Prayer should play a strong role in the life of a leader. Any leader who has attempted to achieve great things has realized that he cannot do it alone. Instead, he needs the guidance and support of God. In this post I show you some of the basic ways that the apostle Paul relied on prayer during his ministry.
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Today’s post concludes my biblical study on women and leadership. This has been one of the most difficult topics I have written on. Last week I wrote about Jesus’ relationship to women and women’s roles in the book of Acts. And the week before that I wrote about the Old Testament perspective on women and leadership.
Today’s post examines the most difficult of the three areas: Paul’s teaching on women and biblical leadership. A 2,000 word blog post can barely scratch the surface of this topic, but in this post I hope to provide you with a brief outline of all the important texts as well as some brief notes about hermeneutics and exegesis.
Rembrandt’s Apostle Paul
I. PAUL’S TEACHING ON WOMEN IN 1 CORINTHIANS
One of the big debates circulating right now in Christian theology is Paul and his application of God’s promises of the Old Testament. Specifically, much of this discussion is focused on how Paul applies the promises given to the Israelites in the Old Testament to the Gentiles in the New Testament. Within this discussion includes what is meant by “seed” originally promised to Abraham all the way back in Genesis 12:2.
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Below I have attempted to outline this debate starting first with the position of Elliott Johnson, Th.D., professor of Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Johnson is a “classical dispensationalist” which means that he sees a distinction between the promises originally given to the Israelites and the promises given to the Gentiles in the New Testament. The second presentation of this topic will be N.T. Wright’s work. N.T. Wright is research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary’s College in Scotland. He is a strong advocate of the “New Perspective on Paul” movement which sees all of the promises of God being fulfilled in the New Testament church. Finally, in section III. you will find a brief exposition of this topic from myself primarily based on the third chapter of Galatians.
A couple years ago I wrote a series of blog posts about the Apostle Paul and how he displayed specific leadership characteristics in the book of Philemon. However, looking back on those posts now, I do not believe that I provided adequate background information on the Apostle Paul. Because of that, some of the leadership principles might have been missed.
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The book of Philemon was written by the Apostle Paul while he was in prison with Timothy and a runaway slave named Onesimus. Paul is writing to his “brother in Christ,” Philemon, asking Philemon to accept Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave. However, Onesimus is no longer the person he once was. Onesimus is now “a brother in Christ” whom Paul has helped become a Christian while in prison.
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It is significant that even though Paul is writing the letter to Philemon and making a request of Philemon, Paul also addresses the letter to: Apphia: Philemon’s wife,
Sending the letter to these “accountability partners” helps to influence Philemon to do the right thing. Even though Paul is the most powerful person mentioned in the letter (more on this later), he strategically uses his influence by enlisting others to make sure Philemon makes the correct decision and does the right thing, which is to send Onesimus back to Paul so Onesimus may be used to spread the gospel with Paul.