Saved by Childbearing - 1 Timothy 2:15

"Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."


This confusing passage is easier to understand when you take the rest of Paul's council into thought as well as see how the greek word for 'save' - soza - is used in other places in the scripture.

A great study that I have found on this scripture is from The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

https://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-2-No-4/Saved-Through-Childbearing

In my own paraphrase, 1 Tim 2:15 says:

'But you shall be delivered from the wiles of the evil one and made safe if you walk in your God given assignment and domain as a 'child bearer' which includes the complete scope of home/domestic management.'

Some choice quotes from the aforementioned website are:

"What does it mean, then, for a woman to be "kept safe [from Satan]"? It means, among other things, that she will not yield in her mind to false notions of what it means for her to be a woman and in particular a woman of God. It means that she will respect divinely set boundaries in the exercise of her spiritual gifts and ministry calling in trust and obedience to God's Word. It means that she will find fulfillment in her domestic calling, in her relationship with her husband, in her role as mother and maker of the home, and in proper ministry involvements in God's "household," the church"

"The above presented interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:15 also strongly affirms a complementarian understanding of biblical manhood and womanhood. Women, like men, were assigned by their Creator certain roles, and it is part of "working out our salvation" (Phil. 2:12) to adhere to these roles in our Christian lives and ministry. Salvation in Christ does not obliterate these role distinctions, as egalitarians claim-it rather aids believers in living once again within the parameters originally established by the Creator, as creatures saved from the curse of sin and restored to God's original design for men and women."



The below video discusses the same topic from the same perspective as Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 21:58 minutes long

One thing that I particularly liked is how she summarized (starting at about 19 minutes)that the same sinfulness that allowed Eve to be deceived, is the same sinfulness that works in a woman's flesh today: we have a tendency to be deceived and then we use our influence on our husbands to bring them along into the deception; that sinful nature tendency is in us whether we want to acknowledge it or not!



Update 5/26/12:
I was also thinking today (5/26/12)about Saul. His position was NOT as priest, only king. Yes, this is an 'Old Testament' example but just as Saul and Samuel were 'playing out' a greater spiritual truth, so too does the 'man and woman' play out a greater spiritual truth as well of 'Christ and his bride, the Church'.  The 'bleating of the sheep' that is heard from the the pulpits manned by woman pastors and woman whose ministries are established on teaching men as well as women, are showing the same disregard for their positions as Saul showed.