A woman's place is in the home, to me, doesn't sound right. A woman's responsibility is in the home. To say her place is in the home makes you think she just ought to sit there because that's where she belongs. No, that's where her duty and responsibility is. That's where her opportunity is to have the greatest impact on the world.
A woman doesn't impact the world by getting a briefcase and going downtown. She impacts the world by raising a godly generation of men and women. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Maybe you've heard that the Bible says a woman's place is in the home, but is that right? Is a woman really not supposed to have a life outside the confines of her own four walls? Today, John MacArthur shows you why it's more accurate to say a woman's responsibility is in the home.
Of course, even a phrase like that is sure to stir controversy, but would you expect anything less from a study that John has titled, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture? Now, to show you what younger women need to know from Scripture about their role, here is John MacArthur. We go again in our study of the book of Titus to chapter 2, and we're looking at verses 4 and 5. This is Paul's instruction to Titus for the young women of the church. Verse 4, encourage these young women, that is, train them in the matter of self-control to love their husbands.
That's one word, philandras, to be husband lovers. That's what it means in 1 Timothy 5, as we read, to be a one-man woman, totally devoted to your husband. Ephesians 5, 25 says, husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church.
That's the key. You love your wife like Christ loved the church. How did He love the church?
He loved the church when the church was sinful. He loves us when we aren't worthy of His love. He loves us sacrificially.
He loves us protectingly. That's how husbands are to love their wives, and that's how wives are to love their husbands. You're to be a husband lover. You're to love your husband. You say, you don't know my husband. I don't love my husband. My husband is not lovable. He has turned me off. I don't love him anymore. I don't care for him anymore. My response to you is, that is disobedience. That is disobedience to the clear Word of God. You are to love your husband. Listen, that doesn't mean that you're going to feel the rockets and hear the bells and whistles.
I read Newsweek magazine, in their edition they said that goes in about two years because of chemical changes. Isn't that amazing? Marriage isn't all rockets and bells and whistles. It's a contented commitment with an occasional light.
And maybe...and maybe a bell and a whistle now and then. It goes beyond that. It goes beyond that to a devotedness, to a level of friendship that runs deep and satisfying.
And I'll tell you how it works. If you don't love your husband, then you need to train yourself to love your husband. And the way you train yourself to love your husband is to continue to serve and serve and do every good thing and every kind thing and every gracious thing and every magnanimous thing and you will make such a massive investment in him, you will say, I've got too much in this guy not to love him.
It is a sin to disobey this command. It is a sacrificial love. It is not necessarily the love of emotion, it's the love of will and a deep commitment. That's where healthy relationships begin. It's the kind of love Philippians 2 talks about when it says, if there's any love, then do this, let no man look on the things of his own life but the things of others, let each esteem others better than himself. It's that sacrificial, humble, condescending, self-effacing love. Secondly, he says, teach these young women to love their children.
That's one word, philatechnos, to be children lovers...to be children lovers. Women, this is your highest calling, to raise godly children, 1 Timothy 2.15, we've been mentioning it all along. You will reverse the stigma of the curse by which women are stigmatized because a woman led the race into sin. You will be preserved from that stigma when you rear a godly generation.
That's your highest calling. Your greatest contribution comes in motherhood, that's generally true. Now let me hasten to say, there are some women that God wants to be single and they're the exception. He doesn't want them to be married. They have what the New Testament calls a gift of singleness. First Corinthians 7 says that women who are single should remain single. If they can do that, so should men because they can devote their whole life to Christ and not be encumbered by having to care for a life partner and a family and children and all of that.
I understand that. I understand what immense freedom a man could have if he wasn't married and didn't have children. Now God hasn't made me that way, obviously, but some are and some women are designed by God to be single for the kingdom's sake. And there are some women who are barren for the kingdom's sake, for God's divine purposes. There are some men who cannot produce children and therefore their wives will never bear children, God knows that. And in His purpose and His providence, that is a glorious and a complete and total fulfillment for that individual woman.
But those are the unique exceptions that God designs. And the general rule is that women bear children and love the children they bear. Certainly in ancient times this would even go for those women who know not bearing children would have adopted some of those children that the widows had scooped out of the marketplace and would therefore have the same responsibility for loving children who had been adopted. Obviously God doesn't want all women to be mothers, though they would be. God has designed some women to have the uniqueness of singleness and others not to have children for His own purpose. And we can thank God for what single women mean to the kingdom and we can thank God and I do daily for what women who have no children mean to the kingdom because God has given them freedom to serve in unique ways. But generally speaking, women are mothers and they are to bear children and in bearing children they have then the responsibility to love those children. That means to sacrifice their life on the children's behalf.
Again, the love is not an emotion, it's not standing in the corner gloating when your little child is all dressed up at how handsome or how beautiful she is. It is the responsibility of pouring your life sacrificially into that little life so that that child grows up to love Christ. Women are to be taught, according to verse 5, to be sensible, to have sound judgment, common sense, right thinking, right priorities, very basic. The older women come along and they teach the young women the common sense stuff of life, just the normal processes of knowing your priorities, thinking right, making sound judgment, applying wisdom. You know, and so many young women today don't understand this. Patricia and I have talked about this through the years, we can't imagine ever going to a marriage seminar, we can't imagine ever going to some kind of a child-raising seminar.
And people say, why can't you imagine that? And the reason is simply this, we were both raised in families where the biblical pattern was modeled. I'll tell you something that will shock you, I never in my lifetime have seen my father and mother argue.
It's hard to pick a fight with me. I've never seen my parents argue. I've seen a model of commitment to one another. I watched my parents raise children, my wife watched her parents raise children. Nobody needs to give me a book on how to do this, there's something built into the fabric of a home that becomes reproductive in the next generation.
And when that gets severed, you have a major problem of trying to undo the bad modeling and restructure the whole thing. That's why the Old Testament says where you have wickedness in the family, it takes three or four generations to turn it around. It's not easy and it's going to be a long time before it gets turned around in our own culture. But where we're living today in this society, it is desperately needed that some women come along and teach the young generation how to think right, what we think is common sense parenting. Then he says, teach the young women to be pure, hognos in Greek, chaste, morally pure, virtuous, sexually faithful to their husbands.
Teach them that they are devoted to one man and that's it, morally pure. 1 Peter 3, 3 says that women are not to adorn themselves merely on the external. It's fine to do a little work out there, we all appreciate it, but mostly...this is true, isn't it? But mostly, he says, don't be worried about braiding your hair and wearing gold jewelry and putting on dresses, but you worry about the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, precious in the sight of God for in this way in former times the holy women also used to adorn themselves. So if you want to be a holy woman, you work on the inside, and that's what he's saying. Teach women to be adorning their heart, teach women to be virtuous and godly on the inside. Back in 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 9 and 10, the same thing is said, women are not to adorn themselves in any way that would call attention to themselves, but they are to put on proper clothing modestly and discreetly, not with the braided hair and golden pearls and costly garments, but rather by means of good works as befits women making a claim to godliness. So if you're going to claim godliness and virtue and holiness and purity, it ought to show up on the outside. Those two words in 1 Timothy 2, modestly and discreetly, very interesting. Modestly means with a sense of shame, with a healthy blush, not shame that you're a woman, but a shame not shame that you're a woman, but a shame that you might cause someone to be distracted from worshiping God, or a shame that you might cause someone to look at you in lust. You want to have that kind of sense of shame, the thought of inciting lust or distracting someone from worshiping God. And the idea of discreetly is the same root again, sophra, and again it means controlling all your passions. Women who make a claim to godliness have their passions under control, they wouldn't do anything to excite lust, they wouldn't do anything to draw attention to themselves when God's people come together for worship.
Holy women have always conducted themselves that way, so Paul says, you teach the young women to be pure like that. And then he says, workers at home. And here's the one that gets all the heat nowadays, because women don't want to work at home.
Women don't want to be workers at home. Why? Because Satan sells the system on that.
Why? Because it's anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-Bible, and it devastates the testimony of the church. The word workers at home, one word in the Greek, oikorgos, from two root words, ergon, which means work, and oikos, which means house, it's simply the sphere of a woman's life is her home, that's her domain. It doesn't mean she has to be there 24 hours a day and can never leave.
What it does...I'm not saying that because you don't want to lock her up with soap operas either. But what it does mean is that is the sphere of her life. That is her domain. It is not that she is simply to be home, but that the home is her sphere. The woman in Proverbs 31 left home when she needed to to buy a field. She left home to prepare that field. She left home and went afar to find things that would help the family. The woman did what she needed to do, but the focus of everything was the home. And that's where she poured her life and she got up early and she went to bed late for the sake of the home. She used to be a homekeeper. That's the sphere of her responsibility. That's her place of employment.
That's where she should pour her life. For a mother to get a job outside the home and send the children to some kind of daycare place is to shirk her God-given responsibility. It also is failure to understand that her husband is to be the provider, as Ephesians 5 makes very clear.
Even if you wanted to work outside the home to pay for your children to go to a Christian school, you made a big mistake. Better that you should stay in the home and raise your own children to be godly than to pass it on to somebody else. Now we know today that there are a lot of wonderful things that we have in the home that ancient people didn't have. I mean, you're not in there with some kind of stone pot beating out the grain to make flour, and you're not down at the creeks slapping your clothes on a rock.
We know that. And you're not spinning thread so that you can sew fabric, make fabric so you can sew garments, so we know you have more time. You need to be very careful how you use that time discreetly. You do have more time and there may be things outside the home you can do that will assist the home, that will assist others, that may even be enterprising like the Proverbs 31 woman and bring in a little bit of income. But any of those kind of things that you do, the home remains the constant and ongoing priority.
Everything focuses on that. When your children are grown and gone, or if God doesn't give you any children, you have a certain freedom. But even then, in what you choose to do outside the home, you don't lose the responsibility for the home. You may be able to care for your home. And because you have no children, still do some things outside. Your home may still be a haven for your husband.
It may be a place where you can show hospitality. You may have opportunity to wash the saints' feet and do every good work. And still do something outside the home, something noble. I always think it's wonderful when women work in Christian ministry when they don't have children at home, or when they teach little ones in school, or when they're involved in a Christian mission enterprise, or when they are involved in ministering to people in jail, or when they work in a hospital, or with doctors and those who help people. But you need to be careful, even in doing that, that you don't get yourself in a position where you are tempted. Because we all know, and the statistics are very clear on this, women who work outside the home have an exponential number of marital, intermarital affairs when compared with women who are in the home because of exposure, temptation. Plus they find themselves not being subject to their own husbands, but subject to somebody else's husbands. You must make wise choices. If you're going to take the freedom that you have in terms of time because your children are grown, because you can care for that home because of conveniences, and choose where it is you're going to use your gifts and talents and abilities, and women have them to teach and lead and administrate and coordinate and serve and help and give and all of that, just like all of the gifts that are mentioned in the New Testament, you must choose wisely so you don't compromise yourself in any way.
But your place is the home. It's also tragic to realize that many women want nothing more than that, and they have an unfaithful husband who leaves them. They're stuck, aren't they, with children, no source of income, and forced in many cases to work outside the home to support the family.
That's not right. 1 Timothy 5 makes it very clear, number one, other men in the extended family should care for that woman so she doesn't have to do that. They've already lost a father, now you're going to make them lose a mother, those little ones? If there's no other men in it, then it says in 1 Timothy 5, some other women ought to come to her aid, and if there are no women to do that, then the church ought to take care of her.
But churches aren't even willing to do that. We've been involved in doing that for years at Grace Church where we have widows, or where we have single women whose husbands have been divorced, or in some cases where we have women with little children whose husbands are serving long prison sentences, even life imprisonment. They lost a father, should they lose a mother? The family, if you have some woman like that in your family, you need to support that woman.
And if there's no one there, the church can come alongside and we do much counseling in that area. But a woman's place is in the home only says half of it. A woman's place is in the home to me doesn't sound right. A woman's responsibility is in the home. To say her place is in the home makes you think she just ought to sit there because that's where she belongs. No, that's where her duty and responsibility is, that's where her opportunity is to have the greatest impact on the world.
A woman doesn't impact the world by getting a briefcase and going downtown, she impacts the world by raising a godly generation of men and women. Obviously this is very simple, direct teaching and we know how to respond to it. At the same time there are questions and I know they can come up in your heart. You say, well, you know, what if I have an opportunity to be gone two hours in the morning, or three hours, or what if I can go to the Christian school and help there for a few hours? The answer to all of that is, if it does not impact your home, if it enhances and enriches the life in the home, if it accomplishes all the spiritual goals, then that's between you and the Lord and your husband and your family to work those things out. You understand the plan and the pattern that God has laid out.
The specifics of how it fleshes out in your home are for you and the Lord and your family to work out. But what grieves me is this massive onslaught that says we've got to stamp out this whole idea of women staying at home. And if you don't think that's it, listen to the agenda. Vivian Gornick, feminist author, University of Illinois, being a housewife is an illegitimate profession.
That's the whole thrust. The choice to serve and be protected and plan toward being a family maker is a choice that shouldn't be. And then she says, the heart of radical feminism is to change that. Why do they care? You tell me, why does some feminist woman care whether you're a homemaker?
Why does she care? I'll tell you why, because her agenda isn't her agenda. It's the agenda of the enemy. It is an anti-God agenda intended to destroy the credibility of the church because if you can get women who claim to be Christians to abandon the home, then you can pick up a Bible and stick it in their face and say, you say you believe this, I don't think so. Therefore, it must not be believable because you know what it says and you're not interested in believing it and you claim to be a Christian. The agenda is not...they don't care, they don't know what they're doing, but they don't care really whether you work.
Satan cares to discredit the Bible, that's the issue. That's the level of the attack. See it for what it is and don't become victimized. The home is where a woman provides the expressions of love for her husband and her children. The home is where she leads and guides and teaches and raises the godly generation. The home is where she is protected and secured from other men and potentially wicked relationships and abuses. The home is where she lodges strangers, washes saints' feet, shows hospitality and devotes herself to every good work.
That's her sphere. And whatever of that home and whatever of the goodness of her life she can take outside and not sacrifice, the home is between her and the Lord and her husband. Proverbs 7-11 gives a definition of a prostitute. This is what it says, she is boisterous and rebellious, her feet do not remain at home. She's not content to be at home.
She's not content with that domain with that man, she wants to explore other options. People today say, oh, a woman must work. She has to work to fulfill herself. That is ridiculous.
That is not true. Her place that God has designed her to express herself most magnanimously is in the home for her family and friends and those in need. Then it says, and this is wonderful in verse 5, she should be kind. She should be kind.
What needs to be said about that? Gentle, tenderhearted, merciful, thoughtful. And then lastly, being subject to their own husbands, not somebody else's husband but their own. That's an echo of Ephesians 5 22, subject to their own husbands. A woman doesn't know how to bow her knee to God until she learns how to bow her knee to her husband. It doesn't mean a servile way, it simply means that she submits as God has designed the order.
God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, 1 Corinthians 11 says, and the man is the head of the woman, subject to her own husband. I worry about women who get out and get under powerful male-dominated environments. I worry about that because a woman responds and a woman can be easily abused. I understand why all of this hue and cry of sexual harassment is going on, though it is way beyond any kind of rational approach, though it is way out of whack, and though it's only another way for the feminists to achieve their agenda, it is nonetheless true that women in a male-dominated place are going to get abused. There's no question about it. They're going to get exposed at best to innuendo, at worst to sexual involvement.
Women needs the protection, the saving sense of protection that a husband in a home provides. And all of that so that the Word of God may not be dishonored. It isn't so much for you, it's for God's Word so that it will not be blasphemed. The honor of Scripture is at stake. And as I said at the beginning, an unbeliever can read this text and know whether we're obeying it. I mean, what do you...what do you think the unbeliever thinks of current Christianity? If he knows anything about the Bible, he'd have to say, well Christians certainly aren't serious about the Bible.
It's really amazing. Charles Haddon Spurgeon made this tribute to his wife. She delights in her husband, in his person, his character, his affection. To her he is not only the chief and foremost of mankind, but in her eyes he is all in all. Her heart's love belongs to him and to him only. He is her little world, her paradise, her choice treasure. She is glad to sink her individuality in him.
She seeks no renown for herself. His honor is reflected upon her and she rejoices in it. She will defend his name with her dying breath. Safe enough is he where she can speak for him. His smiling gratitude is all the reward she seeks.
Even in her dress she thinks of him and considers nothing beautiful which is distasteful to him. He has many objects in life, some of which she does not quite understand, but she believes them all and anything she can do to promote them she delights to perform. Such a wife as a true spouse realizes the model marriage relation and sets forth what our oneness with the Lord ought to be. Well what a joy to be married to someone like that. And you wonder why he was the man of God that he was?
He had some tremendous support. And so it is that God has said, you want your church powerful in the world? This is how you are to live. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current series here on Grace to You is called Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. John, your first point today was about wives having a self-denying love for their husbands. And of course, submitting to a husband who loves his wife like Christ loves the church, that's one thing. But when a Christian woman has an unbelieving husband, that can be tough. Speak to that woman, John. How can she avoid bitterness and resentment that might come with submitting to an unbeliever for years or even for decades?
Well that is a common situation for many women. It's not something that the Bible doesn't understand and acknowledge. In Scripture, the Bible says that a woman can win her husband by her godliness, by her virtue.
I mean, that's what you have going for you. If you're a believing wife, you know the Lord, you love the Lord, and you live a godly life, including submitting to a husband who is not a Christian, you're communicating to him what God has asked of you. You're putting your virtue on display at the purest level, the spiritual level. It may be tough. It can be very difficult sometimes. But the one thing a woman doesn't want to do, if she's a believer and her husband is not, is rebel. Being able to humble yourself, to find that ability to deny certain things for the sake of winning your husband by your godliness and by your virtue is the objective and the goal that you have to strive for. You want to be everything that God wants you to be as a wife, even when your husband is not what he should be. And Scripture says by that you may win your husband because you have shown him the power of the gospel to transform your life.
And perhaps he'll invite that same gospel power to become his through faith in Christ. Thanks John. And friend, to study the issue of submission in marriage more deeply, I encourage you to request John's booklet, Mutual Submission in Marriage. For a limited time, we'll send you a copy free of charge. Just ask for it when you contact us today.
You can call us here at 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, GTY.org. Mutual Submission in Marriage looks at how your marriage can honor the Lord and lead to a blessed and fruitful married life. It answers questions like, what does God expect from husbands and wives? What does it mean to be subject to one another? And how does God's word define marriage?
Again, Mutual Submission in Marriage is free for the asking. Just call us here at 800-55-GRACE or go to the website GTY.org. And while you're at GTY.org, be sure to take advantage of the thousands of other free resources available for you. You can read the Grace to You blog and daily devotionals, you can download any of John's more than 3600 sermons, and much more.
All of that is free at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and join us tomorrow when John shows you God's plan for younger men that is truly revolutionary in a dark culture. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
