Can Women Counsel Men in the Church?

Should women serve as biblical counselors and counsel men in the church?

That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We would love to hear from you. Our phone lines are open right now for the next 25 minutes or so. So if you have a question, pick up your phone and give us a call. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account. You can watch us on YouTube right now, and you can email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Well, yesterday Adriel responded to a question about the ordination of women as pastors, and today we have a follow-up question from one of our listeners.

This is Jacob in North Carolina. Okay, so my question is, how do we as Christians deal with this, the women, as far as being ordained pastors and things, where we see a lot of men who won't stand up, a lot of men that won't stand up and do the work of God? Well, then what do we say? I know what the Bible says, and I agree that, you know, the men should be preaching, but what do we do when the men won't stand up? Like, that's a problem I'm having in my church that the men don't want to do. The men don't want to preach.

The men don't want to stand up. So then what do we do? Hey, Jacob, thank you for giving us a call and for following up on the question that we received yesterday. So I think we're talking about here, you know, what does it mean to be a biblically structured church? And when I read the New Testament, it seems to me like when the disciples, when the apostles established churches, they made sure that they were churches that were governed by a plurality of male elders, where there were deacons who were serving in the church as well, helping to meet the physical needs of the congregation. And a lot of churches today just don't have that kind of structure.

And I think it's a shame. I think that this is a structure that we see in the New Testament, and I think there's good reason for that. Paul, in his letter to Titus, he said in Titus chapter one, verse five, this is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination, he goes on to list the qualifications for an elder. This is a part of what we sometimes refer to as the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, the book of Titus.

And throughout these letters, you have a lot of instruction about the household of God, the way in which it's supposed to be structured. 1 Timothy three as well talks about elders, the ordination of elders and what the qualifications for elders were. In 2 Timothy chapter two, verse two, Paul said, what you have learned from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. But it sounds to me like the problem that you're experiencing is that there aren't a lot of faithful men in your church who desire to serve in this capacity at least.

The Bible says in 1 Timothy that if anyone desires the office of an overseer, they desire a good thing. This is something that should be pursued and churches need good elders. But if there's no one in your church who's stepping up, well, it sounds to me like there's a significant problem there, maybe a deeper issue related to the spiritual health of the men in the church.

And so I think that's an issue. Church structure, Jacob, doesn't determine whether or not, 100%, it's not the only thing that determines this, but it's not defining what it means to be a true church. The big question is, is the gospel being preached faithfully? Is the word of God being preached faithfully in my church? There are going to be churches that don't have good biblical structure that still preach the gospel, and that means that the Spirit of God is still going to work in and through those churches, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't strive to be more biblically faithful and biblically structured. And so I would say pray for change. Pray that the Lord would really lay it on the hearts of the men in your church to step up and to take hold of the responsibility that God has given to them and be the change. I mean, brother, it sounds to me like this is something that you might be passionate about, and maybe that's indicative of the fact that the Lord is working in your own heart, maybe calling you to something like serving as an elder, as someone who might teach and preach the word of God.

Don't discount that. And if you're not able to stay and to pray and to pursue change, then consider, I think, finding a more biblically structured church that is faithful to proclaiming the gospel and is ordered in the way that we see the churches in the New Testament ordered. So I really appreciate your question, and I'm sorry to hear about the situation in your church in particular.

It seems like the men are not stepping up. I could tell that this is something that upsets you, and I pray, brother, that the Lord would be at work in your life and in your church as well. And so thank you for giving us a call. May the Lord bless you. And Jacob, if it turns out that you are going to start looking for a different church, we have a great core question on that topic. It's called How Do I Choose a Church? You can find that by going to corechristianity.com forward slash questions. Again, it's called How Do I Choose a Church?

You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Here's the phone number to call if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life. It's 833-843-2673.

You might want to make a note of that. If you spell it out on your phone, it's 833-the-core. Give us a call right now with your question.

We'll have our phone lines open for the next 20 minutes or so. Let's go to Elias in Hampstead, New York. Elias, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Thank you, Brother Bill Meyer and Pastor Sanchez. My question is, according to the Bible, is Jesus Christ or Satan the devil called the bright and morning star?

Short and to the point. I appreciate your question, Elias. The language of morning star, we find it in different places in the scriptures. We find it in the Old Testament. Is this referring to Satan?

The passage that you might be thinking about is Isaiah 14, verse 12. How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high.

But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. In antiquity, the day star, the morning star, referred probably to the planet Venus, the brightest star of the morning. It sort of heralded the coming of the day. It was preeminent. It was prominent. And the reason that word or that title is used here in Isaiah 14, probably in reference to, well, for one, the hottie king of Babylon, but also to the evil one, to Satan in particular, and to his fall, is because he had this position of prominence.

And so it's just a figure of speech that can be used actually both of the evil one, because he had this prominent position prior to his fall, but also in other ways. For example, in 2 Peter 1 verse 19, it talks about believers having the sure prophetic word, the morning star. Jesus in the book of Revelation talks about giving the morning star to his people, to his children who are faithful to him. Revelation chapter 2 verse 27, it says, And he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father.

And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And again, you see this language at the very end of the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 22 verse 6, And he said to me, These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits, that the prophets sent his angel to show the things that must take place.

And so you see this language used for the position of prominence, and that's why it's used in reference to Jesus and also in reference to Satan in the Old Testament prior to his fall. Elias, does that clear it up for you? It's month. And by the way, Monday was Mother's Day in Mexico. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Well, Happy Mother's Day. Thank you. April 19th was my birthday.

I was 73 years old. Hey, happy birthday. Thanks for giving us a call again, brother. Thanks so much, Elias. Appreciate you being one of our regular listeners. Always nice to hear from him. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

We do receive voicemails on a regular basis, and you can leave us a voicemail 24 hours a day by calling 833-THE-CORE. Here's one that came in from one of our listeners named Dolores. I'd like an explanation for predestination versus our responsibility for making a choice. I know we have been chosen by God, redeemed by God, and predestined before the foundation of the world. And then it also says that if you believe and confess with your mouth that he is Lord. So what is the simplified explanation to someone who struggles with how they coincide with each other?

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate this question. I don't know that there is a real simple explanation. We're talking about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of mankind. You see these two things brought together frequently in the Scriptures. First, as you said, it really is important for us to understand that God is absolutely sovereign, that he's completely in control, and that ultimately none of us would ever believe in or receive Christ were it not for a work of the Holy Spirit, and that God has from before the foundation of the world chosen people. This is what the apostle Paul says very clearly in Ephesians chapter 1. And yet at the same time, when we look at the testimony of Scripture, we know that God calls, commands all people everywhere to repent, to believe that the free offer of the gospel is real, it's sincere, it goes out to the whole world, that we're called to preach the gospel to all nations. We're not called to say, okay, who are the elect and how can I try to figure out who that is and I'm going to preach the gospel to them? That's not at all what we're called to do. We're called to preach the gospel promiscuously and to trust that God is going to gather in his elect by the work of the Holy Spirit. And so you have these two realities hand in hand.

We're responsible for the decisions that we make. We're called to believe, to exercise faith, and yet even that faith that we have is a gift that's given to us by the Lord. You know, I think of what Paul told the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. He's talking about God's coming judgment on those who reject the gospel, on those who don't receive Jesus Christ. And it says, towards the end of the section where it's talking about judgment in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 11, Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. In other words, this is what they wanted.

They had pleasure in unrighteousness. But then listen to what Paul goes on to say in verse 13, But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved of the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, sister, again, this is a complex issue. We know that mankind is responsible and that God is sovereign. There's no contradiction there. And we want to be faithful to what we see in the scriptures. And really we see both very clearly the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of mankind.

The trick is not watering down either of those, not twisting the scriptures to do away with one or the other. There are some people that want to take away human responsibility and say it's a sort of fatalistic existence that we have, God is the author of evil, that kind of a thing. And there are other people who want to do away with the sovereignty of God and say, no, it's really up to me. It's my choice. It's my decision.

I'm just sort of pulling myself up by the bootstraps in order to be saved. And both of those are wrong. God is absolutely sovereign and yet we are totally responsible. And those two truths are held together in scripture.

We have to hold fast to them as well because that's what the Bible teaches. Great explanation there on a very complicated topic. Thanks for that. Thanks, Bill. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adrian Sanchez. And today we want to offer you a wonderful book that will help you grow in your faith and really get a grasp of God's tender heart towards all of us.

Yeah, Bill. Today's offer is a new book that I've recently read and enjoyed. We actually ordered a number of copies for members of our congregation. The book is called Gentle and Lowly, the Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Pastor Dane Ortlund. If you are simply exhausted in the Christian life, weighed down by sin and by life's stresses, anxieties, if you doubt or question your salvation and God's love for you, then I would say you need this book.

Get a hold of Gentle and Lowly. It's a deep study into the very heart of God incarnate. It discusses not only what Jesus did for us, but how God feels towards us. We often think that God is this sort of domineering judge. But when Jesus describes his own heart in Matthew chapter 11, he says it's gentle and lowly.

And when we fail, when we're discouraged, when we don't know how to follow him, Christ's heart towards us is gentle and lowly. And so get a hold of this resource and Bill, you can let them know how to get their hands on it. You can go to our website. If you give a donation of any amount, we will send you a copy of this wonderful book. Just go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers. You can also call us for that offer or any one of our offers at 833-843-2673.

Again, that number is 833, the core. Let's go to voicemail we received. This one is from Catherine in Miami, Florida. Hi, Adriel and Bill.

I just want to say thank you for your podcast. A very good friend of mine. She's actually a mental health counselor, and she's currently in seminary. And one of her goals is to actually partner with our church for her to do biblical counseling. Just today, I heard an argument against it that women counseling a man, let's say, would be perhaps in a direct violation of 1 Timothy chapter 2. Could a woman be a counselor, work with the church, and would it be okay if she were to counsel a man? Thank you so much.

Have a great day. Hey, Catherine, that's a wonderful question and another follow-up on the question that we received yesterday. So I don't believe that the prohibitions in places like 1 Timothy chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 apply to, say, a woman counselor or a woman teaching a Sunday school class even in the church or a woman CEO, that kind of a thing. I think it's focusing on the ordained office of elder and, in particular, the sort of preaching office in the church teaching the local assembly when they're gathered together for worship.

So I think that that's what's being prohibited there. That's my perspective on those passages. And so I don't think there's anything wrong with your friend being a counselor, counseling people in the church. Let me just tell you, I am so blessed by a number of counselors that our church has worked together with. I think that this is really important because there are some issues in the life of the church that just require a little bit extra help. And there are ways in which your friend, as a trained therapist and counselor, will be able to help and encourage people struggling with any number of things, mental illness, for example, in ways that pastors aren't equipped to be able to help. I think it's really wonderful when churches can build relationships with godly Christian counselors in the area and begin to be able to encourage people who maybe need a little bit of extra help in their church, whether it's marriage and family therapy or something else, to go and sit down with some of these counselors that they can trust.

And so I'm excited for your friend. I think it really is a wonderful resource. I know that there are also some cautions and things that you want to watch out for in terms of thinking about counseling in a church context. And Bill, you're a trained Christian counselor.

What might some of those cautions be? You know, the ethics code for psychologists and for family therapists includes something we call dual relationships that we have to be aware of. In other words, let's say we are going to a church, we're counseling within that church, and then we're seeing the person that we counsel in the congregation, at a potluck, in a small group setting. And that can really wreak havoc in a lot of ways, especially if you've got a person in the counseling session that is divulging some very difficult, painful information to you that you need to keep confidential. So I would say, and it sounds like in this particular case, the woman is saying she'd like to partner with the church and maybe she doesn't attend that particular church. I think where you can really muddy the water is if you go to a smaller church and you have a person from the congregation counseling others in the congregation and then rubbing shoulders with them on a weekly basis.

I think then you have to really consider that whole dual relationship issue. Yeah, that's really helpful. But, Katherine, I would, again, just say I would want to encourage your friend. I know that there are members of our church who are serving as counselors or are looking to the future to serve in this capacity, in the future to serve in this capacity.

And it gets me excited because I think this is an excellent resource. I think that for a long time the church has not done a very good job talking about mental health and even encouraging people to pursue counselors that can assist them with some of the struggles that they might have where they could really benefit from a counselor. And so I think you should encourage your friend and hopefully she'll be a wonderful resource to the church as she partners with maybe the church that you're a part of and various other churches as well.

So God bless you. Katherine, thanks so much for your call. And Adriel, I got to tell you, I always appreciate the fact that you point people to Christian counselors as a resource because in our culture right now, we have a lot of depression. We have a lot of anxiety. We have people that are suicidal. And unfortunately, a lot of those people are in the church. And so there are folks that really could use that professional help.

And so thanks for always pointing that out. Let's go to Judy in Springdale, Arkansas. Judy, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? I'd like to ask him how you overcome a family curse. Ever since I was a child, I had really dysfunctional, upsetting things around me and I thought I had rose above it.

I almost lost my life even when I was a teenager. And now my family has been struck with tragic deaths and circumstances and it just keeps coming down on my family and I don't feel safe and I feel like there's always a presence around me. And I would like advice on how to remove that, to have victory over the evil that seems to be around us.

Well, Judy, I don't know. Sometimes we get questions about generational curses, that kind of a thing. Is there some sort of evil spell that's been cast on my family that causes all these terrible things to happen?

I don't know that that's always the best way of looking at it. When the Bible talks about curses in places like Deuteronomy chapter 28 or even the very beginning of the book of Genesis when God cursed the ground, for example, or cursed the serpent, with something that's related first and foremost to sin and the entrance of sin into the world, death itself is a kind of curse that we experience in the world as a result of sin. And so in one sense we would say that all of humanity, Judy, in Adam, born in Adam, is cursed and experiences the effects of the curse, death, destruction, sorrow, sadness. We live in a fallen world. Now the hope that we have, the hope that you have, is that Jesus on the cross bore that curse.

Paul says this very clearly in the book of Galatians. And so the first thing that I would want you to know, sister, is that the curse, the curse of death, destruction, the curse that sin brings about, if you believe in Jesus, you're no longer cursed. You are in Christ. You are a child of the living God.

He's received you into his family. That doesn't mean that you're not going to experience sickness, physical death, suffering, those kinds of things. We do because we live in a fallen world. But Christ is in you and with you and he has taken your curse.

And so in terms of removing the curse, there's not something that we do. It's what Jesus did and we receive his work for us and then we rest in it. Now with regard to some of these other things, it sounds to me like you might be referring just to spiritual warfare, which we all experience as Christians.

And Paul says very clearly in the book of Ephesians, we need to put on the armor of God. We need to pray. We need to resist the evil one. Peter in 1 Peter talks about how the evil one goes about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

And so you do have to be aware of that. And so we go to the Lord in prayer and we say, Lord, clothe me, wash me, fill me with your spirit, fill me with the fruit of your spirit so that I might resist the evil one, those temptations that come my way, that sense of darkness that he wants to put over me. The good news, sister, is that if you're in Christ, the evil one can't snatch you out of the Father's strong hand.

You're secure, you're safe, but he can shoot his darts at you and discourage you. And that's why you have to continually fix your eyes on the Lord. You need to be devoted to prayer. I hope, Judy, that you're in a solid Christian community where other brothers and sisters can pray for you and encourage you in your walk with the Lord as well.

That's really important. You think about that text again in 1 Peter where it says the evil one goes around seeking to devour someone. He's looking for stragglers, for people who aren't in community, for people who don't have accountability, those kinds of things. And so know that Jesus has, one, taken your curse, the curse of sin, on the cross, and that in him you are secure. And two, we are in a very real spiritual fight, and the evil one is trying to discourage us and bring us down. And so we devote ourselves to prayer, we fix our eyes on Jesus, and we trust that he's won the battle, and he has. And because Jesus has won the battle, Judy, you have hope, you can rest in him and know, sister, that you are secure. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.