It applies throughout the professing Christian world that the woman is not to be a teacher. But there are many teachers, even in some Bible-believing churches, even broadcasting on the Internet, and having ministries in which they are the sole preacher and director, with millions of people who listen and follow, of both sexes. They are women, and they say they believe the Bible, but they defy the Lord in a command so clearly given. And not in just one place, but throughout the Scripture. That is sin, of course, and it can happen in any congregation. Every now and then there will crop up a rather headstrong young lady who wants to be a teacher and who must make up her own mind to everything: very opinionated, very dogmatic. She must research and make up her own mind on every subject, and will listen to no one. The Scripture says the woman must learn with all submissiveness and be silent in the church, but nobody can teach that type of young woman.
Nowadays with social media it's even worse, because she appoints herself a public teacher. Christians have to take great care how they use it. These can be public platforms with all sorts of people seeing what you say. That is what some people like. I can air my opinions. Perhaps I'm a young woman. I've been a Christian for six months, a year, two years at most, but I know everything. So I go on social media to air my opinions and say what I think. I preach to everyone. Yes, but the woman must be silent in the churches. You are as bad as the Archbishop of Canterbury: a different scale, but the same sin. It's a defiance of the Lord. What about 1 Timothy 2:12: ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’
Then every now and then you will get a lady of any age who thinks that she should be a pastor. She doesn't call herself that, but she will form a big circle. She says, ‘No, I am a Titus 2:4 woman, teaching other women; it's my ministry. So I have my Internet site, and I have my following, and I'll join a church, and then I'll canvas all the women to listen to me. I'll have my little private congregation.’ She's appointed herself a teacher. She's usurped authority. In her case, she may be aiming at women, but she completely misunderstands Titus 2:4, which doesn't say a woman can be a sort of woman's pastor and appoint herself. It talks to all the older women and they are to be the advisors of younger women. This is one-to-one. This is personal advice, personal encouragement and help.
It is astonishing that we have reached a point in history where the Archbishop of Canterbury, the supposed national church, is to be a woman, the head over all. These must be the end times – there are pointers everywhere. The supposed national church appoints a woman as the supreme teacher, marking the complete defiance of Scripture in the Church of England, the scorn of Scripture, the derision of Scripture, the unbelief and the dismissal of it as having any authority in their affairs. You can't go higher than the Archbishop of Canterbury unless you go to the king, who of course is nominally the head of the Church of England. So the nominal head is an adulterer, and the spiritual head is a woman. How could anybody be a conscientious member of such a church, with such a level of wilful defiance of Scripture and its authority?
The preacher rules and governs the church, not from his own head, but by the word of God, and there is much commanding and much exhorting to be done. From this we immediately learn a number of things, there is no prohibition here against the woman teaching a technical subject, a subject which does not involve this kind of exhortation and ruling. Yes a woman may teach. Obviously, it does not outlaw classroom work. It doesn't speak about what is going on outside the church. The apostle is speaking here about what happens within the church: moral instruction, ruling and governing the church by the word of God. There is some element of instruction which extends to Christian women outside the church, but the full force of this is addressed within the church, and of course within the Christian family also, which is an extension of the church of Jesus Christ. This does not prohibit women being involved in women's work or children's work, nor does it prohibit women praying, nor does it prohibit women engaging in private practical remonstration with men. They are not ruling and governing when they do that; that is a person-to-person activity in which there can be interaction,. If a godly woman has cause to engage in personal and private admonition with somebody else – her husband or some other male – that is another matter. It is something in which two people interact with each other; it is not the seizure of authority and rule over the congregation. So we can make an exemption of those things. We are talking here about the ministry of the word.
There is an awful lot of evangelical literature around today, which says that Galatians 3:28 permits women preachers and teachers in the church of Jesus Christ: ‘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.’ There are Bible believing teachers who today are taking a text like this and saying that everything is different in the church of Jesus Christ, and what the apostle Paul did elsewhere when he said that he did not permit the woman to teach was merely conforming the church of those days to the culture of those days. Texts such as Galatians 3:28 say that you may have women equally with men engaged in the leadership and the preaching ministry of the church. How then do we get round the problem that Paul not once, not twice, but three times prohibits the ministry of women in the church. They say, it was fitting to do that in those days because within the culture of those days women did not take leading roles, and they did not teach, and in many parts of the Roman Empire it was actually forbidden, it was illegal for women to take any leading role in any human society. And so Paul was merely conforming the church of those days to what was proper and seemly for those times. But, they say, when we want legislation for the church in the ongoing ages we turn to Galatians 3:28. That is nonsense and the first reason why it's nonsense is because Galatians 3:28 is not saying anything about the different roles of men and women as God has appointed them, either in the family or in the church. Galatians 3:28 is speaking about our spiritual equality in the sight of God. It is saying that we all have equal access to God; we are all now a kingdom of priests. There is no difference between the nature of the salvation of a man or a woman, any more than a slave or a free person, or a Jew or a Gentile. She isn't given a second-class salvation, an inferior salvation. In 1 Timothy 2 you find that Paul is most certainly not saying that the women folk may not teach merely because it was what was required by the culture of the day. Nor is it because of any difference in intellect between the man and the woman. There is a difference in gifts and a difference in distribution of roles and responsibility, but there is no difference in intelligence and in spirituality between men and women. It is not for cultural reasons that he does not permit women to teach as he goes on to teach..