Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 08:1 (Spring 2003)
Article: Editor’s Column
Author: Bruce A. Ware

---

JBMW 8:1 (Spring 03) p. 2

Editor’s Column

Bruce A. Ware

Editor, Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood;
Senior Associate Dean,
School of Theology
Professor of Christian Theology
The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary
Louisville, Kentucky

The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood comes to you, this issue, displaying its new look. God is prospering our meager but sincere efforts, and we rejoice that the beauty of his design for manhood and womanhood can be mirrored just a bit better by the beauty of the design for the new cover for our Journal. But most important, the contents of this Spring issue again present a rich variety, and much from which to learn and grow in Christ.

David Talley’s excellent study of how God’s created design (Gen 1–2) was marred by sin (Gen 3) and is restored through Christ’s redeeming power as shown in marriage (Eph 5) is full of mature insight and wisdom. As you read this fine piece, you will see afresh some of the glory and beauty of manhood and womanhood, as God’s purpose, in part, is to work through our respective roles to help us grow in sanctification, to the honor of the redeeming work of Christ. It is clear that Dr. Talley has spent much time studying and musing over the thesis he commends in this article, and I assure all who read carefully that you will find much profit here for your own lives and relationships with others.

Steven Tracy warns, helpfully, that headship becomes perverted and distorted when it is exercised with harshness and selfishness. Those of us who hold and commend the complementarian view must keep front and center the responsibility that male headship entails. Whether in marriage or in church leadership, the New Testament commends those men who lead to do so for the benefit and blessing of those under their authority. To fail here is to bring disrepute to the cause of Christ and harm to those we are called to love and serve.

If distortions of male headship can be manifest through abusive relationships, another kind of distortion takes place when passages of Scripture are abused by being made to say something foreign to their intended meanings. Peter Schemm offers a very helpful review of how the supreme text of the egalitarian movement - Galatians 3:28 - has been misunderstood and misapplied by those who advance the feminist agenda. He shows convincingly that the context and clear teaching of this passage is about a glorious truth indeed, for women and men alike (!), but it is a teaching very different from the one purported by egalitarian advocates. Aga...

visitor : : uid: ()