Did [God] not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.

Malachi 2:15a (ESV)

The British Organisation of Non-Parents exists to defend the rights of couples who decide not to have children. In a newspaper report, its chairman has said, “I have never wanted to be a father. I have never wanted that sort of responsibility . . . I do not want to devote myself in this way to children.”1 But don’t children and marriage go together?

Following their return from exile, the hearts of the men of Israel had grown cold towards the Lord who loved them (1:2). They demonstrated their lapse of faith in, among other things, profaning both their covenant with God (2:10), and their marriage covenants with their wives (2:14), by faithlessly seeking foreign, idolatrous wives (2:11).

Malachi rebukes them harshly, calling them back to the nature and purpose of marriage established by God in creation (2:15). Just as God made Adam and Eve one flesh (Gen. 2:24), so He is the witness between all who become one through the covenant of marriage (Mal. 2:14). God’s initial purpose for Adam and Eve was for them to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28), advancing His kingdom by filling and subduing the earth. Even after their fall in sin, God’s purpose for marriage remains the same; the Lord desires godly offspring from His people’s marriages.

Covenant marriage, then, includes both fidelity to one’s spouse and fidelity to one of God’s chief ends of marriage, children. Children are a blessing from the Lord and are part of the way a couple serves God through their marriage. If, however, the Lord chooses not to grant children, those who are unable to conceive need not feel guilty, as if infertility were God’s punishment. He is a good and gracious Father who never gives His children a stone when they ask for bread. He often has other missions for those couples.

Christians must also be very cautious when it comes to contraception. While Scripture does not forbid all forms of contraception, there are limits to its use. Planned non-parenthood for the sake of career or for convenience is not a biblical option for a faithful Christian married couple.2
Footnotes:
 
1  Jack O’Sullivan, “Why Children Are a Choice and Not a Duty,” The Independent, November 17, 1998, quoted in Christopher Ash, Marriage: Sex in the Service of God (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 176.
 
2  See Kairos Journal article, “Marriage Is Not God’s Cure for Loneliness.”
 
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(Genesis 16:1-2) — “The Ancient Mistake of Surrogacy”
(Genesis 30:1-2) — “The Pain of Infertility”
(Genesis 38:8-10) — “Onanism: A Clear-Cut Case against Contraception?”
(1 Samuel 1:9-11) — “Thirty-eight Ways to Make a Baby”
(Psalms 127:3-5; 128:3-4) — “Delighting in a Quiverful”
(Psalm 139:13-16) — “Begotten or Made?”
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First Baptist Church of Perryville is located in Cecil County, one and a half miles east of route 222.