She Was Standing Right There

We have looked at the two hardest verses and found them thinner than they sounded. We have looked at Old Testament women God Himself raised up. We have looked at the promise of the Spirit poured out on daughters. Now we look at the women in Paul's own ministry — the ones he worked alongside, the ones he sent, the ones he commended. Because the man who wrote the stop-sign verses also wrote a long list of women's names he celebrated.

Acts 18 tells the story. Apollos comes to Ephesus. He is eloquent, mighty in the Scriptures, fervent in spirit, and he is teaching accurately the things about Jesus — but he only knows the baptism of John. He is a gifted, sincere, knowledgeable, incomplete preacher. And who completes his instruction? Priscilla and Aquila take him aside and explain the way of God more accurately.

Notice three things. First, Priscilla is named first. In that world, that was unusual — and Luke does it repeatedly. Second, she teaches. She does not merely host; she explains the way of God more accurately to a man who is already a powerful public preacher. Third, Paul himself trusts this couple. They are his coworkers. Eventually a church meets in their house. Apollos goes on to be one of the most influential teachers in the early church — and his theology was completed by a woman.

If Paul believed no woman should ever teach a man, he forgot to tell Priscilla. And he forgot to tell Luke. And he forgot to tell himself — because he kept calling her his coworker.

Romans 16:1-2 — "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church at Cenchreae." The Greek word translated "servant" is diakonos — the same word Paul uses for himself, for Timothy, for Apollos. When it refers to a man, translators often render it "minister" or "deacon." When it refers to Phoebe, many translations use "servant" — which is accurate enough as a translation but obscures that it is the same office word.

Then he calls her prostatis — translated "benefactor" or "helper," but the root meaning is one who stands before, who protects, who presides. It is a word with weight. She was a benefactor of many, Paul says — including of Paul himself. This woman was not a silent helper in the background. She carried Paul's letter to Rome. She was entrusted with the delivery of the book of Romans. And she held an office in her church.

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." For centuries, translators could not bring themselves to believe that a woman could be called an apostle, so they changed her name to "Junias" — a masculine form that does not exist in any ancient inscription. Every piece of inscriptional evidence we have from the ancient world confirms Junia was a woman's name. It is one of the clearest cases of theological bias driving translation in the history of the English Bible.

Most modern translations have corrected it. She was Junia — a woman, a fellow prisoner with Paul, outstanding among the apostles. Whether "outstanding among the apostles" means she was one of the apostles herself or that the apostles held her in high regard, either way — she is named right alongside them. Paul does not qualify it. He does not explain it. He just says it.