The Whole Bible is one story — and it’s all about grace.

Ephesians 5:22 is the most-quoted verse in this conversation — "Wives, submit to your husbands." But the verse has no verb. It borrows one from verse 21: "Submit to one another." This article works through what that grammatical detail does to the whole household code, takes seriously the strongest version of the "tie-breaker vote" argument, and finds the only place in the New Testament where Paul actually uses the word "authority" for marriage — a verse that splits it evenly between husband and wife. Article 7 in the Counterparts Not Copies series.

What does the New Testament reveal about women in the church? Women fund Jesus' ministry, sit at His feet as disciples, and become the first witnesses to the resurrection. In Acts and the Letters, women are marked as leaders, host house churches, and teach Scripture. And in the centuries after the Apostles, widows and virgins held vetted ecclesial offices. Part Two of Out of the Shadows, the fourth article in the series on what the Bible actually says about men and women.

The cultures the Hebrew Bible describes were male-dominated — but the authors are often critiquing the very culture they describe. Walk through Sarah, Rahab, Deborah and Jael, Manoah's wife, Huldah, and the women Matthew refused to leave out of his genealogy, and an undercurrent of dignity comes into view. Even Judges 19 — read carefully — is the writer naming brokenness, not endorsing it. Article 3 in the series on what the Bible actually says about men and women.

The first four chapters of the Bible are the origin story for the whole question of men and women. Walk through Genesis 1–4 carefully and the standard answers stop matching the text. The Hebrew word for "helper" is one most often used of God Himself. The verse one before the famous curse is the first whisper of the gospel — and it lands on the woman. Article 2 in the series on what the Bible actually says.

Most conversations about women in church and marriage get stuck between rigid complementarianism and flat egalitarianism. There's a third way. This is the introduction to a multi-part series on what the Bible actually says about men and women — the broad case in one place, with the deeper exegesis spreading out across the spokes that follow.