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Marriage Is Meant for Making Children...Disciples of Jesus, Part 1
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By John Piper June 10, 2007
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*Ephesians 6:1-4*
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”
4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
I have tried to show from Scripture that the main meaning of marriage is to display the covenant-keeping love \\ between Christ and his church.
In other words, marriage was designed by God most deeply, most importantly, to be a parable or a drama of the way Christ loves his church and the way the church loves and follows to Christ.
This is the most important thing for all husbands and wives to know about the meaning of their marriage.
Marriage Portrays the Magnificent
The key passage has been Ephesians 5:23-25: “The husband is the head of the wife /even as Christ is the head of the church/, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Now /as the church submits to Christ/, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, /as Christ loved the church /and gave himself up for her.” Don’t be so familiar with this that it doesn’t strike you as amazing.
Where in all the world would anyone talk about marriage this way?
In three verses, he says it three times:
Verse 23: marriage: /even as Christ is the head of the church/.
Verse 24: marriage: /as the church submits to Christ/.
Verse 25: marriage: /as Christ loved the church./
What is the most important meaning of marriage?
It is found in the words: “/as/ Christ . . .
/as/ the church . . .
/as /Christ.”
The ultimate meaning of marriage is not in marriage itself.
It is not in the husband and not in the wife and not in the offspring.
The ultimate meaning of marriage is in: “as Christ,” “as the church,” “as Christ.”
Marriage is a magnificent thing because it is modeled on something magnificent and points to something magnificent.
And the love that binds this man and woman in marriage is a magnificent love because it portrays something magnificent—“as Christ loved the church” and “as the church submits to Christ.”
The greatness of marriage is not in itself.
The greatness of marriage is that it displays something unspeakably great, Christ and the church.
Filling the Earth . . .
With Worshipers of Jesus
Now what I want to add today is that marriage is for making children . . .
disciples of Jesus.
There is a double meaning that I hope will help you remember the point.
Marriage is for making children—that is, procreation.
Having babies.
This is not the main meaning of marriage.
But is an important one and a biblical one.
But then I add the words /disciples of Jesus/.
“Marriage is for making children disciples of Jesus.”
Here the focus shifts.
This purpose of marriage is not merely to add more bodies to the planet.
The point is to increase the number of followers of Jesus on the planet.
The effect of saying it this way is that couples who cannot make children because of issues of infertility can still aim to make children followers of Jesus.
God’s purpose in making marriage the place to have children was never merely to fill the earth with people, but to fill the earth with worshipers of the true God.
One way for a marriage to fill the earth with worshipers of the true God is to procreate and bring the children up in the Lord.
But that’s not the only way.
When the focus of marriage becomes, “Make children disciples of Jesus,” the meaning of marriage in relation to children is not mainly, “Make them,” but, “Make them /disciples/.”
And the latter can happen, even where the former doesn’t.
Where We’re Heading
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Here’s where we are going.
First, I want us to see that God’s original plan in creation was for men and women to marry and have children.
Having children is God’s will.
Second, I want us to see that in the fallen world we live in, not only is marrying not an absolute calling on all people, but producing children in marriage is not an absolute calling on all couples.
Normal, good, painful, glorious—but not absolutely required of all.
Thirdly, we will focus on what Ephesians 6:1-4 says about how marriage becomes the means for making children disciples of Jesus.
1. Having Children Is God’s Will
First, the meaning of marriage normally includes, by God’s design, giving birth to children and raising them in Christ.
Genesis 1:26-28:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them.
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
After the flood we read in Genesis 9:1, “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’”
This was God’s original design.
Marriage is the place for making children and filling the earth with the knowledge of the Lord the way the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
It has never ceased to be a good thing.
“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:4-5).
And in the New Testament no one is more positive about children than Jesus himself.
Mark 10:13-14 says, “They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them.
But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”
So from beginning to end, the Bible puts a huge value on having and raising and blessing children.
If you are among the many at Bethlehem with large families, be affirmed!
It is a magnificent calling.
We will come back to it in a moment.
This is one of the great meanings of marriage—to bear and raise children for the glory of God.
2. Having Children Is Not Ultimate
But the second main point I want to make is that, while the meaning of marriage normally includes giving birth to children, this is not an absolute.
In this fallen, sinful age, in desperate need of knowing the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, /nature/ by itself does not dictate when or whether to beget children.
The decision about whether to conceive children is not ultimately a decision about what is natural, but about what will magnify the Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
In other words, there’s an analogy between the singleness question and the children question.
God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
So it sounds, at first, like marriage is /always/ the way to go.
Then the unmarried Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 7 and verse 26, “I wish that all were as I myself am.
But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. . . .
I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.”
So there are different gifts and different callings.
Marriage is not absolute.
So it is with conceiving children.
In the beginning, God said to mankind, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
That’s normal.
That’s good.
But it’s not absolute any more than marriage is absolute.
What is absolute is to pursue /spiritual/ children, not natural children.
Marriage is not absolutely for making children.
But it is absolutely for making children followers of Jesus.
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