Sons—but still women!

Galatians is probably biblical feminists’ favorite book in the Bible. That’s where they find their theme verse, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28), and its corollary, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (3:26). (All Bible quotations in this post are from the ESV.)

Biblical feminists read Galatians 3 to mean that, just as there is now no more distinction between Jew and Gentile because of Christ, so also there should be no distinctions of any kind between male and female. All church offices should be open to women, and there should be no such thing as headship or submission in marriage.

Biblical feminists ignore at least a couple of things here: (1) that the context of Galatians 3 is how we all come to Christ on an equal footing by faith; and (2) that the same Paul who wrote Galatians 3 also wrote “Wives, submit to your own husbands …” (Ephesians 5), “… the head of a wife is her husband …” (1 Corinthians 11), and “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man …” (1 Timothy 2), to cite a few. (We’ll return to these “inconvenient” verses in a moment.)

Now, while Galatians 2:26 (and 2:28) might on the surface seem like the perfect proof text for egalitarianism, that conclusion is really a misunderstanding of what Paul means by “sons of God.” Paul isn’t saying here that gender is no longer important in any context, but that women too (just like Greeks) fit within the category of “sons of God” by faith in Christ. Paul wasn’t opening radical new “feminist” ground here (as some claim), but rather following footprints in the Old Testament that lead back to Eve.

To understand this, we need a little Hebrew lesson. “Daughter” in Hebrew is “son” with a feminine ending. A daughter is a female son, just as Eve is a female man (Hebrew: adam). “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image …male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26, 28). “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (Genesis 5:2). Adam is not only the name of the first man, but also the generic name God gave to Eve (and to the whole human race).

Adam is God’s son (see Luke 3:38); by implication, Eve is God’s daughter. In fact, the rabbis thought of God as Eve’s father, preparing her for marriage to his son, Adam (Leila Leah Bronner, From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women). In the Old Testament, daughter is a sub-category of son. And perhaps this is why Paul felt free to adapt the promise of 2 Samuel 7:14 (“I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son”) to read “and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:18). 

Whether male or female, we are all “sons of God” by creation, God’s “offspring,” as Paul told the Athenians (Acts 17: 28–29). Paul’s point in Galatians 3 is that those who believe in Christ are also “sons of God” by adoption, whether male or female.

But the mistake of the feminists is to assume that this gospel makes us a sort of new unisex race, where male and female have become irrelevant. Yet it’s quite the opposite. God created adam male and female in order to be husband and wife, because he always had the gospel in mind. That’s why Paul returned again and again to creation as the ground of his teaching about marriage and church office. Paul championed our new freedom in Christ, but with all that freedom, he wanted the church to also hold onto marriage as a picture of Christ and the church (see Ephesians 5:32). From the beginning, marriage had a gospel purpose.

And that’s why egalitarianism ultimately undermines the gospel.