Verse 4. That they may teach the young women to be sober. Marg., wise -- a word similar to that which in Tit 2:2 is rendered temperate, and in 1 Ti 3:2, sober. The meaning is, that they should instruct them to have their desires and passions well regulated, or under proper control.

To love their husbands, filandrouv. This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. In Eph 5:25, Paul directs husbands to love their wives, and in Eph 5:33, the wife to reverence her husband, and here he says that it should be one of the first duties enjoined on the wife that she should love her husband. All happiness in the marriage relation is based on mutual love. When that departs, happiness departs. No wealth or splendour in a dwelling -- no gorgeousness of equipage or apparel -- no magnificence of entertainment or sweetness of music -- and no forms of courtesy and politeness, can be a compensation for the want of affection. Mutual love between a husband and wife will diffuse comfort through the obscurest cottage of poverty; the want of it cannot be supplied by all that can be furnished in the palaces of the great.

To love their children. Nature prompts to this, and yet there are those so depraved that they have no maternal affection. See Barnes "Ro 1:31".

Religion reproduces natural affection when sin has weakened or destroyed it, and it is the design of Christianity to recover and invigorate all the lost or weakened sensibilities of our nature.

{b} "the young women" 1 Ti 5:14 {4} "sober" "wise"