Over the last several days as we have worked through our daily reading, there have been a few statements from Paul’s letters to the churches or to his leaders that have been a little bit confusing. They have caused me to go back to do some digging, some research, some work to understand what is being said.
This one is one of those.
Paul is writing to Timothy, talking about some of the practical outworking of living for Christ. He speaks first of the men, that they should be men of prayer and worship. Paul says that they should lift up holy hands, meaning that they should be praying to and worshiping God, looking to the Lord and depending on him for their provision, their protection, and for all that they need.
Paul then speaks of women saying that they should dress with modesty and decency, focusing instead on their inner character instead of upon superficial beauty. He also goes on to speak of the need for the woman to submit to her husband and remain in quiet humility.
But then, at the end of the discussion about women, Paul says something strange about salvation for women:
But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
1 Timothy 2:15
In context, Paul says that Eve was the one that was deceived in the Garden of Eden, but he says that Eve will be saved through childbearing. In trying to understand this better, I learned that this could probably best be translated more literally from Greek as…
“saved in the childbirth”
…instead of “saved through childbearing”. That may seem like a small difference, but I think it helps bring some more clarity and context to what is being discussed here.
First, the scene that Paul is referring to is that of the Garden of Eden. He says that Eve was deceived and became a sinner, but that women, the descendents of Eve, will be saved in the childbirth.
Which childbirth? Does Paul mean that women will be saved by having children?
No, this isn’t speaking of having children, and therefore by having children women can be saved from the wrath of God. All men and women, as the rest of the word of God proclaims, must come to God through Jesus in faith and receive forgiveness in through him. Only through him.
So what is this discussion, then, of childbirth? It is referring to the very first proclamation of the Gospel.
Where do we find that? We have to go back to the Garden of Eden:
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”
The man said, “The woman you put here with me —she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
Genesis 3:8-15
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
As God comes into the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he first calls for Adam, then Eve, and finally the serpent. God pronounces his punishment for their rebellion and disobedience upon each one of them, but within this first pronouncement for the serpent, we see a foreshadowing of the coming Messiah:
And I will put enmity
Genesis 3:15
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
So the woman and the serpent will be enemies, but even more importantly, we see that the woman’s offspring and that of the serpent will also be enemies.
But then the pronoun related to the “offspring” of the woman changes. It says he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.
This is a prophecy of that which will come to pass approximately 4000 years later as Jesus, the Son of God and the prophecied Messiah, takes the punishment for sin upon himself on the cross, then subsequently defeats death by resurrecting from the grave three days after his death. Jesus crushes the head of the serpent in the sense that he has stripped Satan of his ultimate power to destroy by luring people into sin and death. And even further, Jesus seals Satan’s ultimate fate to be banished to hell forever.
Even though the serpent will strike and bruise the heel of the offspring of the woman, Jesus himself, Jesus will crush the head of the serpent.
If you have ever seen the opening scene of the Passion of the Christ, the destruction of Satan, the crushing of the head of the serpent, is what the scene is dramatically attempting to show:
Jesus is the offspring of the woman. She is a human being, so her offspring, referred to as a “he”, is a man, so Jesus must be a man. Yes, in essence he is God, but he is also a human being, a man. He must be a man to fulfill this prophecy.
So as we look back to what Paul tells Timothy, that the woman will be saved in the childbirth, we see that he is referring to the man that would come from the woman. The Holy Spirit would come upon, or “overshadow” Mary, and she would give birth, despite being a virgin, to the one who would come to save all people. He would be called the Son of God and would be both God and a man.
So women will be saved by the childbirth. By the child that was born, Jesus himself, women and men and all who call upon him will be saved.