Let the Women Learn

Tuesday with Timothy # 17

1 Timothy 2:11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

The first part of the text is as neglected as the third stanza of a Baptist hymnal because of the attention the latter part of the verse receives. The passage begins with a divine commandment of action, not a prohibition. This imperative differs Christianity from the cultures throughout the ages. We have a command that women are to learn. As I have said before, Christianity is the greatest blessing to women the world has ever known. We have in the opening verses and divine command upon the house of God, that all of God's people are come to learn of Him. God's people are to hear and to learn God's Word through the proclamation of divine truth. All of God's people are to be in the house of God to learn the Word of God. 

The Bible does not give categories of theology that only certain people should learn certain subjects. Let everyone of God's people be learned in the doctrines of God's Word. Christian people should desire to learn of their God. Perhaps part of the problem is we have got to the place that the only reason there is to learn of God is to be have enough fodder to choke out a sermon for Sunday. We say that theology is for the preacher so he can craft his homilies while the church members come and be entertained and vote in business meetings. No, God would have all His people actively learning of Him. Theology is necessary for all of God’s people to live and walk in the Spirit.

Women are not to be regulated to the kitchen during the church service or off to do other duties while the Word of God is being preached - but they should be among the congregation learning of their God.  It is theology that will make a good wife and a good mother and a godly lady. How can you raise up a child in the fear of the Lord if you do not learn more of God and more of the truth of mankind? Only by being grounded in Biblical theology does a parent have the ability to know that Little Susie is not a spotless petal of perfection with a heart pure as the driven snow but has inherited a guilty and depraved sin nature. It is through theology that a woman can understand her children's true nature and to deal in a godly way. How can a woman understand her calling as a godly wife, except she know it from God's own word?  But even further, to understand and know the Word of God enables God's people, to live, to worship, to pray, to serve -- all to the glory of God. Is it only certain members of the body of Christ need to understand what it is to be in Christ? Is comfort only to be found in imputed righteousness equaled by testosterone levels? I think not. Let the women learn, and not just "women's issues" but theology. 

 The temptation is for women to learn to trust their feelings and emotions rather to learn solid truths. That is why Sarah Young's abominable book Jesus Calling is so popular.  It causes women to doubt that God's Word is enough or God's Word doesn't have a place for their lives and look for God within. Many times, books written for women's studies play upon the emotion and direct women to "hear from God" outside of God's Word. This is the same tactic that Satan used with Eve, to go outside of the revealed Word and look for something else, something you are missing, something...better. The greatest thing a church can do is to tear down the barriers of separation in the learning process of the congregation. Man or women, boy or girl, all should come to God's house to learn of God. God’s way is for the whole congregation to come together and hear God’s Word preached together and sit and learn together. We are a body, after all. 

Let the women learn.