A “role” is an assigned working position. In a team sport, different roles are assigned to different players. One may be a forward player and another a “back” that defends the goal. Having different roles does not mean one is more valuable or better than the other. (We don’t say, “a forward player and a backward player.”) Both forwards and backs are needed for winning the game.
This teamwork is especially important in the group God works through on earth, His church. Ephesians likens the church to “a body” that grows to full strength “when each part is working properly.”
Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15-16).
1 Corinthians 12 has more to say about this “body.” It says that the church, like the body, has different members with different gifts. It stresses how much every part is needed (1 Corinthians 12:15-21). We also learn that having different functions in the body does not mean that some are more honored and some less honored. Sometimes it may “seem” so (1 Corinthians 12:22-23). But God makes sure that the “honor” and the “care” are equalized.
God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:24-25).
Different roles, then, have nothing to do with inequality. In God’s eyes, and in the eyes of spiritual people, all parts are needed, all parts should receive the “same care” and all parts are honored fully.