The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Barbara Swanson of Batesville, Arkansas, from the tape, GC 1301-F, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 8."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1977. All Rights Reserved.

Question

My brother-in-law attends a church where a woman is the minister. Is this right?

Answer

Well, the answer is, "No," it’s not right, and I was interested, weren’t you, last week to see where the Episcopal Church ordained a woman priest; not only a woman, but a stated lesbian woman priest, and now the Episcopal Church has moved into that category. It’s startling to realize how far a field the church has come from the Bible.

I was talking to this fellow from Dallas Seminary yesterday, and he had just left a conference that was held up in the Berkeley area, around Stanford somewhere; no it wasn’t Berkeley, across the bay; but there was a conference there of all seminary people involved in administration in seminaries. And he said what was so interesting about it was that they did not have prayer lest they would offend someone. These are all seminary men. And the only song that they could agree on to sing was, “You Are My Sunshine,” so they sang that before each session.

Well, you know, when you see the Episcopal Church come to the place where they will ordain a woman, and ordain a lesbian woman, you know that they have opted out for the floating ethics of a society that has no authority. They have abandoned the Scripture, because the Bible is very clear about whether a woman could pastor, and I’ll show you a couple of incidents.

First Timothy is a good place to begin, and we’ll just do this briefly because we’ve covered it before, but I want to clear up your mind if you’re the one who asked the question, or you still have this question.

First Timothy chapter 3 and verse 2. Now the word "bishop" here is the same as pastor or elder; a minister of a church is what it means. “A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife”—"a one-woman man" is literally the Greek, "a one-woman man." Now it’s very hard for a woman to be a one-woman man; very difficult. Now like the lesbian, she could be a one-woman woman, but not a one-woman man. So here you have the husband of one wife, indicating that an elder would be one who was a man totally devoted to his wife.

Now backing up to verse 11 of First Timothy 2, it says, “Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. I permit not a woman to teach nor to take authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman.” In other words because Adam was made first and because the woman was the first to sin, confirming the priority of man in terms of leadership, God says this is an age-old principle that the man is in authority and the woman takes the place of submission.

In Second Timothy I think it most interesting that Second Timothy 2:2 gives us a pattern for leadership in the church: “And the things that thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” The teachers within the church are to be men, who have the responsibility to teach others also.

Titus 1:6, again, “The husband of one wife,”—or a one-woman man, again implying that women are not in a position of being ministers.

No, I believe that in the church men are to minister. Now that is not a chauvinistic statement, that is a biblical statement. And I’m not here to advocate a chauvinistic viewpoint or anti-woman or any of that, I’m just echoing what the Spirit of God has said in the scripture. And so it is not right for the woman to be in the role of a pastor.

Now there are some people who say, “Well that was just cultural.” No, it wasn’t just cultural, and that’s why Paul pointed back to Adam and Eve. It was from the beginning that way, it was not just a Corinthian culture or a culture around the time of the apostle Paul. So I think it’s wrong, and of course if it’s wrong, then I don’t think that we ought to associate with such a church because I think that is in very obvious defiance of the word of God.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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