Podcast: What Does It Mean That Women Should “Remain Quiet” at Church? (Claire Smith)

January 13, 2025 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Interpreting 1 Timothy 2

In 1 Timothy 2 the apostle Paul gives instructions to both men and women related to how they should behave in the church, and then he goes on to say that women are not to teach or exercise authority over a man but are instead to remain silent. In this episode, Claire Smith discusses what Paul says in this passage, why he says it, and what impact it should have on how men and women view their roles in the church.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - The Broad Focus of 1 Timothy

Matt Tully
Claire, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Claire Smith
Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
In the preface to this new book that you’ve written, you note that we often think of 1 Timothy (or “One” Timothy for an Australian) as primarily helpful in terms of “gender relations and the role of women in the church.” That’s just how we think about this book. That’s one of the main, if not the main, topic that we often will think of the book through. And yet you argue that sometimes that can lead us to pigeonhole the book in an unhelpful way and actually lose sight of Paul’s overarching focus with this letter. So I wonder if you can start there by talking about that broader focus before we then focus on this particular issue of women in the church.

Claire Smith
Sure. I think we tend to do this with a lot of our Bible reading. We have go-to books when we want to think about something. We go to Romans when we want to think about justification by faith. We go to 1 Corinthians when we want to think about the body of Christ. And we do the same with 1 Timothy. With 1 Timothy, everybody knows about chapter 2. Everybody goes to chapter 2 to look at the role of women in the church, whether they like the text or they don’t like the text, so it divides people as well at that point. And yet the letter is about so much more than that. In fact, one of the things I really enjoyed about writing this book was the opportunity to rise above those debates and think about the book as a whole. Of course, it’s Scripture. It tells us more about God than anything else—about who God is, about what God has done, about what God is doing and will do, and about his salvation plan. And that’s just a wonderful thing, because then you start seeing the specific teaching in the book in a much broader context. And it lifts your heart as well because you’re seeing what God is doing in the world and helps you understand how our place in the world is working with God and helping bring about his purposes.

Matt Tully
That seems like a real danger that we as Christians and as Bible readers probably face in our reading of God’s word, that we can associate certain passages and books of the Bible with certain doctrines or certain topics, and we can start to miss the nuance. We can miss the variety of things that are actually happening in the text.

Claire Smith
Yeah, absolutely. We miss the wood for the trees. We get stuck on the minutiae, and we miss the big picture. But actually, God’s got a big picture, and we want to be part of the big picture. We want to be doing what God wants us to be doing in the world, in our own lives, in our marriages, and in our churches. And 1 Timothy, of course, has lots to say about that—our place in the world, God’s work in the world, God’s ordering of the world. And so seeing the big picture is just so helpful.

04:08 - Setting the Stage for 1 Timothy

Matt Tully
Help us set the stage, then, for this letter. Again, this is a familiar letter for us. Remind us who Timothy was, where he lived, where Paul was writing this letter from, and what we know about the situation that they were both in.

Claire Smith
One of the interesting things about Timothy that I, in fact, in thinking about this interview, I looked it up. It’s easier to name the books that Timothy isn’t mentioned in than the ones that he is mentioned in. He pops up quite a few times in Acts. He’s in 1–2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1–2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy (obviously), Hebrews, and Philemon.

Matt Tully
Hebrews! I didn’t remember he was in Hebrews.

Claire Smith
Yes, at the back of Hebrews. So he’s there as the early church is being established and as the New Testament is being written. He’s there as Paul’s coworker. Paul refers to him as his son, as his child, as a delegate who’s sent to do things on Paul’s behalf. In 2 Timothy we find out he has a mother and grandmother who are Jewish believers (Christian believers) and a Greek father. So in that way, he has a foot in both camps, if you want.

Matt Tully
He straddles the line between Jew/Gentile.

Claire Smith
Yes. In 1 Timothy, he’s in Ephesus, and Paul’s left him there to do something. So Paul’s gone on to Macedonia, and Timothy’s there to serve the church and to deal with problems that have arisen in the church. But more than that, to help them live as the household of God. Paul says, “I’m writing to you so that if I’m delayed you’ll know what you’re meant to be doing and how to live as a household of God. But I hope to be there soon, and then we can do it together, or then you’ll be sent off.”

Matt Tully
I want to return to that household of God idea, because that’s a pretty fundamental concept in this letter and in Paul’s thinking about even the church as an organization. So Ephesus, where Timothy was living, that’s in modern day Turkey, and Macedonia is modern day Greece. Is that correct?

Claire Smith
Yes.

Matt Tully
So that’s where they both would have been. Do we know if Timothy grew up in Ephesus? Was that his hometown, or did he go there as part of his missionary journeys with Paul?

Claire Smith
He’s there because of what Paul wants him to do. Paul had a really significant ministry in Ephesus. He’d gone there, and you read about that in Acts 19 and 20. He’d gone there, started preaching in the synagogue, and then he’d been thrown out of the synagogue and gone next door to the schoolhouse of Tyrannus and set up a ministry there that went for two years. In fact, Luke writes that all of Asia had heard the word of God. Now, obviously not all of Asia, but that’s how significant a ministry it was. And then you have that wonderful parting scene where Paul leaves the Ephesian elders, and he says, “Fierce wolves will come in amongst you.” And what you find in 1 Timothy is the fierce wolves have come in amongst them.

Matt Tully
What he predicted years before has now actually happened.

Claire Smith
That’s right. So now you have false teachers and opponents within the church. Not opponents outside the church attacking the church, but the poison is within the church. And so how is the gospel going to be preserved and defended and advanced with that threat? How is the mission of God going to continue? But also how is the Christian fellowship going to be established and protected as well from false teaching?

08:08 - Foundational Principles to Remember

Matt Tully
So then as you think about this letter (1 Timothy) and 2 Timothy, as the companion to this one, what are some of the fundamental interpretive principles or convictions that we should bring as we actually look at what Paul’s teaching broadly, but then as we narrow in into his conversation about leadership in the church and women’s roles versus men’s roles? What would you say are some of the foundational principles that we should have in our minds as we approach the text?

Claire Smith
Because it’s God’s word, a lot of the principles are the same for the whole of Scripture. We’re to read Scripture as God’s word. It’s authoritative, it’s infallible—all those standard principles that we would apply.

Matt Tully
And it’s worth saying them. Sometimes we can assume it almost, at least in our camp. But I think sometimes we assume it, and so we think we don’t need to say it, and we actually then start to neglect it.

Claire Smith
That’s right. Absolutely. Also, we need to read scripture Christologically—fulfilled and pointing and testifying to Christ. And we need to read it with the grain of salvation history. So we need to understand where we are in God’s unfolding plan and how we read the Scripture that we’re reading in light of God’s unfolding plan. So there are those sorts of general principles. I think another one in particular with 1 Timothy, because of the way the debates have unfolded, is to be text based. So we’re to read what we’re engaging with, what we’re learning, what we’re being shaped by, is what God has written, not a historical reconstruction behind the text. Of course, informed by history and by linguistics and by all the other things that we need to bring to bear, but we are dealing with the text, not a reconstruction behind the text that’s governing our interpretation of the text. Does that make sense?

Matt Tully
Yeah. Let the text itself speak. That does strike me as maybe a tricky line to walk at times, because there are passages all throughout the Bible where our understanding of the meaning of the text, of the actual text, is informed and helped by an understanding of the history and the context. It’s not an either/or.

Claire Smith
Which has authority? That’s the question. What is going to govern your reading of the text? Are you going to read against the text, which is often what reconstruction, particularly in this matter, will do. “Oh, well the text doesn’t mean what it says.” This is historical reconstruction. So which is going to decide the meaning of the text and the relevance of the text for us today? Is it going to be the text or the historical reconstruction? So there are general sorts of principles. In particular, when it comes to 1 Timothy 2 and the teaching about men and women, I think it’s really important to remember who God is—the person and character of God. If God is good and sovereign and for us, then when I encounter something that might be countercultural for me or difficult, I need to remember who God is. And God loves me. And he didn’t spare his own Son, but gave him up for me. So it gives me an open heart to receive what God is saying and to trust God’s word. God is sovereign and his word is sufficient for our time as well as their time. So it’s those sorts of things, really, that help me sit under the word and trust the goodness of the word, rather than want to have difficulties with that.

12:20 - An Elevator Summary of Women’s Roles in the Church

Matt Tully
I want to return to that theme at the end of our conversation, just the important distinction between even accepting and submitting to the word versus loving the word and seeing it as God’s good for us. And there’s a difference there that sometimes I think even complementarians, so to speak, can fall on that former side and not truly get to the latter side, believing that this is good for us. So we’ll come back to that in just a minute. But maybe you can start us off by summarizing for us what you think Paul is teaching in 1 Timothy 2. What would be your short elevator summary of what he’s actually saying about women’s roles in the church versus men’s?

Claire Smith
Short elevator. I’ve never had someone ask me that in an elevator, funnily enough. I think it’s important to see it in the whole chapter. Paul begins by setting it in a framework of a Christian’s place in the world and God’s desire that all people be saved. So this is about faithful Christian living; our testimony in the world; and, of course, in 1 Timothy 3:15, how we’re to live as a household of God. What Paul’s particularly talking about in verse 8 is he has a word for the men, that when Christians come together, men are to pray, lifting holy hands in prayer, not in anger. So there’s a word for the men. There’s a word for the women about our demeanor and deportment, how we present ourselves. How are we seeking to be beautiful? Are seeking to be beautiful with a beautiful shop front, or are we seeking to be beautiful with a heart that’s changed and a life that’s honoring God? And then in verse 11 and 12, Paul talks about the ministry of women in the church in terms of teaching and having authority. Women are to learn. We’ll come back and do more talking about this—it’s a long elevator, by the way.

Matt Tully
We’re going up to the top of the building.

Claire Smith
We are. So the short story is that men, who we go on to in Chapter 3 with the ministry of those who are to be appointed elders or overseers, that women are not to have that role and they’re not to be involved in teaching and having authority in the church. So you’ve got to see it as part of chapter 2 and chapter 3 stuck together. If you try and isolate it, I think you run into all sorts of trouble. But if you see it as part of chapter 2 and chapter 3: How are we to be and how are we to live lives that honor God, and how is the church to be structured? That’s where passage fits in.

15:10 - “The Household of God”

Matt Tully
And that’s where sometimes our verse and chapter numbers and distinctions can mislead us because we start to isolate these sentences and even phrases out of the context, and we start to lose some of the richness of what someone like Paul is doing. Let’s go to that idea of the household of faith. It’s this fundamental notion that peaks up explicitly in different points, but it’s maybe even under the surface a lot of the time. And if we don’t understand what role that’s playing, we can miss what he’s saying here and why he’s saying this. Why does Paul use this metaphor of a household, and how does that help us approach this passage the right way?

Claire Smith
The household of God as a major theme in 1 Timothy clearly pops up above the surface in 1 Timothy 3:15, where Paul describes the Christian fellowship as the household of God: “I’m writing to you so that you will know how to conduct yourselves in the household of God.” But that actually tracks back to chapter 1 Timothy 1:4, where in the Greek there’s a linguistic link and a conceptual link between in the ESV I think it’s translated as “the stewardship of God,” or I think the footnote says, “God’s good order.” Which I think is best taken as God’s ordering of all things. God has ordered all things in creation, in salvation history, in the world, in society, in the family, and in the church. And the household of God is where you see the microcosm of God’s ordering. So we’re to live the way that God has ordered relationships and life, with God sovereign over all. Living well within his creation means living well within the way that he has ordered creation and relationships and life to be ordered. Does that make sense?

Matt Tully
Yeah, and I think that’s so helpful to remember and it’s a helpful way to think about this because I think to understand that in the Greco-Roman world, the idea that within a household there would be different roles that are pretty clearly defined or that would be different, that does run counter to our culture today. I think we see in lots of different spheres, but certainly the home, the idea of distinct roles functioning together in a complimentary sort of way. It’s just not often the way that we think about our lives. We typically don't like the distinctions.

Claire Smith
That’s right. Because we’re post-Enlightenment creatures. We think the individual is king or queen. I think that’s one of the problems that people run into interpretatively, because the temptation then is to say, “Oh, Paul’s just using this because he’s thinking within his own cultural frame. And so this doesn’t apply today because we do things completely different.”

Matt Tully
And just to emphasize, the line of argument there would be that Paul is not necessarily prescribing something for the church today. He’s just reflecting the cultural attitudes and norms of his day in a way to make the Christian church, this fledgling community, more perhaps appealing or socially acceptable to the Roman citizens living around him. Is that the argument that they would make?

Claire Smith
Yep, that’s right. The argument would run something like this: Paul is making the church in the likeness of that culture, whereas what Paul is doing is God’s household, the culture of that day in parts maps onto God’s intentions for God’s household. And so Paul is using those things illustratively rather than the other way around. So it’s a question of which is influencing. Which is the dominant voice? The dominant voice is the household of God—God’s ordering. But as it happens, in Greco-Roman society, aspects of the household mapped onto God’s plans and purposes for his household in that in his household he is the household head, and we are members of his household with familial duties and bonds and love for each other. And there is order and there’s mutual responsibility and there’s all sorts of things (which I talk about in the book) that are part of being in God’s household that, as it happened, were also part of the Greco-Roman household, and I would say in different ways part of households even today. People have different responsibilities, there are mutual obligations. If one person is flourishing, everybody flourishes. Those sorts of things. And where we bring honor, we honor one another in the way that we live together, but also we honor the head of the household. We honor God by living rightly within his household.

Matt Tully
And he gets to set the rules as head of the household.

Claire Smith
That’s right. Absolutely.

20:25 - “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man . . .”

Matt Tully
Paul goes on to say that he does not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Obviously, that phrase “teach or exercise authority” is a pretty controversial phrase, where there are a few different competing understandings, even from evangelical Bible-believing Christians on what exactly Paul is saying there or what he’s prohibiting there. How do you take that phrase? What do you think he’s getting at? How does it connect with what Paul says about elders in chapter 3?

Claire Smith
And chapter 5. Yeah. The way I would understand it is that the teaching that is on view there, the verb that’s used there is used several times through the letter for the activity that Timothy is going to be doing. “Teach and exhort these things.”

Matt Tully
As an elder, essentially.

Claire Smith
Yeah. As an authoritative teacher and leader in the church. So the context that Paul is talking about is when the Christian community comes together to meet as God’s household, to learn from God—what we would call church—the teaching that is on view is the regular, ongoing, authoritative instruction of the Christian community. It’s what we would call these days the Bible talk or the sermon or that sort of thing. The authority—some people would see take those two things and blend them together. So it’s authoritative teaching. Now, I would say, yes, it’s authoritative teaching, but authority is a different thing as well, which is the governing and discipline and management of the household.

Matt Tully
Key decision making.

Claire Smith
Key decision making. So you have those two things in chapter 2. Then, you track through to chapter 3, talking about the qualifications for elders. And what do you find? Elders are to be apt to teach, and they’re to manage their own households well. Because if they can’t manage their own households, how are they going to care for the Church of God?

Matt Tully
Is “apt to teach” the same word as we see in the other passage?

Claire Smith
Yes, that’s the same word group, yes. So you have that there in chapter 3. And then you go through to 1 Timothy 5:17, where you’re talking about elders who lead, especially those who teach. It is actually a different word there but the same meaning. Those who teach deserve double honor. So you kind of have these two threads running through of teaching and authority, or leading, as the responsibility for elders who are not all men. One of the mistakes that can be made is to understand this as a gender divide—women can’t, men can. No. Women can’t, and actually most men can’t either, because there are few men who meet the eligibility criteria in chapter 3 and who are recognized and selected and duly appointed to the role of elder.

Matt Tully
That’s such an important point to emphasize, that it isn’t as simple as yes to men and no to women. It’s not purely based on gender. That’s not the only qualification.

Claire Smith
Absolutely. And the criteria of the eligibility for elders is very high. The integrity and the godliness—we’re not to take these things lightly. We’re not to make sure that we keep women out of the pulpit but we’re not really that worried about which men we put in the pulpit. No, no. We want godly, competent, gifted men to lead our churches and to teach God’s word and to love and govern and discipline the household of God.

24:33 - “. . . rather, she is to remain quiet.”

Matt Tully
I think, sadly, that can be one of the things that can make issues like this so difficult is when there are certainly examples of unqualified men who have been elevated to positions of authority and given authority, and it can sometimes call in the question our faithfulness to God’s word—the full counsel of what he tells us in a passage like this. But that’s obviously not the goal that we would be shooting for. One of the additionally tricky things about this passage that can be hard to understand is what Paul goes on to say to women. He starts off by saying, “I don’t permit you to teach or have authority over men.” Instead, he gives them this positive command to remain silent. And I think that can be something that many people, men and women alike, maybe really wrestle with. What is he saying? And obviously different denominations and churches will take this is different ways—some of them very, shall we say, literally, in terms of a woman’s ability to even speak during a church’s corporate worship service. How do you understand what Paul’s getting at?

Claire Smith
Churches do apply this differently. I think what’s helpful is that the text itself is very carefully structured. Verse 11 begins with a reference to silence; verse 12 ends with a reference to silence. So you actually have what’s called an inclusio. You also have “do not teach or have authority . . . teach and learn.” So women are to learn rather than teach, and women are to be in submission rather than in authority. So it’s very compact. There’s lots there, and you’ve got to keep those pairs: learn, not teach; be in submission, not in authority. And then you have this bracket of quietness, which I understand as quietness, not silence. The same word is used up in 1 Timothy 2:2 about all Christians, so clearly it’s not talking about absolute silence, because—

Matt Tully
That doesn’t make sense.

Claire Smith
That’s not really making sense.

Matt Tully
So is it speaking less to the physical speaking or not speaking and more to the heart posture or the tone?

Claire Smith
I’m going to have a both/and. I think definitely it’s talking about posture and demeanor—one that’s also required of all Christians, obviously, if it’s just been up in 1 Timothy 2:2, but in particular of women. I do think there is an element of it’s the opposite of teaching or it’s part of the opposite of teaching. So you have learning as the converse term, but rather than teaching, women are to be quiet and to learn.

Matt Tully
I’ve heard many scholars point out, both on the complementarian and egalitarian side, that Paul’s comments here about women learning, his positive words about them learning, would have themselves been pretty countercultural in a context where women were often not encouraged to learn. They were kept out of some of the educational context that men often enjoyed.

Claire Smith
That’s right. And I think we can easily miss the presentation of women in 1 Timothy, which is that women are absolutely equal members of the household of God. You have recognized the ministry of women in 1 Timothy 3:11. I understand that as a reference to deaconesses. You have the acknowledgement, the rich acknowledgement, of the ministry of widows in chapter 5. I don’t think they’re a separate order of ministry, but certainly a recognition of their contribution to the work of ministry of the gospel and valuing their ministry. And then you have the encouragement to the young widows to get married and to manage their own households, which actually picks up on a really important theme, which is—certainly in that culture and arguably today—the domain of the household as where women principally express their virtue. In the first century, women demonstrated their virtue in the household, men out in the society, in the polis. And so you see that encouragement for young widows to remarry and to manage their own households well. “To be busy at home” I think is the way it’s put in Titus. So you see women as equal moral agents. Paul is wanting women to live God-honoring lives within God’s order, and there’s no sense that the contribution of their lives is worth anything less than the contribution of men.

Matt Tully
This is another example where I think it’s helpful to even zoom out from just this letter to Timothy here, and you see Paul, as just one example, referencing some of the other important women who have impacted his ministry. He references them and has words for them. So I think we have to interpret this passage in that broader context as well.

Claire Smith
Absolutely. And if our churches aren’t doing that, we’re missing out on two things. We’re missing out on what God wants, but we’re also making a rod for our own back. Because that’s when questions of fairness—women’s and men’s—where feminism and some of the cultural messages of our day will find fertile soil if we’re not valuing the ministry of women, if we’re not treating women as equal partners in the mission of God. So there’s both obedience and pragmatics at that level.

30:29 - “Yet she will be saved through childbearing . . .”

Matt Tully
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe even the trickiest verse, at least in my mind, in this passage has to be 1 Timothy 2:15, where Paul says, again, following on this instruction that he’s been giving, that women will be “saved through childbearing.” It’s one of these passages that you read it and you’re like, “Wait, what did I just read? Is that the right translation? Did something get missed here?” How do you understand that line? What is Paul saying, and how does it fit with all these other incredible Pauline texts on salvation that make it very clear that, in his mind, salvation is by grace alone and through faith alone?

Claire Smith
Well, I think my own theory is that on the last day, there are going to be a few texts where when we meet the Lord face to face, we will suddenly go, “Ah!” This might be one of them.

Matt Tully
So you acknowledge it’s kind of hard to understand?

Claire Smith
It’s hard to understand. Having said that, nothing hangs on it, in terms of the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11–14. So I think you can come to all sorts of views on it, but it doesn’t affect the interpretation of what’s gone before. First of all, let me tell you what I don’t think it means. I don’t think it means that no godly women will die in childbirth, that they’ll be kept safe in childbirth, which is the way that some people have understood it. And I think that’s demonstrably wrong. I don’t think it’s saying that there’ll be no single women or childless women in glory.

Matt Tully
That you have to have had children.

Claire Smith
I also don’t think that because, absolutely, as you’ve just said, salvation is by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. So that’s not what it means. Some people understand it as an oblique reference—and I’d say very oblique reference—to Genesis 3:15 and to the serpent crusher.

Matt Tully
The protoevangelium—this incredible little glimpse

Claire Smith
The seed of Eve. The childbirth. At that point, the definite article becomes very important.

Matt Tully
Childbirth as a concept, as a thing that happens.

Claire Smith
Well, as that childbirth. They will be saved through that childbirth. That is, the birth of the child.

Matt Tully
Representing Jesus’s birth.

Claire Smith
Yes. Broadly speaking, that’s absolutely true. I don’t happen to think that’s what 1 Timothy 2:15 is about. For me, the key to understanding 1 Timothy 2:15 is 1 Timothy 4:16, where Paul says to Timothy, “Watch your life and teaching closely because by doing this you’ll save yourself and your hearers.” And that’s the same word.

Matt Tully
“Save yourself.”

Claire Smith
Now, Paul is obviously not saying to Timothy that Timothy is going to save himself, because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He is the Savior, not Timothy. But if you then map that back into chapter 2 and think about the women, I think that helps us understand what Paul’s talking about. He’s not talking about salvation; he’s talking about being kept in salvation. Not drifting away from salvation, but actually kept in salvation. And I think one of the reasons why childbirth is an issue comes out at the beginning of chapter 4, where Paul talks about how the false teachers have rejected marriage. They’re forbidding marriage. And so you have that reference, and then you have a reference in chapter 5 about the young widows and what Paul encourages them to do, which is to remarry and have children. So it seems that some of the false teaching that was afflicting the church in Ephesus had to do with the goodness of marriage and the things that typically go along with marriage, which is children and domesticity and all the rest of it. And I think Paul’s saying to the women, “No, you continue embracing this aspect of your createdness—marriage, childbirth. Live faithfully as a Christian believer in that, and you will be saved. This is part of your service to Christ.”

Matt Tully
It’s the will of the Lord for you. So how do you say that without tipping over into it being this prescription where women must pursue children and must pursue marriage in order to be living a faithful Christian life. How do you hold those two things?

Claire Smith
And here is where understanding culture is important, because in the first century, women would have married.

Matt Tully
It was almost assured.

Claire Smith
Absolutely. So, really, what Paul’s doing is he’s taking a well-established yes, this is what women do, and he’s generalizing it. Now, if you’d said to him, “Here is a woman who’s infertile,” and plenty of women in the Old Testament were in that situation, he would not have said, “Oh, well, there’s no hope for you then.” Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We’re saved by grace through faith. Paul is just talking in generalities, not in specifics.

Matt Tully
I also think of what he says in 1 Corinthians, where he talks about the benefits of singleness. It says at one point, “I almost wish that everyone was like me and stays single. They don’t have all the cares of this life that come with marriage and children.” And so, again, that’s another example where we have to interpret Scripture with Scripture.

Claire Smith
That’s right. And also allow the Scriptural writers to speak in generalities in a way that may not speak exactly into our lives, depending on where we are.

36:29 - Is Paul’s Teaching Fair?

Matt Tully
That’s helpful. Maybe as a couple of final questions here. As you think about this doctrine or this teaching and Paul and just the nuance that is required when thinking about the way that emotions can quickly be caught up in these things. That happens not just because of our culture, but certainly our cultural moment in which we live makes these things harder to talk about it seems. How would you counsel or advise somebody who’s hearing this, whether it’s a man or a woman, and maybe they would acknowledge, “Yes, I’m convinced by your reading of Scripture and how you interpret this, but I just really struggle with feeling like it isn’t fair. This just feels perhaps arbitrary. It feels like it doesn’t fit with the skills or the abilities that God has given me.” Or I see men, perhaps, who are in leadership roles who don’t seem particularly skilled or gifted in those things. And yet they’re allowed to do it because of passages like this. What would you say to someone who wrestles with that?

Claire Smith
All of us come to God’s word and read things that are difficult. And certainly for me, before I became a Christian, in my early adulthood I was strongly, strongly feminist and would have just hit the roof if I’d read something like this.

Matt Tully
So you can sympathize with that reaction.

Claire Smith
Oh, completely. And I think in God’s wonderful providence and kindness to me, it was some years into my Christian life before I even kind of registered about these passages.

Matt Tully
He brought you in gradually?

Claire Smith
Completely. And actually, the more I work on them, the more God works on me to change me and to help me see the goodness and to be fashioned by his Spirit through his word to first understand it and want to embrace it and see it as his good word for me. I think we have to acknowledge that there are several things that make this difficult for us to hear. One, we’re sinners, so we object to God’s word in our hearts just naturally. Two, we live in a world that is just so contrary to God’s way, and we’ve taken that on. We’ve been shaped by our culture. So there’s sin, there’s our cultural environment, and three, we’ve never seen it done well. We’re all post-fall. So we’ve actually never seen God’s perfect design for men and women expressed the way that it was before Genesis 3. So we have nature, nurture, and experience working against us at that point. Which is why remembering who God is is so important. Because if God is good and God is my maker and he knows me and he knows what’s good for me, then sitting under his word and being shaped by his word, even if it may be that I don’t understand it—if I was going to write the Bible, that’s not how I would have written it—is having a submissive heart and taking his word and embracing it and putting it into practice. I would also say that I think people can understand this is difficult for women to hear. There are things, too, for pastors and ministers that they can do to make it easier so that the cultural tension isn’t quite as extreme. As I’ve said earlier, part of that is encouraging women’s ministry and taking women seriously and the gifts that God has given women seriously. The other thing is to recognize the honor and the privilege and the weight and responsibility of being an overseer in God’s household. But also to work hard at being a good teacher and a good pastor and to really grow yourself in that role. Because the better that you do that, the easier it is for those of us who are called to submit—men and women, I’m talking about here—it’s easier for us to honor our leaders if our leaders are really honoring God in the way that they’re doing their leading and teaching.

Matt Tully
And conversely, not to state the obvious, it’s harder to submit, it’s harder to learn quietly when we have leaders who are unkind, ungracious, bullish, and don't respect the people that they’re called to lead.

Claire Smith
Yep. And that goes across the board ,really, for those that we are called to submit to, whether that be the government, husbands, parents, church leaders. The better those who have been given authority by God, the more faithfully they execute those responsibilities, the more of a joy it is to submit to that leadership.

Matt Tully
Claire, thank you so much for helping us to dig into this important passage and dig into this wonderful book that Paul wrote and maybe understand a little bit better what he’s saying and how it can apply to our lives as Christians today. We appreciate it.

Claire Smith
Thanks very much.

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