cialis online without prescription“131” height=”203″ />Two-thirds of all Bible believing Christians are women.[i] And women have always been on the forefront of Christian missions. In fact, the ratio of women to men on the mission field was as high as 2:1 in many areas during the early twentieth century. These courageous women of God have been beaten, imprisoned and many have made the ultimate sacrifice to become martyrs for the faith.
Within the pages of our Bible, inked in red, unfolds the beautiful co-gender revolution of Jesus Christ. Jewish women, who had listened to their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons pray daily, ‘Blessed is He who did not make me a gentile, a woman or a slave, ’[ii] were probably stunned to discover that God Incarnate desired to use them to further His Kingdom.
To these same women Jesus said: You are My disciple.[iii] You are My evangelist.[iv] You are My supporter.[v] To you I give wisdom to transform lives.[vi] And suddenly, gender-inclusive baptism took the place of male-only circumcision as the universal sign of allegiance to God. With the ministry of Jesus, the whole world was turned upside down!….So why do Christians today pray for their sons to win the world for Christ but for their daughters to find a godly husband to support??
Why can women only be Sunday School teachers and not preachers in many denominations? Is there some weakness, some character flaw that handicaps a female child from the day she is born, making her incapable of strong and responsible leadership in the Body of Christ? Does the Bible proclaim that women, based on their gender alone, are to be under the subordination and control of men? We answer with a resounding, “No!” Yet these defective beliefs have become a mainstay in today’s Christianity, hideously hindering the spread of the Gospel. And that’s what this is really all about.
It’s frustrating enough for a Christian woman to be told from the pulpit that she is somehow inferior to men in the eyes of God, that the ground at the foot of the cross is not really level as she had been led to believe. But the real rub here is that we Christians have become unwitting partners with our enemy to render the Body of Christ less productive than it could be. Our doctrinally unsound teachings about women have served to paralyze the largest portion of the Church, holding back the progress of the Gospel in a way that the devil alone could never have accomplished.
Ephesians 4:13 compares the Church to a man striving for perfection and unity. But sadly, our inability to see women as Christ does has rendered this “man” paralyzed. He is unable to function wholly, two-thirds of his body perversely restrained in a manner that God never intended.
The bold challenge of Catherine Booth – evangelist and co-founder of the The Salvation Army in 1865 – confronts our sexism, our voluntary paralysis: “‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3: 28). If this passage does not teach that in the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of Christ’s kingdom, all differences of nation, caste, and sex are abolished, we should like to know what it does teach, and wherefore it was written.”
[i] Cunningham, Loren and Hamilton, David Joel. Why Not Women? Seattle, Washington. YWAM Publishing, 2000. p.15.
[ii] Paraphrased.
[iii] Luke 10: 38-42
[iv] John 4: 1-39
[v] Luke 8:1-3
[vi] John 4:13-14; John 11:24-27
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Gary & Leslie Johnson have spent two decades in full-time ministry, working among the homeless, drug addicts, ex-offenders, at-risk youth, unwed mothers & death-row inmates. Visit their blog at http://runahimaazrun.blogspot.com/