Was 1 Timothy 2 written to the church?
Complementarians claim that 1 Timothy 2:12 is universally applicable because they say it was written for the church to know how to behave. According to John MacArthur, in God’s High Calling for Women part 1, 1 Timothy was written to “set the church in order”.
First Timothy 3:14-15 gives us the overall intent of the letter: “These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly; but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. ” First Timothy was written to set the church in order.
MacArthur appears to deny that Ephesus had godly women as he states that the Ephesian women were “desecrating” the worship service.
First Timothy 2 focuses in on another problem involving women. Under the pretense of coming to worship God, they were flaunting themselves and desecrating the worship service. Their dress and demeanor betrayed an evil intent rather than a heart of worship.
While John MacArthur’s exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:9ff is about women with an “evil intent”, a statement completely foreign to the text, yet he claims that the prohibition that follows in verse 12 is all about the “biblical role” of all women in the church.
From his discussion of the problems women were causing in the worship services, Paul branches out into a discussion of the biblical role of women.
In the “biblical role of women” given universally for the church, the apostle Paul, according to John MacArthur, states that women must come to church with a “proper sense of shame”. …