It’s entirely possible to write blog articles mechanically or artificially. This one is quite personal. My wife’s due date for our fourth child is today. Three times now I’ve stood by as my wife delivered our children. Each time I felt her pain deeply, wishing I could do my part and carry my share of the suffering. It doesn’t work that way and I can’t.

But there is a biblical viewpoint on this, and it’s a rich theme. Scripture specifically brings up the suffering of childbirth and how redeemed women ought to view it.

The text, of course is 1 Tim. 2:15:

“Yet she will be saved through childbearing
if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

If you’ve found this promise confusing, you’re in good company—Bible interpreters struggle here. We could start with what it doesn’t mean:

  1. Clearly it is not that there is something especially saving about giving birth to children. Salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, not by good deeds and certainly not by giving birth. Furthermore, I know many women with exemplary Christian testimonies that have never carried a child.
  2. Nor can this be a promise that if you’re godly, God will keep you safe or take away the pain of childbirth. Unfortunately, many godly women in the history of the world died in childbirth. And as for the possibility of God taking away the pain… well, go ask your Mom.

So what does it mean then? One clue is to look back in the context—it’s a strong allusion to the fall of man. Another clue is that the “she” is singular and even the word “childbirth” has echoes back to Genesis 3. Both genders suffer from the curse in their own way, but for the woman “in pain you shall bring forth children.” Sin brings pain. The human race and life itself is now tainted. And so God places a poignant reminder right at the beginning of every life. Every member of the human race came here through someone else’s pain. Every baby enters the world under the curse.

But that wasn’t all. The Genesis story also offers a spark of hope, for there was a promise: a descendant, brought into the world this way, would eventually crush the head of the serpent and bring hope to all mankind. Much later we see the picture again in Revelation 12— a woman is pregnant and “crying out in the agony of giving birth.” Her child, it turns out, “will rule all nations with a rod of iron,” a promise that connects across Scripture to the Messiah (Psa. 2:9; Rev. 2:27; 19:15).

As a result, childbirth is not merely a biological necessity to keep the human race going. It is our only hope. If sin brought the curse of pain and death, this promise brings deliverance and life, but it will come through a birth. Every birth pang is a reminder that the world is broken and sin hurts. But every new cry of a child is a reminder that hope came and He was born.

And there is a deeper pattern still—blessing, hope and life come through suffering. The Savior Himself passed through the deepest suffering so that on the other side He won the greatest of victories (Philip. 2:5-11; Heb 12:2). He became a curse so that in Him we could have life.

So likewise, childbirth is a source of intense sorrow and profound joy (John 16:21). In spite of the pain, or more accurately through the pain, comes a new beginning. It is no accident that salvation is called new birth (John 3:3-8) or that the earth itself groans “in the pains of childbirth” (Rom. 8:22), waiting for the final victory. Childbirth reminds us of all of this. Built right into the way the world works, God set a reminder of both blessing and curse; of sin and the new beginning—a reminder attached to every new life and powerfully experienced by every woman that has ever brought a child into the world.

And therein lies the promise of 1 Tim. 2:15. A pregnant Christian mother labors through her pain, following the One who experienced the deepest suffering, finished it, and brought new life to us all as a result. What she experiences there pictures the hope for which we all long.

It has become popular to charge that Christianity is a man’s religion. God, Jesus, all of the apostles and biblical pastorals—they’re all male. Naysayers tell us that women are a sideline to the grand storyline or simply missing from the plot altogether. But this couldn’t be more wrong. The first hope for humanity began right there. Through childbirth comes the only solution we have to the problem of sin. Far from ancillary, women in general and childbirth in particular are core to the story line, and in their experience we see the full power of the biblical story.

Because through suffering and the curse came the grand victory. He who was born of a woman has won it; it belongs now to all of us. And though our struggle continues until the present, the new creation is near—a new beginning, unmitigated joy, and life itself.