Welcome back and thank you for listening to Ask Pastor John with longtime pastor and author John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Tokophobia is the fear of childbirth. It's the fear of the pain of childbirth, the fear of injury during childbirth, both for baby and for mom. And it's a fairly common fear that we hear about in the inbox.

The prospect of parenthood can be, of course, alluring, but the pain and the dangers of childbirth are realities to be considered as well. Here specifically is the question I'm talking about. Dear Pastor John, my girlfriend and I have recently started having conversations about our future. She's a God-fearing servant who I can see myself marrying.

I also believe she would be a great mother. However, she told me that while she wants to be a mother, she is very fearful of pregnancy and childbirth and said she may only want to adopt. I am fearful that I would harbor some level of bitterness in my heart towards her if we chose to not have biological children of our own.

Should this be a marriage deal-breaker for us? I think there are three things that I'd like to say in this kind of situation. One is a word of empathy and understanding about the fear of childbirth. Even though I'm not a woman, I've got a wife and I've got a Bible.

Second is a word about what God has done to address this fear in His Word. And third, what are the implications for your particular relationship and your girlfriend? First, both Scripture and history and all of our experience, I think, are sufficient to give a woman pause about bearing children because historically, childbirth has been dangerous.

And thousands, dare we say hundreds of thousands, of women have died in childbirth or been so injured by the way babies are born that the rest of their life was made difficult. And biblically, this pain in childbirth is explicitly rooted in God's response to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.16, where it says, "To the woman," God said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing." In pain, you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be toward your husband or contrary to your husband, depending on the translation, and he shall rule over you. Now, those are pretty bleak words for a woman. Good grief. It's going to be painful and dangerous to bear children, and you and your husband are going to be in perpetual conflict.

In other words, the fall of man and woman into sin brought pain and risk into the act of childbirth and brought pain and relational misery into marriage relationships itself. That's what sin did. That's what the fall did. Selfish desires flowing from the woman and selfish domination flowing from the man.

So it is understandable that a woman would look with some circumspect seriousness and hesitation about whether to marry at all and whether to risk the pain of childbirth in marriage. I get it, at least from my little bit of experience, makes sense to me. But in the face of all this bad news that comes with the sinfulness of our human hearts, God has broken into history in Jesus Christ and is turning things around.

Indeed, he was turning them around already before Jesus came, but not decisively like he did when Christ came and the Holy Spirit was poured out and people were grafted into the risen Christ. He's turning them around by overcoming the curse of sin in various ways and in stages. Now, Ephesians 5.25 describes the dramatic reversal of the way husbands treat wives in Christ, no longer with arrogant, selfish domination described in Genesis 3.16, but now with humble, gracious leadership described on the analogy of how Christ leads and cares for and provides for and protects the church.

And I think it is a huge mistake, by the way, to say the husband's headship or leadership are obliterated in Christ when in fact they are redeemed and transformed, which is quite evident as you read verses 25 to 33 of Ephesians 5. And with regard to the curse on childbearing, let me give you my understanding of a very perplexing verse, 1 Timothy 2.15.

It says, "Yet she," woman, "yet woman, will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control." Here's what I think that means. And by the way, I did a whole article with all the details at Desiring God called "How Are Women Saved Through Childbearing?" So if you want all the detailed argument behind what I'm gonna sum up now, go to Desiring God and just click on the search button and type in "How Are Women Saved Through Childbearing?" So here's my understanding, my paraphrase of that verse.

Even though a woman may need to pass through the painful remnants of the curse that came on childbearing in Genesis 3, nevertheless she should not see this pain as God's curse in Christ, but rather press on by faith with love and holiness and self-control and thus experience God's complete salvation.

That's my paraphrase. In other words, 1 Timothy 2.15 is intended to address a woman's fear that, I suppose, yes, legitimately arises from the curse of Genesis 3.16, address that fear, and the encouragement is this. "While childbearing is still hard, nevertheless you will come through it. In Christ the deepest dangers of the curse have been removed.

The pain of childbearing will not be an obstacle to your full and complete enjoyment of salvation in Christ." And I think the words of Jesus in John 16.21 point in the same direction when he says, "When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come." In other words, it's gonna hurt.

"But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world." In other words, the pain of childbirth is not an end in itself, and by God's grace in Christ leads to great joy, just like resurrection brings joy after the sufferings of Jesus, which leads finally to the question now of your relationship.

God's transformation of arrogant, selfish, male domination in marriage into a humble, gracious leadership in marriage is closely tied to God's transformation of childbirth as a curse into childbirth as a painful path to extraordinary joy. I think the question every man has to ask at the front end of marriage—indeed, every woman has to ask—is whether, by faith in God's wisdom and grace and power, you are willing to enter into a relationship where there will be gracious, humble involvement of the wife in plotting out the paths of this life together, together with faithful, confident, Godward submission of the wife to the husband's leadership.

That combination. Are you both willing to step into that? Both husband and wife have to look that dynamic square in the face and decide whether they believe this is God's revealed, wise, loving pattern for marriage, and therefore whether he will provide every need that you have to live joyfully in it, which in this case, the one we're talking about right here, in this case, I think means for you as the man, do you discern in this woman such a deep trust in God and such a discerning confidence in your leadership that should you want biological children as God leads you, she would be willing to trust God for that.

She needs to know you will not ride roughshod over her fears, and you need to know she will gladly trust God with your leadership. Amen. That's a very wise pastoral word here, Pastor John. Thank you. And thank you for listening to search or browse our entire episode archive, or to send us a new question of your own, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

Well, by God's grace, this is a podcast that's heard around the world by a lot of different people, and that means when we dive into the most sensitive questions and fears that people face, like today, or into the deepest pain of people's lives, which is what we'll do next time, we do so at a principled level.

We try to offer pointers to scripture. We're never trying to replace the necessary pastors and the counselors and even the Christian friends that God has put into our lives for face-to-face care. That's irreplaceable. And with that said, next time we field a really painful email from a man in England who is struggling with unforgiveness as he reflects back on years of childhood abuses inflicted on him by his parents.

It's a heavy question, and it is up next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. 1 Page 2 of 9