The Roles of Women

In my early Christian walk when I read through the Bible, I couldn’t understand why the Bible wrote specifically to men. There’s not a lot of talk about women other than how they should act in the home and in the church. God said that Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived.” God created Adam first and then created Eve to be a “helper” for Adam. This order of creation has universal application in the family (Ephesians 5:22-33) and the church. These instructions of how men are an authority over women made me angry and not loved by God.


This issue almost made me walk away from God because as hard as I worked to live in a man’s world while working and making good money, the fact is that men got better pay, men were promoted more than women, and now God is telling me that man is the authority over a woman both in the church and in the home. I couldn’t handle this.

I see myself equal to men and believe we were created equal. The only thing I see that men can do over women is their strength. Other than that, I felt just as good as any man while working and living in a man’s world. I did notice when I was working, there were some men that couldn’t handle a woman telling them what to do. I loved this. It turned the tables on how women feel all the time. But when I became a Christian and after I read the Bible and read how women were treated in the Old Testament I was appalled and not very happy with God and what He allowed.

Now I had to come to terms with men being an authority over women in the church. I talked to a couple Christian friends who tried to help me sort these things out. They said that God loves men and women the same they just have different roles. Their salvation is the same and they both have the Holy Spirit. God loves order and He being God chose to put men above women in the church and in the home. The man is the spiritual leader and is responsible and held accountable over his wife and children. He alone must answer to God in spiritual matters concerning his family and the church. It is simply the way God designed the church to function.

This made sense to me but I still couldn’t understand why the Bible related more to men and that women were rarely mentioned. There are a couple of books on women but they weren’t anything that made me feel better about this issue.

I spent most of my life dealing with the roles of men and women and I told myself that I will never let a man tell me what to do or how to live. That’s the way it was for me. I didn’t like the fact that women were meant to have babies and to stay in the home while men were free to leave the home and work outside the home. It made me feel inferior and then when I became saved, it was worse in the church than in real life. I felt more limited in the things I could do in the church than in the world. This is why I almost walked away from God.

My friends also told me that women can excel in gifts such as hospitality, mercy, teaching, and helping children. Much of the ministry of the local church depends on women. Women in the church are not restricted from public praying or prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:5), only from having spiritual teaching authority over men. The Bible nowhere restricts women from exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12). Women, just as much as men, are called to minister to others, to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and to proclaim the gospel to the lost (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 1 Peter 3:15).

God is God and He has the right to say what goes on in His church and in families. He created the roles between men and women and He did it for a reason. Christ is the head of man and man is the head of women. That is how it is and through much prayer and asking God questions and reaching out to my Christian friends I was able to get through this. It still bothers me that the Bible talks little about women but when I get to Heaven, God and I can talk about these things because I know that He loves me.

If you are interested in the roles of men and women in the church and in the home, please go to http://www.truelifelivingbooks.com and read The Role Relationships of Men & Women: New Testament Teaching By George W. Knight and Beyond Sex Roles, 3rd edition By Gilbert Bilezikian / Baker. These books will help you understand God’s plan and design of the church and its members.

Thank you and God Bless…