifices friends, hobbies, everything else for the sake of blessing his family. Then a woman looks at a man like that and goes with a twinkle in her eye and says, yeah, yeah, I follow a guy like that.

Who is selflessly giving himself away to his family. Sure. Do you see men again, the responsibility of leadership? You're saying, well, you're talking about us again. We wanted you to yell at our wives for a while.

But see, again, if you're going to be you know this, some of you men are over other men. You have jobs that place you over other men. If those men that are under you mess up, the boss doesn't go talk to them, does he?

He talks to you, your men messed up. They're under your authority. You see, it's the same way. And so, you know, this is something that is extremely important. Now, we get to verse twenty three of chapter two and he says, and man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now, even though I believe that there is a way in which we can say our children are of our flesh, if we want to be purist in the biblical language, we have to recognize man and woman, husband and wife are one flesh.

In a deeper way than you could ever think about children, I am not of one flesh, as it says here with my children, I am one flesh with my wife. Now, someone can think that they've been a wonderful mother, even though they've been a failure as a wife, and that's not true.

If you've been a failure as a wife, you've been a failure as a mother. Now, I have a friend in Peru who's very bold. And on Mother's Day, that's what he preached. He said he was bold. I said he was crazy.

But the greatest thing that my wife can do for her children is to love her husband and respect him. Why should children respect their father when they see that the mother doesn't even respect their father?

Now, so we're one flesh. It's the highest and most important relationship. And I am not a good father if I jump over the mother and dedicate myself to the children, which is very easy to do. Now, men, one of the things that, again, is very important is oftentimes, as men, we're usually a bit more independent.

And so and some of us very independent. So we think, you know, I'm handling my spiritual life. I'm an adult. My wife ought to handle her spiritual life, too. Well, even though your wife may be very godly, she was not created for that.

She is a woman who can grow before the Lord in her own right without us. That is true. But she was also made to grow with us and under our guidance and under our example. And when we neglect that, we are neglecting something that's very, very important.

Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church

The fact that men and women were made by God to be different. Now, why did he make us this way? Because marriage is not ultimately about marriage. Marriage is ultimately about us representing the relationship between Christ and the church.

Can the church grow independently of Christ? No. Women were created to grow with their husband, with the help of their husband. Under the tutelage of their husband, that does not mean he lords it over her or he knows more than her.

But she was just made for that reason. You leave her alone or think that she's strong and can make it on her own, which is oftentimes my sin. And you're going to mess up the whole thing of what God is wanting to do.

Mutual Submission and Headship in Marriage

OK, now we go on and let's go ahead now and go to Ephesians five in verse twenty two. Well, let's go to verse twenty one and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. So that's believers are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now, a lot of people will look at this and say, oh, what he's really talking about because of verse twenty one is that there ought to be a mutual submission.

And by saying that they cancel out submission altogether. If there's mutual submission, then what do you do when there's a disagreement and how can there be headship and leadership and mutual submission?

What you understand is that Paul is laying out something for us that's very important. In verse twenty one, he's talking about believers, that there should be a sense of mutual submission. For example, if I come to you and show you with the scripture something that's wrong in your life, you need to submit to it.

And if three weeks later you come to me and show me something that's wrong in my life, what should I do? Should I say, well, I'm an elder and I don't have to submit to you? Absolutely not. You can show me in scripture there is mutual submission.

Do you see that? Iron sharpening iron, brother sharpening brother, sister sister. That's that's very important. So in the church, there's mutual submission. Then he comes to marriage and he says, wives, be subject to your own husbands.

Then he comes to children in six one and he says, children, obey your parents. And then he's going to go on and he's going to talk about slaves, which in our terminology would be employees submit to your employer.

And so he's telling us something of the way we should function in society. That in the body, we should submit to one another. When we go to Peter, though, we also learn that we ought to submit to our elders when they're functioning according to the scriptures and can show us with the scriptures.

We learn from from Romans 13 that we ought to submit to the government, we ought to pay taxes and things like that. And we ought to pay taxes and things like that. Well, here we're learning that in the context of the family, wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.

You do it for the sake of the Lord. Now, let me just show you a practical way in which this works. Let's say that a big decision has to be made in our family. And I look at that big decision. I don't just make the decision.

Say, well, I'm the boss that no, what I do is my most trusted counselor with decisions regarding my family should be my wife, so we have to make this big decision. I go and talk to my wife. I want to hear what she has to say.

And if we're in agreement, bam, OK, let's make the decision. If we're not in agreement, it doesn't mean well, if we're not in agreement, it doesn't mean that we're not going to do it. It doesn't mean that, well, my wife's not in agreement, so I'm not going to make the decision.

But what it does mean is this. If she's not in agreement, that's a real red flag for me. She's my most trusted counselor in the family. So if we're not in agreement, a red flag goes up for me. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to postpone that decision if I can.

So that she and I can pray together, talk about it more until we come to unity. When we come to unity, I'll make that decision. But now if the decision has to be made and we can wait no longer as the head of my family, it's my job to make that decision.

And if I am right and my wife is wrong, I do not gloat over her. And if she is right and I'm wrong. She does not gloat over me, ladies. Dear sisters, there's something that you need to recognize. Your husband is going to be judged more severely than you.

When he's wrong, you should not gloat over him. You should be broken hearted. Because he's going to be called to account for the wrong decision he has made. You need to be praying for him. His is a fearful, fearful job, even though he may not know it, even though your husband may just make decisions nonchalantly because he really hasn't learned the fear of the Lord.

You need to pray that he does. And when he makes the wrong decision, you really need to be a blessing to him. It's a hard thing. It's a very hard thing. It's a dangerous thing. To whom much is given, much is required.

Love, Respect, and the Husband's Responsibility

Now, I want you to notice something here. It says wives be subject to your own husbands. And then in the end, in verse thirty three, it says, nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as as himself.

And the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Now, it's interesting here that it doesn't say that wives are supposed to love their husbands. It says they're supposed to submit to them and respect them.

And it's interesting that here it doesn't say that husbands are to submit to and respect their wives, but they are to love their wives. Now, that does not mean that husbands are not to respect their wives or that women aren't to love their husbands.

That's not what it means. But it does tell us something that's very interesting. I do not need my wife to call me three times a day and say, honey, I love you. I don't need her to send me flowers that says I love you.

I mean, I'm sorry. I just don't need that. I don't. What do I need? I need my wife to respect me. That's what I need as a man. I'm made different than a woman. I need my wife to respect me. The whole world, I can wake up one morning and sometimes with the Internet, I feel like I do.

And every person in the world standing outside my yard with down with Paul signs. Paul should die. Paul's a false prophet. Paul's this. I mean, I get everything you can imagine. That really doesn't affect me.

What does affect me is when my wife, when I feel as though she does not respect me. That kills me. It takes all the strength out of me. You want your husband to be strong, respect him, honor him. Now, here's an interesting thing.

But it does say that the husband should love his wife. What does the wife need? Constant reminders. Of that, she's loved, she needs constant reminders that she's loved, you say, well, you know, I'm just not the kind of guy that says that stuff.

I know you're not repent. But here's our problem. Here's my problem. We get to thinking that our wives are like us. Well, I don't I don't need someone telling me they love me all the time. I don't need affirmation in that area.

And so we don't give it, not because necessarily we're just terrible husbands. We I'm telling you, we've been raised in a culture where we've been led to believe that we're just like men and women. And we're not.

We're not just alike. Now, my wife needs respect. Your wife needs respect. But primarily what they need is an affirmation that they are loved, especially today. I mean, a woman's not even worthy of love in today's culture unless she's five foot ten and weighs seven kilos or something.

You know what I mean? You know that, right? And so she's not even worthy of this kind of stuff. That's only for very special women. And that's the kind of, you know, your women, your wives constantly are looking at women in magazines who aren't even real.

And they're going, I don't look like this. You know, Cindy Crawford, the famous supermodel, she said something one time that was really wise and true. They were interviewing her and she said, what you need to understand is Cindy Crawford doesn't look like Cindy Crawford.

And they said, what do you mean? She goes, do you really think my legs are that long? You know, they can do great things with a computer. And when I'm bent over like this with a beach ball, yeah, I've got a little roll of fat here, too, but they can move that away.

They can take that off. And so what happens is just normal women are being compared and they compare themselves to these pictures that aren't even real. Not even the supermodel looks like that. And they walk around going, how could my husband love me?

And then if they walk in the living room and the husband is watching a television show where the women do look like that. Don't think, man, that that doesn't impact your wife negatively, that it doesn't make her think again, am I even loved?

So so we need different things. We need different things. Now, there's a whole what's amazing about this passage is it only really tells the woman. Just be submissive to your husband and respect him. And the whole chapter is about men and how they're supposed to die to themselves and love their wives as Christ loved the church.

So again, we see that the greater responsibility is where it's upon. It's upon the woman, I mean, upon the man, it's upon the man. Now, I want us to look over. Like I said, this is so full of truth, it's unbelievable, but but we just don't have time to catch everything.

Modesty and Godliness in Women's Dress

I want us to go over for a second to First Timothy chapter two, verse nine. Likewise, in verse eight, Paul says, therefore, I want men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

All right. Now, notice men are prone towards wrath, impatience, anger, fighting, dissension, this type of thing. Then he goes on, he says, I don't want that out of you. I want you lifting up holy hands.

I want you living a life of prayer. I want you to be in unity in your prayer. But now he goes to nine, he says, likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments.

And I say, whoa, well, hold on there. And this is something I'm going to be very honest with you, that my wife and I have been we've really been struggling with this. Not that we don't want to obey it, we want to make sure we know what it means, because does it I mean, what does it mean?

I mean, what does it mean to be a woman? Because we've been given some terms here and I mean, they're not, you know, we almost look at this and say, why didn't you give us more? I mean, give us a rule, give us, you know, something that we can just follow.

But I want you to look at some things. I want you to see, first of all, likewise, I want women to adorn themselves. Now, he wants women to adorn themselves. Adorn themselves with proper clothing. He wants women to adorn themselves with proper clothes.

OK, so adornment's not bad, but that adornment we're going to see is in verse 11. In verse 10, it's good works, godliness, a quiet and submissive spirit. Now, let's go on. He says, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing.

That tells me that there is clothing that's improper for a Christian woman. All right. I mean, that's just logic. There is clothing that is improper for a Christian woman. Now, he says the clothing must be modest, modest.

This is a very important. It's literally proper clothing with modesty is the way it goes in the original text. So with modesty, my wife has a really good thing that she says, and she goes, if your clothing is a frame for your face from which the glory of God is to shine, it's it's proper.

If it draws attention to your face, if your clothing draws attention to your body. If you have the ability to outline it, to make it noticed. Then it's sensual, it's sensual. What you're doing is wrong.

Beauty Versus Sensuality

Now, I want to step off for just a second. Women, you need to understand something. Men are not as dumb as you think they are. My wife and I have a friend in Illinois, and she's a very pretty lady, very pretty.

And if she walked in that door right now, every man in this room, if he turned and saw her, this is what they would say. Well, that's a very pretty lady. That's a very eloquent lady, elegant lady. That's a beautiful lady.

And that's that's what they would think. But ladies, there are also women that aren't half as attractive as that lady I just described to you, either in their face or in their body. And they could walk in that door.

And the moment every man heard the door open and he looked over there, if he was a godly man, he would have to go like this. Because it's not beauty, it's sensuality. And even though you can't exactly write down the rules and put it all on paper, when you see it, you know it.

There is a difference between beauty and sensuality. And God is not against beauty. He is against sensuality. The in Philippians, we are told to think on things that are excellent, that are noble, that are just, that are right, that are true.

The way a woman carries herself and the way she dresses ought to promote the following types of words. Modesty, discretion, wisdom, beauty, elegance, refinement, but not sensuality, luxury, extravagance.

Now, extravagance, ladies, is when your husband wants to want you to take off your earrings so he can make them into lures to catch northern pike. Now, ladies, this is, you know, I've been giving your husbands a lot of tasks.

Let me give you one. Seek to find out what this means and go wherever the Lord shows you. There is nothing more attractive than a woman who has this look of wisdom and discretion and nobility and simplicity.

Simplicity. It's just a simple beauty about her. Now, I was teaching in Romania, I guess it's about two years ago. And I said at a university, I think it was Brasov, University of Brasov, I think, or something.

And it was Europeans, you know, just European techno punk kind of stuff, you know, all these teenagers. I mean, all these college students come in there and everything is a whole room full of them. And there was a bunch of girls there at the bottom of the auditorium in the first rows.

Purple hair, you know, no nails through their nose, stuff like that. You know, and and I looked at them and I didn't get angry. It just really broke my heart. You know, you just look at these little girls, you think, oh, Lord, you know, where where is their father?

What you know, what's happened? And this is what I did. I looked at him and I said, how many of you have seen the movie Pride and Prejudice, BBC or the one the recent one with Akira Knightley? Or how many of you have ever seen that or seen Sense and Sensibility?

You know, those two movies and most of them went, you know, I have. And I said, after you saw that movie, those movies, did did you feel sad? Kind of. And a lot of them went, well, yeah, I, yeah, I did come to think of it.

And I said, well, you know, when I saw those movies, I felt sad and I said, do you want me to tell you why? And they said, sure. I said, because much of what you saw in that movie has been killed in you.

It's been killed. There was a time when people dressed for the sake of beauty. Now it's for the sake of the sake of lust. It used to be refinement. Now it's grunge. And I said, isn't it amazing that even though this really didn't happen in the movie, this was kind of the thing the movie gave you.

Like if a girl was standing there and she reached for a book, let's say a 19 year old girl, and she reaches for a book. And the moment she reaches for the book, a boy also reaches for the same book and his hand crosses her hand like this just by accident.

And guess what happens? The moment that happens, she almost loses her breath. She flushes and has to leave the room. Look what they've done to you. Look how they've robbed you. And you've allowed yourself to be robbed.

The young man, his heart's beating and he doesn't even know what to do, just jumps out of a window. The young girl is all flush and she's just feeling all of these emotions that are just about to explode in her heart and tenderness and innocence and all these things that have been killed in you, young lady, they've been killed.

Sin causes death all the time. It kills everything. It kills beauty. It kills poetry. It kills refinement. I would challenge you to get into the scriptures and it is a difficult task because you start asking yourself a question.

Well, what is it? What is masculine? I mean, does it mean I can never wear pants? Does it mean this or that? Those are very hard questions. And you know what? You need to have a lot of grace because when the scriptures do not say something specifically, you better not be putting your specific rules upon people.

I mean, my wife's here. She's you know, she doesn't dress like a Puritan or something. But at the same time, I can tell you that she and I are in a transition because we've honestly, you know, you get around to trying to look at different aspects of your life.

And one of the things is what is it supposed to look like to be a feminine, beautiful woman with discretion and wisdom and nobility? And I and you know, you can you could dress a woman in a skirt that went all the way down to her heels and she could still be sensual and ungodly.

I mean, nothing's going to cover up a wicked heart. But how should the daughters of God dress themselves? And, you know, some people have gone really, you know, I think the other side and they just wear, you know, you know, denim skirts and white tennis shoes and, you know, put their hair a certain way.

And everybody's a homeschooling mom. I don't think that's what the scriptures had intended either. But I will tell you this, take simplicity, take modesty, take discretion, put within that beauty and elegance.

Throw away from it all sensuality and luxury and extravagance and try to find where does the Lord want you to be? And I'll tell you this, just as as a man, a woman who most people would say is not that attractive in her face.

Or in her body, if you see the way, if you see nobility in her, if you see discretion and wisdom in her clothing, in her in in her way of being, it is attractive, it is pleasant. It is. It is a noble, virtuous woman who just doesn't have it on the inside, but it affects the way she dresses, it affects the way she holds herself and young ladies that are here.

And boys don't play with you. They don't wrestle with you. They don't come up and grab you around the neck. You don't do all these kinds of things. You are very special, very proper, not in that wrong sort of way.

There's a dignity to you. So don't allow the world to tell you how to dress because they just want to make you sensual. Don't tell people how boys or don't let people tell you how boys are supposed to treat you.

Let God tell you and you demand that. You don't do that. Now, fathers, here's something else. You treat their mother. Very poorly. They don't expect your daughter to rise above you in the mate she chooses.

She needs to be able to to look at you and then look at all these 20 year old boys that haven't got, you know, the brain God gave a goose. She needs to be able to look at them and go, you do what? When that boy says, I love you, you what?

Love me. You can't spell the word love. Go look at my dad. Follow him around for two years. He'll show you what love is all about. You see, guys, we do such a disservice to our daughters. We all do when we neglect their mothers or treat their mothers common.

Simplicity, Frugality, and the Proverbs 31 Woman

So don't be angry one day when some guy comes along and treats your daughter is common. Now, look what it says here. It says not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments. Now, does this mean, as some has interpreted, a woman can never braid her hair?

Well, if you go into the Greek world, you will see some braiding that went on that literally it was frightening. The woman looked like Medusa. I am not kidding. They braided hair to the I mean, they would spend days braiding this hair up and it was going all over the place.

It looked like snakes coming out of her head. That's what Satan will always do to a culture. What he's talking about here is not that you can't braid your hair. It's not about just the simplicity of it, not extravagance.

And then there's gold and pearls are costly garments. Now, what does this mean? Well, I see that the servants of Abraham gave Isaac's bride some costly bracelets. Some rings for her nose, you know, go go figure.

So that wasn't treated as an ungodly thing. I think it goes back again to extravagance. Extravagance and costly garments. No, women should not be preoccupied with spending a lot of money on clothing. But you know what?

A wise woman, a noble woman can take a little bit of something and make it look pretty amazing. Remember the Proverbs 31 woman? She didn't just dress her household. She herself dressed in purple. But it was a frugality.

A frugality, a simplicity like one time when we were on our honeymoon, you know, I wanted to really like, I'm going to buy her something. So we go in this clothing store and there's this dress or skirt.

I don't know the difference between a dress and a skirt. What was it? Was it a skirt or a dress? Skirt. OK, I just I just don't know. I just can't figure that out. Or is it a skirt? And it was really pretty and it just kind of went down long.

It's really pretty. I said, why don't we get it? She looked at the price tag. She said, it's eighty five dollars. We're not buying this. I said, good. I didn't know they cost that much. But guess what?

A few weeks later, she found the same skirt, different color, exact same skirt with the price tag still on it. And the goodwill, I think it was for five dollars. And I was like, praise the Lord. You know, I'm like here, honey, here's ten dollars.

Don't spend it all in one place. But it's amazing what a wise woman can do with almost nothing. And it's also amazing what a woman with no wisdom cannot do with everything. It's just amazing. And so, you know, and it comes down, you know, people always ask me, is it a sin for women to wear makeup?

And I say, brother, it's a sin. Some women don't wear makeup. An old preacher said one time, it never hurts to put a little paint on an old barn. But now here's the point again, you can see when a woman uses makeup and there's there's discretion and you can see another woman.

It looks like she just lost the paint gun war, you know, and that's just what it comes down to. And then there needs to be a lot of grace when you make your decision. I remember one time I preached in Romania and God had really moved and saved a bunch of people and the meetings were all extended.

And then the next year I came back and I brought my wife. My wife had some little earrings in and things like that. And this Romanian woman walked up and she goes, brother, Paul, you preach power of God in your life.

How could you be married to a woman like this? And I was like, I'm stepping back because there's going to be a fight. And my wife was so wise, she got her in a headlock and pounded. No, I'm just kidding.

This lady who said this was about twenty five, thirty years old, twenty five, and she looked just haggard. But I mean, in her face, you could see she she was an attractive lady, but she was just haggard.

I mean, just morose. And my wife goes, do you have a picture of yourself? Lady goes, yeah. Before I was converted. Chelsea, can I see it? Lady said, yeah. Try to look at the picture. And it was a vibrant young lady smiling, happy.

Try to look at it. She gave her back the picture and she said, you know, I liked you better when you were lost. And then she came back to her and said, is this what Jesus does to a person? Kills their joy, makes them mean spirited.

OK, you don't have any makeup and you don't have any earrings on. But you look she didn't say this, but I know she was thinking you look like a zombie from the Dawn of the Dead movie. You know, the fact of the matter is this woman was in bondage.