I admire people who know lots of people – and can keep their names straight. Paul the apostle had that knack.
He mentioned numerous people in his letters, calling their names correctly and often identifying a specific trait or aspect of their lives.
How easy for us to applaud this feat, even seek to replicate it – yet fail to recognize the significance of these “pleasantries.” Eager to get to the meat of the Word, we scoot right past such personal greetings, counting them as irrelevant as genealogies and Old Testament sacrifices.
In so doing, we rob ourselves.
Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable … (2 Tim. 3:16 AMPC)
Greetings!
Every Scripture. God-breathed. Profitable.
Take Romans 16:1–16 and 1 Corinthians 16:15–18. In each case, while closing a letter to the believers in a certain city, Paul included personal remarks regarding individuals he knew.
Writing the church in Rome, Paul greeted or commended 29 people, all but two of whom he called by name.
Writing the church in Corinth, Paul commended one household. He called its members “the first fruits” of the gospel in that region. He affirmed:
They have devoted themselves to the service of the Lord’s people. (1 Cor. 16:15)
Together, these two passages offer us far more than a peek into first-century niceties. These greetings prove astonishingly profitable – as we consider the women Paul identified, his commendations of them, and his urging:
Put yourselves at the service of such people. (1 Cor. 16:16 NRSV)
Seven women
Paul had not traveled to Rome when he wrote his letter to the church there. How amazing that he knew so many of the believers! How significant, the prominence of women among those Paul singles out!
Ten of the 29 people Paul names are women.
Four of the first seven people he mentions are women: Phoebe, Priscilla, Mary and Junia.
Seven of the 10 people whose ministries Paul affirms are women – the four above, plus Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis. (Paul also greeted Julia, Rufus’ mother and Nereus’ sister.)
We cannot begin to understand the import of Paul’s greetings without first asking the Holy Spirit to remove the Christian leadership grid we may have been taught to lay across the New Testament. The Scripture recognizes nothing of our typical church organizational charts, but we often cannot see beyond them.
Further, the bias against women in many Bible translations hides the beautiful pearls these passages contain. Yet now, humbling ourselves before God, let’s look at the seven women Paul identifies in Romans 16:1–16 in connection with ministry.
Spirit of the living God, you inspired these words. Open them to us.
Phoebe
Phoebe did not live in Rome. She traveled to Rome and apparently delivered the letter to the Romans. What a crucial assignment Paul entrusted to her! Further, he wrote in Romans 16:1–2:
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.
Paul declared, “I commend Phoebe to you. I stand with her. I unreservedly endorse her.”1 He urged, “Receive this woman. Assist her in whatever way she needs.”
According to the New International Version, Paul called Phoebe a “benefactor” and a “deacon.” How telling that New American Standard and New King James translate the same two Greek words as “helper” and “servant.”
The latter renderings make Phoebe’s role sound as if it did not involve leadership, but the biblical text indicates the opposite.
Consider the Greek word translated “benefactor” or “helper” in v. 2. Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton explain why that word is notable:
In other ancient literature, protastis was used to describe the noblest, most gracious, and beneficial rulers. Emperors, kings, governors, nobles, patriarchs, captains, and numerous other authoritative officials were referred to by this word. Only one person was so described in the New Testament: Phoebe. Paul couldn’t have honored her more.2
As to the Greek diakonos (translated “deacon” or “servant” in v. 1), Paul used this term 21 times in his letters. Seventeen times, the King James Version renders this word “minister”; three times, “deacon”; and once, in reference to the woman Phoebe, “servant.”
Perusing these 21 occurrences, we find that every time Paul used the word diakonos, he referred to someone in leadership.3 In so doing, he affirmed leaders who were true servant leaders, and called out those who were not.
Also, repeatedly, Paul affirmed the way Jesus had upended human leadership paradigms:
- When our Lord gave this new, overarching command to his people, “Love one another.”
- And when he declared that all true leaders among his people would be true servant leaders.
You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant [diakonos], and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served [diakoneo] but to serve [diakoneo] others and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matt. 20:25–28 NLT)
In God’s kingdom,
ministry is about truly knowing the Lord –
and truly serving people.
Leadership is about bowing before HIM –
and spending and being spent for them.
Service is about giving yourself to prayer –
and getting your hands dirty –
in order to cultivate life.
In truth, not pretense, Paul, Apollos, Timothy and Phoebe were ministers who led by serving. So were the other six women, and three men, named below.
Priscilla
After commending Phoebe, Paul began saying hello. First on the list? Another woman.
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus … Greet also the church that meets at their house. (Rom. 16:3, 5)
Paul mentions Priscilla before her husband Aquila. Indeed, Priscilla’s name appears first in five of the seven New Testament references to the pair. Cunningham and Hamilton wrote, “This is contrary to the Roman custom of naming the man first when referring to a couple. In fact, this was so rarely done in antiquity that it seems to indicate that Priscilla was the more prominent member of this ministry couple.”4
Paul called Priscilla and Aquila his sunergos, “co-workers.” He counted Priscilla as much a part of his ministry team as Timothy, Titus, Epaphroditus, Mark and Luke – for Paul used the term sunergos in describing each one.5 Scripture shows Paul’s “fellow workers” proclaiming, teaching, writing and overseeing, in addition to serving in less visible ways.
Priscilla and Aquila had met Paul in Corinth after they left Rome under edict of Emperor Claudius. They worked with Paul for some time.
At one point, Paul left the couple in Ephesus, trusting them to continue the ministry there while he traveled on. When the two heard Apollos teaching boldly about Jesus, yet knowing only “the baptism of John,” they didn’t wring their hands or wait for Paul to return.
When Priscilla and Aquila heard him [Apollos], they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. (Acts 18:26)
Named first in this passage also, Priscilla apparently took the lead in teaching Apollos. When she and Aquila later returned to Rome and started a church in their house, do you think Paul’s co-worker Priscilla served solely as a smiling hostess?
Junia
Paul mentions another husband and wife in Romans 16:7:
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
Apostles lead. They teach, preach and evangelize. They exercise spiritual authority. Here, Paul greets a woman apostle.
Ah, but an interesting thing happened to Junia the apostle roughly 1500 years after she lived. About the time of the Reformation, translators began rendering Junia as the male Junias, thus changing Scripture to coincide with their view of the “scriptural role” of women.
Bernadette Brooten offers this tongue-in-cheek description of such thinking: “Because a woman could not have been an apostle, the woman who is here called apostle could not have been a woman.”6
Alas, Martin Luther himself introduced this bit of Scripture tampering: “Only since the Middle Ages, and primarily because of Luther’s [German] translation, has the view prevailed that Junia was not a woman but a man by the name of Junias.”7
Not until the nineteenth century did English Bible translations begin to reflect Luther’s thinking.
Even more recently, some commentators have admitted to Junia’s being a woman – then insisted that the phrase, “outstanding among the apostles,” instead means “well-thought-of by the apostles.”
Regardless the tactics that translators and others have used to deny it, Paul called Junia an apostle, and commended her as an outstanding one.
Four hard workers
Paul also greeted four women we know nothing about except that, in Paul’s words, they “worked very hard”: Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis (vv. 6, 12). Paul employed the Greek word kopiao three times to designate these women. He used this same word four times of himself.
In 1 Corinthians 4:9, 12 (NLT), Paul said,
I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world – to people and angels alike … We work wearily [kopiao] …
In 1 Corinthians 15:10 (NLT), he wrote,
But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me – and not without results. For I have worked harder [kopiao] than any of the other apostles, yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace.
Since Paul used kopiao to refer specifically to his labor as an apostle, we dare not assume the hard work of Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis involved everything except leadership.
One admonition
In the final verses of 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote:
You know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the Lord’s people. I urge you, brothers and sisters, to submit to such as these and to everyone who joins in the work and labors at it. (16:15-16 TNIV)
Paul commended Stephanas and “household” for devoting themselves to serving (diakonia), joining in the work (sunergeo) and laboring at it (kopiao). See any Greek words you recognize? That’s right. Paul used different forms of these very words in describing the seven women named in Romans 16:1–12.
After commending the Stephanas household, Paul urged, “Submit to such as these.”
British evangelical Bible scholar, F. F. Bruce, has said:
[Paul] seems to make no distinction at all between men and women among his fellow workers. Men receive praise, and women receive praise for their collaboration with him in the gospel ministry, without any suggestion that there is a subtle distinction between the one and the other in respect of status or function.8
Yet, translators have created distinctions that Paul did not. A number of English versions include the word “men” at least once and sometimes twice in 1 Corinthians 16:15–18, though the word does not appear in the Greek. Where Paul says, “submit to such,” the 1995 NASB says, “be in subjection to such men.” Where Paul says, “acknowledge such,” the same version says, “acknowledge such men.”
The “household” Paul commended for serving (diakonia), joining in the work (sunergeo) and laboring at it (kopiao) surely included women.
Further, in Romans 16, Paul specifically mentioned women “such as these,” endorsing Phoebe the diakonos, Priscilla the sunergos, and Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis, the hard workers (kopiao) – along with Junia the apostle.
For men only?
In 2000, James Merritt, then president of the Southern Baptist Convention said, “The scripture makes it very plain without any apology that the calling of God into the ministry … is for men only.”9
Oh?
The greetings in Paul’s New Testament letters – the ones translators have altered and we often bypass – say otherwise. They tell us how all of us are to respond to anyone ministering as Phoebe, Priscilla, Persis and the women of Stephanas’ household did:
Honor and look up to people like that.
Follow the leadership of such people.
Submit to such as these.
This post is excerpted and adapted from chapter 5 of What About Women: A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé.
See also
- The silencing of women and the snorts of God
- Where have all the women gone?
- This girl is a woman now
- Waylaid by God
- Leah no more
- Adulthood and the church
- The forgotten key: Loving one-anothering
Footnotes
- See Loren Cunningham & David Joel Hamilton, Why Not Women? (Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishing, 2000), 149. This book helped me see crucial truth at a crucial time. Since then, I’ve learned: Loren Cunningham’s methods and his long-term ministry, Youth with a Mission, have violated the truth he taught, misrepresented God and abused many young people. To learn more about the abuse allegations against YWAM, see this MinistryWatch.com post. Also see my post, The people I quote. ↩︎
- Cunningham & Hamilton, 151. ↩︎
- Paul used diakonos in speaking of: Jesus, government leaders, false apostles (speaking sarcastically), church leaders, Apollos, Paul himself and his coworkers, Tychicus, Epaphras, Timothy – and Phoebe. ↩︎
- Cunningham & Hamilton, 145. ↩︎
- See Romans 16:21; 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25; Philemon 24. ↩︎
- “Junia…Outstanding among the Apostles” (Romans 16:7), by Bernadette Brooten, http://womensordinationcampaign.org/timeline-links/2020/1/14/junia-a-woman-apostle-named-in-scripture. ↩︎
- Luise Schottroff, Let the Oppressed Go Free: Feminine Perspectives on the New Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 36; quoted in Eldon Jay Epp, Junia, The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 38. ↩︎
- Ward & Laurel Gasque, “An Interview with F.F. Bruce,” St Mark’s Review 139 (Spring 1989), 8; http://www.theologicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ffb/interview_bruce.pdf. ↩︎
- David T. Morgan, Southern Baptist Sisters: In Search of Status, 1845-2000 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 83. ↩︎
