You might hear the cultural argument: “The Lord’s choice accommodated the culture at the time. Women were not accepted as valid witnesses, so the Lord had to choose men. If He were choosing today, women would be apostles.” That argument ignores Anna’s effective role as a witness who “began to… speak of [Jesus] to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). If God can choose Anna, He can certainly appoint “lady apostles” to witness, at least to receptive women. Aside from that, consider the cultural argument at several levels:
- The belief that human culture forces God’s hand in Acts 1 is akin to idolatry. It makes culture a god stronger than God Himself.
- It opens the door to overthrow God’s will. Simply choose anything you dislike in New Testament Christianity, then invalidate it for today by linking it to a past culture. Every passage of Scripture is set in some culture, which opens every passage to attack.
- It makes present culture—our new understandings, our improved practices and lifestyles—the standard with which God must comply today. (We now are so advanced that we position God to do what He should have done before.)
- It ignores God’s inspired culture. God originates male leadership in Genesis, before human cultures evolve. As this survey traces, God’s initiatives continue to reinforce that principle in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Apostolic leadership expresses a trend long established by God’s repeated choices from the beginning and through every century since.
- The Lord shows Himself very willing to defy prevailing cultures. “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). We see God’s counterculture in Jesus’ arrival as King, so humble and poor that society fails to recognize Him. We see it right here in Acts as He chooses uneducated, provincial men to challenge the capital’s educated elites (Acts 4:13 cf. John 7:15). We see it in the very nature of salvation.
Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Genuine faith has no need to guess or speculate. As in the first century, some “promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith” (1 Timothy 1:4). Rather than speculating about what God would do if given the chance, we do well to respect the reality, namely His actual sovereign choices.