Kristen

Mark, “masculine” words in Greek do not mean the word is masculine. That’s a common mistake Enlish speakers make. The gender of a noun is part of the language; it doesn’t mean a “masculine” word therefore means a male thing.
This is plain to see if we look at modern French. The word for “table” is “la table.” This doesn’t mean the French think tables are feminine things. “La porte” means “door.” The French don’t think doors are feminine creatures. Oddly enough, in French a lot of words that refer to masculine articles of clothing are feminine, and a a lot of words that refer to femnine articles of clothing are masculine. This means nothing. Languages with gendered nouns don’t directly translate to masculine nouns being about male things, and feminine nouns being about female things.

“Anybody” may be a masculine-gendered word in the Greek, but the meaning of the word is gender-neutral.

As for Galatians 3:28, if you’ll read further on into Chapter 4, it becomes quite clear that Paul is talking about far more than salvation. He’s talking about the nature of the covenant community of believers in Christ, that they all have the same status as “adopted sons” — which was a term that referred to the full status of someone who had been adopted, as a freeborn male Roman citizen, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto. Paul says we are all adopted as sons– we all have the same “freeborn male citizen” status. The passage was not intended as a way to hand a sop to Gentiles, slaves or women and say, “There, you have salvation. Now be satisfied with that and let us freeborn male Jews have everything else.”
There are no poor, low-status cousins in the Kingdom. We are ALL SONS.
But you’re probably right to end the conversation– it’s getting nowhere. I explained my position on deacons, and you still see what I’m saying. I don’t see how we’re going to come to any agreement when we’re starting from such different foundations.