Titus 2 (Part 2) God’s Design for Women in the Church

 Titus 2:3-5

“Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.”

Older women are given specific ways to demonstrate their faith in the way God designed them. 

The idea of “an older woman” is someone who has walked with the Lord through different seasons of life. She has matured in her faith through years of living and has wisdom to offer those younger than her. She has spent her adult life studying the word of God, living to apply the Word of God to daily life. She is growing in Christlikeness to a point where she can be an example to others. 

This is a call to use our later years for God’s glory! Our American culture puts a lot of emphasis on “retirement” and the idea that after you’ve worked for years or raised a family, it’s time to just have fun -  travel, play golf or pickleball, lounge at the beach, or whatever the “fun” lifestyle is. God’s word doesn’t present that idea. 

If you would consider yourself an “older woman” - it’s not too late to become this! God is a Redeemer - He redeems or restores what has been broken and makes us New Creations in Him. He continues to grow us and change us all throughout life.

If you are a “younger woman” - one who is either a teen or in younger adult years - God calls you to maturity in these ways. God desires you to put yourself to the task of growing to be a woman who fears Him and lives out the principles of this passage.

The first instruction is to be reverent in behavior.

1. Reverent in behavior. 

The word reverent means “to become holy” - it is to live in a way that is “set apart” from the world and set apart for God.

Our words and actions should be honoring to the Lord. Just as the Proverbs 31 woman’s life is rooted in fearing God, Titus 2 calls us to make God the center of life. Our reverence, fear, awe, worship, love and trust must be in God. A reverent life comes from having a high view of God.

Behavior flows from the heart. This woman is first a woman who fears the Lord. She is confident in God’s character. She trusts God’s wisdom, goodness, power, grace, mercy, faithfulness, righteousness and everything else God is. She responds to life based on that trust. Her aim is to please God. Her behavior reflects a heart that trusts in God’s plan.

It’s not just the actions we take. We can say nice words, but if they come from the motive of getting our way, being liked or well thought of, the motive is still self centered. That doesn’t please God even if the word or action SEEMS good.

She doesn’t blend in with worldly living. She is set apart with God-honoring words and actions.

The rest of the descriptions add specific ways to do this.

Second, women are not to be slanderers.

2. Not slanderers

God is addressing a godly woman’s speech. Ladies, we can be very hurtful with our words. We will spend an entire week on words the last evening of class. Let’s focus on slander for now.

The Greek word means “accuse”. Older women are not to falsely accuse or say untrue things about other people. Webster’s dictionary says,  “the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation”. This word is used of Satan 34 times in the New Testament and sadly, we are guilty of this type of speech.

We can be quick to accuse our husbands or children of a bad motive in doing what they did.

We can be quick to assume that someone meant to slight us or intended something with ill will. We can accuse someone of being unhappy with us based on nothing more than a look.

We can be quick to make wrong assumptions about an attitude or the way something was said. We can be quick to make accusations about the tone of an email or text. 

I know I am guilty of this! God is calling us to not be quick to accuse others. We do not know other people’s hearts and motives. We are to assume the best of others (and we’ll talk about that in a minute!)

Not only should we not speak slander, we should not listen to it. We need to guard our hearts against listening to slanderous speech because we are responsible for what we allow our ears to hear. If someone is slandering someone to you, it may be helpful to ask, “would you say the same thing if that person were here right now?” or, “I’d rather hear directly from that person what happened.”