How are women saved by Childbearing? In Christ Jesus, women are not only saved from their sins, but childbearing becomes an instrument of sanctification and maturation—saving them from the very situation that our first-mother Eve fell prey to because of Adam’s abandonment. Paul’s argument goes something like this: women are to pray but not exercise authority or teach men because Christ has not changed the order He established in Creation but fixed it in Redemption; when women pray, adorned with good works and Biblical submission (“faith… love… holiness with self-control…”) Holy Spirit graciously uses childbearing to replace a woman’s foolishness or simpleness with wisdom to aid her husband in the work of “smashing the heads of serpents”—i.e. dominion with the Lord Jesus. With the Church, a Godly woman becomes a “Second Eve” who will never fall for “did God really say?” again. There are several things to note here. First, this “salvation from being deceived” is truly part of salvation proper. Second, like other covenantal signs and symbols, childbearing apart from faithfulness in Christ does not make a woman wise (e.g. baptism or the Lord’s Table or reading one’s Bible or serving others). Third, marriage and childbearing are deeply typological, pointing to the “one-fleshness” of Christ and His Church as revealed in Christian marriage as well as the death that comes through a woman being “sundered” and two lives coming out of her pain. Finally, this pattern is ultimately fulfilled in Christ, God-born-of-a-woman, through a line of faithful women who looked for the One who would crush the Serpent’s head. Yet this pattern does not end with Christ, but with the Bride which includes many brides who faithfully bear and raise small-Christs (Christians!).

APPLICATION

1. God thinks the world needs female heroes, but the true heroes look like Sarahs and Marys. Sisters, be the heroes you were saved to be in Christ.

2. Older sisters, you are mothers in the Church, and God is calling you to disciple younger brides and future brides in faithfulness, love, holiness, and self-control.