#94 WOMEN’S ROLE IN CHURCH + Dr. Lynn Cohick

We're going to talk about women's role within ministry. Today's guest is Dr. Lynn Kohek.

What did Jesus really think about women? Jesus saw women as individuals.

He welcomed their ideas. He got into conversations. You feel seen, you feel heard, you feel valued.

What is really happening between Jesus and this woman? Jesus allowed her to speak. He dignifies her by allowing her a public platform, gives her the mic.

They missed it. They totally missed it, and she totally got it. Oh my gosh. How do we apply our role as women biblically?

Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host.

In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the

Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our creator, better. Hi, it's

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello, welcome to Biblically Speaking. I'm your host,

Cassian Blino. Today, I'm very excited to talk about a very popular topic, something that's near and dear, something

I get comments on all the time, especially being a woman with a microphone in front of her, is what did

Jesus really think about women? Did Paul continue that vision in letters like Ephesians and Philippians, or have these words in 1

Corinthians that people love to quote, has that been misunderstood? We're going to debate 1

Corinthians. We're going to talk about women's role within ministry. We're going to see what does

Jesus really think and then apply it to today. How do we apply our role as women

Biblically and in alignment with how Jesus taught, and how can we encourage other women to respect what

Jesus taught? I'm going to put it all into context with the expert of all experts. Today's guest is

Dr. Lynn Kohik. You are a distinguished professor of New Testament and director of Houston Theological Seminary at Houston Christian University.

You hold a PhD in New Testament and Christian origins from the University of Pennsylvania, and you publish major work on Ephesians, Philippians, women in the

New Testament, and the social world of early Christianity. You are going to put this in context, and I'm so excited to get into the show.

Thank you. Thank you, Cassian, for inviting me. And that's kind of a mouthful, but yes,

I have studied for a couple of decades now, the women in the

Biblical text, especially the New Testament. So yeah, great to be here and have this conversation.

I know why I want to talk about this, but did you specifically have a reason why you wanted to study this topic of women in the

Bible? Well, I think two reasons. One, I love the study of history and studying people of the past, not so much like wars and tactics and battle and that kind of thing, but more just how did people actually get on with life?

And then I loved studying the Bible. And I think when I put those together and then think about my own

Christian walk, it becomes kind of personal. So there's both the academic side that I'm just curious about this.

And then the personal side is I want to be a faithful follower of Jesus, so. Definitely.

Have you, as a woman who has so many credentials and now kind of speaks with her own microphone, have you had to face any accusations of women are meant to be silent personally?

And then you're like, well, let me tell you some context. Yes, yes.

Yeah. And I think we want to dive into the biblical text, so no reason to take a lot of time in that.

But I think my story is similar to a lot of women in the academy, in the church, frankly, in the workplace.

It's a space where, I don't know, you kind of feel like you always have to hit a home run.

And that if you foul out or you strike out, well, it's, yeah, it stands for all women everywhere.

So there just feels like a lot of pressure to perform all the time and to always get it right and always have an

A plus, yeah. Totally, I feel that. Okay, so let's put it in context.

I mean, let's kind of start off generally speaking in case somebody could be unfamiliar with what we're talking about, is that when people ask, what does the

Bible say about women? It feels to me, it's what's a woman's role. But what do you think they're actually asking?

No, I think so. I think what they're, first of all, when they say, what does the Bible say? They often rightly,

I think, mean, what does God say? And so there's like a heightened level of intensity when you say, what does the

Bible say? It's not, what does this charter say or what does this historian say?

But no, what does God say? And then say about women kind of presupposes that there's this norm and the norm is man.

And so how does a woman compare and contrast with man? And I think you're right to use the word role.

Although I don't see God laying out roles for men and women that aren't kind of tied naturally to family sort of thing, like women bear children, and that's a role is a mother, but mother is also relationship.

So I think the, I tend to avoid role because that, I mean, cultures have different expectations for men and women.

And that's, anyway, so it kind of gets complicated when you start using the word role.

I like to think about discipleship and think about it that way. Awesome.

Well, this is my favorite question to ask and it's transport me as if I lived back 2000 years ago, what would it have been like as a woman?

Because I know it's like to live in 2026, but what about the year 26? What would that have been like for me as a woman back then?

Well, I think first of all, compared to today, things would have felt really, really, really local.

You just didn't travel far from your home area. And that would be true for men and women.

We have access to news globally and instantly. That just simply would not have been the case.

So that your world would have, from our perspective, felt really small.

It would have also felt very tied to your family center.

And for women, when they married, that meant that they might also move from their home area to their husband's area.

But at this time, women usually married, in the

Latin, it's called sine manu, without hand. It means that not everything, not all their property and all of that went over to their husband.

They retained connections with their father's house. They could maintain their own checking account, if you will.

They could have their own property, date groves, fields, courtyards that were separate from their husbands.

So their family was very important, but they weren't completely dependent on their husband for everything.

But nobody could really do it alone. They didn't have DoorDash. So it was really important that everyone contributed so that you could have hopefully two meals a day.

And I think that, so there was a subsistence level to existence at this time, and thus everybody's contributions mattered.

So I would say, those are some of the things, when we go back to the first century, it was a hard life compared to what we would be used to.

It was a communal life. You depended on people in really important ways. It was very physical, because there wasn't mechanical, other than the wheel, there really wasn't any kind of mechanization to help with things.

Yeah, so that's, I would say that, so now I'm in this community, I'm gonna be valued for how

I can contribute with raising children. About 50 % of children died before they reached the age of five.

It's a terrible, sad statistic. And so both the husband and the wife, both parents really wanted to have children who would grow up to adulthood.

And that wasn't a given, the way that we think often it is today. So I think women would have wanted to get married, almost everybody did.

I mean, it's with rare exception that people entered into their 30s, women entered into their 30s without being married.

So marriage and having a family was highly valued.

And not, yeah, and so I would say that's women, because it contributed to the ongoing life of the family, and you were usually one, if not two generations away from being extinct, your family.

So I think we need to remember that when we read the biblical text, because we might feel like, oh, well, women were just only in the house.

Yeah, but it's not the same as like the 1950s, leave it to Beaver and Mrs.

Cleaver in the house, that everyone was working at this time.

There wasn't like a middle class, the way we have today and leisure time and just all the things which

I'm thrilled about. I also love hot water and flush toilets. I mean, there's a lot that we have now that I'm really glad for.

And we just have to remember those things didn't exist then. And so how you valued and appreciated people, we have to keep that in mind.

There was differences compared to today. I mean, already you're shocking me.

I don't know where I got the notion that these women were like way less valued, way less protected, had a lot less worth.

I mean, the fact that they had property or could have property honestly shocks me. But I mean, it is completely different.

Obviously, they have to be contributing to society and able to run the household, that makes sense to me.

But the way that you're framing it right now makes it seem like in that first century, women and men were teams.

There wasn't men as a hierarchy, which I definitely would have said that. I would have said that like women don't really have rights.

They don't really have a voice. And so when we get into these texts, it's almost shocking that women are speaking out because I kind of look backward.

I'm like, well, it just feels like that was a time where women were just less respected. Is that totally wrong?

I mean, no, it's not totally wrong for sure. It's basically, it's a matter of degree.

So women, they weren't emperors, although they could birth an emperor, be the mother of an emperor or the wife of an emperor or sister or daughter.

They were not senators. They weren't in the military. And those, the emperor, the senators and the military were the ones that held the final power.

So women didn't have that, although they could be royalty. So there was a Jewish queen that ruled for 10 years at the end of the

Hasmonean dynasty, which ended in 63 BC. For 10 years, she ruled.

She had been the, her husband had been the king. And when he passed and her two sons were not ruling at that time, she led.

So, and Cleopatra, of course, we know Cleopatra, that name, Cleopatra the

Seventh, who was a lover both of Julius Caesar and more famously,

Mark Antony. So she was the most wealthy woman in the whole of the Mediterranean basin at that time.

She had a lot of power. So people, and in fact, Cleopatra really irritated Herod the

Great. She had a lot of date groves near Jericho and he really wanted that area, which makes me really like Cleopatra because I think

Herod the Great, and I'm not alone. Lots of people didn't like Herod the Great.

How did she, like, this is just like a mini history lesson, but what do you think made her kind of end up in a position where she had that much power?

Oh, because she was a Ptolemaic ruler and the

Egypt, in Egypt. And the, they were considered, you know, like divine in a certain way.

So the royal family, because there was a divineness in some way connected with them, this would not be true with the

Jewish leaders, but in the pagan world, that would be part of where she got her influence and power.

They felt it was a royalty. Yeah, but the legal system is such that while women could own property, there were some restrictions on whether they could loan money.

There was a sense in which, or in certain situations, not loan money. They could buy and sell, but there were general restrictions.

There was a general sense that women should be quiet or subdued, or there's a strong push on their modesty.

And the modesty was not so much on clothing, although that is mentioned, but voice and demeanor and that sort of thing.

Yeah, it is all there, but it leaves room for like the display of wealth.

Age and your class or wealth played a huge role in how much influence women had.

And so a wealthy woman could have much more influence in a community than a poor man.

Yeah. Wow. And I think that you make a distinction which we'll probably get into when we get into Corinthians is it's more about their demeanor and being silent than it is their wealth and what they're wearing.

So that's just interesting. Okay, so let's get into Jesus. So if we start with Jesus and then we get into Paul, we have so many examples of Jesus interacting with women throughout the gospels.

And where do you see his treatment of women most clearly? Because in the modern texts, we see silent women when he speaks to his mother, but then we see him interacting with women in really gentle ways.

So should we look at his treatment and we'll go by kind of examples of like, are they kind of daughters that he dotes on that are less than him, that he has more power or is there any equality that he might see with women?

What would you say in your own words? Like how could we summarize it and then we'll get into the granular. Yeah, I think that Jesus saw women as individuals.

They weren't a class or a group. He could look at them as individuals and really see them and their needs.

And he welcomed their ideas.

He got into conversations. And I don't know about you, but for me, I feel really respected when someone stops, looks at me and says, oh yeah, tell me what your thoughts are.

Like you feel seen, you feel heard, you feel valued. And that's what we see

Jesus doing time and again, often over against his disciples, most of whom, but not all, most who were male, sort of shushing women or pushing them along.

I mean, they do this also to the poor or to those who need healed. It's not just to women.

There's a sense in which, this guy's a little too busy for you right now. Jesus never acted that way to women.

And he didn't to others who were in need. But we're talking specifically about women.

That's, I think he just saw and heard them and valued them. Communicated his sense that they were fully human.

Crazy concept. Exactly. Okay, let's, I have, let's see. I think I have five examples of women here.

The first one is my favorite. I've spent a lot of time talking about the bleeding woman. I love the story, just the

Jewishness of the woman I've spent. I love my episode on the bleeding woman with Dr. James Sedlicek. But knowing what

I know, this woman, I'm like kind of knowing her context and her backstory. What is Jesus really communicating about this woman who is very vulnerable, very poor, and she is on the ground and she is technically unclean.

She is bleeding and she reaches out and she touches him. And he says, daughter, your faith has made you well. This bleeding woman, outside of it, it looks like she's less than.

It looks like he's kind of like taking pity on her. He's doing her a favor.

If I'm gonna be like super brash about it. But let's transport more context into this.

What is really happening between Jesus and this woman and why is it relevant on the way that he treated her, given the context of his status and her status and that time and the way women were seen?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you're right. She's hemorrhaging. So it's not just the regular menstrual purity issues.

It extends beyond that. And there, in the Old Testament, they do talk about that, Azav and Azava, the male and the female who have repeated bodily emissions that render them unclean.

And she has spent years trying to get healed of this. But you notice that nobody is thinking that she is, by her presence, making everyone else unclean.

I think that's a really important point. She's not leprous. The lepers are put outside of the village because of the fear of the contagion.

She's not seen as that. And so she is coming to Jesus because she believes he's a healer.

And she reaches out and touches him. So she's not communicating, if you read the Levitical stuff, she's not, by her touch, communicating or making him, in some way, unclean.

This is about power. And she sees Jesus' power to heal. And he recognizes.

Where I would differ from how another view would be, he stopped,

Jesus stops, and it's not like he calls her out, but he recognizes that someone in this mashup of people that's coming close to him saw him as having power, much, much more power than the average person that he comes in contact with.

And so it gives her an opportunity to testify to what he has done for her.

And she does. And he praises her for that.

She becomes, for the whole crowd, a testimony. This is, I was just looking it up here in Mark.

So Mark chapter five, and this would be verse 30, when

Jesus realized power had gone out of him. And that's a really important term in Mark as he discusses

Jesus' miracles. The disciples are like, ah, you know, everybody's around you.

But he says - A thousand people have touched you. Yeah, exactly. This woman knew what happened to her.

And I love that line also. It gives credence to women who say,

I felt a change in my body. Now we can think modern healthcare today.

And in the last hundred years or so, there's been great strides in the medical community, but the stereotype is sort of like, ah, these women, they're kind of hysterical.

They're kind of, you know, they're never, yeah, they, what do we want to say, hypochondriac.

You know, they don't really, you can't trust what a woman says about her body. There are all these symptoms.

But I love that here that the biblical text says she knew what happened to her, a change happened.

Something felt different and of course felt healed with her.

And Jesus allowed her to speak that.

So she testifies to him. So that's what I would say. He dignifies her by allowing her a public platform, gives her the mic and he values her faith in his power, which is, as I say, what

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Yeah. I love that, that he dignifies her and gives her the mic and not by chastising or patronizing her.

He wants her to tell what happened and claim it and own it. Wow, yeah, that really shines a new light that I've never considered.

Okay, I would love to stay there, but the Samaritan woman and the woman at the well.

So with the Samaritan woman story, what does it mean that Jesus is speaking theology with a woman, but not just any woman, this woman with a story, with a back, with many histories that he's alluding to?

Yes. So a couple of things, and I know we're pressed for time, so I'll just highlight this, but I have, there's a great book called

Vindicating the Vixens that your listeners may want to check out.

And there, I discuss this a little bit more. I've published a couple of times on this Samaritan woman because I just love her.

I've been pondering her for 20 years now. Yeah, she's an amazing figure.

Yeah, well, I think it's because they do talk theology and I love talking theology.

And so I think I really appreciate that. I love that she's an evangelist and I wish

I had her courage, but I mean, the whole town, maybe not every single person, but lots of people in the town, because of her testimony, believe in Jesus.

Then they go out and meet Jesus and they're even more confident, but it's not that they say, oh, well, we'll check it out.

They go and hear Jesus and then they believe. They believe because of her testimony. And if you start there, if you look at how the story ends,

I think it challenges then our typical understandings that she is an immoral woman.

I don't think she is. I don't think that's what Jesus is saying. And as he rehearses that she's had five husbands, that's a tragedy.

That's not that she's, I think of like Liz Taylor, who was married five or six times, twice to the same man, kind of glamorous and all that.

I feel like she's not, it's not a glamorous existence. She's more like Naomi. Everyone's dying around her.

And we don't know if she has children that can help out. And the man she's with now,

I mean, it may be that she's a concubine, which in their culture would have been like mostly a wife, but not granted all of the privileges of inheritance.

Like if they had any kids, the kids would not inherit. So there's ways to understand who she is, the situation in her life, where it's not that she has made immoral choices.

But I think the biggest evidence, the most convincing evidence for me that she's not immoral is that the men in the town believe her.

She comes back and says, I think I've seen the Messiah. Can you believe it? And they're like, wow, yeah.

As you tell us all this stuff, you're absolutely right. Now, who believes the local floozy?

I don't know what other word, there are certain words that also come to mind that would be impolite. I mean, no one's gonna believe.

Let me say it more positively. Clearly she had a reputation in the town of being someone interested in theology.

She knew the prophecies. The Samaritans had the five books of Moses.

She knew, because Moses talks about the one who is going to come after. She knew that.

She didn't know Isaiah's prophecies. She wouldn't be reading the extra later prophets.

The Samaritans didn't do that. But they had the five books of Moses. It's clear she knows her theology.

And it's clear that the townspeople knew that she was an upstanding, believable, moral woman.

There's also the sense, well, you know, she came at noon, that means she's an outcast. There's simply no evidence in the ancient world that there were time restrictions on when good women went to wells, okay?

It's not, you know, there's any number of situations that I could imagine a woman in a village needing to head out to the well at noon.

Somebody knocked over her jar. Somebody needed extra. You know, maybe her neighbor just had a baby, couldn't get to the well.

She's like, let me run and get one, you know, a jug filled for you. So many reasons.

But I also think it's interesting, in the Greek, it just says in the sixth hour. So it doesn't say noon.

And at this time, the Jews told time in a different way than the

Romans did. The Romans tell time like we do, you know, at midnight, at 12 .01 a .m.,

like that's when our day starts. For the Jews, the next day starts at sundown.

It can get kind of confusing, but I'm sure the ancient Jews, Jesus could tell, you know, he knew both time systems and just operated, you know, almost unconsciously in them.

So it's very possible that John, in this case, doesn't mean noon the sixth hour, but means 6 p .m.

For reasons, you know, I mean, there's research. I don't know, it would take us far afield for me to try and prove that.

But anyway, there is the possibility that it's actually 6 p .m., which would make sense then of Jesus being really tired and the disciples being in the village and getting food, as they would have been preparing the evening meal.

So anyway, but even if you say, no, it has to be noon, there's simply no evidence that going to the well at noon indicates that, you know, that she was an outcast.

Anyway, so yeah, the Samaritan woman, when Jesus gives her a theological truth that is frankly, maybe the most theoretical, philosophical of anything that he says, which is that the time is coming when people will worship

God in spirit and in truth. Everybody at this time, pagan,

Samaritan, Jew, everyone is sacrificing. Like there is not this conception that you could worship a

God or in the pagan's case, a goddess, without having some kind of animal sacrifice.

Now, it didn't mean that you personally always gave an animal sacrifice because they were expensive, but everybody thought you had to, you had to be in a sacred place, the house of the

God, and you gave a sacrifice. So for Jesus to say, the time is coming when everyone, you know, worship

God in spirit and in truth, it's like, whoa, now we just think, oh yeah, that makes total sense.

That was an amazing revelation and vision of what this worship will look like when

Jesus has been crucified and raised and ascended to the father.

So I just think, you know, she, you don't just drop that on somebody, right?

This is a woman, I think, who has been thinking deeply about who God is and been, you know, and Jesus at the very beginning of all of this story in John, John says

Jesus had to go through Samaria. It's an interesting way that it's phrased because Jesus actually didn't need to go.

There are other roads that go around Samaria. The fact that it's stated that he had to go,

I think just kind of sets things up. There is an encounter that needs to happen. And that encounter is just incredibly rich theologically.

And it's, you know, that the woman in this story, the

Samaritan woman, who later church history calls Fotina, the one who's illuminated or enlightened.

She follows through with the teaching that Jesus gives his disciples in this whole story, right?

The disciples come back and Jesus says, the field is ripe for the harvest.

The disciples have just been in the town. They come out, they have some food, but no one in that town is saying, hey, they talked about the

Messiah. She goes and converts most of the town that comes back out. And I can imagine the disciples going like, whoa, what just happened?

They missed it. They totally missed it. And she totally got it. She represents like how to do

Jesus' teaching well in this story. And so often we just like block, we block out this important section of Jesus' teaching in her story.

We just kind of stop the story when she runs back to tell the town, but it continues and it's even more powerful.

I wish we could stay here the whole hour. It is so evident how much you've thought about this and you've brought so many details to light.

I thank you for sharing so much about what you've learned and thought about. That's wow,

Fotina. I'm so mad that we have other things to talk about, but moving forward just from Jesus into Paul's teaching, because we're kind of at that halfway mark, would you say it's fair to call

Jesus a feminist and not in like the new definition, but like in the way that he sees women as equal to men?

Is that fair? Yeah, let me qualify things a little bit.

So the feminist movement, like let's say the first wave when women were trying to get the vote.

Sure. And even the second wave where equal pay for equal work, like in the 80s.

Those have as one foundation, the sense of the equality of all people.

And so in that sense, it's good, but it's also an enlightenment idea that kind of can root things in, you have a right.

You have a right to this. You have a right to equal pay. And I would say that in our democratic culture, that is absolutely true.

But when you look at the biblical text, we are enjoined to lay down our lives for others, right?

We are called to serve and Jesus himself,

I didn't come to be served, but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many.

And so I would say that if by feminist, you mean seeing a woman as fully human, fully deserving of a flourishing life as someone who in and of herself without a man, but just in and of herself representing the imago

Dei, the image of God, as it tells us in Genesis one, he made them male and female, he created them in the image and likeness of God.

So if that's what feminist means, then I would say, yes, Jesus is a feminist, but today it's so packed.

And even back in the first wave, it's very packed also with politics.

And that's what I'd like to kind of tease out. If we just stay with the imago Dei, are women made in the image of God?

Yes, they are made in the image and likeness of God, the three persons.

And so, yes, I would say Jesus treats women as fully human and all of the attributes, wisdom, knowledge, deep joy, just the kinds of things that when you think what makes us relation, that what makes us like the best that a human can be, women do that, can represent that just as well as men.

Beautiful. Okay, I'm so glad to hear that the text supports that and that we have texts that can support that claim for Jesus that it's not something that we're kind of placing, but it's very evident through the text that Jesus does see women and does have value and does have respect for them in that way.

Moving forward. Can I, yes, before we jump though, let me just also mention there's a fabulous book written by Dorothy Sayers.

It's a little pamphlet called, Are Women Human? Isn't that a great title?

Are Women Human? And it's basically, she gave two lectures, I think in 1938, she gave two lectures about Jesus and his interaction with women and it's superb.

Yeah, Are Women Human? Okay, we'll have that in the show notes below for this just in case anybody wants to easily download it, but that's amazing.

Okay, so now women in gospel work. We see Paul writing these letters and in Philippians, women like Eodia and Sintiki, I don't know if I can say that remotely, perfect.

Okay, so they're participating in gospel work. What can we see about the text? Is that, is this a good thing or a bad thing or something that they should not be doing?

Yeah, so Eodia and Sintiki in Philippians chapter four, they are called

Paul's co -workers and so they and their names are written in the book of life.

So they are on Paul's team, full members of Paul's team.

They're not being chastised for heretical teaching or misappropriation of church funds or immoral activity, but there is a disunity and scholars aren't clear what that disunity is.

It's gotta be something in relation to ministry. It may be that they, one thinks we should open a second soup kitchen and the other says, no, we need to send this money on overseas missions.

You know, something like that where it's legit disagreements on how you live out your ministry, but it has risen to the point that the congregation itself is being pulled apart.

That's what Paul is really concerned about. Now, the other interesting thing about Philippians is at the very beginning of the letter,

Paul greets the saints, the holy ones, that's what he calls believers, those who are in Philippi and also along with the

Episcopoi and Diakonoi, the bishops or the overseers is how a lot of translations do it,

Episcopoi, overseers, later it becomes bishop and Diakonoi, deacon.

So Paul never mentions those two groups in any of his greetings other than here and to the

Philippians. So some people wonder, given the prominence that Iodia and Syntyche have, that perhaps they are also members of either of these groups.

We don't know, but I think it's a plausible, conclusion to draw.

How does that change things with their participation? Well, I think it just, what it does is it said, sometimes if you have a title or you're part of a group that we know led the church in one way or another, it then becomes an example of women functioning in leadership roles, yeah.

Okay, and it's seen in a bad light there or? No, I think it's not.

I think they can be, we know that they're co -workers, but they also might be deacons. We know they're co -workers, they may also be

Episcopoi, right, overseers. We don't know, but when you just kind of add up little bits of things like that Paul never greets these two groups, except here to the

Philippians, and he rarely identifies by name people in a congregation, suggests that, oh, maybe they're members of either of these groups or one is a member of one of these groups.

And so it's how people just kind of, how we try to recreate what the first century church looked like.

How did they, yeah, how did they build their community and structure their community?

Okay, so it seems like even in participation within being a co -worker is not, it's an elevated status.

Like, it's an equal status. It's not, you know, she's the secretary and I'm the big boss because she's a woman.

Like, it doesn't seem like that's the case, but even like real quick in Ephesians, because I really want to get to 1 Corinthians, but with Ephesians, Paul is talking about marriage.

He's talking about household relationships. So the way he's talking about that, how should

I hear that? Both like back then and now. Is this get in your kitchen and don't come out?

Or is it, this is, you are the leader of this household. Like, what is that status?

How should I hear that then and now? Yeah. Well, I would say that to read

Ephesians best, start at 5 .18. Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit.

That's the command that Paul will then continue where he will talk, be filled with the spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to each other, giving thanks to each other and submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ.

So that line, submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ, that's verse 20.

Verse 21 reads literally, wives to your husbands as to the Lord. There's no verb.

So you have to take the verb from the previous verb, which is the verb submitting. So we're submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ, wives submitting to their husbands as to the

Lord. So right away, you recognize that the submitting isn't peculiar to wives or to women in general, but is a posture that everyone should have within the church to each other.

And in particular, what this would mean is that the owner of a slave, the master of the slave, should be willing to wash that slave's feet when they enter into the house church or serve them the cup of wine or the loaf of bread that represents communion at the time.

And that would be really, really hard. We know that it's really hard because in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17 and following, we know that at least in Corinth, those who are more wealthy are eating a big meal at home, are actually not eating a big meal at home, sorry, but are bringing their food to the church service, but not sharing it.

So it's not like a potluck. They don't have potluck. They, in terms of status and wealth, if you bring your lunch that has

Twinkies and a fancy ham and cheese sandwich, and then you just sit there and all the other kids look at you around the lunch table, you remember this in sixth and seventh grade, and they're like, huh,

I just get like soggy PB &J and no snack.

I get like celery. But the person with the

Twinkies isn't sharing. Is it, you know, we don't need to. So in the same way, when you are invited to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ, it has a sense of service that is connected to it that will very powerfully reshape the community in Ephesus, in Corinth, all of that.

The Romans were very hierarchical in their social structure, and Paul continues to preach a gospel that upside downs that expectation.

I would say the other, saying that a wife should submit to her husband is actually, while it sounds maybe a little harder in our ears today, most writings at this time, whether Jewish or Gentile, enjoined the wife to obey.

Now you do have the word obey when it refers to children, when Paul refers to children, you know, in the next section, but here it's submit.

And there's really, in my studies at least, I've only been able to find two other places where you have the word submit.

Everything else is obey. So I think the wives would have seen submit, and it's similar to the actions that I'm experiencing from my brothers in Christ towards me.

And also the submission is very much framed as to the

Lord, not that the husband is like the Lord, but that the submitting is as it would glorify the

Lord. So if my husband said, I demand or command that you offer a libation to my ancestral

God for the blessing of this family, well, she may decide not to do that, and that would be submitting as unto the

Lord. In other words, she's not being asked to commit idolatry with her husband because her husband told her to.

Her first loyalty is to the Lord. You see this not so much in Ephesians, but you see it in 1

Peter 3, when a believing wife is married to an unbeliever, and the danger that she would face.

Anyway, no, that's not part of what we're looking at here, but the - The context is helpful.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the wife is responsible for honoring the gods of her husband.

That is so clear in all the literature, and the Jewish man would have expected that too of his

Jewish wife. He wouldn't want her to commit idolatry. Whereas the Gentile husband would assume the wife, he wouldn't call it idolatry, but would honor the gods and the goddesses.

Like even every day, they would have home altars, and she might pour a little libation of wine before the main meal.

I mean, you didn't just think religion at this time, you did religion.

And so, all that to say, the submit part catches our attention, but it wouldn't have surprised,

I don't think, the wives that were sitting there listening to this. What would have amazed them are the commands that are given to the husband.

There's no command, not in the form of the imperative, to the wives.

I mentioned in verse 21, there's no verb. So our

English, you have to add a verb. So we say wives submit, which is fine, but there's not a command to do that.

And so wives should submit to their husbands in verse 24 is also in the indicative.

I mean, it just is like describing something, right? But you get to the husbands, husbands love your wives, now you have an imperative.

So the imperative, be filled with the spirit. Now you have the imperative for men, love your wives, as Christ loved the church.

And that would have been shocking to women, why? And to men. Well, men did not, the term love, while there was probably emotional affection that they would have said was love at this time.

I'm not saying husbands and wives didn't love each other. This is love as Christ loved, that no husband is expected to give his life for his wife, not at all, not even close.

It's the hierarchy, right? So the fact, three times, the husbands are commanded to love, once in 25, once in 33, and then the phrase ought to love.

So ought is the command, right? And then you have the same verb to love. And then to go on and say, love her like your own body.

I mean, that's craziness, right? Why is that craziness? Well, I think

Aristotle described female as the privation of male.

So you have the male that is normative, and then the female is more emotional, less rational than the male.

And I think that Aristotelian model continues even up to today.

So what is the worst thing you can call a fifth grader, fifth grade boy on the playground?

A sissy, right? I mean, call him too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too clumsy, and they'll eventually get over it.

But you call him a sissy, i .e. a girl, and that's the worst thing you can call a boy.

So I think that to say to the husbands, you actually have to think about your wife as important as you are, and be imagining her own person like it's you.

Now, in 1 Corinthians 7, we get another hint of what

Paul is meaning here. In 1 Corinthians 7, he will say to the husbands and wives, this is in verse four of chapter seven, for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, which is no newsflash.

Everybody's like, you know, the people in the back of the room are nodding off. Yeah, yeah, we heard this. But Paul continues, and the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

And I am sure that somebody in the back row just kind of jerked awake, like, wait a minute, can you repeat that again?

That's unheard of. But the mutuality at such a fundamental level, you know, the intimacy of the marriage bed, which was, you know, by rights, the husband had authority there.

Paul is saying in the gospel message, that is simply not the case, and that a husband yields the authority of his own body to his wife.

So that's what I think Paul is meaning here then about love. And he finishes it in that verse 33, 533, that I just,

I'll read the line here.

Each one of you, husbands, must also love his wife as he loves himself. So again, just repeating.

Now, the English often goes on to say, and the wife must respect her husband. So you kind of feel like, oh, the wife's getting a command here.

But actually, the way the Greek is written here, it's a special clause that is kind of what we would call like a contingent clause.

It's better translated that the husband each one of you husbands must also love his wife as he loves himself, so that the wife will respect her husband.

There's a contingency there. It's that as you love your wife, she's gonna respect you.

It is not the case that Paul is jumping back to reminding the women, by the way, you need to respect no matter how bad your husband treats you.

That's not what Paul is getting at here. And unfortunately, some of our English translations hide the, it's a hynna clause for those who know

Greek, who are listening, which suggests a, I'm calling it like a contingency.

Every other place that Paul uses this grammatical setup, these terms, we have that contingency.

I think he uses it like 22 other times in the letter to the Ephesians. So anyway, yeah, so I think

Paul is suggesting a mutuality in marriage that, and he uses body language, head and body here to talk about completeness.

And because he's gonna quote, the two become one flesh. So he's taking us back to marriage in Genesis and the body language is helpful there.

And also that we are members of Christ's body. So there's an intimacy there that we have with Christ.

There's a lot of metaphor that's happening here. I would just conclude also by saying there is no such word in the biblical text as headship.

There is the word head, kephale, used metaphorically, but we have in some of our comments on this text have created a, like an abstract truth that we call headship that is taking a metaphor that Paul uses, head and body, and he's used it elsewhere in the letter.

It's not the first time that he's used head and body. It's a useful metaphor and we've reified it.

We've like put it in concrete. We've made it into a, like a system or a proposition rather than see it as it's supposed to function, which is as metaphor.

Metaphors take two things that are, we usually don't put together and the metaphor puts them together so that we can realize a new truth.

And headship has unfortunately become part of our vocabulary but it's an exegetical decision.

It's not a biblical term and I don't think it's actually really biblical. I don't think it reflects well what

Paul is saying. But even if you agreed with, or even if you disagreed with my interpretation, nevertheless, using the term headship, yeah, it just codifies what is a really dynamic and beautiful metaphor of mutuality that Paul is trying to have the church envision.

With these types of words that they're using, it's shocking how much Paul is equalizing women and men.

Would women have heard this and been like, what did he just say? Oh yeah.

Like it would have been shocking news for them. Yeah, I think it would have sounded good.

I think for men, it would have been shocking. I don't know that it would have, they may have had to give up stuff.

But then as now, there are a lot of men that are absolutely wonderful and caring and I happen to be married to one and I've got to believe he has ancestors even back in the biblical times.

So for some men, maybe this was freeing. Like this is how they've acted anyway.

But from a cultural standpoint, it would have been shocking. People have asked, why didn't

Paul just say that husbands submit to their wives? That would have been simpler for us today to understand.

But it would have been nonsense in the ancient world. I don't know how a man, a husband would be able to submit to his wife.

Like you just technically couldn't do that. He is the one who represents the family. There, he is sort of legally the what we would call today, head of the house, right?

Like that is the social position. So to submit to your wife, as a husband submit to the wife, just conceptually, it would just, they would ask, how do

I do this? So when Paul says, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, then they could begin to see, oh, so I am self -sacrificial in my actions.

Submit doesn't necessarily carry that level of commitment to the wife.

So that's why I think he uses love and he commands it and he uses

Jesus' own examples to help them see this is gonna feel new and different.

But because it is how God originally intended it, as we find in Genesis one and two, it will hopefully also feel like a blessing.

Wow. Okay, well, I'm gonna be honest. I have at least 30 more questions that I wanna ask you and we haven't even touched on like first Corinthians 11 through 14.

So because I know that you have so much to say about this, do you mind if we reserve that to its own episode and maybe we do a part two to this?

Because I don't wanna rush through this with you and I didn't wanna limit anything that you've said before because I think everything has been so enlightening.

So if you don't mind, I'd love to, we can after this recording schedule a part two to this and give it due diligence to first Corinthians 11 through 14 but for this,

I'll end it here. And for those that are just listening now, before you listen to this next episode, how can people get in contact with you, learn from you, buy some of your books or go to one of your conventions if you're speaking?

How do people continue learning from you, Dr. Kohek? Yeah, well, I do have a website, lynn .kohek,

is that right? I can type my name in, lynnkohek .com.

I think it's one word, lynnkohek .com. And just putting together in the next two weeks or so we'll be launching kind of a new and updated website.

So that'll be available right now. They can type in leadershipwithoutapology .org

and that will take them to our current version that as I said, will be updated soon.

But yeah, leadershipwithoutapology .org is the website. And I have a personal website, lynnkohek .com.

It's what I think it is. But anyway, just type my name in and Google. I'll put both those in the show notes for anybody that just wants to easily keep learning right at the end of this episode.

Okay, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to go back and listen to this. But I think that just my initial reaction just being a

Sunday school Christian is you've already shown so many examples of like, in context, these are verses of love, of equality, of respect and elevation.

And we haven't even gone to like specific contextual events like in Ephesus, but just already women are coworkers.

Women have a distinct role. Jesus is asking men to sacrifice themselves for women and to level with women in ways that they would level with other men and sacrifice for other men and see themselves and just elevate them and respect their theology and their knowledge to even let them be the seed in a community.

So I feel very well equipped in this. So thank you so much. Oh, well, thank you,

Cassian, for having me on your podcast and asking all these great questions.

And you're right, we can just keep digging and digging and seeing more. But what we find as we dig and dig is how much

God loves his daughters. Yes, oh my gosh. I can't wait to bring you back on.