Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing. — The last words are more accurately and forcibly rendered — through the childbearing. With that tender and winning courtesy to which, no doubt, humanly speaking, the great missionary owes so much of his vast influence over human hearts, St. Paul, now anxious lest he had wounded with his severe words and stern precepts his Ephesian sisters in Christ, closes his charge to women with a few touching words, bright with the glorious promise they contained. Though their life duties must be different from those of men — yet for them, too, as for men, there was one glorious goal; but for them — the women of Christ — the only road to the goal was the faithful, true carrying out of the quiet home duties he had just sketched out for them. In other words, women will win the great salvation; but if they would win it, they must fulfil their destiny; they must acquiesce in all the conditions of a woman’s life — in the forefront of which St. Paul places the all-important functions and duties of a mother.
This is apparently the obvious meaning of the Apostle’s words — all this lies on the surface — but beneath all this the reverent reader can hardly fail to see another and deeper reference (the presence of the article, “through the childbearing,” gives us the clue) — “she shall be saved by THE childbearing” (the Incarnation) by the relation in which woman stood to the Messiah, in consequence of the primal prophecy that her seed (not man’s) should bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), the peculiar function of her sex, from its relation to her Saviour, “shall be the medium of her salvation.” (See Bishop Ellicott, in loco.)
If they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. — But let no one think that the true saintly woman, painted with such matchless skill by St. Paul, satisfies the conditions of her life by merely fulfilling the duties of a mother.
She must besides, if she would win her crown, hold fast to the Master’s well-known teaching, which enjoins on all His own disciples, men as well as women, faith and love, holiness and modesty. The last word, “modesty,” or discretion, or sobriety (all poor renderings of the Greek sophrosune, which includes, besides, the idea of a fight with and a victory over self), brings back the thoughts to the beautiful Pauline conception of a true woman, who wins her sweet and weighty power in the world by self-effacement.