The High Calling of Motherhood
By Rev Walter J Chantry

"But women will be saved through childbirth, if they continue in
faith, love and holiness with propriety." (1 Tim 2:15)

One of the greatest issues in our society today
is the status and role of women. "Too often" writes Rev WJ Chantry, women have
been "held in contempt... subject to verbal, social and physical abuses."

But, how are women to respond? How can a woman
find a role in life which will bring real dignity and fulfilment, and stretch
all her abilities to the full? Rev Walter Chantry gives an answer which would
revolutionise our society if it were put into practice.

Rev Walter Chantry is Pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA. He is married with two daughters and a son, and is the author of Today's Gospel, The Shadow of the Cross and God's Righteous Kingdom, all published by the Banner of Truth Trust.

Our generation has highlighted the oppression of
women. The symptoms are not difficult to identify. Women have too often been
held in contempt. Large numbers of them have been subjected to verbal, social
and physical abuses. Women's magazines and social activists have pointed the
finger at very serious ill-treatments which subject multitudes to misery.

Our world has little difficulty describing the
quandary of women. But it has completely mistaken the root cause. Consequently,
women are being offered a faulty solution to their real troubles. False
diagnosis usually leads to improper measures of correction. In this case the
cure proposed by the world simply compounds female misery.

SCRIPTURE SPEAKS

Contrary to popular assumption, the Bible has a
number of things to say very directly about this issue: Paul, in 1 Timothy
2:11-15, alludes to the plight of woman. He suggests that she needs to be saved
(verse 15). This cannot mean salvation from sin and God's everlasting wrath. In
this context Paul joins salvation to childbearing. He must have in view a
deliverance from some other extremity. In fact he is referring to the
circumstantial calamities which attend a woman's life. In the passage Paul gives
a solution. His views are not simply a parroting of the social philosophy
current in his own age. Under divine inspiration he wrote not a private opinion
but the very Word of God. CREATION AND FALL
"Women's rights" proponents become livid when God's directives to women
are read to them from this passage: "A woman should learn in quietness and full
submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, she
must be silent" (vv. 11-12). "That is the very cause of woman's distress", they
tell us. "She has been subject to man. We must go directly to the source of
grief. Liberate woman from man's dominance".

The Apostle Paul vigorously disagrees. Woman's
problem is not her social position of subordination to man. That is not her
trouble.

The Apostle Paul first notes the reasons why
full submission to man is expected of woman:

"For Adam was formed first, then Eve" (verse 13).
Man existed before woman. Woman was taken out of man. This priority of man to
woman and the derivation of woman from man were not incidental details of
creation. They were intended to establish human social order. Woman was made for
the man [Gen 2:18]. She was formed to fill the role of a help suited to the man.
In Paradise, Eve found perfect happiness for a time in a role which was
supportive of man in a social position which was subject to him.

A woman's griefs, therefore, are not the
consequence of her social rank but a direct result of the fall. The experience
of being subject to a sin-filled husband is not identical to submission under
innocent Adam. It is sin in the man which makes him thoughtless of woman and
abusive toward her. Sin in woman spawns discontent with even legitimate and
ideal treatment in her true role. Satan was the serpent who brought every sting
of displeasure to the woman.

The Apostle Paul then reminds women of the
history of the Fall:

And gives the reason for the curse which they feel
so keenly. "And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was decieved
and became a sinner" (v14). Scripture is not here heaping all of the blame of
this world's suffering and confusion on woman. If anything, man is more directly
incriminated. But Paul does expect woman to understand her share of the
responsibility in the Fall which has ever since plagued her.

Adam was not deceived. This does not clear man of
all responsibility in the tragedies which have haunted the human race. Adam
walked into the evil rebellion against God with his eyes wide open. He took the
fruit from Eve with no false illusions. His was the deeper sin. He transgressed
fully knowing what he was about. But Eve was duped by Satan. She had "the wool
pulled over her eyes". There is generally in the female constitution a confiding
simplicity (which can become gullibility). This characteristic perfectly suits
her to the role of help-for-man just as God had designed. There is in this
constitutional difference of woman from man a beauty which defines feminity and
is attractive to men.

The Apostle Paul's chief reason for directing
woman's attention to her deception in the Fall was not to "rub it in". It was to
reinforce the necessity of her being subject to man. The Fall with all of its
consequences harmful to woman did not arise from her being subject to man. The
exact opposite is the case! When she abandoned her role of submission to Adam,
and decided to take matters into her own hands, the Fall came! Eve determined to
lead man rather than follow. She became a temptress instead of a help. Stepping
out of her God-given place and rebelling against the divinely instituted social
order, she brought the world - and womanhood - to ruin. She is not a poor
innocent victim of resulting desolations. Woman under the influence of Satan is
the perpetrator of them all. Her restless defiance of man's authority is at the
crux of human calamity!

This world's opinion is that there should be no
distiction between man and woman in the social order. If only woman were
emancipated from man's rule, her suffering would cease! Such an analysis indicts
God's creation order and his post-garden directives as the culprits in woman's
distress. God's Word cites the precise opposite as the cause of her trouble.
This is no mere academic matter. Woman's liberation from oppression and
suffering depends upon finding measures which correct the root of the malady. If
the disease is fed instead of combated, her last end will be doubly wretched.

THE HOPE OF SALVATION

The Apostle Paul does not abandon woman with an
indication that her misery is self-inflicted. A promise is given from the Most
High: "But women will be saved" (v15). This is not a text on remission of sins
but deliverance out of sin-related suffering and oppression. Woman will triumph
over and emerge from the misery and curse under which she is held by forces of
evil.

But how are women saved? By their joining militant
organisations which demand rights equal to man's? By proving that women can
"make it" in the world of business, politics, sports, and even the pastorate? By
escaping from home where she has been buried in obscurity and where so many
evils have been perpetrated by abusive husbands? Never! That approach only
institutionalises her rebellion against her God-given place.

Her pathway to real salvation was
appointed by the Almighty. It is motherhood. "She shall be saved
through childbirth" (v15). The first gospel promise was given before any curse
was pronounced on man or woman. And the promise wonderfully involved the means
of motherhood. "I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and
between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike
his heel" [Gen 3:5]. God our Maker would not allow the human race
to perish. Now that Adam and Eve had sinned and Paradise was
shattered, the only hope lay in God himself. "I will" is the message of grace.
One means was mentioned as the instrumental course of salvation from the devil's
clutches. It was childbearing! Deliverance comes, not through man's vocational
efforts in the cultural mandate, but through woman's childbearing. How wrong
women are when they imagine that their hope lies in imitating men's careers. As
they abandon motherhood for the office and factory, they despise God's carefully
designed means of breaking the devil's yoke and fleeing the miseries he has
inflicted.

It is to woman, not man, that God assigned this
high calling. But her hope is not identified with her political savvy, her
business acumen, or her social activism. It is in childbearing! Women today are
so eager to abandon "mere" motherhood to duplicate male labours. How tragic,
when the hope God has given woman and for all of our race is tied to
childbearing! Of course the central attention of Genesis 3:15 is upon one seed
of the woman, Jesus Christ. He who was born of the Jewess, Mary, delivered the
decisive death blow to the head of the serpent on Calvary. He purchased
salvation for all who are redeemed.

Yet, even before Christ came, a godly seed of the
woman was set against Satanic forces. Childbearing prepared the way of the Lord.
When about to raise up mighty leaders, Jehovah God, often sought out peculiarly
able women. Jochebed, the mother of Moses; Hannah, mother of Samuel; Manoah's
wife, mother of Samson, are leading examples. Through their childbearing the
course of history was wonderfully altered. Since Christ has come, a godly seed
carries the gospel to all the earth to gather God's elect and hasten Christ's
return. Raising a godly seed is still of the profoundest importance to the cause
of God in the earth.

Adam saw at once that the most profound work of
the ages - God's work of grace - is directly related to motherhood. Appreciating
God's purpose, "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of
all the living" [Gen 3:20]. Today, through contraceptives and abortions, women
can avoid the "nuisance" of having children. Using these means, they are free to
seek what they think are higher and more noble callings. What relief to the
forces of darkness! Nothing crushes the cause of sin like godly childbearing.

TRUE MOTHERHOOD

It is obvious that more is intended by
"childbearing" than the physical process of conceiving, carrying a child in the
womb, and bringing him into the world, but mothering that person is assumed.
More is expressly stated by Paul. "Women will be saved through childbirth, if
they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety" [1Tim 2:15].
Conscientious motherhood cannot follow the selfish pattern of having a child
only to send him off as soon as possible to a day-care centre. Of course, at
times this is essential for survival! But at other times it is produced by a
selfish interest in one's own career or in acquiring more wealth. Women want to
get on to more exciting things. This low view of a mother's task is damaging the
church.

Many are saved out of homes in which parents did
not care for their children. These have lived useful lives for the Lord. But
most of the greatest servants of God who have dealt the mightiest blows to
Satan's kingdom were raised in stable homes. It is almost always a mother who
makes it stable. Today nothing can replace the care and training of a faithful
mother. Those who lack this blessing in their childhood carry a burden
throughout life. Emotional scars and character flaws from mother's neglect are
handicaps in serving the Lord. Even grace at conversion does not eliminate these
liabilities.

Our world sets its wares before women: Look at the
money you can make! A pay-cheque is an immediate and tangible reward for labour.
Look at the influence and respect you can command in a successful career! There
is fun and excitement in the work world - the social stimulation of interesting
people, the excitement of travel, the glamour of attention from others, the
intellectual challenges, and so on. But in reality these often prove to be the
baubles of Vanity Fair.

God has assigned a nobler work to woman than
merely to parallel man's activities. There is no more pitiful person in the
world than the woman who "has it all together" in business but whose family has
fallen apart. She is the epitome of energy, organisation, talent, and efficiency
- only her children have not turned out well.

Loneliness and non-recognition attend motherhood
for a time. But that is the perspective of this world only. How does the Judge
compare the socialite, the dynamic business "success" in comparison with the
mother who is selflessly training children with an eye of faith fixed on a
spiritual kingdom and her hope firmly fixed upon the Lord? Some will think this
is an emotional appeal to put women down once again. Rather, it is a conviction
that many women have abandoned their highest dignity and hope for lesser things.

What is involved in motherhood? After birth pangs bring children into this world, there come years of
life pangs. It is a mother's task and privilege to oversee the forging of a
personality in her sons and daughters. For this she must set a tone in the home
which builds strong character. Hers it is to take great Christian principles and
practically apply them in every-day affairs - doing it simply and naturally. It
is her responsibility to analyse each child mentally, physically, socially,
spiritually. Talents are to be developed, virtues must be instilled, faults are
to be patiently corrected, young sinners are to be evangelised. She is building
men and women for God. Results may not be visible until she has laboured for
fifteen or twenty years. Even when her task ends the true measure of her work
awaits the full maturity of her children. Moses would be much more than an
Egyptian rebel and an obscure shepherd, but Jochebed would not live to observe
the consequences of her motherhood.

A HIGH CALLING

If a godly mother is to succeed at this task, she
must be a woman filled with faith, love and holiness. These must not be
occasional, but consistent qualities of life [1 Tim 2:15]. It is no wonder that
women spurn this task, preferring the halls of government, the materialistic
empire or the busy office. There is no more demanding work in all the world, no
more awe-inspiring job-description than raising a godly seed! It will challenge
all the genius, talent, and grace that any human being could possess. Should
women be educated? Assuredly the moral educators, psychologists, spiritual
shepherds, and advisers of future generations must be well-trained!

Woman's hope, the church's hope, the
world's hope is joined to childbearing with continuance in faith, love and
holiness. Young women, here is a life-long calling! It is the
highest any woman can enter. There is much more to it than the worldly images.
Take it seriously and God will bless the generation to come.

Work at it spiritually and the Lord will give you
the liberation you desire. Some day the glamour girls who leave their children
in a nursery will reap their reward. They will sit in their plush houses holding
fat bank accounts and will look with envy at a godly seed.

This is why Proverbs 10:1 tells those who are
children that "A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother". Immorality is a
public shame to the mother of one who breaks God's law. Her whole life was
devoted to raising her son and daughter. Father has a career as well as a home.
But all of mother's eggs have been placed in one basket. Motherhood could not be
a part-time hobby. If you become a fool, you will break your mother's heart.
Godly women do not live for kisses and nice little gifts, but to see their
children walking with the Lord in righteousness. All of a godly woman's hopes in
this world are bound up with the children of her motherhood.

SIGNS OF HOPE

One of the most encouraging signs in our age is an
increasing number of young women who aspire to being godly. They are serious
about motherhood. They have ordered their priorities biblically and already
demonstrate the traits of faith, love and holiness. But they will come under
fierce attacks. "Feminist" literature will belittle them as doing nothing
significant. As sacrifices mount, temptations will increase to fall in with the
world's system.

Young men, to follow the Lord fully your wife will
need to be reminded that you share her vision for pleasing God through rearing a
family. You must let her know that you admire her labours in motherhood. And
churches must combat the deluge of worldly propaganda. They must continually
hold out the biblical ideal of women's service to God and humanity in
childbirth, and continuance in faith, love, and holiness. In due time faithful
mothers will have the seal of God blessing on their labours.

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