Neither male nor female

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul's baptismal formula names the three founding hierarchies of the ancient world and cancels them in one sentence.

Galatians 3:28 is widely understood to preserve an early baptismal formula that predates Paul's letter. In the ancient Mediterranean, three divisions structured legal and social life: ethnic (Jew/Gentile), status (free/slave), and sex (male/female). The formula names and cancels all three at the moment of baptism. It does not claim sex disappears — Paul elsewhere discusses men and women as such — but it claims that in the new body of Christ, none of the three determines standing before God. Whatever later hierarchies developed, Galatians 3:28 is the theological ceiling.