1 Timothy 2:1-15 • Loyalty to Christ Affects How You Adorn Yourself

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Instructions for and about women in the second half of 1 Timothy chapter 2 have been discussed and debated openly in Christian circles over the past few years. Through looking at the text itself, there are some things we can know for sure while not understanding it fully. How we respond to what we read in the Scriptures does affect how we adorn ourselves. In the last article, we looked at why godliness flows from knowing Christ and His grace. This is post #4 in the 1 Timothy & Titus blog series. In this post, we will see how important loyalty to Christ is to adorning yourself with godliness.

Listen to this post as a similar podcast from the Adorn Yourself with Godliness Bible Study covering 1 Timothy and Titus in the New Testament. (11 lessons)

The Challenge

The verses in the last half of 1 Timothy chapter 2 have been the subject of controversy and misunderstanding for years. There are probably as many explanations of what verses 9-15 mean as there are words in those verses! Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But doing a Google search will net at least 10 different opinions about them. When you study this passage, remember to focus on the text—what it says and what it could have meant to those who received and heard the words written. As always, we start with the truth of what we can know. And this is one truth we can know—Jesus Christ demonstrated God’s love for women which has elevated the position of women wherever the Gospel has taken hold.

Jesus Demonstrated God’s Love for Women

To fully appreciate Jesus’ approach to women, we need to step back in time into the shoes of the first century woman. It was tough to be a woman living around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea at that time. In both Greek and Roman cultures, women held a second-rate status with few legal rights. Because of Old Testament teachings, Jewish women had more honor in their homes than their Roman counterparts.

The Lord Jesus demonstrated in His life on earth how much He loved and valued women. He taught them truth about God, forgave them for their sins, accepted them in His circle of followers, and gave new life to them after His resurrection. His care for them was very countercultural to what they had previously known.

What you see in the Gospels is that Jesus never spoke condescendingly to women, never made derogatory jokes about them, nor did He ever humiliate them. Women who knew Him loved Him. They wanted to follow and serve Him!

Read the blog series on New Testament Women. These articles coordinate with our two studies: Live Out His Love and Satisfied by His Love.

The Apostles Respected Women

Freedom to learn

The apostles continued Jesus’ attitude toward women. That includes Paul.

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. (1 Timothy 2:11)

Every local church incorporated women into the body of believers and taught them the truths of the faith along with the men. “Full submission” is obedience to what God is teaching them through His Word and His servants who teach. Women then and today are encouraged to learn everything they can from God’s Word and be obedient to it.

Women played a significant role in the church’s expansion. They assisted the apostles as they had assisted the Lord. They supported the church through hospitality and financial gifts. Women were active in speaking God’s word (prophesying) and praying in the public worship service alongside the male members of the congregation. Women were considered qualified and were given the opportunity to minister in many ways both inside and outside the church gathering.

Only two restrictions

Only two restrictions were placed on women in the church

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12)

Women are restricted from the ongoing, authoritative one-on-one teaching of a woman over a man in the church. Or the verse could be translated a wife over a husband. Everyone who has studied history and knows the male-female dynamic can figure out why this can be a healthy restriction.

The other restriction is found in chapter 3.

Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (1 Timothy 3:2-4)

This restriction is for the position of elder. “Faithful to his wife” literally is “to be the husband of one wife.” Only a man can be a husband. The other qualification words for elder are also masculine in gender.

Now before you close your listening ears, those restrictions are consistent with God’s activity in the Old Testament. In Genesis 18:19, God made Abraham responsible for the spiritual welfare of his household and those who would come after him. Regarding the religious worship of Israel under the Mosaic Law, only males of the tribe of Levi who descended from Aaron could serve as priests. God excluded other males, and all females, from the religious authority of priesthood.

All men and women could freely minister to the community in many other ways. God always provides freedom within boundaries.

Given Freedom within Boundaries

Not liking any restriction

But modern women don’t like that. We don’t like to be told we can’t do something we want to do. It is like the Garden of Eden all over again. God told the first humans they could eat from any and every tree of the garden—all they wanted to eat—except for just one. So what do they go for? The one. Eve, the first woman, was deceived by Satan about why God had placed a restriction on that tree. She saw that the fruit of the forbidden tree was desirable, and she went for it. That’s what Paul was referring to in 1 Timothy 2:13-14.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. (1 Timothy 2:13-14)

Eve wanted what wasn’t God’s will for her or for Adam either.

Freedom of what we can and should do

Christian women have the freedom to learn every aspect of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We can minister in many ways to many people, using our spiritual gifts to teach women and children in the Body of Christ. We can hold the position of deacon and serve the church in that way. God has said “No” to women holding the position of elder. God has said “No” to a woman being the primary, ongoing, authoritative teacher of a man in a church setting. But we can teach men in a church setting under the authority of the elders.

I was asked by the elders of my church to teach a 3-week class on biblical creation to a co-ed Sunday School class. Because I was under their authority and had some expertise that they didn’t have, my teaching of that class was biblical.

Women through the centuries have been used of God to share the gospel and establish churches. Once those churches were established, male elders were appointed to take over the ongoing, authoritative discipleship of the church members. Freedom within boundaries.

Demanding freedom outside the boundaries

Like I said earlier, we don’t like to be told we can’t do something we want to do. Demanding freedom outside of the boundaries God has set always leads to straying from devotion to the Lord, from loyalty to Him. Loyalty is “the quality of devotion or attachment to somebody or something.” It’s both a feeling and an action. And as we have been studying, your loyalty to God affects how you approach life and how you conduct yourself. Whether you will adorn yourself with godliness or with ungodliness. Whether you will exalt yourself or exalt God.

From the Scriptures, I’ve learned four truths about loyalty to the Lord. These are true for every woman who calls herself a Christian. And loyalty to Christ affects how you adorn yourself.

Truth #1: Jesus Deserves Your Loyalty

The moment you trust in Jesus Christ as your savior, you get a new life fused together with His and a new identity. You are now said to be in Christ, a Child of God, one of God’s saints, totally accepted and loved by Him. This new identity is something you can never lose.

You are set free to live a radically different kind of life. And in that freedom, you have a choice, “Who are you going to serve with your life now?” God or yourself? That choice was ever before Paul as well. In his life and his words, he communicated to Jesus, “I am YOUR man forever.” Years ago, I made that choice, too, when I said to Jesus, “I am YOUR woman forever.” I serve you.

But how do we do that with all the distractions around us?

Truth #2: Loyalty Requires Humility

Humility is a decision you make in your mind. You choose humility before God by recognizing His authority over you and desiring what He wants more than what you want. You know that you’ve made that decision when you are willing to trust in God’s goodness and accept His dealings with you as good without fighting Him on it.

Humility is the opposite of self-assertiveness and self-interest. It is not occupied with self at all. Humility recognizes God’s authority over you in every area of your life, including what you can and cannot do within His will in the local church.

Truth #3: Humility Leads to Obedience

What good is a servant who refuses to obey? Or is out there trumpeting herself and her own will, and occasionally remembering to do what Jesus wants? Or picking and choosing what she wants to obey?

We can know God’s will on a great many things. Humility before God means I’ve already got His authority settled in my mind. Now, I can obey Him in the rest of what He desires for my life to please Him. To adorn ourselves with godliness. And we see what that looks like in 1 Timothy and Titus.

Learn in quietness

When Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2:11 that women should learn in quietness and full submission, he was referring to humility and obedience.

God gave us women our gift of verbal communication. Someone said we need to use 20,000 words per day. That came from Him. He expects our use of words to honor Him and teach about Him.

But sometimes, He wants us to be quiet. That means to learn from others rather than babbling our own words. It means to hold our tongues and just be quiet. I know for myself, that I spend way too much time talking and not enough time listening. A lot of us women are like that.

3 specific situations for being “quiet”

In three specific situations in the New Testament, Christian women are instructed to be quiet.

In 1 Peter 3, a Christian woman who is married to a non-believer is to demonstrate Christ to her husband through her conduct rather than through her words. Devotion to God expressed in a life that pleases Him does not require talking.

In 1 Corinthians 14, wives in the church worship setting are instructed not to question their husbands during the church gathering. Just as in 1 Timothy 2, the purpose is to prevent disruption of the church worship gathering. In all three situations, the purpose for God’s command is to benefit others. It is not to demean women.

The same is true regarding God’s instructions to women in the church in 1 Timothy 2:12. Recognizing that God designed a man to learn spiritual teaching best from another man is humility. Obeying that command without fighting God on it is serving Christ. Once again, the purpose for God’s command is to benefit others. It is not to demean women. And get this. This command only applies to the local church. It has nothing to do with any other aspect of life in the community, government, education, or business.

Hindrances to obedience

What are some hindrances to our obedience?

One hindrance to obedience is a lack of understanding of God’s commands, especially the why. Biblical commands and guidelines are boundaries for us to be able to enjoy a satisfying and abundant life. Our humility before God will lead us to believe that. In God’s wisdom, He knows that a man will learn best in the spiritual realm when being taught by another man of God.

Another hindrance to obedience is selectively choosing what we will obey. That leads us to being what the Bible describes as weak-willed women, always learning but never able to recognize truth for what it really is (2 Timothy 3:7). Weak-willed means undisciplined. It’s like a child’s behavior, especially one who wants everything, even stuff that the parent says is not good and so refuses to trust the parent and obey. They are really weak-willed to do the right thing. For women, this would be choosing to take your own way for approaching life in spite of instruction or warnings that it will be destructive. What’s missing here? Humility. It’s declaring, “I’m part Jesus’ woman because I’m saved and going to heaven when I die, but the rest of me is my own!”

A third hindrance to obedience is not accepti8ng the ugliness of our sin. What happened to Jesus before and during His crucifixion is a picture of the ugliness of sin that He took upon Himself on that cross. Has anything in recent headlines just made you sick? Any time you choose not to obey God’s word on some issue—lying, envy, complaining, immorality—it’s as ugly in God’s sight as that heinous crime. Do you believe your cruel words when angry are as ugly as that worse thing? Or your constant worry? Or your rebellion against authority? Or living with a man who is not your husband? Or your lack of respect for the one who is your spouse? Maybe they don’t have the same consequences. But they’re just as ugly. Obedience is necessary to remain loyal to Jesus and live a life that pleases Him.

Humility is the decision you make in your mind that you are not God, that Jesus is your master, and you serve Him through obedience to Him. The rewards of being loyal to Jesus are immense and incomparable to anything the world can offer you. One of those rewards is protection.

Truth #4: Obedience Offers Protection

From false teachers

In Acts chapter 20, Paul met with the Ephesian church elders when he was on his way to Jerusalem. This would have been about 7 years before writing 1 Timothy. He warned his friends about what would surely happen to distract them from their loyalty to Jesus alone. This is what he told them,

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. … I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard!” (Acts 20:28-31)

His words reveal how obedience is necessary to protect yourself from those who distort the truth and draw you away from your loyal love of Jesus. Visualize what Paul is saying: savage wolves will attack from outside or from within the flock itself dressed in sheep’s clothing. Seven years later, it’s there. Distorted truth. False teachers in the church.

Read the blog, “2 Timothy 3:1-13 • Staying Faithful through Grasping Truth.“

From distorted truth

Here’s the key: When you have humbled yourself before Jesus as your master and chosen to obey His commands revealed to you in the Bible, you will be able to recognize truth from error, from anything that is distorted. But when you resist the discipline that comes from obedience, you’re vulnerable to embracing whatever new teaching that comes along as a fad or a cultural adaptation, and you cannot recognize the truth when you see it.

Distorted truth takes many forms and requires a lot more time to explore than we have here.. Beware of anything that promotes disobedience to God’s commands and robs you from the joy and benefits of loyalty to Jesus.

My “Healthy Living” articles cover common examples of distorted truth in our culture

Obedience offers protection. That is the crux of what is said in 1 Timothy 2:15—that very difficult verse to understand. At the end, it says this:

if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Timothy 2:15)

We may not fully know what it means, but we do know this. Women can choose to stay faithful to Jesus Christ as their protector and deliverer from false teaching, deception, and even their own selfish pursuits. He is faithful and will do it.

Conclusion

Loyalty affects how you adorn yourself with godliness or with all those other options out there that offer nothing lasting. Jesus as Lord deserves our loyalty. Loyalty requires humility. Humility leads to obedience. And obedience offers protection from being sucked into every wave of teaching that exalts the individual over God. I want what Jesus wants more than what I want. I will listen to other women who say the same thing. Christ Jesus is Lord over His Church and Lord over me and whatever He calls me to do in His name.

Have you already made that decision to say, “Lord Jesus, I am YOUR woman every day?” If not, will you do that today?

In the next post, we will see that a godly woman is worthy of respect.

Let Jesus satisfy your heart with such love for God that you will want to live a life that pleases Him.

All of the above information is covered in the Adorn Yourself with Godliness Bible Study covering 1 Timothy and Titus in the New Testament.

Other Resources