Approaching the Hard Passages of Scripture

In the past few months, my life has changed, as has the topic of many of my conversations. I'm in the middle of my first semester in the Ph.D. program in New Testament/Greek studies. I'm adjusting to a new way of thinking, a new way of studying, and new demands and expectations that are placed on me by both myself and others.

In the process, as I've wrestled with doing Ph.D., and as I still wrestle with the purpose of it, especially in being a woman in this program, God has led me to do some intense examination of scripture concerning what my role is according to the Bible. My biggest concern in pursuing a Ph.D. is whether I am being biblical, and I don't want to step outside God's design for women. I've discovered that many of the women in seminary have this same concern and question of What is God asking of me as a woman? This question has driven me to seek out answers from the scripture as I've heard a variety of perspectives and interpretations of how we are to live as women.

Over the next few weeks, I want to lay out some of the exegesis and teachings that I've learned from my own studies of the exegetical significance of the "hard passages" as well as from others' biblical interpretations.

One of the issues that has led me to this study, apart from developing obedience, has been the attitude with which many men and women approach the "hard passages" of scripture concerning women. Even at a conservative seminary like the one I attend, I often find men afraid to make definitive claims that scripture defines women's roles in submission to men. Others who have heard men make these claims have labeled them as women-haters or culturally irrelevant.

But what if it's true? What if our culture has it wrong? What if we are attempting to accomplish God's plan in our way by ignoring scriptural universals and as a result, we are failing at truly understanding the gospel.

The gospel is the main thing in this discussion over these issues. The gospel is not some side-lined issue irrelevant to biblical manhood and womanhood; it is the very heart. The gospel says, "Not my will, but thine be done." The gospel surrenders all for the sake of God's glory among the nations and the redemption of mankind. The gospel demands that we take up our cross and follow Jesus, whatever that might mean. And the gospel invites us to do it God's way. Because there is no other way.

As we embrace the gospel, we surrender to God our dreams and our demands for how our lives look, and we hand over to him the pen of our story, allowing Him to fill in the pages with His Story. And His Story is the one that I want. So let us approach the text with gospel-centered lenses: that God's way is hard and demands my everything, whatever that might mean. So as we examine these passages over the next few weeks, my hope is that I draw closer to Jesus and am transformed more into His image knowing that as I release my hold on the world and its dictates for my life, I gain truth, the living water, and, ultimately, Jesus. He's all I ever wanted anyway.