Charles Ellicott Commentary Titus 2:4

"that they may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children," — Titus 2:4 (ASV)

That they may teach the young women to be sober.—This is better rendered, simply, that they may teach (or school) the young women, omitting the words “to be sober.” In Ephesus, the Apostle’s representative was directed to exhort the younger women himself. It is very likely that the same charge being given here to the older women of the congregations was due to the spiritual state of the Cretan Christians, which called not only for more practical and down-to-earth, but also for more individual, exhortations. So here, this special work was left for the elder women among the faithful to carry out.

Such a reformation as St. Paul desired to see in Crete—not only in the discipline of the Church but also in individual life and conduct—would never be brought about by a sermon from Titus, or even by many sermons, however eloquent and earnest. It would be a matter requiring much time and patience and would, as observed above, rather follow as the result of patient individual effort and holy example.

To love their husbands, to love their children.—There was evidently in Crete a feverish longing for excitement and for novelty in religious teaching; hence the demand for, and consequent supply of, the fables and commandments of men spoken of in Titus 1:14.

Women, as well as men, preferred to do something for religion and for God, and thus to wipe out past transgressions and perhaps to purchase the liberty of future license. They preferred the rigid and often difficult observance of the elaborate ritual, the tithing of the mint, and anise, and cummin, to quietly and reverently doing their Father’s business. St. Paul’s method of correcting this false and unhealthy view of religion was to recall women, as well as men, to the steady, faithful performance of those quiet, everyday duties to which God, in His providence, had called them.

St. Paul tells Titus that the first duty of these younger women—a duty he also wanted their older sisters to impress upon them—was the great home duty of loving their husbands and children. While St. Paul would never have the women of Christ forget their new and precious privileges in the present and their glorious hopes for the future, yet here on earth he would never let them desert, or even for a moment forget, their first and foremost duties. Their work, let them remember, was not out in the busy world. Their primary duty was to make home life beautiful through the love of husband and child—that great love which always teaches forgetfulness of self.