Let’s read a bit from Titus once again:

The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sensible, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. (Titus 2:3-5 KJ2000) 

Paul very specifically ties blasphemy of the Word of God to the actions of women, not to men.  Doesn’t this seem strange in light of the fact that he also places women in a subservient role to men in the order of nature?  Yes, until we understand why, and once again I have to give credit for this revelation to my own wife.  In the order of creation men represent God the Father while women represent Christ Jesus Himself.  The Bible teaches that the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus, that he was fully God and fully man.  Yet the Word also says that Jesus did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.  How can this be when further study of the Scripture also shows that Jesus in fact IS the Jehovah of the Old Testament?  Because Jesus came to demonstrate life as a son of God.  The first command with a promise is to “honor your Mother and your Father.”  Jesus showed us how to do this.

Many chafe at the idea that a woman should be obedient to her husband.  We live in a feminist, evil age.  The ideals of feminism have brought many horrors to the world, not the least of which have been the destruction of the nuclear family in western societies and abortion on demand.  (But, I do not blame women alone.  Men allowed it to happen by accepting “liberal, advanced, and progressive” thinking.)  Many who desire to see women do all things men do point to Scripture and rightly point out that Paul also teaches that in Christ no distinction exists between male and female, etc.  Others go on to accurately teach that God Himself consists of both male and female attributes and that Adam, when first created, existed, like God, as both male and female.  True, true.  But, the plan of God included Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the subsequent judgment of God that placed Eve under Adam’s authority.  None of this happened by mistake or because God was caught off-guard by mankind’s sin.  God created man with the ability to sin.  To have done otherwise would have been to create nothing more than a machine that could only do what God programmed it to do, even if those things were only “good” things.  To understand the Word and God’s purposes, we must always remember that God created man in His image and that His goal was to create a being like Himself.

This brings us back to the pattern of women in God’s creation.  Woman is no less important, no less worthy, than man.  To say so would be to say that Jesus is less important, less worthy, than his Father.  No, the pattern of woman is that she fulfill the role of Jesus in creation.  Like Jesus, she is called to willingly lay down her life for others, her children and her husband.  When she does this of her own free will she shows the world Jesus Christ in the flesh.  (By the way, this is the coming of Jesus in the flesh that John tells us identifies the believer in 1 John).  Woman’s calling is very high indeed.  And it is because women en mass have rebelled against this high calling that the Word of God is blasphemed today.