When Jesus Commanded Women to Teach Men

Before we address Paul’s words about women keeping silent in the church and his forbidding women to teach men, lets consider one other scripture that will help us balance those.

When Jesus was resurrected, an angel commissioned at least three women to teach Jesus’ male disciples. Those women were instructed to tell the disciples that Jesus had risen and that He would appear to them in Galilee. But that is not all. A short time later, Jesus Himself appeared to the same women and commanded them to instruct the disciples to go to Galilee (see Matt. 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-7).

First, I think it is significant that Jesus chose to first appear to women and then to men. Second, if there was something fundamentally or morally wrong with women teaching men, one would think that Jesus wouldn’t have told women to teach men about His resurrection, hardly a trivial piece of information, and one that He could have delivered on His own (and in fact later did). No one can argue with this fact: the Lord Jesus instructed women to teach a vital truth and give some spiritual instructions to some men.