What You Should Know About Biblical Complementarianism

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Nancy Guthrie
All of you who are all over the world who are joining in virtually with us for this conversation with a group of friends this afternoon on healthy complementarianism a completely uncontroversial subject for the afternoon. Did you love that? I want to begin just by introducing my friends on the panel. I’ll begin at the end down there. This is Kevin D. Young. He is senior pastor of Christ’s Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. He’s also assistant professor of Systematic Theology at reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. Kevin also has a brand new book out on the topic we’re talking about today, men and women in the church and get this subtitle a short, biblical, practical introduction.

Kevin DeYoung
That’s all it is okay.

Nancy Guthrie
Kevin is a lover of history. Having recently received his doctorate in early modern history with his research focused on the theology of John Witherspoon, a Scottish American Presbyterian theologian, who was founding father of the Unite United States. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, are the parents of nine children. At least that was today hasn’t changed.

Kevin DeYoung
I’m here so I hope

Nancy Guthrie
he is a reader, a thinker, a blogger, a podcaster. A professor, a runner, a Jeopardy watcher. Lucky Charms eater. Next is my friend Melissa Krueger. She’s the director of women’s content at the gospel coalition. She has been a math teacher, a women’s ministry leader in the local church. She is the wife of a seminary president. She’s the mother of three children. And Melissa, I would say is a multitasker a beach lover, a faithful friends a lifelong learner, and at least in my opinion, a consistent source of Godly wisdom and insight. Thank you. And then ligand Duncan ligand Duncan is chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary and it would actually take the rest of our 40 minutes we have together to list all of his academic credentials. Ligon is a husband, he is a dad of two adult children. Ligon is a churchman. He’s an author. He’s a teacher, he’s a peacemaker. He’s an encourager. He loves to sing, and he loves to laugh. And I love those all those things about you. I am Nancy Guthrie, and I am the moderator for our panel this afternoon. And as the four of us have considered all of the things that we could talk about this afternoon, there’s so much we would like to cover if we could. And if you have shown up today or if you’ve tuned in on the live stream, hoping that we are going to add some logs to the fire of some of the controversies that are always simmering around this topic, I’m afraid we may disappoint you. What we are hoping to focus on is what will be most helpful to men and women seeking to understand and faithfully live out what the Scriptures teach. So that’s our focus. And here’s how we’re going to begin, let’s begin by defining terms. TGC is foundational documents. Here’s what they state, that in God’s Wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. So what I want to ask first, how would you expound on that, perhaps to define briefly what we mean by complementarianism? Maybe we’ll start at the end, Kevin.

Kevin DeYoung
It’s such a long word, isn’t it every time I text it to my friends, I think John Piper Why did you come up with this word? But it is, and I know some people don’t like the word anymore and want a different word, but Nancy has explained it well and from the statement in the TGC document, that men and women complement that is with any we also have to complement each other. We are very nice, Melissa, but it means that we are fit each for each other and this finds its most clearest expression in marriage, but it also has ramifications for how we relate to each other, certainly in the church and even men and women throughout society. So you see from the very beginning that God created the world with these differentiated pairs. I don’t know if you’ve seen this before. But in the whole warp and woof of the universe, God created these cosmic pairings that there’s the sun and the moon, there’s the sky, and the land is heaven and earth. There’s male and female. And part of the storyline of Scripture is understanding how God by his design in order has created these complementary pairs, one each for the other. And that redemptive history is moving toward, in some sense, the reunion of these that heaven comes down to earth. And isn’t it fitting that before heaven comes down to earth and Revelation 21 and 22, Revelation 19 is what it’s a picture of marriage, it is the reunification. So when the man says in the garden, that this is a shot, for she was taken out of each woman taken out of man, the one flesh union is, in a way, a profound reunion that she was taken out of his side so that the two coming together are not in an undifferentiated pair, as if any group of friends could have done the same, or two women or two men, but a man and a woman, and in particular, the creation mandate there, and why most particularly the woman is a suitable helpmate for the man is because apart from that reunion, that one flesh expression of love and covenant commitment, the creation mandate cannot be fulfilled, namely, to be fruitful, and to multiply. So from the very beginning, in the garden, we see the complementary nature of men and women. And then we see various patterns and prescriptions throughout the Old and New Testament that how help explain what this looks like. And that’s some of what we’re trying to talk about, and how we can live that out in a healthy way.

Nancy Guthrie
What would you have Melissa?

Melissa Kruger
I think that was pretty good. All right. I think he did a really good job. I would just say, I mean, simply equal and worth and dignity and different and how we live that out in the world. Yeah, so just a really simple, but that was really good, the longer answer.

Nancy Guthrie
What is one scriptural passage, we’ll start with you, Ligon. What is one scriptural passage that is particularly and maybe it’s not a passage, maybe it’s just something about the whole of the message of the Bible, or a reality in the Bible that you find particularly compelling or convincing to the conviction that you’ve come to in regard to complementarian ism,

Ligon Duncan
certainly Genesis one and two, and Kevin just talked about that. And you talked about that when we were chatting beforehand, very important for me, and so is First Timothy three. But for me, I saw complementarianism before it became an issue for me to study in the Bible. So I’m not a person, a lot of my friends were not complementarian and then they became complementarian. So Mark Devere, when he was at Duke, and InterVarsity, kind of didn’t have a position on this, maybe lean to egalitarian. And then when he heard an argument for egalitarianism at seminary from a professor that he deeply loved and respected, he said, I think I’m a complementarian. So but I’m not one of those people. I didn’t change my mind on this. So there wasn’t a text. So for me, it was seeing my mother and my father, live out this what the Bible teaches. And then seeing my pastor live this out, and then I go to the Bible, and I go, Oh, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this in my mom and dad, my mom was a university professor, more well read than my dad, more theologically minded than my dad, but she, she had a very obvious respect for him. He had very obvious love and care. For her. It was a fruitful relationship, they helped one another. And so when I went to the Bible, I didn’t see this battle between men and women, I saw two people that are in the fight for one another. And I’d seen that in my mom and dad. And same with my pastor I, I grew up in a time where we were leaving a liberal denomination that had ordained female pastors. And my pastor was involved in saying that we need to be faithful to the Scripture and have only qualified ordained male elders. But when he spoke about women from the pulpit, he was unbelievably respectful. You can tell he loved women and he loved the women of the Bible. So there was no there was not a hint of misogyny in his demeanor and his language and his teaching. And, and when I went to the Bible, I said, Wow, that’s how the Bible is. So I didn’t get changed by a Bible text I got, I saw the Bible being lived out. And then I said, Oh, that’s what the Bible teaches.

Nancy Guthrie
How about you, Melissa?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, for me, my story was almost flipped. Law. So I was raised in an egalitarian church contexts. And then it was really when I became in high school, a Christian, that I started studying the Scriptures. And so when I saw First Timothy two, you know, I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over men. And when I saw Ephesians, five, Wives submit to their husbands, yeah, these are the passages that can make us off kind of squirm in our seats. But for me, I’ll be I’ll be honest, it was just this is what the Scriptures say. And I fell in love with the scriptures. And I actually, it’s just this, I mean, there are a lot harder things to be quite honest. I don’t say that condescendingly at all. But when Romans 12 tells me to prepare, to prepare my mind, and to be a living sacrifice, or to be content in all things, there are lots of really hard things in Scripture. So while this may fall in that category, I also said, I believe in this God, that He is so good, that he must only want good for me. And so I fell in love with the God of the scriptures. And so yes, the scriptures were new to me, in my context, but I really could just embrace them with joy. And I’ve seen them lived out over the course of my lifetime. And I’ve been very thankful to be in these contexts, but it just was wet. For me. It was what the scripture said, yeah.

Nancy Guthrie
So is there a particular scripture or aspect of scripture for you, Kevin, that you find particularly compelling or convincing?

Kevin DeYoung
Well, we were all talking beforehand, over lunch. And I think you mentioned Nancy and soda Melissa, the example of Jesus, Jesus is not one to kowtow to the religious authorities of his day, or to make sure that he’s always palatable to the social norms and customs. So he teaches women, he calls them to sit at his feet, he touches them when they would have been ceremonially unclean. So you have Jesus who is not at all afraid to call the daughters, these daughters of Abraham and give them not give them but recognize the dignity and worth that they have. And at the same time, he picks in all male, apostolic band 12 men who are going to be leaders in the church. And Jesus is not one who’s trying to curry favor with men, he has a deliberate reason why he’s doing so. And he does so in a way that hopefully is leading to the flourishing of men and women. mean, you certainly get the sense that the women around Jesus loved Jesus. And they saw someone who loved them in a way that could metaphorically and sometimes literally be felt. And so you see in Jesus, to be complementarian. And people on you know, this will light up Twitter, but to be complementarian, in the healthy best way, is to say we want to love as Jesus loves. And we want to lead as Jesus would lead. And I think we see the example. Yes, the term is new, we have to come up with different terms when there’s different debates in the history of the church, but the sort of love for men and women the sort of differentiation in the way in which they relate to one another. All of this has been around since literally the very beginning. And we see someone no less than Jesus who affirmed and lifted out.

Ligon Duncan
And I think to a lot of times, people will try and make a distinction between Jesus and Paul on this, I’m struck more and more as I read, Paul, what a wholesale plagiarist of Jesus he was. So just like, Jesus will route his teaching on marriage in Genesis in Genesis to where we were talking about. So also Paul will route his teaching on men and women in Genesis, and especially the creation of Adam and Eve, or in First Corinthians 14, he will rooted in what he calls the law or the torah meaning the Five Books of Moses, the inspired authoritative Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and he makes it very clear, my teaching is not coming from the culture, it’s coming from the word

Nancy Guthrie
and specifically, Melissa mentioned the First Timothy passage, which is of course, you know, always at the heart of these discussions and, and it seems as so much of the conversation about it is was Paul speaking to a particular cultural cultural situation that day, but it seems so clear to me in that passage, he actually says what he’s basing that on, and he tells me refers to Genesis and here in Genesis chapter one, we have this picture right from the beginning that here he’s is this great task that he Commission’s Adam and Eve they’ve they’re going to fill the earth. Well, that’s going to require both of them an incredible partnership from the very beginning that requires both. They’re going to exercise dominion that’s going to require both of them. And so, to me, complementary complementarity is beautiful. From the beginning, that it’s this opportunity to live out God’s call in our lives that we need each other for. And to me, that’s so beautiful. But the other thing I think that’s obvious there in in Genesis is that there is an order, there is an order. In that, you know, Adam is held responsible. Clearly when God comes, he is held responsible. And that’s even punctuated for me when we get to Romans, you get to Romans chapter five. And the whole reason we need we need the second atom is because the first atom failed to rightfully lead that first family to eat of the tree of life through obedience. But now the second atom, as we are joined to him is going to lead us into that tree of life and obedience. We often hear our E egalitarian friends say about complementarians, that perhaps we have formed our convictions based on one or two isolated verses that are just disputed in terms of their application for today, while at the same time ignoring other parts of the Bible, especially perhaps the ones that show women in vital roles of leadership, or prophesying or teaching. So how would you respond to that? Like, if you want to go? Well,

Ligon Duncan
you and I were both friends with Dan torriani. And Dan is just outstanding on issues pertaining to complementarianism. But he wrote the section of the PCA study, committee report on women in the life and ministry, the church, and he actually surveyed the whole range of activities that women are involved in doing in the Bible. It’s a massive list of significant activities that are cataloged in the scriptures, and we celebrate those things. There’s no desire to downplay those things. It’s just those things are not set in opposition to what the Bible clearly says elsewhere. And by the way, the Bible does speak repeatedly to this issue, like maybe at least 11 times and 11 times is a lot of times to be counted a few times. And, you know, if the Lord said it once, it would be important enough, but 11 times is pretty clear. So I think that I think that’s not a good argument. I think you have to actually take the text seriously. And and, frankly, more and more, the tendency is to say you have to have a hermeneutic that takes you beyond the text to actually get to a non complementarian position.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, absolutely. And, and I would just get back even to what Kevin was saying, you know, when they say, Oh, it’s just a small passages were one like you were saying, Nancy, verse, Timothy is rooted in Genesis, but also the example of Jesus who I don’t think, you know, he changed how women were treated in society. I mean, first century, second century, women came to Christianity in droves, in part because it was completely in opposition to how they were treated elsewhere. And so he was revolutionary. And he, he could have done whatever he, I mean, He’s God. And so he still chose 12 men to build his church upon, you know, in some sense. And so I, for me, I just see that these passages just go right hand in hand with the example of Jesus.

Nancy Guthrie
Let’s get a little bit more personal. We heard from you will, Ligon and Melissa a little bit about your background. So let’s start with you, Kevin, about this. Would you tell us a little bit about your personal life experience that perhaps Perhaps shaped how you’ve come to some of these convictions and where you are with them?

Kevin DeYoung
My mom was great. My wife is great.

Nancy Guthrie
Could you expound on that?

Kevin DeYoung
I will briefly, I will say, and I think this is somewhat where where these questions are going, as we talked about it. It’s really important when we talk about this, and assuming there’s some basic theological biblical agreement and what we’re saying with people in this room and people watching. Yet we since we’re suspicious of different dangers at times, and we want to lean against different potential pitfalls, and that’s where it’s really important to know our own experience, but not to theology dies out of our own experience. So we start with the Bible. We want to interpret our experiences from the Bible as best as we can. So we’re mindful of them. But we don’t project whether it’s, you know, as Ligon described, I saw a godly Christian home and godly Christian marriage. I don’t remember ever being explicitly taught these sorts of things, but I certainly saw them live there. out, I grew up in a mainline denomination and about the time I was in high school or college, maybe sooner than that they started having women elders, and I’m not sure why I instinctively thought that was a bad idea. It’d be I’d picked up that from my parents, or maybe I had read enough. So I grew up with that I have family members that I love, who deeply disagree with me. Woman in my family who was ordained, so I have people that I care for, and are kind to me who differ very much on these issues. But it is important to realize that what I’ve seen are basically, I think, healthy complementarian models saw that growing up, I hope my kids are seeing that I’ve been in churches, where it seems to me that there’s lots of godly, theologically minded, energetic women who want to learn and study the Bible, women like Melissa Krueger, who learn and teach and do those things, and yet, completely are flourishing and happy to embrace what the Bible teaches. And so I need to be mindful that I think I’ve mainly had a good experience and other people have it. And so that doesn’t mean that if your experience has been bad, and you’re sitting here saying, Okay, I kind of agree with the theology, you’re saying, but wait a minute, in my church, and my home and my family, it’s been so nasty, it’s been so ugly, it’s been so hurtful. And that really may be. And so someone who’s had more of a positive experience, needs to be mindful of that, listen to that, understand where your dangers and sensitivities may lie. And at the same time, not project all of that writ large, which is what we tend to do, especially with internet discourse, we assume everyone’s saying something is saying it right to me, you’re always subtweeting me. And everything I’m saying to everyone else, is coming out of whatever my own experience is. And if we could step back a little bit, basic, common sense, be mindful of others love as we would want to be loved, and let scripture interpret our experiences, we could at least have a better chance of having fruitful conversations.

Nancy Guthrie
So Melissa, you talked about how you came to some of these complementarian convictions? Tell us from there on, what’s been your experience of being a complementarian? Woman?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, honestly, I mean, we talked about this earlier, I’ve had great men in my life. I mean, I’m really blessed. I can remember my first PCA church I went to, I felt like a daughter of that church, I felt loved. I can remember sitting in my college dorm room. And this was when you still had the answering machines, and getting a message on my answering machine from my elder at my church, because I had become an associate member as a college student, saying, Hey, I’m your elder. I just want to know how I can pray for you this semester. Wow. You know, and I was like, oh, that’s and it was called the Church of the Good Shepherd. So they actually lived up to their name. It was a great, it was a great church, but to be a college student, you know, I’m clearly not the biggest tither in the body at this point, you know, because I have no money, but just to be truly cared for by this pastor. And I still feel like, you know, he married my husband and me, just truly cared. Like, he was a father of the faith to me, and taught me the word of God. And then I met my husband, Mike, who has loved me in these ways, as well. So I’ve gotten to see the beauty of it. I can, I can say, I’ve seen hard things in it too. I’ve experienced that I’ve experienced when it goes awry. And because we are humans trying to live out a good thing. And sinful humans will always make good things bad at certain points. So I’ve seen both but but even as Kevin said, it really does get back to what does God’s Word say? And how can I interpret my experiences in light of that, and still believe God’s way is right and good, even when some of us have had bad experiences and entrust him and say, Okay, well, this isn’t right. So let me find a right expression of this. And I think that’s okay to be on the lookout for.

Nancy Guthrie
Yeah, beautifully said. Ligon. More Do you want to add to your personal it’s

Ligon Duncan
just just that, as I mentioned before, my mother was a university professor and she because she had grown up Baptist, she actually is a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary category tech catalog, the church music library, there when she was a music student at at Southern taught at Furman University. So hurt her stepping into Presbyterianism was a very deliberate process for her it took it took a while talking with our past to her before she could, before she could get over a couple of hurdles. Interestingly, not the sovereignty of God or the doctrines of grace. But baptism and church government were a that was a big deal. So she was a thinker. And when I had questions, I went to her to talk theology. And so I was blessed to I was reared around strong, godly Christian woman, women that took studying the Bible very seriously. And there was never this dichotomy that you know that men are the one that think and think about theology and women stay in the kitchen or something like this. I had, I had, I had, you know, good examples of thoughtful theological women in my family and in my church, and all my church experiences have been like that everywhere. Godly women in in every congregation that I’ve been in, that are respected and regarded have a wonderful partnership with the pastor’s and I want to totally agree what Kevin said, as a pastor, as you might imagine, I run into tons of people who have not had my experience, I mean, totally not my experience. So I am wide open, my ear is wide open to people that have not had that experience. But for me, it’s always been a beautiful thing for me, not a, you know, a bad thing or, or a tragedy.

Nancy Guthrie
So we defined complementarianism, maybe we could go a step further and say, What does healthy complementarian ism actually look like? Because I think it’s one thing to be biblically convinced of it at a level this is, this is good and right and true. But for all of us, it’s the living it out that maybe gets a little bit more challenging. And I think also, I think we want a complementarianism, don’t we that the way we define it would have made sense in the first century, when the New Testament was written, as much as it makes sense today in 2021. And that it makes sense in Africa and Indonesia, and South America in all of these other cultures, as it would in America today, right? So what is healthy complimentary? What are the markers, some markers? Melissa, I’ll start with you.

Melissa Kruger
I think in the church, it means we are one body, with many parts working together. So I always hope not to see just women serving over here and just men serving here, but that we are working together as a family. And we’re all pitching in and we’re all helping and we know each other and we are I have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and daughters that we’re a family. So we’re cheering each other on in the race like that. We’re sitting in small groups, and we’re saying, Hey, I’m gonna pray for that person you’re trying to share the gospel with and, you know, we’re doing this together. And I think one of my favorite passages on this is actually Romans 16. It really says a lot, who Paul thinks in Romans 16. I mean, he has all these women, to be able to think them, you have to know them. And he knew what they were doing. And I love how he talks about Rufus, his mother, who has been a mother to him, you know, and it’s this familial way that he viewed these women and these men, and he’s thanking them both. And so I just think that’s this picture of healthy complementarianism that it’s, we’re a family. And so we love each other, and we support each other and we know each other.

Nancy Guthrie
So we have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in the church, which seems to reflect so much of what Jesus said right when he says it’s really not all about my blood relations, but who are my mother’s and my brother, my sister. Yeah. Kevin, how about you healthy complementarianism?

Kevin DeYoung
Well, at the risk of doing the third way, which I so often to stay in the let me try to say it’s, it’s a complementarianism that isn’t, doesn’t try to be everything, but doesn’t say that it’s nothing meaning when God calls us to Christ, He calls us to be disciples caused us to follow Christ. He doesn’t first of all call you to biblical manhood or biblical womanhood. It’s a call, to repent of your sins turn from sin, turn to Christ. So if we make the gospel a call, first of all, to biblical manhood or womanhood, we’re missing what the gospel is. And we follow Christ as men and women. That’s we are embodied people. We have not just a gender assigned, we are given a gender by God, recognized by a doctor, given by God and we are meant to then follow him. So there is, you know, so my one of my many sons or daughters is what does it mean to be a man or a woman? I would say First of all, it means to be a disciple of Christ you’re made in His image, the answers would be the same. But as I’m continuing to talk to them, there would be some things that are different. I think a healthy complementarianism, then is not trying to say too much. And it’s not then trying to say, too little. The danger with the too much is to make what would be, to Nancy’s point some of our cultural norms, and to make them then become at the level of Scripture. I don’t might my wife says, this has like a little hint of a pink line. I said, No, it’s salmon. So I’ve but you can’t make a rule that, you know, a man can’t wear a pink shirt. And yet, if we go into First Corinthians 11, it sure seems Paul is saying, God gives us by nature, manhood or womanhood, but we can’t help but that culture is going to give us some of those clues. And some of those clues come with dress, with appearance, with demeanor, with posture, all of those. So we don’t want to make absolute stereotypical statements as what real men do, they get a Stetson hat, and they like to fix cars and kill animals. I don’t know how to do any of those things. And yet, I get concerned that sometimes complementarianism is everything, we’re all just the same, except men have a list of 100 things they can do. And women have a list of 98 things they can do. And we’ll just try to massage that there’s two things you can’t do. You can’t be the leader in the home, or you can’t be the leader in the church, that is a complementarianism that I think is destined to fail, it’s going to seem capricious, is going to seem arbitrary. And so without adding all sorts of cultural stereotypes is that’s how you sort of have a posture a posture is what are you leaning in towards? It’s not an absolute rule. And so if we make complementarianism, just, the man can do a couple more things and the woman can do that’s, I don’t think gets the whole scope of Scripture and how God made us to complement one another. And as a good friend to be pointed out recently, a woman said, Hey, you got to talk about the things that women can do that men can’t do. Like being a mom, as if God gives that gifts like giving birth, if God gives you that gift, so we don’t want to present it as sort of apologetically just men can do a couple of things. It’s in the fine print in the membership packet, you’ll probably see it but make sure you get your tithing envelopes. That’s not healthy, and neither is it a healthy complementarianism if it becomes the Siena Quan on the without which nothing the everything of our sort of gospel presentation, it’s part it’s the way in which we’re Disciples of Christ.

Nancy Guthrie
So I suppose if we’re saying there’s healthy complementarianism, then maybe it’s obvious that perhaps there is also unhealthy complementarianism. And I wonder, I’ll start with you. Ligon. Do you think that’s the case? What what do we do about it?

Ligon Duncan
Yes, there certainly is. Perhaps everybody in this room is very aware of how inappropriately these things often are talked about in the world of social media, with bombast bravado, chest thumping, demeaning of other people we never ever want to give into our culture has been teaching us for 25 years. That’s that. That’s how you talk to one another. That’s how you talk to one another about politics. That’s how you talk to one another about culture. And it is in the church, big time. And that is not the way conversation is depicted in the Scripture as either between believers or with believers in the world, the world no matter. Our motto has to be in relation to the world. It does not matter how much you hate me, you can’t make me stop loving you. And our, our conversation has to bear that out. So look on this. If you go home and tell your children that there is such a thing as a male and a female, at some point in your life, you are going to be accused of hate speech. So it’s a good thing and complementarianism you get a little pre you get a little practice on that. Okay, there are going to be people who hate you for being complementarian don’t return that, hey, don’t don’t return the demeaning speech. The suspicious attitudes speak in love. So that definitely that kind of unloving speech, that you know that everybody kind of gets in their room with their little tribe and they thump their chest and they make smart aleck remarks about women or or other, that is not the way we want to talk. That’s not the posture we want to have. I also think that totally, social media is not reality. You know, the kinds of things we struggle with in families and marriages and in the local church often are miles away from the stuff that gets talked about all day long on social media. And there are real significant issues there too. And there are real unhealthy things there. But you do need to kind of get down into your local church, because it’s going to be different in every church. So for instance, I’ve ministered for 17 years at a deep south church, you might assume that, that my women would have dealt being in a traditional culture that my women would have dealt with a lot of abusive, domineering husbands. Sadly, we did have some of that we had to discipline people for that 10 to one, the women in my church complained about passive males. So if I’m talking about this at the level of Twitter, and I’m not getting down into my own congregation to see what the real issue is, I’m missing it. So there yeah, there is all kinds of unhealthy stuff out there, we just have to make sure that we’re working on the real unhealthy stuff. That’s right under our nose, not trying to fix the world, not trying to fix every church, it’s gonna be different in every church. And as a pastor, you need to know your sheep, you need to know their temptations, you need to know what the problem is, in that local church. We, Nancy, you and I have talked about godly women who are fully committed to complementarianism, but don’t feel like they’re supported in their local congregations to be challenged to learn the scriptures challenged to teach one another, the scriptures etc. So there are lots of different ways that this thing can go wrong. You’ve got to have your knows in your local church in the life of your people to know because there are a million different ways to sin. But there’s only one way to be biblical. So you’ve got it, you’ve got to know the different sides of the boat that you can fall off of,

Nancy Guthrie
I think that you would probably reiterate some of what he said, Melissa, and you know, my experience has been like yours. I’ve had such a positive experience support from my pastors and elders, and in a good marriage where I am so supported. So grateful for that. But I think like all of us would say, we’re not unaware of what many women especially I think experience under what gets called complementarian is let’s call it so called complementarianism. So Ligon was speaking about the reality in a church and you’ve done a lot of you and I both hear from a lot of women. Right. And plus, you’ve been a women’s ministry leader in the local church. So what would you add to that about what you have seen in regard to unhealthy complementarianism? that’s of concern?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, I would actually say, I’ll use myself as a case example. I think I came into marriage with a, sometimes a traditional view of the family more than a biblical view. And so I want to say what that meant. So this was the infamous lasagna fight between my husband and I. So I really, really believed like loving my husband was making him lasagna from scratch, you know, so I worked all day on this lasagna, because this is what Christian women do to love their husbands. And so I worked all day, you know, everything, everything. And then we sat down and we ate it in about two minutes. And Mike did not praise me enough. You know, it was this just deep. You don’t you understand what I did for you. And, and I realized at that moment, Mike didn’t really my husband didn’t actually really care about having a lasagna that was made from scratch. And I was loving an ideal of what I thought the perfect wife was out there, rather than actually loving my own husband. And so I think it is really important when the scripture says submit to your own husband as the Lord. And here’s what I want to say every complementarian marriage should not look the same. Yep. There is not a checkoff list that you made the homemade lasagna and now you’re a good wife, you know, and so for me, it was breaking free and saying, really, what does scripture say? This means and really looking at what you know, it’s really more important because what I did not display was love, patience, kindness, joyfulness and self control. You know what I what that’s that’s been a loving, respectful wife is to bear fruit in my marriage, not to make the perfect lasagna. If that makes sense. I had to fight against that.

Nancy Guthrie
Kevin, would you speak to that person who maybe they’re become biblically convinced in regard to complementarity. But it’s a rub. And they’re not really sure what it’s going to look like. It’s difficult to accept and difficult to live out. How would you encourage that person?

Kevin DeYoung
Male or female Yeah, yeah. You know, I think first of all, to be honest with ourselves and with others and with the Lord, when things are hard on the one hand, we don’t, we shouldn’t wear it as a badge of honor that the Bible says something, and we’re not sure we like it. That’s not the goal, the goal is to enjoy what God gives to us. And at the same time, it can be a process with certain doctrines, and this may be one of them. And so to be honest, Lord, I want to be like David and say, I delight in the law of the Lord, and that this is good. This is sweeter than honey, and right now, I’m eating it because your Word tells me and would you change my tastebuds for it? I think both men and women, we might think of just women as struggling to accept this, but men can do it for the reasons that, like I mentioned, many men will feel that and they’ll be embarrassed to mention it, they’ll feel like my wife is so much more spiritual, she knows the Bible better. She goes, all these Bible studies. You know, you’re a big shot at work during the day and you’re scared to pray with your wife at night, you need to be a man. And you need to go and talk to your pastor, and get some help and have someone give you some good resources and set some good models and be a man that’s a biblical command. And I think for women who struggle with this, to accept this teaching to realize that, you know, as Melissa said, there will be for any of us in the Christian life, if everything about following Jesus seems this kind of what I was doing already, then we all we probably haven’t really taken Jesus seriously with all the things that he’s telling us to do, hopefully, over time, you know, to submit to a godly husband does not feel like cross bearing. But to lay down our sense of what may initially seem fair or right or good or true or beautiful, and commit by faith that you’re going to walk down this path that God lays out in Scripture trusting that as the will leads or perhaps as the mind leads, the affections will fall we always like the we will like the affections to be out front oops, actions feels good. That’s that’s how we make arguments on line. I feel I emote, therefore I am. Spurgeon said we ought to make very hard arguments using very soft words, the Internet was invented to do the opposite. So your will your mind may be leading and trust that your affections will follow?

Nancy Guthrie
Well, our time is actually up. But I can’t bear to not have our last question. So you each get 30 seconds. Okay. The lightning round. Each of us have children. You all have both sons and daughters. So in 30 seconds. I’ll start with you, Kevin. What do you hope over the lifetime that you have these nine children in your home? What do you want to communicate to them about these things?

Kevin DeYoung
I hope they’re not always in my home. Yeah.

Kevin DeYoung
I’ll remember one thing, my dad would travel, he was in ministry. And he would say to us, when we leave when he would leave, and even when my brother and I, there’s my brother, me, and then two younger sisters, he would say, and when I’m gone, I want you to be the man of the house. Now, you know, a whole bunch of people say what a terribly horribly chauvinistic thing to say, but I always remember it was his way of saying, of course, my mom was taking care of us weren’t taking care of her. But it was a way of saying, You’re a protector. And you look out for you help your mom with the work. Now, we probably didn’t do a very good job. But you’re the man of the house. So I will give those little words sometimes to my boys, and I’m going away. And I want you to make sure you want to make mom’s job easier. You’re here, and to my daughters who have different personalities, and some of them very strong and feisty and fiery, I don’t want I don’t want them to feel like they have to change that. But I want them to understand where true beauty comes from. And almost any dad as girls grow up, being beautiful is really important. And we have an opportunity as fathers in particular to help them know what God’s sort of beauty looks like and so true strength for my boys through beauty. For my

Nancy Guthrie
30 seconds. You

Melissa Kruger
I would tell both raising a son and a daughter. B in every part of the Bible all of your life. There are these passages that directly apply to men and women. But they will never suffice to make you a biblical man or biblical woman be a student of all of the words all of your life and that will make your mother very happy.

Kevin DeYoung
Your your kids, Melissa are just great. I mean, we help us help me and her daughter who might be here somewhere she won the like, best all around awesomeness person award at the school, which was well deserved. And so, blessings you and Mike are are they listening through your

Melissa Kruger
dad is the effect of grace in Jesus being very kind?

Nancy Guthrie
Right, like you close us. Yeah. Yeah, those

Ligon Duncan
are such good answers. And I’m not sure I can compete with them. Nancy, I would both of my children I think are headed for marriage. My daughter’s engaged in God willing will be married this summer. And I think I would say to both of them as they treasure Jesus Christ as they rest in trust in Him alone, for their salvation as he’s offered in the gospel, to live with their mates in such a way that their mate say I am so glad that you are a woman and a godly woman or I’m so glad that you are a man and a godly man. Make what you are as a man and a woman to be a blessing to your spouse.

Nancy Guthrie
So beautiful. Thank you, each of you for sharing with our panel. Thank you. Thank you to those of you who are in the room who have joined us and thank you to those of you who have joined us online. It’s been our pleasure to talk about these very important things with you. Have a great day.