Journal: Bible and Spade (Second Run)
Volume: BSPADE 26:3 (Summer 2013)
Article: Lovers Of Husbands And Children
Author: Gordon Franz

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BSpade 26:3 (Summer 2013) p. 82

Lovers Of Husbands And Children

Gordon Franz

“Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live”

Introduction

Ancient funerary monuments, sarcophagi and ossuaries can tell much about the dead that can be instructive for the living today. The inscriptions about the dead can tell the living what life was like in the past and can teach us lessons for life today. A visit to a cemetery can be an interesting, instructive, and very informative experience.

When I was a student, and later a field trip instructor, at the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem, I would give tours of the Protestant cemetery located behind the old Bishop Gobat School on Mount Zion. This cemetery contained the graves of the “Who’s Who” of the 19th and early 20th century Protestants living in Jerusalem. Most would recognize the name Horatio Spafford (1828–1888), the composer of the well-loved hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.” As an archaeologist, I was keenly interested in the gravestones of Dr. Conrad Schick (1822–1901), an architect and early explorer of Jerusalem; Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), the father of modern biblical archaeology; Dr. Clarence Fisher (1876–1941), one of the excavators of Samaria; James Leslie Starkey (1895–1938), the first excavator of Lachish; and other archaeologists and explorers of Jerusalem. As a believer in the Lord Jesus, I was moved by the epitaphs on some of the tombstones that expressed the assurance of eternal life for those who had placed their trust in the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior (1 Jn 5:13).

The Older Women In The Church

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to his co-worker, Titus, who was laboring on the island of Crete, that instructed him to “set in order the things that are lacking [in the churches on Crete], and appoint elders in every city” (Ti 1:5; all Scripture quotes are from the New King James Bible). He also told Titus to instruct the people in the churches about “things which are proper for sound doctrine” (2:1).

Of the older women in the churches, the Apostle Paul says they should be “reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things—that they admonish the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be blasphemed” (2:3–5). I would like to look at two phrases in this admonition: “to be lovers of (their) husbands, lovers of (their) children (philandrous einai philoteknous

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