What is a Woman?

Introduction

Hello! And welcome back to another episode of Thoroughly Equipped, I am your host MelbaToast and am so glad you could join me today! May this episode bless you and bring Glory to God.

Womanhood. What is it? What is a woman? What does it mean to be a woman? Is it determined biologically or by one’s feelings, choice, or behaviors? Can anyone be a woman? 

I played a couple of clips in the intro to this episode. It’s very eye opening to hear people’s response to the question. And these questions were asked to women at a woman’s march. You would think people attending a march for women’s rights would have a clear definition of what a women is and what womanhood looks like. 

But here is what I observed in these statement of ambiguity and inclusion. The underlying idea that ANYONE can be a woman by merely identifying as a woman makes women and what it means to be one meaningless. Things that mean nothing and everything are not only contradictory but have no value.

Now more than ever, I believe women who hold to Scripture as their directive for life and living, have the answer to this question. God reveals to us in nature and biology our physical differences and the bodily functions of those differences, but we also have God’s word that informs us of our created purpose and gender roles that come with being created female. 

It is both the design and the roles that encompass womanhood. We do not choose to be a woman, God made that choice for us, and in his choice our purpose/roles are given.

Last season, our Titus 2 times were episodes that discussed God’s doctrine. We looked at what is doctrine, where do we find doctrine, true versus false doctrine, and discerning doctrine. I felt this was very foundational when looking at Titus 2. Older women teaching the younger women the whole counsel of God (His good doctrine), is one of the means by which God purifies for Himself women who are zealous for good works. So this season I want to really dive into Womanhood and the beauty of God’s design for us.

But before we dive into defining womanhood we have to address HOW we should answer this question. 

Sola Scriptura and Biblical Womanhood

• Do we learn from culture/tradition to determine what it means to be a woman?
• Do we look at Science and observation to define what a woman is and what womanhood looks like?
• Do we learn from the Creator of humanity, the One who made both male and female?

We, as Christians, know the answer to this. We go to God. He created us, He knows best.

But it’s one thing to believe in God and to know that he has the answer, it’s another to ask how we receive his answer. And that is extremely fundamental to this discussion.

• Ask yourself what you believe about Scripture:
  • Is it written by God?
  • If it is, Is the God you worship Sovereign, all powerful?
  • Is God sovereign enough to say EXACTLY what He wants to say?
  • Is God sovereign enough to work through the writer’s up-bringing, education, culture, and even his sinful nature to say EXACTLY what He wants to say?
  • Is God sovereign enough to know the impact of His teachings, despite the differences in culture thousands of years later?
  • Is it inerrant?
  • Is all of it without error? 
  • Is God, not only sovereign enough and intelligent enough to say EXACTLY what he want to say but also sovereign enough and powerful enough to KEEP His word, throughout time and culture?
  • Did God provide, in His word, everything we need, not only for salvation and  life, but perfect and thorough instruction into righteousness and godliness? 
  • Did God provide all we need to live as godly women?

For all these questions the answer is Yes. 

And since He has given us His very word that is profitable for teaching us what a woman is, rebuking us where we sin as women, correcting our false beliefs, and training us into righteous womanhood- it thoroughly equips us to be not merely women but Godly women.

So let’s look at what God teaches us about women.

1.  That GOD MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE AND BOTH IN HIS IMAGE

 Then God said, ^o“Let us make man⁸ in our image, ^pafter our likeness. And ^qlet them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷  So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

^rmale and female he created them. Gen 1:26-27

Let’s first tackle this statement “Male and female he created them”. These are two distinctly different humans here. That difference is what we have called gender for thousands of years. And there are only 2 of them. Male and female. This is a biological statement, one that can be observed by looking at DNA. We can definitively say that one is either male or female by the chromosomes one has. But there is more than just being identified as female that makes one a woman. Why do I say that? 

Both Male and female are made in God’s image. Humanity is set apart from the rest of creation because we are image bearers. 

Theologians describe having been made in God’s image as reflecting certain attributes of God. God, being a spirit is not visible that we can sculpt and draw his image. But we do have spirits that display, reflect, and communicate who He is. In the beginning this image was good, and after the fall, we still retain this image, but it is turned inward, reflecting and communicating ourselves instead of God.

When one is justified in Christ, this self, their spirit becomes a new one, one that, by God’s sanctifying work,…is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator- Col.3:10. 

Yet, whether one is male or female, saved or not, we are made in God’s image, and are of equal value and worth.

2. God tells us that Woman was made FROM man and FOR man.*

When no ^zbush of the field¹ was yet in the land² and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man ^ato work the ground, ⁶ and a mist³ was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷ then the LORD God formed the man of ^bdust from the ground and ^cbreathed into his ^dnostrils the breath of life, and ^ethe man became a living creature. ⁸ And the LORD God planted a ^fgarden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. ^gThe tree of life was in the midst of the garden, ^hand the tree of the knowledge of good and evil….The LORD God took the man ^kand put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ^lyou shall not eat, for in the day that you eat⁴ of it you ^mshall surely die.”

¹⁸ Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; ⁿI will make him a helper fit for⁵ him.” ^{19 o}Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed⁶ every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and ^pbrought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam⁷ there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the LORD God caused a ^qdeep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made⁸ into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

“This at last is ^rbone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was ^staken out of Man.”⁹

^{24 t}Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.- Gen.  2: 5-9 and 15-24

There is a lot of information that we can glean from these passages. And men have studied it for years. But for this episode I want to focus on only a couple of things. 

1. That God made humanity for a purpose.
2. That God created 2 types of humans for this purpose.
3. And there is an order in which he created them as well as a difference in the WAY he created them

The LORD God took the man ^kand put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it (Verse 15). 

The Male human was created first and placed in the garden and instructed to tend it before the female human was created. This is important and it lays out for us that God intended for Man (Adam, as he was named) to have an authoritative role in tending the land. He was given the instruction and it was his responsibility to carry it out.  

Seeing that it was not good for Adam to carry out this instruction alone God created a helper fit for him (verse 18 & 20). And notice what Scripture interjects here as God had seen that Adam  needed a helper. Adam had been at work naming the animals, which gives Adam an authority over these animals. God, himself named Adam and gives Adam that responsibility to name all the rest of creation. This is part of Adam reflecting God, part of his being made in God’s image. God has authority and delegated authority to Adam to tend the garden and name the animals. Just keep this in mind as we continue.

So God, seeing that Adam was alone and was in need of a proper helper to accomplish the task, put Adam to sleep, removed a rib and formed Eve FROM Adam’s rib. She is from him, and for him, and made in God’s image. 

Wayne Grudem expands a bit deeper on what it means for woman to be a helper fit for man.

The Hebrew text can be translated literally, “I will make for him (Hebrew le-) a helper fit for him.” The apostle Paul understands this accurately, because in 1 Corinthians 11 he writes, “Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Corinthians 11:9). Eve’s role, and the purpose that God had in mind when He created her, was that she should be “for him . . . a helper.” . . . Yet in the same sentence God emphasizes that the woman is not to help the man as one who is inferior to him. Rather, she is to be a helper “fit for him” and here the Hebrew word kenegdô means a help “corresponding to him,” that is “equal and adequate to himself.” So Eve was created as a helper, but as a helper who was Adam’s equal, and one who differed from him, but who differed from him in ways that would exactly complement who Adam was.

(Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 119)

When Adam wakes, God presents her to him and Adam, continuing his role as one in authority over God’s creation, names her woman. She is named woman not merely because she is created female, but because she came from man. She is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

 Now back in the first account of the creation of Man God says… to them, ^s“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Gen 1:28

This is what men and women are instructed to do. Multiply, fill, subdue, and take dominion.

Ok, from Scripture we can answer what a woman is. A woman is an adult female human being, equal in worth to man, created in God’s image to be man’s helper in accomplishing the directive to rule over the earth.

She is as much a reflection of God as man is, and is as important as man is. She was and is needed to help man multiply, fill, subdue, and take dominion. 

Not only is she equal to man, needed for man, but she is also the glory of man (1 Corin.11:7). While woman was created from the rib of man, she is the completion of man (Gen.2:24), her role in helping man rule over the earth brings glory to man. This may seem to our modern feminine sensibilities to be degrading of women, but to be the glory of someone is by no means minimizing their worth. Paul uses the same word when describing the Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 2:20, that they are his glory and joy. They were the fulfillment of his aspirations, not because of anything that Paul did but because God through them helped Paul accomplish what he was called to do. In the same way, we women are not merely the glory of man because of what man does, but because God has created women to work through them to help man accomplish God’s will. Man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. Eve was the best thing that came from man because she was made to be his helper.

And to make it even more astounding, God not only determined to create Eve from the rib of Adam but determined that by the means of the man and woman becoming one flesh, man then comes from woman. “In the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God”- 1Corin 11:11-12

This verse, and really all the other verses we have looked at touch on biology. I didn’t really get into talk on defining women in biological terms because I wanted to first lay out that women are made in God’s image and made for a purpose. Now this purpose explains WHY we are made biologically different. Our physical differences are designed by God as the means by which we multiply AND complete the roles that God has given to men and women (I will get a bit more into this in coming episodes). But while our DNA and the body parts that were created by God through them are used to identify male and female, they don’t give us the purpose of men and women, nor the reason why God made humanity as either male or female.

Ok, so now we have defined what a woman is, but what is womanhood?

That, ladies, we will conquer in the next Titus 2 Time episode.

In conclusion for today, tho…I want to bring us to the heart of the issue in our gender discussion, one that I always want to point us to, and that is the Gospel. Yes, the Gospel is so intertwined in this. In eternity past God, knowing that His creation would undergo the subjection of sin, in infinite wisdom, chose to create beings that would reflect Him as male and female, to be joined together to become one flesh. These 2 genders, the male human and the female human, would ultimately reflect THE most beautiful, gracious truth, that would shine in a fallen world…the glory of Christ and His Bride, the Church. This is good, strong theology..I’ll let John Piper explain

Ladies, I pray you grasp this. I pray you know you were created to be a woman, called to glorify God in His design of you. He calls you, as a woman, to display the wonders of the Gospel, the glory of Christ’s work in redeeming you from your sins, and clothing you in His righteousness. I pray, ladies that you revel in being made a woman, and grow in sanctification as you strive to reflect his image, diving into strong theology as you learn about Him in Scripture. I pray…you are in His word.

MelbaToast