27. Cultivating the Nature of Femininity While Young (Titus 2:4-5)

On the sixth day, the eternally relational, triune God made masculinity and femininity to differ in the ways they reflect His likeness: 

• Masculinity glorifies God by leveraging strength in worshipful leadership and service of the weak. 

• Femininity glorifies God by loving his people with contentment under headship. 

Both postures reflect actions, attributes, and ways of relating found within the Godhead. In step with this created order, Paul’s letter to Titus prescribed the teachings of godliness to the Cretan churches, according to the truth of the gospel, with a few male and female distinctions. Titus 2:4-5 focuses on the training of younger women in the church to value and fulfill their God-given feminine actions, attributes, and relational outlook.

Before examining the content of the training, it is important to note that if older women are to teach, then younger women must look and listen to them with humility. A young woman need not wait for or expect an older woman to choose and mentor her. Life in the local church provides a ready training ground for the astute woman. I am privileged to know this because God has placed women in my church who have more years of experience working out their faith in various trials. As a woman in my twenties, my pride tempts me to settle for my own experience with God, and to be seen as “wise beyond my years.” My contempt for the natural order of God’s slow, time-bound transforming work would rob me of learning from the nuanced ways that He has refined those older women. While my youth by no means disqualifies me from knowing God and walking with Him closely, I need to be ready to receive the training of Godly older women.

Paul named six ways that younger women in the church can be trained to uniquely glorify God by thriving with contentment under headship. 

Younger women can cultivate godly femininity…

1. In Love.

2. In Self-control.

3. In Purity.

4. In Work.

5. In Kindness.

6. In Submission.

In love.

All believers have a privileged calling to apply the love of Christ to the church by encouraging, comforting, and “looking to the interests” of one another (Philippians 2:1-4). Married women have been given the role to love their husbands and children in particular ways that no one else can. Young married women must learn how to do this by looking and listening to older women. At the same time, unmarried women have no shortage of people God has hand-picked for them to love. If young women take honest inventory of the needs that surround them, they will confront their own insufficiency in love. But by God’s grace, they can look to older women in the church (married and single) for Christlike examples of tireless love. 

In self-control. 

Feminine struggles with self-control may take the forms of impatience and indulgence. These vices say, “God is going to forget to be good to me, so I must take it upon myself to move my timeline along, or give myself all the good things I crave.” Cretan women were not the only ones needing to guard against forms of gluttony! Self-control says this: “God will be good to me. Rather than demanding the things I want now, I can wait quietly for the Lord and enjoy him as my portion.” Earlier in the Titus passage, Paul had already called older women in the church to high standards of self-control. Younger women may observe their example of trust that God does not withhold anything truly good from those who look to Him.

In purity.

In the area of purity, feminine sin struggles may be expressed in corrupting talk or wandering thoughts. Young women should ask themselves:

• Am I discontent with the boundaries God has placed in my life right now, so that I am taking liberties to cross those boundaries in my thoughts or actions?

• Is my discontentment spilling out in my speech?

Purity demonstrates trust and delight in the goodness of God within the boundaries He has given. He placed everything good and pleasant within the garden of His presence. Why depart? For women especially, purity is tied to joyful contentment within our limits. When younger women see the purity of godly older women, they ought to attribute it not to age or innocence, but to the joy of long life within the pleasant boundaries of God’s presence. 

In work.

Godly femininity is not passive but active. A woman who glorifies God in her femininity works where God has her. If that means keeping a home, serving and teaching little ones, and preparing the home for hospitality, she glorifies God by thriving in this work under the headship of her husband. If God has given a woman work to do outside the home, she too is to thrive, having received her work from Christ the Head through a human overseer. Younger women face a long stretch of working years ahead of them, and so need to be spurred on by observing the perseverance and contentment of those with many working years behind them. 

In kindness.

Godly femininity feels no need to gain power through meanness or manipulation. A woman trusting Christ as her Head is free to display kindness toward those in her proximity at all times, not only when it serves her to do so. Older women have learned through years of experience to trust that they will not miss out on the Lord's kindness by spending themselves in kindness toward others who may not reciprocate. Younger women need these examples of seasoned kindness as they begin to realize the sacrifice of doing good to the ungrateful and resistant. 

In submission.

All believers, male and female, are called to submit to Christ and to demonstrate this submission through certain human relationships. While female and male roles of submission and headship are most distinct within marriage and the church, young women are encouraged to consider a number of areas where submission to the headship of Christ can shine brightly.

First, married women uniquely demonstrate submission to their own husbands. God designed this in reference to the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Young women may be surprised when they first encounter the cursed struggle for headship in their marriages (Genesis 3:16). However, complaining about their husbands to other young friends could keep them trapped in discontentment and multiply their marital struggles. Instead, to breathe hope and life into their marriage, and transform it into a living proclamation of the gospel, young women should talk through specific areas of submission struggles with women who have been through the same testing of faith and learned to submit to their husbands as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22).

Secondly, both married and unmarried women are called to submit to the authority of their local church by not neglecting to gather together, listening to teaching, and submitting to church discipline if necessary. God calls working women to submit as bondservants to the authority of their bosses, working heartily as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23). Women can demonstrate godly femininity by submitting to government authorities, trusting God that he is the one who provides and rules over every elected official and governing agent (Romans 13:1). A young woman who honors her parents glorifies God in her confidence that he wisely selected those who would raise her (Exodus 20:12). Older women who have cultivated a life of contented submission are a blessed gift from God to younger women whose worldly examples demand that they oppose the call to submit. 

Finally, young women are to be trained in godly femininity for this purpose: “that the word of God will not be reviled,” (Titus 2:5). Paul taught doctrinal truth so that the Church would thrive with contentment under the headship of Christ. When women in the church resist or reject their feminine nature, they communicate to the watching world that God’s designated order, both in the cosmic relationship of Christ and the Church, and in individual lives, is false and untrustworthy. By contrast, women who commit themselves to grow in the nature of femininity show with their lives that God’s word is true, and to obey it is the best way to live.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.