Day 16 "Biblical Womanhood" To be Keepers at Home"

To be Keepers at Home Titus 2:5 
This is a controversial subject among Christian women.  I have included 3 different views from different sources. 

Keepers at home - That is, characteristically attentive to their domestic concerns, or to their duties in their families.. This does not mean, of course, that they are never to go abroad, but they are not to neglect their domestic affairs; they are not to be better known abroad than at home; they are not to omit their own duties and become "busy-bodies" in the concerns of others. Religion is the patron of the domestic virtues, and regards the appropriate duties in a family as those most intimately connected with its own progress in the world. It looks benignly on all which makes home a place of contentment, intelligence, and peace. It does not flourish when domestic duties are neglected; - and whatever may be done abroad, or whatever self-denial and zeal in the cause of religion may be evinced there, or whatever call there may be for the labors of Christians there, or however much good may be actually done abroad, religion has gained nothing, on the whole, if, in order to secure these things, the duties of a wife and mother at home have been disregarded. Our first duty is at home, and all other duties will be well performed just in proportion as that is.*1


 HOME-KEEPERS. Making home first of all a center of attraction by its order and cleanliness and comfort; then by its harmonies of peace and love, so that no discordant notes may mar the music of its joy; and then by avoiding gossiping visits, and the excitements of habitual restlessness, and a too great love of shopping, securing the safety of economy and the honor of a wife who "weaves all into beauty and order at home*2.

.  They are to be workers at home.  We’ve dealt with the attitudes of a woman, love toward husband, love toward children, wisdom and purity.  Now, we turn to the very important issue, the sphere of her responsibility, workers at home, oikourgos, literally a house worker.  This is the sphere of a woman’s life.  It is her domain.  It is her kingdom.  It is her realm.  The word is derived from the word “house” and the word “work.”  A house worker.  It doesn’t simply refer, by the way, to scrubbing floors and cleaning bathrooms and doing that.  It simply connotes the idea that the home is the sphere of her labors, whatever they might be.  It is not that a woman is to keep busy all the time at home.  It doesn’t mean that she can never go out the door.  It doesn’t mean that she’s always to be doing menial tasks.  But what it does mean is that the home is the sphere of her divine assignment.

She is to the home keeper, to take care of her husband, to provide for him and for the children, all that they need as they live in that home.  Materially, she is to take the resources the husband brings home and translate them into a comfortable and blessed life for her children.  She is to take the spiritual things that she knows and learns and to pass them on to her children.  She is a keeper at home.  God’s standard is for the wife and mother to work inside the home and not outside.   In addition to having less time to work at home and teach and care for her children, a wife working outside the home often has a boss to whom she is responsible for pleasing in the way she dresses and a lot of other matters, complicating the headship of her husband and compromising her own testimony.  She is forced to submit to men other than her own husband, likely to become more independent, including financially in fragmenting the unity of the family.  She is in the danger of becoming enamored by the business world or whatever world she’s in, and finding less and less satisfaction in her home responsibilities.*3

 My personal opinion is if you can stay home then do it. It is rewarding.   Pray about it and then obey what God reveals to you.

*1 Notes on the Bible by Albert Barnes [1834].
 *2 The Pulpit Commentary, Electronic Database.
*3  Gods patterns for wives  Part 2 https://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/1945
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