How do we recover biblical womanhood in an age shaped by feminism, confusion, and the neglect of the home? Hosts Scott Brown and Jason Dohm are joined by Pastor Justin Miller in answering this question as they discuss the high calling of the Titus 2 woman — a mature Christian woman devoted to loving her husband, loving her children, and building a Christ-centered home. The solution is not complicated: rather than bow to feminism’s empty lies, godly older women must disciple younger women in their calling, and families must raise daughters with a joyful, robust vision for biblical womanhood. 

Thanks for checking out the podcast. Just a quick reminder, not to use this as a replacement for the good pastoral leadership and teaching in your local church, but really just an encouragement for quiet faithfulness through the sufficiency of Scripture. Of Scripture. Jason, pretty much everywhere we go, we hear the same thing. I don't have a Titus II woman in my life.

Yeah, they're not growing on trees, but they're very precious when you have them. Yeah, and what happened? Well, the feminist poison was drunk, and women fled into the workforce. And they didn't raise their children. And their children weren't raised by Titus II women.

So just to take a second to define the term a Titus II woman is a mature Christian woman who has given her life to the exhortations of Titus II, loving your husband, loving your children, keeping your home. There's I forget how long the list is. Well, let's let me read the text. Yeah. Yeah, the older women teach the younger women specific things Here's how it goes the older women likewise that they be reverent in behavior not slanderers not given to wine Teachers of good things.

In other words young women need be taught that they admonish the young women by the way the word admonish has to do with almost like a like a slap in the face like you know sober up honey you know look here's reality that they admonish the young women to love their husbands to love their children to be discreet chased homemakers good obedient to their own husbands that the Word of God may not be blasphemed. The significance is stated right here, the purpose so that the Word of God is not blasphemed because when women don't do this there are things that happen that cause the Word of God to be blasphemed. So we are going to talk with Justin Miller who is the pastor at First Baptist Church in Puxico, Missouri. Hey, great to see you, man. It's great to see you both, brothers, and it's great to be back with you both.

Yeah, we loved your book on against gentle parenting. And so now we're gonna talk about the Titus II woman. Also, by the way, before we get into this, we just published a book called What Is a Family? A Catechism for Diagnosing and restoring the Christian home. It's 201 questions that really nail the doctrine of the family and a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about ends up getting contained in here.

And then also theology of the family, you know, this is really a signature resource that we have, we've had for many many years, just have a new edition of it that really tries to build out the doctrine of the family. Really, 500 years of biblical wisdom from the older writers. It's better to go back to the older writers than the newer writers. We're not the first ones to think about these things. Yeah.

So this really is a gold mine of culture changing wisdom for not just older women, but older men and younger men and younger women. The passage addresses all that. So Justin, you know, what are your initial thoughts about this passage just sort of globally? Yeah, so you know the Titus II thing that I hear everywhere is the same thing you mentioned in the very beginning. I don't have a Titus II woman to disciple me.

I hear that a lot when I go and preach in various places or do seminars in various contexts. A lot of young ladies who are looking for mentorship, guidance, all those sort of things, they'll make that comment. And I don't think that it's an easy solution. I think it's going to be generational in the sense that as faithful pastors, faithful churches preach the Word, are unafraid to say the hard truths, unafraid to say the most difficult in our cultural lenses, things that as the people of God are conformed, as they're built up, as they're strengthened, as they understand what the Bible says about the role of the woman, the role of the man, and those sort of things. Generationally, I think this will, and we're starting to see it in our church.

We have a group of ladies who just want to give themselves to caring for their children, loving their husband. They see the whole commission piece in Genesis chapter 2 where Adam and Eve were part of the same direction. Adam is commissioned to cultivate the garden, to guard the garden. He had a mission in the covenant of works and she is a helpmate to him. This is pretty false stuff.

And they're going the same direction. And where it falls apart is in Genesis 3 where she's addressed, he forgoes his leadership, and her role is the helpmate, and it really crumbles. And so We're seeing a lot of ladies not see that she has a job and he has a job, but they have a family they're building together, children that she wants to invest in, a husband that she wants to see love Christ more fervently and faithfully. And so I'm excited about the future with a lot of younger women who are being raised up in the church, hearing the truths, and want to love their families well. Yeah, and what's happening is that there is a generation that's overturning the last 150 years of feminism that really destroyed the family.

And the problem is that, you know, even pastors have ignored this passage of scripture because it's too countercultural. Secondly, and they misrepresent it because they themselves drank a little bit too much of the feminist brew. But feminism was the suicide pill without question. That's why John MacArthur, in his commentary on Titus, he says there's no biblical standard more viciously attacked today than this passage. No passage is more ridiculed or and reinterpreted by assailants within the church than these two verses.

So I think, you know, there's been a war against this kind of lifestyle and pastors have been accomplices to it. Here's something Paul says in Colossians 2.8. He says, don't be cheated. Don't be cheated by the basic principles of the world. Don't be cheated by philosophy.

And I think one of the things we want to stick in our chest and say is to young ladies especially, don't allow yourself to be cheated by the modern spirit of the age. You could wake up one day with so many regrets having not given yourselves to the things that are the sweetest things and the most needed things. One of the things that I wanted to say, especially to young women, is what a high calling this is and what a hard calling it is. A high calling, you're being called to something great, you're being called to something tremendously valuable, but a very hard calling in two ways. The first way is it's difficult.

Do you think a healthy home that God is describing in His Word is easy? Do you think they just spring up out of the ground? No, you actually need a gifted, mature, believing woman to do it with her life. It's a full-time effort for someone with a lot of gifts and with a lot of believing maturity. And they don't just spring up out of the ground.

So it's difficult in that way, but it's also difficult, Scott you already mentioned this, how countercultural it is. The majority opinion is that you have to leave your gifts on the table in order to do this little thing that the Bible says you should do. And we just want to contradict that with all our might. If you go try to do this hard thing, it'll take every gift that God has given you, and you'll have to use it within the boundaries of Christian maturity to pull it off. And the problem with this is it doesn't go viral because it happens in the quietness of a home.

Nobody sees it, but they will see the results. They will see whether the Word of God is going to be blasphemed as a result of it. But this this kind of life happens quietly. It happens in the really the confines of your own home and the world. The world doesn't even see what you do.

There you are, you're raising your children, you're loving your husband, you know, these things, you know, people will only see vestiges of it. I mean even, I just was thinking about for my own life, you know, how does anybody look at my life and know how I'm loving my wife? Well, most people don't know how I'm loving my wife because they're not there. They see me in public, you know, they see me show affection to her, they see me joke around with her and tease her and things like that. I mean, I think that she knows that I like her.

Yeah. But they don't. For those watching, she can hold her own. She can hold her own. Don't worry about Debra.

Worry about Scott. She's very nice to me. But yeah, these admonitions that older women are supposed to bring to younger women are characterized by seven points. Some say they're six, but we'll call them seven things that older women should teach the younger women. And I like what you said, Justin.

It took 150 years to dig this hole. It's gonna take a couple generations. It doesn't happen overnight. I mean, you can have women who are converted, their lives completely change, and they can make tremendous progress in this. They can even be late to the game.

But the thing is, those older women are going to have to teach younger women, they're going to have to raise their daughters. And frankly, you know what? In our churches, Jason, we're seeing them. We're seeing these daughters coming up. We don't have a lot of silly 13 and 16 year old girls in our churches because they're actually have been raised by their mothers and their fathers, not other 13 year olds.

So let's crank through this list of what the older women or teach the younger women first to be a lover of your husband, to love your husband. So what does that look like in everyday life? You guys are husbands. I think it means, if you define love biblically as an unconditional commitment to another's good, I think loving your husband is you're unconditionally committed to His greatest good, which is first and primarily His walk with Christ. I hope on the day of judgment I'll be able to look towards my wife and say I was a better follower of Christ because of her encouragement, because of her words of affirmation, because of her devotion.

And so loving your husband, I think primarily on the forefront is working for his good spiritually, praying for him, praying for your children, those sort of things, you know, husband children. And then same mission. Adam and Eve fall apart because they are diverted. They're both going the same direction in Genesis 2, and then they begin to go different directions in Genesis 3, and of course you have a crumble. And so she's on the same mission with her husband and she's managing things to where he's free to function and do all that he's gifted to do.

I think it's interesting when you look at some of the great saints of old like Martin Luther, he talks a lot about Katie and how she manages the home and how she handles the things and how he's freed to then give his life to prayer, study, preaching, writing, and those sort of things. I think a godly woman frees her husband to pursue all the things for the glory of God, to build a strong home, to provide, and those sort of matters. So spiritually, you have her encouraging, strengthening him. And again, Matthew 18 is real in the home too. It doesn't mean she's a doormat, but she sees him as a sin, but she does it in a respectful, gentle, kind manner, approach your husband when he's erring and going away from truth in a way that he wants to, he wants to heed her.

So you didn't say anything about romance. How does this view of love fit in with this romanticized, emotionalized version of Hollywood love that we see floating around? Well, thankfully we don't have to choose between the two. A romantic love is real, it's part of Christian marital love, but it's a subset. So the world has pretty much skinned it down to that being the sum total.

But Christians don't. For Christians it's a piece of the pie, but certainly not the whole pie. You know, any husband that's been married for decades and has been loved well by his wife, is it easy out there or tough out there? It's tough out there. We're living in the post fall world.

How many times would you have quit or not wanted to keep going if you didn't have the persistent love of someone who you respected more than anyone, which that's your spouse? Ladies, It's so important to your husbands to love them, your persistent love of them helps them keep going and keep making progress in the faith. I was asked after church recently, how does a wife love her husband? And I said, well, first of all, it's really clear that we need to be taught how to love. That's why the Titus to woman is a teacher.

She's teaching her children, her younger, the younger ladies, how to love. In other words, you have to be taught how love doesn't come naturally. You know, hatred comes naturally. Love doesn't come naturally, not as naturally. And so what does that mean?

And my answer was, well, she needs to be taught what love looks like in the Word of God. And the Bible is full of, I'm just gonna call them the laws of love, the commands that describe love. You can go to 1 Corinthians 13. You can go to the fruit of the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is, first of all, love, and it's a lot of other things.

A wife loves her husband in 1 Corinthians 7 by giving what she owes to him in affection. He does the same thing. He owes her affection. He's talking about the sexual relationship. So there are many ways that we learn how to love, because love is learning how to do the things that are pleasing to God.

And there is affection mixed, like as you said, Jason, it's not an affection-free love. You're not just doing duties, but the duties actually create love, create feelings of love. Yeah, if I could jump in, brothers, we tell our church members and particularly in marriage counseling that a wife can build her home or destroy it. That's Proverbs. There's something about when you come home and you've, I remember there was a rough season of ministry.

We were really going through here and I was coming home and just a straw, I wanted to quit. You just want to quit. You want to hang it up and do something else. You want to drive the proverbial red truck. And my wife, she looked at me in the eyes and she said, the Lord has placed us here.

We're going to stay and stand. And I'm so proud of your faithfulness. I was ready to run through a wall after that. There's something about my wife and how she was there with me and that she loved me and that she was encouraging me that I was ready just to go back out there and wage war for the kingdom. All this ties into Proverbs 31 and Proverbs 31.

The husband of that Proverbs 31 woman is contending in the gates. Where do you find the husband? You find him in the community wielding influence on behalf of his family in the places where decisions and communities are made. Because his energies overwhelmingly aren't needed at home for most of the day because that's so well managed. So this first command to be a husband lover, to be a lover of your husband.

And then the second is to be a lover of your children, to be a child lover. And this again, I mean, this needs to be taught. Of course, you know, every mother and father, when their children are born, they love those children. It's hard to find people who don't love their children, except in our society, who abort their children. But you don't find this in Christian families where people don't really love their children.

But I think love for children also needs to be taught as well. And so let's talk about that. You know, how do you teach a... How does an older woman teach a younger woman to love her, to love their children. That's the point of a grey-headed woman who has been through it and kind of learned it at ground level.

She can put a young mother years ahead because she's actually seen and done and can make it so that a young mother doesn't have to learn everything trial and error. You know, our own wives learn from some older women to do some pretty helpful things. It's really, really good. When you think about what wisdom is, it's truth skillfully applied, right? And so it's when these ladies know what the Bible says concerning what it means to raise their children, the aim of parenting, which is to raise children to glorify God and enjoy him, the means of parenting, willing the word, discipline, teaching, warning, And even the root problem of the child, which is sin and its manifestations, women who have actually engaged in those things and for those aims have come to the pitfalls of the roadblocks and have learned how to skillfully apply the word of God have much to say to younger women in this.

And we're finding those women in our church who have done that, young ladies seek them out because they come across situations like my child is doing this. I want to address in a way that they will get and see God's glory and their need for Christ and their sin and its consequence. How do you engage? And they will seek those women out who've skillfully learned to apply truth and have done it. And even they were trying to do it.

Cheryl Pitt follows as they strove and repented and kept going. Yeah, yeah. And then this third one, to be self-controlled after to be a lover of your children. Let's just talk about that here. I mean, I think that this has to do with personal discipline and it also has to do with management of emotions.

How else would you talk about that? Well homes definitely reflect it. The home in many ways is a reflection of what the mom who's spending most of the hours managing the home, in the context that we're talking about, it reflects her. So a self-controlled woman is producing an orderly lovely home. Yeah.

And then he turns to pure. The fourth is to be pure. In other words, to set her mind on whatever's true, whatever's lovely, whatever's of good report, you know, let your mind dwell on those things. And then, one of the more controversial statements here is to be keepers at home or to be homemakers. The whole idea is that she's a home builder.

She's building her home. That's her focus. What does being a homemaker mean, really? I think it means managing the home in such a way that the husband is freed to go out, as Pastor Jason said earlier, and really go out to the gate, go out to the community, go out to engage on behalf of the family. And so it's taking care of the things with the table, the food, the reality of all the fixtures in the home and making it a place of joy and peace that the husband is ready to come home to and take off his armor and relax before he goes back out into the world.

Because the Christian man is called to strive and fight and be faithful. I love what Paul Washer says. He always comes home, he told his kids, and said he slays dragons, he fights dragons, and of course, you know, he was using that imagery about fighting dragons, and his kids were really engaged with it and he described his job as fighting dragons and that they would have to believe him. But in some sense, every Christian man is doing that. We are in a spiritual battle, Ephesians 6.

We don't wrestle with flesh and blood, but principalities of darkness. When you have a home that's a refuge and the wife managed the home well and the husband is excited to go home and see his wife and his children and to really engage there, it's a happy place. Yeah, the real question I think is what is a biblical home and how do you get there? A biblical home is a great commission outpost. A biblical home is a refuge for the members of that home.

That means the husband and the children and the wife too, but the wife is actually creating that environment. And like I said earlier, it's not easy to do. These don't grow on trees and there's a reason because it's hard and it takes the full commitment of a gifted, mature, believing woman. And so when you think, we could list a bunch of other things of what a biblical home is, but how do you get there? Well, you'll get further towards the biblical target with a gifted, mature, believing woman who focuses her energies there.

It's worthy of a life's commitment. I've heard my own wife say this to a young mom in our church, what we've done is really hard, but if we could go back in the beginning, we wouldn't even think of making another decision. We're so glad we did what we did. And we want to say that. Those of us who are closer to the finish line than the starting line will say, we're glad we did what we did, which is so important.

Yeah. Well, just to wind it up, we need more Titus II women. How do we get them? We get them one generation at a time. We get them through local church life, through preaching, and we get them through actually preaching the passages of scripture that create this kind of a culture in the church and There there does seem to be a rising number of Titus to women among the kind of churches we're part of that's really thrilling and I I'm told all the time that our church is very very different than the other churches that people visit.

And a lot of that has to do with we have had women who have sought to be this kind of woman. I praise God for them. They are oaks of righteousness. Yeah. A parting shot.

Parting shot. Young ladies, if this is something that you can't aspire to, then I just want to say you don't understand what God is calling you to yet. Once you understand what God is calling you to, you'll see it is a high calling, though it's a hard calling, to be aspired to. And when you get there, if you understand it, you'll be able to rejoice in it. Don't worry that your gifts will be wasted on this.

You'll need every single gift God has given you to do this. Amen. Amen to that. OK, well, thank you guys. And thank you, Justin, for joining us.

I hope you have a great rest of the day out there in the great state of Missouri. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us. See you, brother. Okay.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We hope you can be with us next time. See you then. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com