Your Ten Dollar Word of the Week: Complementarianism

Just about everything in the Christian life is countercultural and counterintuitive. Biblical womanhood is no different. If you’re been around a good church for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard that biblical womanhood and worldly womanhood are radically different.

The debate on how the Bible deals with gender (and there is a debate) is incredibly important. It’s not simply theological nit-picking. When God created men and women in his image (Genesis 1:27), the personal and relational character of their Creator was stamped into them. Men and women by nature are personal, relational beings – just like God. This means that how we live out our personhood and relate to others day to day doesn’t just affect our lives here on earth, it actually affects how we, as image-bearers of God, display who God is to the world.

A huge piece of this is gender. “God created man (humanity) in his own image…male and female he created them.” Somehow it wouldn’t have been sufficient for God to make only men or only women (even if we could pull off what a hammerhead shark can) and still be able to say that we were “made in his own image.” Our man-ness and woman-ness come from, reflect, and are dictated by God himself.

So, in a nutshell, how are men and women to relate? There are essentially three options.

1. Chauvinism

Chauvinism says that men are by nature higher than and superior to women, who are by nature weaker and inferior. It’s only natural then that women should submit to men across the board, not unlike those who consider particular ethnicities or races to be inferior to others. This position is wrong because it’s oppressive and abusive, and because it’s a misunderstanding of God’s creative intentions for men and women.

Chauvinism says men and women are distinct in both value and role. 

2. Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism (from the French word égal, meaning “equal”) affirms that God creates men and women equal – both equally valuable as image bearers of God – but generally sees no difference in how they relate to each other and the roles they play in the home and in the church. Many Bible believing, Jesus loving Christians hold to this position, but we believe that God has provided a framework in which men and women are to use their gifts and talents in the home and church.

Egalitarianism says men and women are equal in both value and role.

3. Complementarianism

Complementarianism says that God has created men and women equal while also giving them distinct and complementary roles. These roles include godly men who humbly and lovingly lead their homes and godly women who faithfully and joyfully follow the lead of their husbands. Being a man does not by itself grant any sort of authority, just as being a woman does not by itself equal submission (like chauvinism would say). Rather, because God has designated the marriage relationship to paint a picture of Jesus’ own relationship with the church, the man and the woman each play distinct roles.

This is why the Apostle Paul is able to speak of marriage in the ways he does, such as in Ephesians 5: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord…Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church…”.

Complementarianism says men and women are equal in value and distinct in role.

Our Stand

As mentioned in Sunday’s sermon on Honoring Women, the local church cannot afford to be undecided or uncommitted when it comes to how men and women relate at home and in the church. If we don’t do the hard, biblical thinking required, we’ll soon adopt the views of a culture that doesn’t love or honor Jesus.

The Rooted is committed to complementarianism in the home and church. We also believe that men and women are partners in every area of life and ministry together. Though equal, men and women have biblically defined, complementary, and distinct roles, so that husbands are to lovingly lead their homes like Jesus and only men should serve as pastors in the church.

As author Justin Holcomb writes:

Some people have difficulty with the idea of complementarianism because they have either experienced or wrongly assumed that a husband’s leadership is macho domination. But the perfect example of leadership is shown in Christ’s love for his bride, the church. Christ’s relationship to the church is the kind of leadership that sacrificially gives for the good of another. It’s this type of leadership that husbands are intended to model to their wives so their marriages are reflections of Christ’s love for his church.