For just a moment please follow along in your Bibles in Titus 2:1-8, as I again read those 12 special character traits for men and women. Then we will go back to our word-by-word look at the Titus 2 woman of God.

Stand/Read/Pray

v.1 But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: v.2 that the older men be:
1. sober,
2. reverent,
3. temperate,
4. sound in faith,
5. [sound in] love,
6. [sound in] patience;

v. 3 the older women likewise, that they be
1. reverent in behavior,
2. not slanderers,
3. not given to much wine,
4. teachers of good things— v. 4
5. that they admonish

the young women
1. to love their husbands,
2. to love their children, v. 5
3. to be discreet,
4. chaste,
5. homemakers,
6. good,
7. obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

v. 6 Likewise exhort the young men
1. to be sober-minded, v. 7
2. in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works;
3. in doctrine showing integrity,
4. reverence,
5. incorruptibility, v. 8
6. sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you. (NKJV)

When God gets to pick the curriculum for His Church, what does He choose to be taught? He lays down--

The Twelve Characteristics of Women Highly Useful to God

Women who are highly useful to God have these characteristics. The long-term goal of their lives is geared towards being useful to God. Parents who want their children be useful for the Lord begin early on to point their children towards the high calling and great joy of being a Titus 2 woman and the Titus 2 man.

The whole goal of a Titus 2 woman is to train younger women in Biblical, simple-to-measure, Spirit-empowered, love-based living.

Paul did not call for Titus as the pastor to train all the women in these qualities God wanted them to cultivate; rather he called upon the godly older women of Christ's church. He singles out the women of faith, those who had already learned to love their husbands, learned to love their children, and learned to be reverent, godly, modest and wise—and charged them with seeking out and meeting with every younger woman in the church.

The older women are to have mastered all 12 and the younger women are trained in the last seven.

v. 3a “the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior” (1) Living as a Priest for God

First the godly character of the older woman in the faith is profiled. Without a reverent lifestyle behaving like a living sacrifice, dedicated to God—none of the rest even matter. That is why Paul starts here first!

Paul first draws a word from the Roman world to capture the entire bearing of these godly role model women in Christ's church. The Greek word translated “reverent” is used only here in the Bible, and it conveys the idea of priest-like. That word for ‘acting as a representative of a god’ is the word Paul uses to describe the devout and godly character of the Titus 2 woman. Older women are to live like holy priests serving in the presence of God. Their sacred personal devotion to the Lord has slowly come to influence every aspect of their lives.

Godly older woman have simply taken Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 and Galatians 2:20 seriously.

Bodies presented as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, not conformed to this world, but with transformed and renewed minds, in bodies that are temples of the Holy Spirit glorifying God in your body and spirit, which are God’s; no longer living for me, but Christ living through me.

They have presented themselves to the Lord, they have begun to live life the way God asked them to live—as a walking temple of God, as a consecrated priest of God, as a living sacrifice, and as a bondservant of the Lord.