Thesis
Equality is a true biblical good when it refers to the equal worth of persons made in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ; it becomes a weapon when it is pressed beyond that proper meaning into a denial of the ordered offices, the discipline, the honor, and the order that the same God has appointed. The abuse of equality is not a modern invention. It appeared in the wilderness with Korah, it appeared in the days of the judges, it appeared in the apostolic congregations, and it continues today wherever the language of equality is used not to defend persons but to dismantle the offices to which God has appointed them. This paper traces the abuse in its four characteristic forms and offers the biblical corrective.
Introduction
The argument of this suite has so far moved in one direction: against the conflation upward by which ruling offices have been treated as ladders of worth, and toward the recovery of authority as service in the pattern of Jesus Christ. The present paper turns to the mirror error. If Papers 5 and 6 are read as a pair, the pair traces the two ditches on either side of the road. Paper 6 will examine the abuse of rank, in which office becomes possession. The present paper examines the abuse of equality, in which the doctrine of equal worth is pressed past its proper limit and used to attack the offices and orders that God Himself has established.
This abuse is harder to name than the abuse of rank, in part because equality is itself a true Christian good (Paper 2). To criticize the abuse of equality without seeming to criticize equality itself requires careful distinctions. The paper proceeds in five sections. The first establishes the biblical diagnosis of the abuse, with Korah’s rebellion as the paradigmatic case. The second through fifth treat the four arenas in which equality becomes a weapon: against office, against discipline, against honor, and against order. A pastoral conclusion follows.
I. The Diagnosis: Korah’s Rebellion as the Old Testament Paradigm
The clearest single biblical narrative of the abuse of equality is the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16. Korah, with Dathan, Abiram, and two hundred and fifty chiefs of the congregation, gathered themselves against Moses and Aaron with a striking accusation: “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?” (Num. 16:3).
The accusation should be heard carefully, because it is not in itself false. All in the congregation are holy; the LORD is among them. The premise that Korah uses is a true premise. The whole congregation was a kingdom of priests (Exod. 19:6); every Israelite was the LORD’s. But Korah used the true premise to draw an illegitimate conclusion. From “all are holy” he inferred that Moses and Aaron had no special office, no special call, and no rightful authority over the people. The equality of holiness was made the basis for a denial of the offices that God Himself had appointed.
Moses’ answer is instructive: “In the morning the LORD will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him” (Num. 16:5). Moses does not deny that the congregation is holy. He denies that the holiness of the congregation abolishes the choice of God. The LORD chooses; the LORD draws near to Himself whom He will; the LORD appoints offices, and the offices stand because He stands behind them. Korah’s mistake is not in affirming the holiness of the congregation but in setting that holiness against the appointing word of God.
The chapter ends in judgment. The earth opens and swallows Korah, Dathan, and Abiram with their households; fire from the LORD consumes the two hundred and fifty (Num. 16:31–35). The next day the congregation, having learned nothing, grumbles against Moses and Aaron, “You have killed the people of the LORD” (Num. 16:41). A plague breaks out; Aaron, with a censer of incense, stands between the dead and the living until the plague is stayed (Num. 16:46–48). The very priestly office that Korah had set out to dissolve becomes the channel of preservation for the very people who were repeating his rebellion.
Two doctrinal points emerge from the narrative. First, the abuse of equality typically begins from a true premise. The accuser is not always wrong about equal worth; he is wrong about the conclusion he draws from it. Second, the abuse of equality is treated by God as a serious matter. It is not a polite disagreement about ecclesiology; it is a rebellion against the One who has appointed the offices.
The New Testament makes the connection explicit. Jude writes of false teachers in the church that they have “perished in Korah’s rebellion” (Jude 11). The wickedness of Korah is not a curiosity of the wilderness. It is a recurrent disease in the people of God, and the New Testament names it in those terms.
II. Equality Against Office
The first arena in which equality becomes a weapon is its use against the very existence of ordered office.
In the wilderness, this took the form of denying that there were priests and prophets. In the days of the judges, it took the form of “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6; 21:25). At the close of the period, when Israel demanded a king, the demand itself was a complex case: the people wanted a king “like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5), which Samuel rebuked, but the institution of kingship was itself appointed and would later become the line through which the great Son of David would come. The complexity is instructive. The people were not rejecting kingship in itself; they were rejecting the LORD’s kingship in favor of a managerial king, while imagining themselves to have ascended to the dignity of self-determination. The flattening was upward, not downward, but it was a flattening of the proper order all the same.
In the apostolic congregations, the abuse of equality against office appears in several forms. Paul addresses the Corinthians who would not “discern the body” at the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:29) and who treated the apostle himself with contempt (1 Cor. 4:8–13; 9:1–3; 2 Cor. 10–13). He had to defend his apostleship not because he loved status but because the gospel he brought stood or fell with the legitimacy of the office God had given him. Paul’s response to those who treated him as a peer to be argued with rather than an apostle to be heard was severe—he warned them that the rod he carried was Christ’s (1 Cor. 4:21).
The pattern persists. In every age there are congregations and households and commonwealths in which the language of equality is used to refuse the very existence of offices that the Lord Himself has appointed. The wife refuses to recognize that her husband has any office she does not also have; the member refuses to recognize that the elder has any office he does not also have; the citizen refuses to recognize that the magistrate has any office that does not also belong to himself in his capacity as a private man. The argument always proceeds from a true premise (we are all equal in worth, all baptized into one body, all citizens of the heavenly city) to an illegitimate conclusion (therefore there are no offices to which we are not all equally entitled and which we are not all equally authorized to occupy or to refuse).
Hebrews stands as a corrective. “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Heb. 13:17). The text presupposes that there are leaders and that there are led, that the leaders will give account, and that the led must order themselves to the leaders in such a way that the leaders’ work is done with joy. Equality of worth in Christ stands alongside, not against, this ordered relation.
III. Equality Against Discipline
The second arena is the use of equality against the church’s discipline and against any reproof, correction, or judgment by one Christian of another.
The argument runs along familiar lines: who are you to judge me? We are all sinners; we are all equal at the foot of the cross; the elder is no better than I am; the older woman has no more standing than the younger; you have your sin, I have mine. The premise, again, is partly true. We are all sinners; the elder is not, in his own person, better than the member; equality of standing at the cross is real. But the conclusion drawn from these premises—that therefore correction cannot be given or received, that discipline cannot be administered, that judgment cannot be rendered within the congregation—is forbidden by Scripture.
The Lord commanded the very practice that this abuse rejects. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone… But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you… If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:15–17). The progression assumes that brothers may, must, and do call one another to account; that the church as a body must act; and that the church’s judgment may rightly end in exclusion. None of this is consistent with the claim that equality forbids correction.
Paul commanded the Corinthians to remove from their fellowship a man living in open sin (1 Cor. 5:1–5). He rebuked them: “I am not writing these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers” (1 Cor. 4:14–15). The apostle exercised fatherhood—a particular office—and he warned that he would come “with a rod” if necessary (1 Cor. 4:21). He did not allow the principle of equality in Christ to neutralize the ordered correction he was sent to deliver.
The pastoral letters press the same point. “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” (1 Tim. 5:19–20). Elders may be charged; they are not above correction. But charges are ordered: two or three witnesses; public rebuke for persistent sin; a process by which discipline is administered with weight and not with whim. The whole framework presupposes that some discipline some others, and that this is not a violation of equality but its mature expression in a body that loves the truth and one another.
The contemporary form of this abuse often takes the language of “judgmentalism.” It is, on its surface, a noble protest against the cold-hearted denunciation of sinners by self-righteous saints. That protest, where the saints are indeed self-righteous, is welcome. But the protest is often pressed past its proper limit until it becomes the doctrine that no judgment may be rendered by any Christian over any practice of any other Christian, on the grounds that we are all sinners and all equal. This is the abuse of equality against discipline. It dissolves the very church it claims to humanize.
The Lord’s own correction is decisive. He warned, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1), and the warning is real. But in the same Sermon He commanded His disciples to “beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing… You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15–16), which requires judgment, not its suspension. He warned later, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24)—again, requiring judgment rather than abolishing it. The Lord’s prohibition was against hypocritical judgment, not against discernment within the body of Christ.
IV. Equality Against Honor
The third arena is the use of equality against the giving of honor where Scripture commands it.
Scripture commands particular honor to particular persons in particular relations. “Honor your father and your mother” (Exod. 20:12; Eph. 6:2). “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor” (1 Pet. 2:17). “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor” (1 Tim. 5:17). “Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed” (Rom. 13:7). “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10).
The abuse of equality refuses to give specifically what Scripture commands specifically. It will not honor the father as father, the mother as mother, the elder as elder, the magistrate as magistrate. It will offer instead a flat regard that gives equally little weight to all, on the principle that to honor one more than another is to violate equality. The reasoning is invariably the same: we are all of equal worth, therefore no one is owed honor that another is not also owed.
The reasoning fails because honor in Scripture is not paid to worth; it is paid to office. The father is honored as father, not because fathers are more valuable persons than children, but because fatherhood is an office that the Lord has appointed and that the child is called to honor. The magistrate is honored as magistrate, not because magistrates are more valuable persons than citizens, but because the office is appointed by God for the good of the commonwealth. The elder receives “double honor” not because elders are doubly valuable persons but because the office of teaching and ruling is doubly weighty before God.
Where this distinction is lost, the leveling impulse becomes a refusal to do what Scripture commands. The child will not call his father “Sir.” The citizen will not address the magistrate with respect. The member will not stand when the elder enters the room. The young will not rise before the gray-headed (Lev. 19:32). In each case the abuse of equality is doing exactly what Korah did: from the true premise of equal worth to the false conclusion that no specific honor is owed.
The most acute biblical comment on the resulting disorder is in Proverbs: “Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up: a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food; an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress” (Prov. 30:21–23). The point of the proverb is not that slaves should never become kings or that maidservants should never marry well. The point is that when honor is suddenly taken without having been shaped by the long apprenticeship of giving honor, the earth itself shakes. A society in which no honor is given because no honor is owed is a society in which, when honor is at last taken, it is taken by the worst.
V. Equality Against Order
The fourth and broadest arena is the use of equality against the very category of order in human affairs.
Scripture is full of order. The days of creation are ordered (Gen. 1). The household is ordered (Eph. 5:22–6:9). The congregation is ordered (1 Cor. 14:40; Titus 1:5). The commonwealth is ordered (Rom. 13:1–7). The angels themselves are ordered (Col. 1:16). “But all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40). Order is not the opposite of equality; it is the structure within which equal persons live together.
The abuse of equality against order makes disorder a virtue. It treats every structure as an oppression to be dismantled; every distinction as a discrimination to be erased; every authority as a usurpation to be deposed. In its mature form it becomes an ideology of chaos in which the only legitimate posture is rebellion against whatever is.
Peter and Jude both name this disease in the strongest terms. “Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction” (2 Pet. 2:10–12). “Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones… Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion” (Jude 8, 11). The apostolic vocabulary is unflinching: those who “reject authority” as a principle are not making a contribution to Christian theology; they are walking in the way of Cain and perishing in the rebellion of Korah.
The doctrine of structured equality refuses this ideology. It holds that ordered offices among equal persons are a created good, established by the Lord, fulfilled in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The dissolution of order is not progress toward equality; it is regress toward the wilderness of the judges and beyond.
Pastoral Conclusion
The abuse of equality is not the abuse of equality as such. The doctrine of equal worth is precious and true. It is the foundation of the gospel’s address to every person; it is the dignity of every image-bearer; it is the standing of every believer in Christ. The abuse is the pressing of that true doctrine past its proper limit until it becomes a weapon against the offices, the discipline, the honor, and the order that the same Lord has appointed.
The pastoral test of whether equality has become a weapon is simple. Equality rightly held protects persons and honors offices. Equality wrongly held dismantles offices in the name of protecting persons, and in the end fails to protect the persons either. Where the wife is freed from her husband’s headship in the name of her dignity, she loses both the head and, in the long run, the dignity. Where the member is freed from the elder’s oversight in the name of his maturity, he loses both the oversight and the maturity. Where the citizen is freed from the magistrate’s order in the name of his liberty, he loses both the magistrate and the liberty. The wreckage of the abuse is, in each case, on the side that thought it had been liberated.
The next paper will examine the mirror error. Where this paper has shown how equality may be used as a battering ram against rightful office, Paper 6 will show how rank may be used as a club against the equal persons over whom it is set. The two papers belong together. The Lord forbids both. The Christology of Paper 1, the doctrine of submission without inferiority in Paper 2, the doctrine of headship in Paper 3, and the doctrine of authority as service in Paper 4 are all aimed at the road between these two ditches, and they hold the road open only when they are held together.
Notes
- All Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version (ESV).
- The reading of Numbers 16 in this paper treats Korah’s accusation against Moses and Aaron as a paradigmatic case of the abuse of equality. The true premise (“all in the congregation are holy”) is set against the appointed offices of God, with judgment as the result. Jude 11 explicitly applies the pattern to false teachers in the apostolic period, which warrants its application here.
- Paper 5 is to be read as the mirror to Paper 6. The two abuses are not symmetrical in every detail (the abuse of rank typically threatens persons directly, while the abuse of equality typically threatens offices through which persons are protected), but they are equally serious before God.
- The pastoral test offered in the conclusion—that equality rightly held protects persons and honors offices, while equality wrongly held dismantles offices in the name of protecting persons—is not a complete diagnostic but a useful first cut. Some movements that begin in the proper protection of persons end in the dismantling of offices; the test is intended to mark the transition.
- The reading of Romans 13:7 (“respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed”) is treated in this paper as binding on the Christian conscience in relation to lawful authorities. The limits of submission to authority are taken up in Paper 9; the present paper is concerned with the duty of honor where it is owed, not with the limits beyond which submission must yield to obedience to God.
- Proverbs 30:21–23 is read in this paper as a wisdom observation about disorder rather than as a prohibition of social change. The slave who becomes king and the maidservant who displaces her mistress are not condemned in their persons; the proverb names the destabilizing effect of sudden honor taken without the formation that ordinarily prepares one to bear it.
- The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are referred to throughout by their scriptural names. The Son is named “Jesus Christ” in the form most frequently attested in the New Testament writings.
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