Men and women in the church, part 1
The Bible & Gender 3.0
Galatians 3:28
by Eric Stillman 
April 29th, 2007

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Last week we looked at Jesus’ relationships with women in light of the first century Jewish context he found himself in.  We found that Jesus reestablished the equality that had been intended at creation, treating men and women as equals and elevating the place of women beyond the home into that of disciple and witness. 

For the next three weeks, we’re going to look closely at Paul’s writings on the role of men and women in the church.  Paul is an apostle who wrote much of the New Testament in the form of letters to various first century churches who were attempting to live out what they understood as the way of Jesus.  The main reason many churches see the roles of elder and pastor as only open to men is because of Paul’s writings.  A large part of Paul’s letters are about correcting errors that he saw in the churches he had planted.  He never lays out a systematic theology, however, which makes it hard to answer the question of gender roles in the church.  There are however a few places where he talks about the role of men and women in the church, which we will look at closely over the next few weeks.  Today we’re going to look at the book of Galatians, and specifically at Galatians 3:28, where Paul writes these words:  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  There is certainly something revolutionary in these words; just how revolutionary remains to be seen.

The main question we’ll attempt to answer this morning is does “neither male nor female” only refer to their standing before God, or does it also refer to their roles in the church?