Let Me Be a Woman

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. GENESIS 1:27

No part of Elisabeth Elliot’s teaching has been more loved, or more argued over, than what she said about being a woman. She said it in many places — in conference talks, in her newsletter, on the radio — but she said it most fully in a short book published in 1976, Let Me Be a Woman. She wrote it for her daughter Valerie, who was about to be married, as a series of brief chapters on singleness, marriage and womanhood, and it has been given by mothers to daughters ever since. Five years later she wrote a companion for young men, The Mark of a Man, adapted from letters to her nephew Pete. This chapter sets out the teaching of the two books as fairly as it can, and then notes, as honestly, where faithful Christians have disagreed.

Given, not chosen

The foundation of her argument was creation. A human being is made male or female by God, and that is not an accident of biology or a role assigned by culture, but part of what he or she has been given. Her deepest objection to much of the thinking of her day was that it treated sex as a thing to be overcome or redefined, rather than a gift to be received. For her, as for all her teaching, the Christian’s first response to what God has given is acceptance. A woman is not to apologise for being a woman, nor to measure her worth by how closely she can resemble a man. She is to ask what God meant by making her as she is, and to give herself gladly to that.

Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. PSALM 100:3

She did not mean that every woman must marry, or that a woman’s whole calling is the home. She had been single for years, a translator, a missionary, a widow, and later a teacher and writer with a public ministry. Let Me Be a Woman gives a good deal of attention to the single woman, and insists that she is no less a woman for being unmarried.

Order and submission

The more contested part of her teaching concerned marriage. Following the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5, she taught that marriage is meant to be a picture of Christ and His church, and that the picture has an order in it: the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, and the wife is to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ. She saw this order as part of a larger pattern running through creation, in which God has arranged things in a hierarchy not of value but of function, and in which even the Son, equal with the Father, delights to do the Father’s will.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. EPHESIANS 5:22

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. EPHESIANS 5:25

Three things are worth noticing about how she presented it. First, she held that submission is something a wife gives, freely, not something a husband extracts; it is an offering made to the Lord, of a piece with every other offering in her teaching. Second, she held that it implies nothing about a woman’s worth or intelligence, and she had no patience with men who thought otherwise. Third, she held that the husband’s calling is the heavier of the two, because the pattern he is to follow is a Saviour who died. Headship in her account is not privilege but responsibility, and its shape is the cross.

A model she held up for women was Mary of Nazareth, who heard the word of God and answered that she was the Lord’s handmaid. In her account that reply showed what a woman’s calling looks like at its best, and indeed what Christian discipleship looks like in any form: a glad yes to what God asks.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. LUKE 1:38

The Mark of a Man

The Mark of a Man approaches the same subject from the other side. Written for a young man, it calls him to the masculine virtues as she understood them — taking responsibility, protecting and providing, leading by serving, showing courage and initiative, keeping his word, forgiving, enduring. Its model is Christ, who did not grasp at His rights but took the form of a servant. She was as hard on passive, self-indulgent men as on anyone, and the book is in many ways a summons to young men to grow up.

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. 1 CORINTHIANS 16:13

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. PHILIPPIANS 2:5–7

Where Christians differ

It would be dishonest to present this teaching as though all believers accept it. Many do. A large number of evangelical Christians, sometimes called complementarians, hold views close to hers, and her books did much to shape that position. But other evangelicals, sometimes called egalitarians, read the same Scriptures differently. They point to Paul’s call to mutual submission in the verse just before the instruction to wives, to his statement that in Christ there is neither male nor female, to the women who laboured with him in the gospel, and to the way the New Testament household codes may address the culture of their day. They hold that marriage should be a partnership without a fixed order of authority, and that the gifts of the Spirit, not sex, should determine roles in the church.

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. EPHESIANS 5:21

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. GALATIANS 3:28

Some critics have also felt that her portrait of femininity carried the stamp of mid-century American culture as much as of Scripture, or noted the tension between her teaching and her own life of independent work and public speaking — a tension she was aware of and addressed in her own way. Others have feared that teaching on submission can be misused by domineering husbands. She did not teach that a wife must follow her husband into sin, and her insistence on the husband’s self-giving love was meant to exclude tyranny; Christians on every side of the debate would add that no reading of these texts can require anyone to remain under abuse.

This companion does not settle the question. Faithful Christians who love the Bible hold both views, and the debate turns on careful reading of particular texts. What can be said is that her teaching was not a slogan. It came from a woman who had obeyed God at great cost, who asked at least as much of men as of women, and who grounded everything in the self-giving love of Christ. Readers on both sides can learn from that, and should weigh her conclusions where they belong, under Scripture.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. ACTS 17:11

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Do you receive your being a man or a woman as a gift from God, or as something to manage or resent? Thank God for how He made you.

2. Read Ephesians 5:21–33 slowly. What does it ask of a husband, and what of a wife? Which part do you find hardest?

3. If you are married, ask how your marriage could show more clearly the self-giving love of Christ. Begin with your own part, not your spouse’s.

4. If you hold a different view from hers, state her argument fairly to yourself before you answer it. If you share it, ask how it might be misused, and guard against that.

5. Like Mary, say yes to one thing God is asking of you this week.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You made us male and female in Your image, and You called it very good.

Teach me to receive the way You made me with thanksgiving, and to give myself gladly to Your purpose for my life.

Where I am proud, humble me. Where I grasp at rights, make me like Christ, who took the form of a servant.

Give us grace, where we differ, to search the Scriptures together in love. And make every Christian home a picture of Your Son and His church. Amen.