EPISODE SEVEN: LET THE WALLS BE BUILT UP

…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

In 1991, Steve Green released an album titled We Believe. One of the songs he recorded was Let The Walls Come Down. The album’s focus was to encourage unity among those we often refer to as having “like precious faith.” I love Steve Green, but in this episode of Set Free, I am addressing some walls that need to be built up, not further broken down.

We’ve arrived at the context which included our key verse, cited at the beginning of this post: 1 Peter 2:4-10. This passage is a “sandwich”: meat in the middle (4, 6-8) and bread on the outside (5, 9-10). While the “meat” is vitally important (the bread is just “carbs” without it!), I am going to focus on the “bread.”

As you come to Him, the living stone, rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s sight, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:

“See, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.” For you who believe, then, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word—and to this they are appointed.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are a people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

The analogy of believers as part of a building, a temple, appears in other passages in the New Testament. See Ephesians 2:19-22 and 1 Corinthians 3:9-14. References to Jesus as the cornerstone also appear in Ephesians and in Matthew 21:42. The cornerstone holds the building together, and Peter emphasizes this in this passage, referring to Him as “precious” several times, as he did in 1:19.

But I want to linger a bit on this building of which Jesus is the cornerstone. We, as women, are part of that building, called to be part of what Peter speaks of here: “a spiritual house,” “a holy priesthood,” “a royal priesthood,” “a holy nation,” those who “offer spiritual sacrifices,” and those called “to proclaim” His virtues.

We will likely consider what it means for women to be this holy and royal priesthood in our next episode, but today let’s focus on this building of which we are a part. To do that, we will return to Genesis with the help of some Hebrew scholars.

Genesis 2 gives us a more detailed account of the creation of the two people made in God’s image and called to bear that image. Adam was created first from the dust of the earth. He was given responsibility for caring for the rest of creation. When we reach verse 18, we read: “The LORD God also said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.” God is then described as making all the other creatures from the dust of the earth, allowing Adam to name them, and then repeating that, among them, there was no one like him. He was alone, and that, according to God, wasn’t good. In verse 21, we read, “So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he slept, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the area with flesh. And from the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man, He made a woman and brought her to him. And the man said: ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; and she shall be called “woman,” for out of man she was taken.’”

What I am about to try to summarize is more detailed than I have the capacity to explain, and I would encourage you to do a little investigating on your own. I recommend Ingrid Faro’s book, Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation, and this site: https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/minding-our-words/.

The Hebrew word tesla is usually translated as “rib,” but in some translations, if you look at the alternate readings listed at the bottom of your Bible or in the centre column of some translations, it is rendered “side.” This same word appears forty times in the Hebrew Bible, but the only place in most of our English Bibles where it is translated “rib” is here in Genesis 2. Most scholars now tell us that “rib” here in Genesis 2 is a mistranslation (and, by the way, men and women are born with the exact same number of ribs—men aren’t missing one!).

So what? Why does it matter whether the word is translated “rib” or “side?” Hebrew scholars (and Jewish scholars) will tell you that the reference to “side” in Scripture has a distinct meaning and is related to the temple—another analogy used in the New Testament regarding believers. I quote Faro here:

“Other than the two translations as “rib” in Genesis 2:21–22, all but two uses of tsela are special architectural terms for the sides of sacred places where God makes his presence known:

(Faro, Ingrid; Dalrymple, Joyce Koo. Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation (p. 29-31). Kindle Edition.)

I found this fascinating—and enlightening. It also raised another question. Why is woman the only part of creation not made from the dust of the earth? Rather, she is made from man. They are literally one flesh. She is made from him, yet a little different from him. Woman originally came from man, but subsequently every man (and woman) has come from a woman’s body, including our Lord Jesus. This picture from Genesis reveals something of the mutuality God designed to exist between men and women. They are part of each other yet distinct, and are meant to fully support each other as equals in this “building,” this “temple” in which Jesus is the cornerstone. As in construction, a weak, unequal wall weakens the entire building.

This is where we enter into some controversy. Traditionally, in many of our Christian contexts, women have been viewed as a “weaker” sex. This is not understood strictly in the sense of being physically weaker, but has, through the ages, been taken to mean that women are not intellectually, morally, or spiritually as strong as their male counterparts. At times, women have been considered instruments of Satan, temptresses to be resisted at all costs, and those who needed to be kept in their places for the good of society. There are remnants of that belief that still pervade today. This is a controversial subject. Women and their “places” in the home, in the church, and in society in general are a hot topic—the discussion has waxed and waned throughout history, but this era in which we are living now seems to be one of those “hotter” seasons in that discussion.

The consequences of this flawed exegesis (or eisegesis, reading into what isn’t there) are evident in the weakness of our present-day church. The shared strength of the building that Peter describes in his letter, and the divine design illustrated in that early chapter of Genesis, are what we need to return to. The analogy of a building or temple implies that the stones are as strong as possible and the walls are level. If any building is to survive tsunamis, earthquakes, and whatever else life throws at it, it has to be well constructed. Is that not as true in the spiritual sense as in the physical? Peter’s words are not gender-specific. He addresses his audience, including women along with the men. There are no weaker stones or substandard materials. The whole of Scripture testifies to unity and equality, and to why woman was taken, not from the earth, but from man with whom she constitutes one flesh.

And just to annoy people further, the translation of the word “helper” in Genesis 2 is misunderstood and misapplied as well. The Hebrew word used for Eve is the same word used to describe God more than twenty times in the Scriptures, and He certainly is NOT the kind of “helper” that women are often told to be: weak, obedient, submissive, and silent. See https://faithgateway.com/blogs/christian-books/ezer-unleashed on this subject.

There is so much more to be said here, but I have stirred the pot enough, I think. Also recommended to you is Carolyn Custis James’ book, Half the Church.

Yet another “thorn” in the sides of some is the presence in Scripture of women who were strong walls in the structure that Jesus is building. Women like Junia and Lydia, Priscilla, and the daughters of Philip, who were evangelists.* Then there is Phoebe. Paul entrusted his famous letter to the Roman church to her. She was not just a “postwoman” dropping off the mail. It was customary for the person who delivered the letters for the churches to read them to the congregation, explain them, and answer questions about their content. Paul trusted her to do that! Hardly a description of someone morally, intellectually, or spiritually weak.

When I set out to develop this Set Free series, my purpose was to explore our freedom as women, a freedom that has been denied to us and still often is. This is not a discussion about titles or positions; it is about becoming what God called us to be, as defined in our key Scripture from 1 Peter.

One day, you and I, as women, will stand before God to give an account of our stewardship of the gifts He has given us. To please others, to “obey the rules,” and to “colour within the lines,” I have compromised for the sake of peace. For that, I repent. Now I have my own line to draw in that proverbial sand, perhaps too late for my ministry, but hopefully an encouragement to other women in ministry. I need to do better at being and doing all that God called me to do. The church needs to use ALL its resources. If we are to make an impact on the world and truly demonstrate what redemption means and how Jesus is the light and hope for our society, we need to do better—all of us.

More to come…

* In my role as Fellowship archivist, I discovered something very interesting about the ups and downs of the discussion over what women should or should not be allowed to do in ministry. The leadership of our churches in the 30s, those who would become part of our Fellowship in the early 50s, was ultra-conservative, exemplified by Dr. T. T. Shields, who was then the driving force behind the Union of Regular Baptist Churches. The Union was active in many Home Mission works across Ontario and Quebec at the time. Each Home Mission pastor was required to report regularly to the head office in Toronto. In my travels through the documents from that era, I found that several pastors reported holding evangelistic services, week-long campaigns designed to reach out to their communities. The reports described how God had blessed with the salvation of many souls because of the ministry of the FEMALE evangelists who had preached in these campaigns. It was apparently quite normal in the 30s for women to be travelling evangelists. Reaction from the head office? Absolutely nothing, except rejoicing in the salvation of souls! Today, at least in our Fellowship churches, a female evangelist would never appear behind a pulpit—and the church is weaker for it. The walls are weaker.