THIS, Is a Tough One

 

It's the one scripture I raised an eyebrow at, bewildered, but didn't ask God to clarify. It's the one scripture I didn't ponder.

I didn't put a question mark in my Bible's margin. I didn't think twice about it. I didn't pray about it.

I think I just felt, "Well, God has that verse there, and He must have a reason." But I did not go any further than that.

The passage says this:

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

1 Timothy 2:14-15

That's according to the Bible's King James translation. And glancing at all of 1 Timothy 2:11-15, more verses than those two are puzzling in Paul's note to a young preacher named Timothy.

But one thing that immediately made sense to me about it, is that this note had to have been written on one of those rare days when Paul was outlining some of his personal feelings.

Paul said, at other times, that his preaching was directly under the Holy Spirit's leading. But then there was a time when he emphasized that he wasn't speaking directly under conviction in the Spirit, but that he was speaking personally, like any other man in the church.

Maybe this was one of those times.

After all, when Paul writes, "Let a woman learn in silence," he says "I." Paul rarely said what he personally was okay with. But here he said, "I do not permit a woman ... to have authority ... ."

He didn't say God. He said "I."

Then, Paul gives his reason for saying he personally didn't allow women to teach men. He said Adam was here first, and that it wasn't Adam who foolishly listened to the devil. It seems as if Paul felt Adam simply made the mistake of following his wife, as opposed to listening to the devil personally. So, Paul said he preferred men to do the leading in the church.

It's the one time Paul seems maybe a little cocky!

And he goes on to write that Timothy shouldn't worry about whether women in the church are growing to know Jesus, because they'll be "saved in childbearing," according to the King James translation!

Another translation, the 1995 version of the New American Standard Bible (NASB), puts it another way: "But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint."

That translation sheds a little more light, saying, "through the bearing of children," instead of "saved in childbearing."

But that version of the NASB, also inserts an error that other Bible translators looked at and followed. That NASB adds the words, "But women will be ... ."

If we look closely at the King James Version, that's not what Paul said. He said something curious. He said, "SHE will be saved in childbirth, if THEY" live faithfully.

So I have to say it helps to know Paul, not Jesus, at this point.

Paul preached, under conviction of the Spirit instead of out of his personal feelings, that there is basically nothing better than living completely devoted to Heaven. He preached that not everyone marries but that some are "like" him, just workers in God's word without any heated desire for marriage.

He preached that way, under God's conviction.

But then he had strong, spiritual messages for those who do need to marry. And that's the sense he brings to this note to Timothy.

Pa-ul was telling Tim-o-tay (pronunciation, my own), not to worry about married couples who are faithful. He's saying he personally thinks faithful men are going to lead in marriage (unlike in Paul's Spirit-led sermon to the church at Corinth: 1 Corinthians 7:15-16, when a woman is saved and faithful but the man isn't). And he's basically saying to Timothy, "You'll see the fruit of that leadership in how the woman helps the children to behave."

He is not talking about the actual event of child birth, which is why the 1995 NASB implies that the woman's Salvation can be seen through "the bearing of children," instead of "in childbirth." The text means a woman in a faithful marriage is going to impart true life to the children; she bears them up, or raises them, to live right.

But here's the most difficult part of this message:

Thinking back on God's ten commandments, which Jesus lived perfectly, it's incumbent upon each of us to live in such a way that honors mother and father, even if we're parentless. (The Bible has a lot to say about Christian adoption, not only adoption into Heaven.)

And then in the 1 Corinthians 2 letter from one preacher to another preacher, there is the implication that a woman's very life (not her spirit that's saved not through works but by Grace, but her very life), will be "preserved" (NASB, 1995) because of her children's behavior.

Lord, have mercy.