Question: Since it states in the Bible that women can be saved through childbearing, then would women have no need of being born again? Does this mean that women can get into the kingdom of God just by bearing children; thus absolving them of the spiritual aspects of salvation?
Answer: No, it does not absolve them from the spiritual aspects of salvation nor from the need of being born again for the following reasons. First let me insert the Scripture text here that I assume to be alluded to in this question. I Timothy 2:14-15 reads thus: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”
When Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “…Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” He was referring to mankind the human race. He was not referring to just “man,” the male side of the race, but to the race itself both male and female. This term is used this way throughout the Scriptures. In Genesis 1:27, we read, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The male and female are component parts of one another and we see in this text they, both male and female, are referred to as man. The only time this is not true is when the male and female are being distinguished between the different roles that each of them fill in their relationships together as husbands and wives and parents in the home, and a few cases where a particular or specific woman is referred to. Thus we conclude that every person (male or female) getting into the kingdom of God must be born again and come in the same way. Acts 5:14 says, “And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.”
The Amplified Bible renders the text this way, and I feel it turns the true light on it. “Nevertheless (the sustenance put upon women (of pain in motherhood) does not hinder their (souls’ salvation), and they will be saved (eternally) if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control; (saved indeed) through the childbearing, that is, by the birth of the (divine) Child.” This text introduces two important points. First: that the pain suffered in childbearing, which was a part of the penalty for her transgression, and even if she die (and many have), none of this is any hindrance to the salvation. Also note that the thought carried here is not that her soul is saved because of this, but that none of this is any hindrance to her being saved. Second: that the childbearing referred to here was the bearing of the Christ Child, Jesus, the Divine and only begotten Son of God who was born of the woman without the man and was the Saviour of all mankind both men and women.
In my thinking I cannot come up with any solution to this text that satisfies me better than this. I will insert here a quote from Adam Clarke. At this place on page 593, of Vol. 6, he inserts a quote from Dr. Macknight which says in part, “The female sex shall be saved (equally with the male) through childbearing through bringing forth the Saviour, if they live in faith, and love, and chastity, with that sobriety which I have been recommending.” And again on the same page we read this: “The salvation of the human race, through child-bearing was intimated in the sentence passed on the serpent in Genesis 3:15, ‘…I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,…’ Accordingly, the Saviour, being conceived in the womb of His mother by the power of the Holy Ghost, he is truly the seed of the woman who was to bruise the head of the serpent; and a woman, by bringing Him forth, has been the occasion of our salvation.”
It is interesting to note in this connection that Jesus Christ is the “Seed of the Woman.” In Scripture, all the genealogies are reckoned on the male side; so and so begat so and so, and on and on it goes. A man’s seed was reckoned in his sons. This is true even though he may have begotten a number of daughters, too. But there is one exception to this rule. He who was the chief of them all, Jesus Christ, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of the kings of the earth, the King of saints, the Blessed and only Potentate, the only begotten Son of God, the Saviour of all mankind is reckoned as the “Seed of Woman.” True, after the stream of His genealogy started it was picked up and run through the male side, too, from generation to generation; but it was headed in the woman and He was declared to be the “Seed of the Woman.”
After the stream ran through the male side for several hundred years, it surfaced in the woman in Isaiah 7:14, where we read, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Accordingly, we read in Luke 1:26-35, that the angel Gabriel appeared to a virgin named Mary and announced to her that she was going to conceive and bear a son and said some very exalting, majestic things about Him. She questioned how this could be since she was a single woman, but Gabriel explained to her that the Holy Ghost would come upon her and the Highest would overshadow her, and therefore that holy thing which would be born of her would be called the Son of God. The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 surfaced again in Matthew 1:20-25, where the angel is explaining to Joseph about this miraculous, spiritual phenomena which was baffling him. The angel told him that it was by the Holy Ghost and that it was the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.
So the Saviour was clearly and totally the seed of the woman and I am satisfied in my own mind to accept this as the solution to I Tim 2:15. Acts 17:30 says that now God “…commandeth all men every where to repent.” As noted before, when the Scriptures speak of man or men in regards to salvation, they are referring to human kind all of them; both male and female. So women are required to repent the same as men. That much is clear.
