Are men and women equal in God's eyes?

The Old Testament refers to more men than women. Men also had a more public position than women in the conduct of worship under the law (e.g. the priesthood was given to Aaron and his sons: Ex. 28:1) and in the administration of Israel’s affairs (as seen, for example, in the fact that the right to reign passed through the male line). However, neither fact suggests any bias for or against either gender. God loves every individual who has ever been born with the same love — ‘all are precious in His sight’, as the children’s chorus states. God shows the same grace and favour to all, irrespective of gender, race or any other characteristic of nature which might distinguish one person from another. While He has given men the primary responsibility in connection with the public testimony for Him on earth in all dispensations, this is part of His order for earthly things.[1] It does not carry any suggestion that God values men more than women or that He takes less pleasure in the service of women than that of men.

The very fact that woman was “taken out of man” proves her equality. She is not an inferior, but an equal, a helpmeet. Between man and man there is similarity, identity—between man and woman there is equality, but with it diversity.

Man and woman are equal morally but he is the head positionally.

Scripture distinctly states: “The man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man … Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is OF the man, even so is the man also BY the woman; but all things of God” (1 Cor. 11:8-9, 11-12). How exquisitely guarded and balanced a presentation of the truth is this!

Verse 28. "There is in [Him, and consequently among you] neither Jew nor Greek," etc. (ouk eni). The force of these words and their bearing on the state of the Galatians is evident. The effect of their Judaizing, had been to revive national distinctions, and even to create others of which they were before unconscious. For the essence of legalism is to insist on the difference between the Jew and the Gentile, and to assert the superiority of the former. Then again, the Jew was bound by law; the Gentile free, though in a false and evil liberty of natural wilfulness. But both these conditions are forgotten in their new standing as in Christ. The Jew's bonds are undone by the dying of the Lord, and the Gentile is no more an alien dog, but has a portion with the children in the blessing of their common God (Rom. 3:20, 30). In the law, too, the women had a lower place, religiously, than the men. The males were the appointed worshippers at the great national conventions, and the doers of the service of God's sanctuary; the women merely echoing in their subordinate place what men only might originally speak or do. But now males go not up alone to keep God's feasts. Believers of either sex are "heirs together of the grace of life." The presence of the Father, and the throne of grace on which He sits, are accessible to both alike in the same prevailing Name, and by the one indwelling Spirit. "Ye are all one [man] in Christ Jesus," says the apostle. It is a description of their common participation and membership in the mystic unity of Christ's body, the Church. They stand in Him according to the truth and glory of His title as the last Adam; even as they were, though of common origin and nature, diverse and mutually hateful as the children of the first Adam. As a common sin produced all manner of social and moral inequalities, so a common righteousness, and that of God, fills each vessel of His grace out of the exhaustless fulness' that is in Christ. If the generation of God's children be a numerous one, yet the life which they have, as His own free and ever blessed gift, is "in His Son" (1 John 5:11).

First, we see men and women seated together. This tells of their equal and common interest in Christ, where there is neither male nor female, as we read here, "For neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord"; for, personally considered, they have the same standing in the church of God.

Secondly, we see the man uncovered, and the woman covered. This tells us of their difference mystically considered, as we read here, "For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man" (8th and 9th verses). And these two things are true, not only of Adam and Eve, but of Christ and the church, so that in the assembly — where she is not permitted "to speak" (1 Cor. 14:34), or when prophesying, which she may do elsewhere (Acts 21:9) — the woman is to carry the sign of subjection (i.e. the covered head) Gen. 24:65, and the man to appear without it, thus mystically setting forth "Christ and the church."

To dwell with the wife "according to knowledge," is to have the relationship, and the affections proper to it, ordered by the truth, by the knowledge which the Christian has of the relationship in the sight of God. And this is exceedingly important; for herein lies the difference between the believer and the unbeliever in these relative positions; and it behoves the Christian to act in all these according to the new place in which he has been brought by the death and resurrection of Christ. The Christian husband will therefore dwell with his wife according to the truth of his union with his wife, as revealed in the Scriptures.

Moreover, he is to give honour to his wife, and on two grounds. First, on the natural ground, that she is the weaker vessel. There is little doubt that this reference is to the more delicate frame and organization of the woman, requiring and deserving more gentle and more tender treatment. So that just as weakness constitutes a claim upon strength for consideration and support, so the wife as "the weaker vessel" has a claim upon her husband for thoughtful, loving watchfulness and care. He is to give her honour by rendering her all the attention which her more delicate nature requires. It is possible, however, that there may be a reference to the fact that "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:14), that she thus showed herself to be "the weaker vessel," by being the first to fall through the subtlety of the devil. More easily acted on, especially through the affections, she thus needs and demands from her husband vigilant and tender care to shield her from the peculiar temptations to which, with her weaker nature, she is constantly exposed. But, secondly, this exhortation is grounded in grace as well as in nature, "as being heirs together of the grace of life." In Christ there is neither male nor female. (Gal. 3:28.) All natural distinctions therefore, as constituting any relative superiority in Christ, are abolished. While therefore the husband claims the natural obedience of his wife, he must never forget that, if they are both children of God, they are together "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." (Rom. 8:17.) And as such he is to give honour unto his wife; for these natural ties, and these relative connections, are only for earth; and when the Lord comes to receive His people unto Himself, husbands and wives will alike be caught up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and then both will be like unto Christ, and be for ever with Him.

Attention to this injunction is the more needful for the reason given, "that your prayers be not hindered." It is pre-supposed that husband and wife will habitually unite in prayer; and hence the warning is, that any failure in the husband to give honour unto his wife will tend to disturb harmony of feeling, and thus to hinder prayer. It were well if all Christian husbands and wives would often ponder these words. For in the activities of this present time there is great danger of neglecting this united prayer; and the slightest disturbance of concord will ever tempt them to neglect it the more. Satan knows this, and hence he ever seeks to cloud over the peace of these relationships; for he does not forget that it is impossible for husband and wife to go together to the throne of grace when there is the smallest discord in their hearts. The husband must watch against this snare, remembering the importance of their prayers not being hindered. For how many things are there constantly occurring in every family which need to be spread out before God! And how blessed it is when husband and wife can go together, with one heart, concerning every difficulty and perplexity, to the throne of grace!

In Christ all fleshly distinctions disappear. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (ver. 28). All these differences pertain to the old creation. All are brought into equal blessing and privilege in the risen Christ. It is a question of our place and portion in Him. Let us be careful to confine the passage thus. Ere this, it has been used to set aside or slight the relationships of life; and it has been brought forward as justifying the woman in taking the man's place in the services of God. But this is to utterly pervert the plain words of the apostle. All the relationships of life are sanctioned by God in Christianity as previously, and are all regulated in the Epistles of the New Testament. And it must not be forgotten that the woman's place was ordered and settled before the fall, and has not been touched by it, save that bitterness and sorrow have come in, as solemn results.

The believer then is a son in immediate connection with his Father, with God (God Himself being manifested). He is a son, because all who have been baptised to have part in the privileges that are in Christ have put on Christ. They are not before God as Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, male or female; they are before God according to their position in Christ, all one thing in Him, Christ being for all the common and only measure of their relationship with God. But this Christ was, as we have seen, the one Seed of Abraham: and if the Gentiles were in Christ, they entered consequently into this privileged position; they were, in Christ, the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise made to that seed.

And this is shown by the fact of the new place into which God has put His people now, "sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus;" the school of law is not the proper place for us. That does not mean that we are not to profit by the lessons which the law taught, of course. We may profit by the lessons which we learn in school without being under the schoolmaster; but under the schoolmaster, no one says "Father." The place of sons as such is manifestly somewhere else than at school. This, then, has come for us, for "as many of us as have been baptized to Christ have put on Christ." Christ is, according to the truth announced in baptism itself, the One in whom we are, therefore, before God. It is His perfection, His beauty that is seen upon us. Nothing else is seen, no earthly condition, no place of privilege beside. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Manifestly, if each one of us is in Christ, Christ must be the same for each and all of us. There can be no distinction here. For distinction, we must look away from Christ; but if then we "are Christ's," then "are we Abraham's seed," in the fullest way identified with the very One in whom the blessing was to be, identified with the very Heir of blessing, and therefore heirs according to the promise, "in thy Seed:" that is Christ, in whom we are.

But Christ, then, is the Head of every man. The head of the woman is the man. Here is what we were saying; something which in the minds of many now would be contradicted or set aside by the place in Christ which we have got, in which there is neither man nor woman. That is quite true, and remains always true, that there is in Christ neither male nor female. There is a common equality, and one of the most perfect and highest kind, which can never be touched, never set aside, but to be acknowledged in the fullest possible way. That does not, on the other hand, set aside the fact that in God's order for earth, and in the place which God has given to man and woman respectively on the earth, the head of the woman is the man. The higher fact is shown forth in the lower one. There are not two heads in creation, but one. Two heads would mean division. God's thought is unity. The man, as he says afterward, is not without the woman in the Lord. The man and die woman form the man in the full sense of humanity, and the woman is necessary thus to make the man what he is; but that alters nothing, but rather confirms what he contends for here according to God's thought, as we look back and see it in creation itself, — the head of the woman is the man. Let us go further, he says. The Head of Christ is God. Is that something derogatory to His true character? Is not He God? Is not He divine? Yet, after all, it can be said, "the Head of Christ is God." Christ has taken His place as man, and He is not ashamed of it, and He does not refuse the consequences of it. He has come to be in creation the example of most perfect obedience on the creature's part, as well as on God's part the example of the most perfect grace, the fullest revelation of God that can be found. Thus, then, we have these things established.