Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 01 – Jan 1988
God Gives The Weaker Sex The Key
Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Genesis 3:15 & 1Timothy 2:15a
Reading: Genesis 3:1-15, Luke 1:26-38
Singing: Bow.Ps.113; 289; BoW.H. 105; H. 100; 170
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In advent it is quite the done thing to preach a sermon on the “Mother Promise”, the first announcement of the Gospel of Christ, made in Paradise just after our Fall. Today we will look at this text from the angle of 1Timothy 2. The angle of “the place of women in the plan of God’s salvation”. Are there women and girls here in church who, at least when they were young, wished they were boys? Who hated to be “only a girl?” I have encouragement for you today. Maybe by the time I’m through with this sermon there will be a man or two here who wish they were women! No use of course, we are and should be what God made us. But that so many women wish they were men is mainly due to the way our society, when men were its bosses, talked about women.
Men used to talk about women as “the weaker sex”. All they looked at was the weights they could lift, or the size of their skeletons. We learned meanwhile that it is a joke to call women the weaker sex. They are not. They live longer than men, on an average. They can work harder and keep at it more doggedly than men. They are not nearly sick as often and so badly as men. They can even handle stress better than men. On an average that is.
You don’t have to be a feminist to see how talking of women as the weaker sex is not really true. Ah… you will say, except in church. There the woman is second to man-the-leader, is she not? There God made her, if not the weaker sex, at least the lesser sex. Especially now that in so many churches, including ours, the topic of “women in office” is being tackled, you can hear people use heavy guns on both sides of the argument. Bible guns, too. One of the heaviest texts is the one from 1Timothy today. It seems to be hard even for believing Christians, to keep such arguments and discussions calm.
What we often do in our debates is push one another further than we would like to go. We make the other bloke say more than he wants to say. Some people do that to Paul, too. Then they make him a woman-hater, a real male chauvinist pig who thought that women were good for nothing outside the kitchen or the bedroom.
And one of the texts used is this one in 1Timothy. It is a passage that bases what it says on creation, unlike the text in 1Corinthians 14:33ff, where Paul gives as a reason for women having to keep quiet in church that, not to do so, would give offence. It would not look good in that culture and it would get the tongues of the gentiles wagging about that silly bunch of Christians, if women spoke up in church. But here in 1Tim.2 he uses Bible history. The women better keep quiet, after all, wasn’t she the one who fell for Satan’s temptation first? Wasn’t she the one who then tempted the man? And it is in that context that Paul talks about “bearing children”.
Very strange things have been made of that. How must we read such a text? Now mind you, I am not going to argue in this sermon for women in office. But what I do want to do with you today is have another good look at this text. And see how the gospel glows and glitters in it; the gospel of Jesus Christ.
it.
GOD GIVES THE KEY ΤΟ “THE WEAKER SEX”
Let’s look at 2 key words: “saved” and “child-bearing” and from these two key words we see:
1. what it does not mean,
2. what it means first, and
3. what it means even more!
1. She shall be saved…
What does that word “saved” not mean? It does not just mean: “You go to heaven”. It does not mean: “you will end up having a good time”. Oh you will, but that is only a by-product just as “being happy” is a by-product of a good marriage.
2. What then does it mean first of all: to be saved?
A doctor has not really saved a patient if that patient has to spend the rest of his/her many days unconscious while machines eat for him, breathe for him and carry off his wastes for him. Such patients are then called “vegetables” and, wrong as that term may be, it sure is true that this is not human life! To be saved is always: being salvaged: to be made fit for service once again. To be made for praise, for God’s glory. For good works, as our Catechism puts it. Jesus did not die and rise again that we would get heaven as the ultimate package of God’s consumer goods. But that we would be alive unto God once more. It is a pity that our battle with Rome has made the words “good works” sound somewhat suspect. Sure, good works are not our payment by which we win God’s love. But they surely are the proof of our being saved! That’s what we were saved for. At last we are useful for God. Saved Salvaged. But…
3. There is a deeper meaning!
Being saved is: being used so that others are saved! Being saved that that you may help bring about that beautiful Kingdom, marvellous KINGSHIP of God in which a whole world is His again. In the Old Testament that meant especially: to be used for bringing about the coming of the Messiah! That was why God called Israel as His special people. Through them this wonderful Gift of His would reach this planet! Now let us read once again that expression in 1Timothy in that light, “she shall be saved through bearing children…!” You see, most people (including the gentlemen who wrote most commentaries) overlook that Paul, when he penned down these words, just had been writing about Adam and Eve!
First, let us make sure again what Paul did not mean: “To be saved through getting babies” does not mean that this is the only way a woman could get into heaven! Fancy Paul being so unfair! If that were true a childless woman would not stand a chance! and an unmarried woman or one whose husband is sterile would then have to borrow another man to get pregnant! But that is obviously not what the Bible says. The Bible does not even say (as people used to think) that the main purpose of marriage and human sexuality is to get children. That is what our old Form for Solemnisation of Marriage used to say: the first purpose of marriage is the propagation of the human race”. The Church of Rome still teaches that, but the Song of Songs (as well as the Paradise story itself!) tells us that this is not so. Man and woman are first of all to enrich each other’s life. Sexually too. And so that goes on after child-bearing age is past. Unlike what some young people think, this is God’s call and gift into high old age!
I am very glad that, years ago, our Synod therefore changed the order of the purposes of marriage. Childless couples have a full marriage, too. In that, too, we differ from the animals. That means also – incidentally – that sex-before-marriage does not become right as long as you’re on the pill. It has a love-function – a covenant-function – a marriage-enrichment function, quite apart from getting children. Getting children does not “save” a bad marriage.
Well, what does it mean: that a woman is “saved through childbearing”? Well, it means first that this is one way in which a woman fulfils her purpose, shows her unique gift and worth. Her labour gives life to us all. Us men, too! This hard work and pain is the gateway by which all of us, including men, entered the world. We should all look upon women with awe, like Adam did when he looked at his wife after this promise of God in Genesis 3:15 and called her “Mother of all living!” What a key position! What a tremendous responsibility! (A woman who has the life in her destroyed is therefore doing a most unnatural thing!) The life a woman bears is even potentially eternal life! My mother bore not only a son, but a son who would live forever! To be a mother is a glorious thing. And a high and holy honour. Worth staying at home for. Worth making that home a haven of rest for. That does not make her less or lower at all. The greatest leaders and geniuses of the world, the most respected artists and inventors and healers in the world could become that only because they were borne and cherished by mothers who nurtured their lives.
And now I come to the core of our double text: Jesus Himself came along this way. For – thirdly – you see this text has that deeper meaning. Paul had just been talking about Adam and Eve. Sure, Eve fell first. We do not know what Adam would have done if the devil would have picked on him first instead of on his wife. What we do know is that God, when he tells the devil that his dark kingdom shall be overcome, tells that evil prince, not that Adam shall deliver him that blow… but the woman shall do that! HER seed!
The man whom God used to write Genesis 3:15 was an Israelite and Israelites thought MEN to be the sowers of the seed. Biologically that is the case of course. These Jewish men had a way of thinking that the women were only the instruments, the passive fields on which men sowed the seeds. Forget it! says God in Gen.3:15! As he says again in Luke 1 and Matthew 1! The seed that shall do the devil in, is the seed of the woman! And when The Time comes at last it is a woman who – in obedience – says to God: “behold the handmaiden of the Lord, let it be to me as you say!”
And then Mary, the second Eve, in a way, un-does where the first Eve went wrong. The first Eve already was given the privilege to help God put it right: She brought forth a son too! What we call the weaker sex, was chosen by God to shame the strong. And do you now see the smile of Paul as he writes that seemingly harsh text to Timothy? Do you see behind it the smile of God? We had better be careful before we use 1Tim.2 to put women DOWN! God puts her UP in his mighty acts of salvation!
When the fullness of time had come Jesus was born of a woman – and that is Paul writing in Gal.4! If she was tempted first, she gets first place in bringing us our Saviour. The man Joseph is used as Protector and Provider, but he could not bring us the Saviour. So we had better be careful when using this text in 1Timothy to tell women that they had better play second fiddle. If she does play second fiddle at all, God wrote a wonderful part in His score for this instrument!
So, does that now mean that we can have women ministers and women elders? Well, that’s not what you can get out of this text. And that surely is not what I want to tell you this morning. But the Christian community – that sees that God laid in the hands and into the body of a woman the great trump card to outwit the devil – may look upon woman with respect and awe. God who gave us His Son had a marvellous way of dividing tasks!
In God’s book no girl need to wish she were a boy. And no one weak and quiet needs to think that he or she is insignificant in His book. The gospel is the good news of Jesus. And it is through women – through a woman – that He made sure He came. She was made bearer of life. Also bearer of my life. Even bearer of my everlasting life. Jesus came this way. After He came, the woman who bore Him had to call Him her Saviour, too. Yes. She was saved through bearing this child. Because this child alone could save her. The devil thought he had an easy victory when he tempted a woman.
But God laughs him to scorn, the most High has him in derision! It was the seed of a woman who smashed his head. The Hand that would wrest from the prince of darkness his sceptre, the hand that would open the scroll of the history of a new world was made inside a womb. Oh the laughter of God that makes me laugh again! Ah! the wonder of the gospel!
AMEN.