Cheryl

Charis,

Thank you for your kind words!

It is always good to talk about different interpretations and how they fit in the context. I agree with what you said that women often are guilty of putting their husband over and above Christ. And we all (men and women) can have our minds corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Regarding your thoughts about “a woman” as being all women who can be restored to the garden intimacy with Christ, this view has some problems.

You said:

“She (Eve/woman) will be saved (restored) through bearing the child if they (women) continue in…
How could it mean Christian “salvation” because it is dependant upon “they”?”

The fact is that good hermeneutics requires us to check out the meaning for “saved” to see how Paul has used this elsewhere. Paul never ever used this word in his epistles to mean anything else but biblical salvation. We may be confused about what he is actually saying in verse 15, but we still have to be consistent.

The basic meaning of the verb sozo is to rescue from peril, to protect, keep alive. Sozo involves the preservation of life, either physical or spiritual. There are two clues that Paul meant spiritual salvation. The first clue is that he does not use this word in any other way in his epistles. The second clue is that he ties it in with “the childbearing”. It is a definite noun. What one child is tied in with salvation? The only answer we can give is the Christ child. Now if we make “a woman” to be all women, then we actually have Paul prescribing a different method of salvation for women in general and that isn’t consistent with scripture.

However if we have Paul prescribing a way for a particular deceived woman to become “deprogrammed” from her deception (he commanded Timothy to let her learn) so that she will be in a place to continue on in the true faith, then it makes sense. Think about it this way – what would you say that a deceived person needs to do to be saved? You could tell them that they need to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus, but how does a deceived person do that if they have the wrong Jesus, the wrong gospel and the wrong spirit? (2 Corinthians 11:3,4) The answer is that they need to learn the truth. They need to sit in submission to good godly teaching of correct biblical doctrine so that they can unravel the error. Then and only then will they be in a position to know the truth and be saved.

Maybe it just makes so much sense to me because I have been actively involved in helping Jehovah’s Witnesses come to faith in Christ for 16 years in a support group setting. They needed to have their false doctrine unraveled before they could accept the truth. When their eyes started popping open by what they were seeing in scripture, it was very rewarding to me to teach them about Jesus.

Does this make sense at all? And by the way, I believe that you are here because you asked Jesus to teach you. You are on the right road, but there is more for you to learn. Each word in this passage is important and we need to understand who the “she” is without confusing the “she” with the “they” before we can fully understand this passage.