³Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, ⁴so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.

Turning to older women, we also see here instruction for younger women. Some charge passages like this with gender bias, asserting that Paul’s inescapable male perspective is conditioned by the patriarchal culture of his time. But we respond that this is God’s inspired Word: Paul’s writings were accepted by none other than the apostle Peter as inspired (2 Peter 3:15–16), and the second generation of Christians universally endorsed them as authoritatively inspired. So we can confidently say this teaching carries the authority of God. Certainly God may use a male perspective to convey it, but we dare not accuse Him of sinful bias that needs correcting by modern egalitarianism.

Yet Paul is not without sensitivity or wisdom. Things specific to women’s domestic relationships are better and more appropriately taught by women to women. Elsewhere he addresses gender issues of behavior more directly (see Eph. 5:22–33). But here he makes it clear that the elders or the men are not the primary teachers of these things to women. To be sure, the general teaching of the church needs to address things like this from time to time, as any study through the epistles would eventually include. But the working out of these things should be the responsibility of older, godly women.

Paul lists four areas of behavior older women should focus on: they are to be reverent in behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, and teaching what is good. These four are similar to the list given to the older men. Possibly, as some commentators suggest, the women in Crete had a propensity to alcohol addiction and gossip, but these instructions apply to all women professing faith in the Word of God.

In particular, older women are to teach younger women what is good concerning domestic relationships. This instruction includes, first, to love their husbands, and second, to love their children. Younger women are to be characterized as those who love their husbands and their children. Third, they are to be sensible, pure, workers at home, and kind. And fourth, they are to be subject to their own husbands, not working in competition with them. Teaching what is “fitting for sound doctrine,” then, includes specific areas of domestic behavior, and this needs to be taught by older women to the younger.

Lord, I accept Your teaching even when it goes against today’s culture.