Never was a Silence so Loud
There are no examples either in Holy Writ or in human literature of a silence as loud as Adam's silence in Genesis 3, when with Eve, they were approached by the Tempter.
From the Tempter's opening words to the eating of the fruit, Adam is mute.
Shamefully mute. Culpably mute.
A Story for our Times
In our gender confused era Genesis 3 is a story we need to pay heed to. It's a true story, a true account of an actual event. We know that because the rest of Scripture confirms the historical veracity of a real Adam and a real Eve.
One of the ways in which our culture is most confused about gender is in the role between men and women. The word "equality" is used without any reference to the biological and psychological differences between men and women.
And since the word "equality" has a justice ring about it, to even question what someone means by "equality" is tantamount to patriarchy, sexism, or a hundred other modern sins.
Christians, tragically, have simply drifted with their culture. Church after church has appointed women as elders, pastors or vicars in a headlong rush to avoid the charge of sexism and cultural irrelvancy.
Many Christian marriages are disordered and upside down under the same untouchable idol and mantra of "equality."
Order but no hierarchy
Christians who remain faithful to Scripture, and this is probably the Majority World of Christians, no longer infected by the West, know better.
Order between the sexes in marriage and church begins with order between the members of the Godhead. In 1 Corinthians 11:3, Paul writes that "the head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man, and the head of Christ is God" (which must mean God the Father).
Just as there is an order in the Godhead, with the Father as the first person, the Son begotten of the Father as the second, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son as the third Person, so, made in God's image there is an order between the sexes.
All three Persons of the Godhead are equal in glory and divinity but there is order.
In the same way men and women are both made in the image of God and possess the same dignity and value, but there is an order between them. God made Adam first, he made Eve for Adam, he made Eve out of Adam. He gave his word to Adam who had to pass it on to Eve. Order.
The "Godhead model" should inform the behaviour of every Christian church and every Christian marriage.
Women should never lead in the church because it turns God's order upside down. They should never teach men for the same reason (1 Timothy 2:12). No heirarchy, just order.
Women should submit ('order themselves under') to their husbands (Ephesians 5:25). Again, nothing to do with hierarchy, just order.
The world will never get this, but Christians should. Christians have the Godhead as their model of equal glory but distinct order. The world has no model and simply hears "heirarchy" when we say the word "order." Christians should not expect the world to understand or accept this. They can't.
Back to Adam's Deafening Silence
What went wrong in the garden of Eden was a double sin. Adam sinned by 'just doing nothing' and 'letting it all happen'. And Eve sinned by taking the initiative.
This is what should have happened.
The moment the Tempter approached Eve, Adam should have stepped in "Listen here, you speak to me." (Or as someone crudely put it, "Hiss off.")
And at that very moment, Eve should have said, "Speak to my husband."
Eve, perhaps flattered by the attention, and erring by taking the lead, fell. And Adam failing to take responsibility, said absolutely nothing. And Adam's guilt is greater than Eve's.
And so we see that the first sin was far more than simple disobedience. It was a gender sin, an order sin, a marriage sin.
The Importance of Order
On the one hand, it could be argued that disorder in a church where women lead and disorder in a marriage where the wife leads are matters of secondary importance - a denial of the divinity of Christ is a primary doctrine by contrast - they are not minor issues.
For the moment we relegate God's divine order between the sexes to merely a cultural matter which we can dispense with because the culture of our day dictates our anthropology, it leads to much more.
We must then begin to rethink every other "cultural relic" of the Scriptures and allow homosexual practice (which the Bible calls sin) into the church, and then transgender ideology, and then....?
Sticking to the Truth
Instead of drifting with the times - or shall we say with the politically correct minority - we should maintain our witness: men and women are absolutely equal when it comes to value, dignity and salvation. But they have been created with complimentary roles, whose source is the order between male and female, and whose deeper spring is the image of a triune God, whose eternal inter-Personal love is ordered.
May the Lord help true churches stick to the truth, for it, and it alone, will set men and women free.
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