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Bible Study		October 17, 2022
Why God Gave Men The Lead Role

Introduction

Paul says God gave men the lead role in this life. The reasons he gives are related to creation and the original sin. He is an apostle, he says this is God's will, and his reason's are Biblically based, so we accept them. Still, we might wonder why.

Why?

In 1^st Timothy, Paul is telling Timothy how a church should be organized and run. As part of that he addresses the role of women in the church.

Let women learn in silence with all submission, ¹² for I do not allow a woman to teach, neither to usurp over a man, but she should be quiet. For Adam was formed first, and then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and violated the commandment (1 Timothy 2:12-14)

What Paul means by "let women learn in silence with all submission" is discussed in a different lesson Women In The Church. In this lesson we are only going to ask why. More specifically, Paul is saying the greater sin of Eve is one of the reasons the lead role was given to all men, in perpetuity. Why should that be?

Paul's reasons are:

"birth" order
because Eve was deceived but Adam was not

For Paul's first point, he seems to be saying that it was always God's plan that man would have the lead role. Therefore, God created Adam first.

Birth order is very important in the Old Testament. That is strongly supported by God. The first-born child, and especially the first-born male child, had special rights and duties.

In effect, Paul believes that God views Adam as a first-born son. We see that again when Paul talks about the first Adam and the last Adam.

Understanding Paul's second point is more difficult. In saying Eve was deceived but Adam was not, Paul means Eve's sin was intentional but Adam's was not. That may require more explaining. There are two levels of sin, intentional and unintentional. An intentional sin is done with full and present knowledge that you are doing something wrong. It is a direct rejection of God. Adam's sin was that he trusted Eve too much and accepted the food she gave him without checking. He was tricked and ate the food unintentionally, without realizing it was the forbidden fruit.

So, we accept that Eve intentionally rejected God's commandment. Why should Adam be given the lead role because of that and why should that role come to all of his sons?

Neither Paul nor the Bible generally give us a direct answer to that but we are given plenty of clues. We'll start with two questions. Why did Satan choose Eve as his target instead of Adam? Why did Satan deceive her in the way that he did?

Satan knows that he will get one shot at this, so he needs to take his best shot. If he fails, Adam and Eve will be aware that there is a being who is actively working to deceive them. We see no indication that Adam or Eve even had the capacity to understand evil. If this element-of-surprise advantage is lost, a second attempt would be far harder, maybe impossible.

He chooses Eve because he sees some flaws in her that make her weaker:

She doesn't like being third in order, the helper to the guy who is second to God. We see that in Satan's attack, "you will be like God". She is weak there because she covets. This is her opportunity to move up.
She is strongly attracted to the appearance of the fruit. It's pretty and it is different from the other fruits. She wants it
She strongly desires to experience the taste of the fruit
She strongly desires to have what she has been told she cannot have. This is a common problem with many people. Once they are told they cannot have something then having that thing becomes their focus.

Satan has been watching her. He has seen her hanging around the tree and he has seen that Adam does not do that. It seems that Adam has seen that in her also. Where did she get the idea from that she shouldn't even touch the fruit? That wasn't part of God's commandment. If God had said that later, he would have been lying. It must have come from Adam who was trying to shore-up her resolve not to eat the fruit. He would have been doing that because he had seen her attraction to it.

Eve, then, was chosen because her nature contained flaws that made her weaker. Satan's attack is pressed against those weaknesses.

Paul says that she was deceived into doing what she knew was wrong and that is why the man was given the lead role. Those two don't seem to be related, however. The only way to relate them is to say that these weaknesses will always make Eve the target for Satan's deceptions and, therefore, a poor choice for lead role. She will always need someone in her life who will help her get past those weaknesses. As mentioned above, it seems Adam had tried to do that before, without success.

That understanding puts us nearly at the end of this study. Why does the lead role always fall to men? The answer must be that Eve's daughters inherit that same nature that Eve had. With that, they need the same guidance.

Does that mean men are always flawless in their operation in that role? No, certainly not. They need Eve's counsel so they don't miss things. Solomon has much to say in Proverbs about the value of good counsel.

Also, it seems that God had intended that first-born sons would lead the religious order. After their poor performance with Aaron's golden calf and the good performance of Levi's clan, God gave the role of lead in the religious order to Levi.