15 But women will be saved through childbearing ...
We know we are saved through faith in Christ. However, salvation also implies living holy lives as in Philippians 2:12 continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Compare this with the second part of this verse: if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. So why does Paul refer to childbearing? Following the most simplistic, conservative view, this has been taken to confirm the suspicion that Paul meant to 'keep women in their place': they are to bear children and stay at home. However, Paul has not forbidden women's involvement in ministry but even encouraged it, so this verse needn't be at all difficult: it takes on a different meaning.
Although women are free to study God's word and teach it to others, it's also pleasing to God for them to be wives and mothers. Maybe this idea of women learning God's word was so radical that some would think that such women should not marry and have children.
The Gnostics actually taught that women who had children could not be saved! That was after the New Testament was written, but were these ideas already around in Paul's day?
He was aware of something of the sort because he writes in the same letter:
1 Timothy 4:1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. ... 3 They forbid people to marry ...
So Paul is assuring women that they don't have to choose: it's OK to marry, have children and still be involved in the ministry of the word of God. Of course, that's a permission not a commandment.
(1 Corinthians 7:6 I say this as a concession, not as a command.)
… if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
In the first part of this verse, the Greek does not say women but simply she in keeping with the rest of the passage (see verse 11: a woman). Why the change of pronoun later in the same verse: 'if they'? Paul is never careless about such things. Following on from his concerns about the influence of women on their husbands, he surely means the husband and wife together. In other words he expects the man to also be involved as a partner, and they can encourage one another and grow spiritually together. This certainly makes more sense.
