Are Christian Couples Required to Have Kids?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We love to hear from our international listeners
00:00:07.560 | who are spread out all across the globe.
00:00:09.800 | Here's a question today from a young woman.
00:00:12.400 | Hello, Pastor John, greetings to you from Finland
00:00:15.160 | and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:16.880 | I am married, but my husband and I have no children.
00:00:20.040 | In Genesis, God tells the first couple
00:00:22.960 | to be fruitful and multiply,
00:00:25.080 | increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.
00:00:28.820 | That's Genesis 9, 7.
00:00:30.760 | Today, many people in my nation,
00:00:32.720 | people who are married and capable of having children,
00:00:35.520 | choose not to.
00:00:37.000 | Intentional childlessness has become very common
00:00:41.100 | in the past decade and the reasons are diverse.
00:00:44.000 | Fears about climate change,
00:00:45.640 | worries about the fragile health of the mother,
00:00:47.680 | worries about being a bad parent
00:00:49.760 | and simply deprioritizing children entirely.
00:00:53.500 | I know you said it was permissible for couples
00:00:56.360 | to wait to have kids and to limit the number of children
00:00:59.340 | that they have.
00:01:00.540 | That was in episode 1176.
00:01:03.580 | And you said it's permissible in some cases
00:01:06.300 | for a missionary couple to forego children altogether.
00:01:10.100 | That's episode 286.
00:01:12.060 | But how about non-missionary Christians?
00:01:14.820 | Is it permissible for an ordinary Christian couple
00:01:17.460 | to simply choose to not have children at all?
00:01:20.740 | How would you respond, Pastor John?
00:01:22.960 | - My first response is,
00:01:25.580 | I don't think there is any such thing as simply choose.
00:01:30.580 | She asks, is it permissible for an ordinary Christian couple
00:01:36.980 | to simply choose to have children?
00:01:40.940 | And I'm not sure what she means by the word simply,
00:01:45.580 | but it sounds like she means just because we want to.
00:01:50.140 | In other words, simply choose would mean
00:01:52.900 | without any struggles or conflicts or reasonings,
00:01:56.380 | but just because we feel like it.
00:01:59.600 | And my first response to this is to say
00:02:02.100 | that there is no such thing.
00:02:04.280 | There are always realities in our hearts and in our minds
00:02:09.280 | and in our experiences that shape
00:02:14.640 | our so-called simply choosing.
00:02:17.700 | Jesus said, out of what's in the heart,
00:02:20.940 | out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
00:02:25.500 | How much more would it be true that out of what's
00:02:30.140 | in the heart, we choose not to have children.
00:02:33.920 | We are not simply choosing.
00:02:37.260 | We are choosing because of who we are,
00:02:39.460 | because of deep realities that have shaped our hearts,
00:02:43.640 | our preferences, our desires, our wants, our inclinations.
00:02:47.740 | So let me make five observations that may reveal
00:02:52.740 | some of the hidden things of the heart.
00:02:57.820 | First, it is normal, beautiful, fitting, natural,
00:03:02.820 | and normative according to scripture,
00:03:09.360 | both explicitly and I would say implicitly in many places
00:03:13.640 | for a married couple to have children.
00:03:17.180 | This was God's plan from the moment of creation.
00:03:20.180 | It was part of what was very good.
00:03:23.060 | Genesis 128, God blessed them.
00:03:26.400 | And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply
00:03:30.220 | and fill the earth.
00:03:31.280 | And it remained the plan after the catastrophic fall
00:03:37.160 | and the ruin of the world, and even after the flood
00:03:42.340 | and the recognition that sin is going to ravage the world
00:03:46.700 | until doomsday.
00:03:48.260 | Genesis 9, 6, whoever sheds the blood of man,
00:03:52.300 | by man shall his blood be shed for God made man
00:03:55.940 | in his own image, and you be fruitful and multiply,
00:04:00.580 | increase greatly on the earth, multiply in it.
00:04:03.940 | In other words, there's gonna be murder
00:04:05.700 | till the end of the day, so have children.
00:04:08.020 | This is just the opposite of the way some people think.
00:04:11.100 | And it goes on being God's good plan
00:04:14.380 | generation after generation.
00:04:16.000 | Psalm 127, behold, children are a heritage,
00:04:20.100 | an inheritance from the Lord.
00:04:22.260 | The fruit of the womb is a reward.
00:04:25.820 | Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
00:04:28.020 | are the children of one's youth.
00:04:30.340 | Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.
00:04:33.500 | He shall not be put to shame when he speaks
00:04:35.900 | with his enemies in the gate.
00:04:38.520 | This is the whole drift of God's word.
00:04:41.780 | Children are a gift.
00:04:44.400 | Children are a blessing.
00:04:46.480 | When they are withheld, it is a heartache,
00:04:50.360 | sometimes even a judgment.
00:04:52.080 | The generations flowing from your seed
00:04:55.060 | and from your womb are a crown.
00:04:58.600 | Proverbs 17, six, grandchildren are the crown of the aged,
00:05:03.600 | and the glory of children is their father's,
00:05:07.660 | and they are a blessing.
00:05:09.020 | Her children rise up and call her blessed, Proverbs 31, 28.
00:05:14.000 | What a sadness when many modern women,
00:05:18.180 | short-sightedly, I think, choose to forego that blessing,
00:05:23.180 | while millions would literally
00:05:26.000 | give their right arm to have it.
00:05:27.600 | That's observation number one.
00:05:30.380 | It's just the way scripture leans.
00:05:34.880 | Second observation, that positive view of children
00:05:39.880 | as a blessing remains true,
00:05:43.860 | even though the Bible is starkly realistic
00:05:48.420 | about how badly things may go in families.
00:05:51.780 | Even the book of Proverbs,
00:05:54.300 | which is maybe the most pro-family book in the Bible,
00:05:58.300 | says, chapter 30, verse 11,
00:06:01.980 | there are those who curse their fathers
00:06:05.360 | and do not bless their mothers.
00:06:08.160 | And Jesus warns, they'll be family split,
00:06:11.200 | three against two and two against three.
00:06:14.280 | And he said it would have been better
00:06:16.400 | if Judas had never been born.
00:06:19.680 | The cry of David has been heard
00:06:23.000 | in the mouth of 10,000 fathers,
00:06:25.520 | Absalom, Absalom, oh, my son, Absalom,
00:06:28.600 | would to God I had died in your place.
00:06:32.180 | The Bible is not a Pollyanna tale of happy families.
00:06:37.180 | Almost all of them in the Bible are broken,
00:06:40.540 | just one way or the other,
00:06:42.140 | but none of this, none of it hinders the ongoing reality
00:06:47.140 | that conceiving and raising children is normal,
00:06:52.420 | beautiful, fitting, natural, normative.
00:06:56.540 | So the question is, why would that be?
00:06:59.400 | So here's my third observation.
00:07:01.820 | That can be because the Bible
00:07:04.480 | simply does not share the modern mindset,
00:07:08.520 | whether in Finland or in America,
00:07:11.360 | that the aim of life is the avoidance of hardship
00:07:14.500 | or heartache or suffering.
00:07:17.320 | Of course, we don't know whether
00:07:19.720 | we will have a disabled child or not
00:07:22.760 | who changes our lives forever.
00:07:24.720 | Of course, we don't know whether a child
00:07:27.620 | will break our heart with unbelief.
00:07:29.980 | Of course, we don't know if our child
00:07:32.980 | will live six hours and then die.
00:07:36.660 | And of course, we do know that our children
00:07:39.580 | will demand enormous focused attention.
00:07:42.380 | We do know that to raise a child in the Lord
00:07:45.460 | demands spiritual desperation and prayer
00:07:48.900 | and focus and attention.
00:07:51.300 | We do know that there will be financial demands
00:07:54.380 | from our lifelong commitment to this child.
00:07:57.000 | We do know that there will be thousands of hours
00:08:00.800 | that you must deny yourself an immediate felt need
00:08:04.140 | in order to do good to this child.
00:08:06.400 | But from the standpoint of God's Word,
00:08:09.900 | none of those possible heartaches
00:08:12.920 | and none of these guaranteed stresses
00:08:15.800 | are reasons not to have children
00:08:17.780 | because the Bible does not share the modern viewpoint
00:08:22.940 | that the aim of life is the avoidance of hardship.
00:08:26.180 | On the contrary, the assumption of the Bible
00:08:30.260 | is that through many tribulations we enter the kingdom
00:08:34.920 | and that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness
00:08:38.060 | and that there's joy to be found
00:08:40.980 | through giving ourselves away.
00:08:43.580 | Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
00:08:49.940 | In other words, almost all the arguments
00:08:53.700 | for not having children are built on a worldview
00:08:57.360 | radically different from the Bible's worldview.
00:09:00.320 | Fourth observation, there's another problem
00:09:05.680 | with presuming to think that we can do more good
00:09:10.100 | by not having children, like for climate change.
00:09:14.060 | The problem is we simply do not know
00:09:18.480 | whether our child will be a debit or a credit
00:09:22.460 | to the human race, a curse or a blessing,
00:09:26.180 | a taker or a giver.
00:09:28.060 | We don't know.
00:09:29.240 | We don't know.
00:09:31.780 | He may be a freeloader with a big carbon footprint
00:09:35.760 | or he may be the genius who invents the very means
00:09:39.940 | of saving millions of lives.
00:09:42.460 | Who do we think we are?
00:09:44.460 | My goodness, who do we think we are
00:09:47.840 | to predict that our children will be a loss
00:09:52.600 | rather than a gain for the world
00:09:55.100 | and for the glory of Christ whom we can believe and pray?
00:09:59.000 | We don't know.
00:10:00.340 | And it's not our business to know.
00:10:03.580 | Our business is to give them life and raise them up
00:10:07.940 | and do what we can to build into them every dream
00:10:11.820 | and every possibility and power and blessing
00:10:15.340 | for the world and for the glorifying of God.
00:10:19.540 | And my final observation is that not one couple in a thousand
00:10:24.620 | decides to have children by sitting down and calculating
00:10:27.900 | the effect of their child on global warming
00:10:30.780 | or the replacement rate population
00:10:32.900 | so that in 30 years from now, the workforce
00:10:35.860 | will be big enough to sustain the aged
00:10:38.340 | or whether we will certainly have enough resources
00:10:41.140 | to establish the child in a fruitful location.
00:10:43.420 | It just doesn't happen that way, not for 99% of the couples.
00:10:48.820 | And I'm suggesting it shouldn't happen that way.
00:10:52.900 | We're not smart enough for it to happen that way.
00:10:55.900 | And the Bible doesn't encourage us to have children
00:10:58.460 | with that mindset.
00:10:59.980 | Rather, it happens like this--
00:11:02.660 | a combination of, one, the biblical blessing pronounced
00:11:07.960 | upon having children together with, two,
00:11:12.500 | the voice of God in nature every month as a woman ovulates
00:11:19.860 | and as the man stands ever ready to deposit his seed,
00:11:23.740 | and, three, as the deep-seated, God-given longings of a man
00:11:30.060 | and a woman to be a father and a mother rise up.
00:11:33.740 | That biblical blessing and that voice of nature
00:11:37.940 | and that God-given longing should be followed,
00:11:43.020 | I'm arguing, unless God himself makes it crystal clear
00:11:48.780 | that the self-denying path of Christ-exalting obedience
00:11:54.460 | is childlessness.
00:11:56.940 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:58.100 | And thanks for joining us today on the podcast.
00:12:00.380 | For our feed, our archive, or to send us your own question,
00:12:04.340 | even from as far away as Finland,
00:12:06.220 | go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:12.580 | Well, over and over in the Bible,
00:12:14.020 | it appears that God saves us in order
00:12:16.820 | to draw attention to himself.
00:12:19.900 | This is nowhere clearer than in the first chapter of Ephesians.
00:12:24.020 | There we are told that God predestined us
00:12:27.020 | for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.
00:12:30.900 | Why?
00:12:32.220 | To the praise of his glorious grace.
00:12:34.300 | That's verses 4 to 6.
00:12:36.340 | Again, just a little later, it says God predestined us.
00:12:39.740 | Again, why?
00:12:41.340 | To the praise of his glory, verses 11 and 12.
00:12:44.740 | And then Paul even says that our eternal security
00:12:47.900 | is sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit.
00:12:51.220 | Why?
00:12:52.260 | To the praise of his glory.
00:12:54.060 | That's verses 13 to 14.
00:12:56.180 | So why does he do that?
00:12:57.460 | Why does God predestine us, save us, adopt us,
00:13:01.740 | and eternally secure us in order to draw attention to himself?
00:13:06.020 | So very important that we understand
00:13:08.300 | the answer to this question.
00:13:09.900 | That's next time.
00:13:11.140 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:13:11.980 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
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