Make no mistake, weak women are still being targeted. Much of the material that is marketed to woman in the so-called Christian market is banking on our immaturity. Maybe you think no one is susceptible in your church because of its good teaching. But if Timothy needed to be warned, so does every other pastor. No, not all women are gullible—don’t be one of those women!

 
On Friday I kicked off a series of posts I will be doing with the heading The Danger of Women’s Ministries. I am encouraged from the responses and messages I have received over the weekend that many women resonate with this danger. And there has been some good reflection on this word “gullible,” that I honed in on from 2 Tim. 3:6. But such strong language does make some women defensive. So before I continue, I want to make it clear that Paul was talking about a particular type of women.

However, we can all be susceptible if we are not adequately conditioned in the Word. Think about it for a minute. Paul is exhorting Timothy, the pastor to the church in Ephesus. This is a church known for it’s passion for the truth! If Timothy needs to watch out for this in his congregation, then so do pastors today. We are all vulnerable to false teaching.

But like I said in my last post, this is a jarring warning to read:
For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

This expression, weak women or gullible women, insults us. It is meant to. The phrase, literally translated “little women” or “small women,” was a term of contempt. Paul isn’t soft-pedaling the issue here. And he isn’t being chauvinistic. Most of his writing shows a high view of women and much appreciation to their service to God. I wish we could all be that kind of woman that is praised.

And Paul is not saying that men are not gullible. He is saying that this particular type of immature women were the targets for godless false teachers to manipulate and infect households. Why do you think they were a target? I want to briefly look at two reasons for going after women in general, and then two that make these particular “little women” more of a target:

Their Value
I want to start with something I mentioned in my last article. The tactic that the very first false teacher and the father of them all, Satan, used in the garden was to go for the woman. Why didn’t he approach Adam? Was it because Eve was more susceptible to error? Scripture doesn’t tell us the reasoning behind his strategy, but we do see that he is “more crafty than any other beast of the field” (Gen 3:1). Satan was going after Adam by going after his bride. He went for a target of value for Adam’s fall. It is no surprise then that he is still relentless in trying to deceive Christ’s bride, the church, through false teachers.

The Influence They Have Over a Household
Women are influential both in their personal households and in the household of God.

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