Ephesians 2:1-10

Καὶ ὑμᾶς ὄντας νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν, 2 ἐν αἷς ποτε περιεπατήσατε κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, κατὰ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος, τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ νῦν ἐνεργοῦντος ἐν τοῖς υἱοῖς τῆς ἀπειθείας· 3 ἐν οἷς καὶ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἀνεστράφημεν ποτε ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν, καὶ ἤμεθα τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποί· 4 ὁ δὲ θεὸς πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει, διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην αὐτοῦ ἣν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς, 5 καὶ ὄντας ἡμᾶς νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν συνεζωοποίησεν τῷ Χριστῷ, - χάριτι ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι - 6 καὶ συνήγειρεν καὶ συνεκάθισεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, 7 ἵνα ἐνδείξηται ἐν τοῖς αἰῶσιν τοῖς ἐπερχομένοις τὸ ὑπερβάλλον πλοῦτος τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ ἐν χρηστότητι ἐφ᾿ ἡμᾶς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. 8 Τῇ γὰρ χάριτι ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον· 9 οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων, ἵνα μή τις καυχήσηται. 10 αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα, κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς οἷς προητοίμασεν ὁ θεὸς, ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς περιπατήσωμεν.

And you, being dead in your trespasses and sins in which at one time you walked according to the pattern of this world, according to the ruler of the lower invisible realm, the spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience, in which we all also once dwelt in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and the mind, and we by nature were children of wrath as also the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, through His abundant love with which He loved us, even while we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ Jesus—by grace you have been saved—and together with Him raised us up and enthroned us in the upper heavenly realm in Christ Jesus, in order that He might show in the ages to come the unsurpassable treasure of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not from works, in order that no one may credit himself for it. For we are His work, created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works in which God prepared beforehand in order that we would live them out.

Antinomian Nihilism toward Sanctification and the Misuse of Isaiah 64:6

“All our righteousness is as filthy rags.” This is from Isaiah 64:6. It is quoted often to mean that even a righteous act is not righteous before God. Hence, how could we ever really do anything good that pleases God. This leads often to an antinomian tendency among Evangelicals who think that it really doesn't matter what they do because they cannot please God anyway.

This verse, of course, is ripped out of context. The text is not saying that even a really righteous act is filthy before God. It is speaking to the religious community that is in sin and has a pseudo-righteousness in maintaining the cult of YHWH.

The larger text states:

You [i.e., God] assist those who delight in doing what is right,

You have favor upon those who observe Your ways.

You were angry because we violated them continually.

Will we be saved?

We are all like one who is unclean,

all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in Your sight.

We all wither like a leaf;

our sins carry us away like the wind.

No one invokes Your name,

or makes an effort to take hold of You.

For You have rejected us

and handed us over to our own sins. (64:5-7)

So this is not talking about truly righteous deeds. It is talking about performing a false righteousness as a replacement of observing God’s ways.

It is true that we may never have perfect works in this life. Perhaps, our works are tainted with selfishness and other wickedness. But that is not what this verse is saying. Isaiah’s context is people who have replaced true righteousness with cultic rituals (the same type of righteousness the Pharisees have in the Gospels). Hence, Christ often applies Isaiah to them.

It is important to note that righteousness is possible in Jesus Christ. They are works of Christ through the believer. This sort of nihilistic idea that a redeemed man can never do anything truly righteous because all of his righteousness is filthy menstrual rags, so why try is based on a false understanding of this passage.

As John says, the one who does righteousness is righteous and born of God. As Paul says, we are God’s workmanship created anew in Christ Jesus for the purpose of doing good works. We are predestined, regenerated, and saved in order to become holy and blameless, truly righteous. And that isn’t filthy in God’s sight. It is pleasing and beautiful because our works of love are His works of sanctification that adorn His work of justification. And these works are described in Revelation as pure and clean robes that adorn the saints. There are no filthy rags about them.

I Agree with Beth Moore

Beth Moore has called out misogyny in evangelicalism, and I want to say a hardy, "I agree!" So she should stop promoting it. Egalitarianism and Feminism are misogyny. That is the entire point that complementarians are trying to make. In fact, that is the entire crux of the whole issue. Answering the question, "What does misogyny believe and look like?" is where everyone divides. The issue then is what or who can tell us which view is correct.

I would argue that God is the only One who knows the correct position and has revealed it in both His creation (general revelation) and the Bible (special revelation) that any views that argue a woman is honored by becoming something other than a woman is misogyny. If someone models a role for women, for instance, that goes against the role laid out for the woman by her biological creation and God's creational work for her as it is revealed in Scripture, it is antiwoman, replacing the woman with some other role meant for some other creature, and displays, therefore, a hatred for true womanhood and the women it seeks to convince. In essence, a woman who takes upon the role of a man or an animal/object has erased her womanhood and has become something other than what God named as a woman. It is absolute hatred for what is truly a woman. Our culture loves women when they are either prostitutes or gender neutral/men in terms of their roles, but actual women are hated by the culture. They are continually viewed as lesser than anyone who is a sex symbol or anyone who aspires to something greater (i.e., to do what the man does) than that banal existence of womanhood as wife and mother or those in the process of becoming wife and mother.

As such, all feminists, all egalitarians, such as Beth Moore, are misogynists. They hate women because they are not content in keeping to the natural role that defines a woman. They think it to be lesser for themselves to have to be "chained" and "imprisoned" to such an existence. They are Gnostics in their understanding of gender, which explains their hatred for women, since Gnostics disdained women and did not believe that they could ascend to be a better individual unless they became like a man or gender neuteral.

Indeed, many misogynists still say they cherish and value women, and even partake in some of the role that is womanhood, but their disdain for what it means to be "just a woman" in terms of staying within the lane of what her biology and the Bible dictate is repudiated by seeking to become "more" than what God would desire her to be by taking upon the role God desires exclusively for a man to take upon himself.

Misogyny is rampant in our culture because the idea that what the men do is better than what the women do has been advocated by pop-Feminism for years now. It's time that women were honored as women, and for Evangelicals to stop lying about their exaltation of women when they exalt those who evidence a disdain for the idea that being only a woman in all that womanhood calls her to be, and nothing else, is to be honored and desired by women more than any desire to be like the man. It's time to start exalting wives and mothers and the roles in the church that support womanhood rather than diminish it.

Let's put an end to misogyny in the church, therefore, and tell Beth Moore to love God by obeying His revealed will for women, and to love the gendered humans he has made in the fullness thereof.