“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”
The second privilege that Christians have at the point of salvation is that they are one with all believers in Christ regardless of distinctions in society.
There is neither Jew nor Greek,
There are no racial distinctions in Christ. God says that the very distinction the Judaizers made between Jew and Greek was not valid. Judaizers cannot compel Christians to become Jews.
there is neither slave nor free,
There are no social distinctions in Christ.
there is neither male nor female;
There are no gender distinctions in Christ. Women have full spiritual status with men.
Christian feminists make this phrase the crux of their interpretation to support their view of Christian feminism. Some claim that Paul swallowed his culture to such an extent that he even wrote Scripture based on this bias. Christian feminists claim that passages such as 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11 hold fallacious teaching on roles of men and women.
Christian feminists argue that this phrase means that there are no meaningful distinctions between men and women. However, Paul does not make distinction between all possible differences in culture. The context deals with justification and sanctification. A woman receives justification exactly the same way a man receives justification.
Gay activists also use this passage to argue that homosexual practice is valid because God obscured the distinction between men and women. Some Christian feminists concede this argument because it follows the logic of their interpretation.
God does not recognize human distinctions in those who are in Christ.
Human role distinctions (1 Corinthians 14:34; 1 Timothy 2:11-15; Ephesians 5:22-24; 6:1-8) have nothing to do with our spiritual significance before God. Christian feminists completely miss the point of this passage which says the male has no spiritual privilege over the female. Every person, male or female, rich or poor, have the same spiritual status before God.
When we make distinctions in people, we form a basis for prejudice against them, making some superior and other inferior. Christians should not make race, economic status, or gender a measuring stick of acceptance.
However, God maintains differences in roles within society. God designed differences in the sexual role, so there are functional differences between men and women. He did not create unisex; He created gender differences. If so, where is the distinction? Spiritually, men and women are the same. Physically and functionally, they are different. Spiritual blessing is one thing, but human function is another thing.
Christian feminists today fail to accept that God’s truth is transcendent. They want to pour it into the mold of current philosophy and trends. They cut themselves off from unity of truth as it is found in the Bible. All that is left is plurality. That is why we have pluralism: everyone has an equal view of life, plurality is all that there is, and there is no unity of truth.
Coming to a conclusion about truth is arrogant to our society. The reason for this belief is the assumption that everyone has different reference points; there is no singular reference point. Everything is relative, so there is no ultimate location of truth. We can trust nothing that fixes truth. This is where the ultimate flaw of the feminists lies. They have bought into egalitarianism, which has no biblical basis whatsoever. Egalitarianism is a form of pluralism. They use this philosophical bias to interpret Scripture. It is a greater value to them than Scripture itself, for if Scripture contradicts this assumption, then Scripture itself is wrong!
Christian feminists who do not believe in biblical inerrancy, claim that Paul violated God’s principles by continuing the dissemination of sexual roles. However, they praise Paul for Galatians 3:28.
What forms the biblical basis for the rights of Christian feminism? There is none. The classical view of tolerance was that openness to different views was a virtue. However, it is one thing to open oneself to different views of the world and claim that all views are equally valid. Pluralism says more than that all views should have equal expression; it claims that all views are equally valid!
This contradicts the very idea that the Bible claims for itself mutual exclusive truth. As Christianity and Hinduism cannot both be equally valid, neither can modern Christian feminism and biblical roles. The only groups that Christian feminists will not tolerate are those who claim that tolerance is not an ultimate virtue! They cannot tolerate those who have the temerity to teach what the Bible actually says.