Get Married, Have Children (Part 3)

by on October 5, 2026 | Comment

Qualifications and Caveats

The decision to have children is obviously deeply personal and fraught with uncertainty. Some readers complained that the exhortation in part 1 of this series was unnecessary and even burdensome. Dear reader, it was not my intention to add to your burdens, and in my fifty years of life in the church, forty-five of which have been spent in confessional Reformed churches, I doubt that I have heard more than one sermon on this topic. Others testify that they are regularly harangued from the pulpit to get married and to have children. To the degree this is happening it is unfortunate. The pulpit is no place for hobby horses. It is for the serious proclamation of the law and the gospel.

Nevertheless, I do not repent of this series, and I would encourage readers to receive it in the spirit in which it is offered. The demographic evidence is clear and abundant that young people are having children at an extraordinarily low rate. Further, experience tells me that what is out there (that is, in the world, the prevailing culture) is also in here (that is, in the visible church). This point was driven home to me regarding gambling when it became evident that Christian young men are embracing the gambling culture. It is always worthwhile to remind ourselves of basic biblical truths and patterns for our lives in nature and in grace.

To that end, in part 1, I sketched the natural pattern established in creation. In part 2, I addressed concerns and objections—for example, whether the fall changes our responsibilities under the creational mandate and how to relate nature and grace relative to getting married and having children. In this final installment I offer some qualifications and caveats.

Covenantal Pattern and the Great Commission

I once was so taken with the progress of redemptive history, I thought that perhaps the inbreaking of the last day (eschatology) in the new covenant meant that the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20) replaced the “be fruitful” pattern of Genesis 1. But this view does not account for the persistence of the creational pattern and is the fruit of an over-realized eschatology. Such thinking fails to see that the grace of the new covenant perfects, or sanctifies, the creational pattern; it does not destroy it.

We need not set the Great Commission against the creational mandate. We Christians live in both spheres, nature and grace, and have responsibilities to both. Inasmuch as we are members of the kingdom of God by grace alone, through faith alone, we are part of the church that has been commissioned by her King to bring the gospel to the nations. Inasmuch as we are members of the creational family of image bearers, we also have the duty and privilege to be fruitful and multiply.

In the Reformed churches, we tie those two aspects of our life together in the covenant of grace. Though marrying and having children is a creational duty for us, it is not merely that. Our children are also members of Christ’s twofold kingdom, and as such they are heirs of the covenant of grace. God has made a promise to believers and to their children: “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen 17:7), which Peter repeated in Acts 2:39: “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” Therefore, just as Abraham applied the sign of the covenant to his sons, we apply to believers and to their children the sign of admission to the church in the new covenant. The promise of the covenant of grace is grace perfecting, or sanctifying, nature. We see this in Paul’s language to the church in Corinth when he calls the children of believers “holy” (1 Cor 7:14). When believing parents bring children into the world, they are bringing into the world members of the covenant community.

Wisdom and Hope

Prudence has a place in making important decisions. It is prudent to wear a parachute when jumping out of an airplane, but prudence cannot become fear. Refusing to have children out of fear is not prudence. There may be good reasons why it is not prudent to have children or to wait for a time, but to be able to have children yet refuse to out of fear is not an act of faith. Any parent knows that uncertainty and anxiety are always associated with bringing a child into the world, but Christians do so in the confidence that we and our children belong to God and with the hope of the promises of the covenant of grace. We do so knowing that it is a privilege to shepherd Christ’s little ones at home and in the church. There are moments when the blessedness of children and family becomes apparent: Baptism, the recognition of covenant children as members of the covenant of grace, is one of those. Watching children begin their own lives, get married in the Lord, and build their own families is a wonderful blessing. We pray and expect that all our children will know all the benefits of the covenant of grace.

Exceptions

There are always exceptions to general rules. That is why we say “the exception proves the rule.” In this case the verb to prove is used in the older sense of to test. The test does not invalidate the rule even as it challenges the rule. One exception to the general creational (and re-creational) pattern of getting married and having children is our Lord’s teaching about eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom. In response to Jesus’s teaching about divorce, the disciples pressed him, saying, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

But [Jesus] said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matt 19:10–12)

There are those who cannot receive this saying about marriage and divorce. They are those who, in the providence of God, are “eunuchs” for the sake of the kingdom. In the ancient Near Eastern world, eunuchs were those who were castrated for the sake of devoting themselves entirely to the service of the empire without the distraction of wife and family.1 In reply to the disciples whining about not being able to put away their wives at will, our Lord raises the stakes, as it were, as if to say, “If monogamous marriage is so difficult, you could always become a eunuch.”2 This is not to say that there have not been actual eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom. Calvin explains,

Christ speaks of three sorts of eunuchs. Eunuchs by nature or who have been castrated are debarred from marriage because they are not men. Others he calls eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs, so as to give themselves the more freely to God. He says that these are free from the necessity to marry. From this it follows that all others who shrink from marriage are fighting against God with the impious audacity of Titans. It is very weak for the Papists to emphasize this phrase “make themselves eunuchs,” as if men can impose a rule of continency at their will. For Christ has already said that God gives it to whom he pleases. And a little later he asserts again that anyone who is not endowed with this special gift is acting presumptuously if he chooses celibacy. Hence the “self-castration” does not rest in men’s free will. The sense simply is that although some are by nature capable of marriage, yet if God grants them immunity from it they are not tempting him if they abstain.3

Apart from those who are eunuchs by nature and by surgery, there are those who have been given the gift of celibacy. If God has so gifted you, then by all means, give yourself over to full-time Christian work, but nothing about our Lord’s words here should lead anyone to think that is the norm.

The apostle Paul also gives us an exception, which I mentioned in passing in part 2. Paul’s rule in this matter, as he explained to the Corinthians, is that “each person [should] lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Cor 7:17). Those who are married when they come to faith should remain so (v. 27). At the time Paul wrote he advised that, given “the present [or impending] distress,” it is good for those who are single to remain so (v. 26; cf. v. 27). He explains at some length the virtues of remaining single since “the appointed time has grown very short.” Even those who have wives “should live as though they had none” (v. 29). The goal is that they should not be “anxious about worldly things, how to please [their wives]” (v. 33). Those who are gifted with singleness are “anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord” (v. 32). If, however, anyone is not gifted with celibacy, then Paul clearly instructs them to marry (v. 36). The concern is order and an undivided devotion to the Lord (v. 35). So it is good to marry, but for Paul, given the qualifications our Lord and he provide, it is better to remain single (v. 38).

Again, the implication is that singleness is the exception to the rule. Were everyone to remain single and celibate, there would eventually be no church or society. Kim Riddlebarger is surely right when he says, “Paul informs the Corinthians that while celibacy is good under certain circumstances, and while there are certain advantages to remaining celibate according to 1 Corinthians 7:11, marriage is the normal human condition.”[4

Those who are gifted with celibacy and singleness are free in the Lord. The church should honor and respect that call and, within the constraints of the Word as confessed by the churches, make use of the gifts of single people. Likewise, there are those who, in the providence of God, are unable to have children. To address this case at length would require more space than I have here, but, though the inability to have children is a hard providence, perhaps it opens the door to adoption? There are children who need homes, and what a blessing for them to find a permanent, gracious, loving Christian home where God’s covenant promise is at work.5

Conclusions

Christians live in the same world with their unbelieving neighbors, who may see the world the way Malthus or Ehrlich did, but as Christians we do not share that view of the world. It is not a closed machine that is running out of fuel. This world belongs to our good and gracious God, who upholds and governs all things, and we and our children belong in it.

27. What do you understand by the providence of God?
The almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His Fatherly hand. (Heidelberg Catechism [1563])

We know that just as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27), the world was made for man and not man for the world. We were given dominion and called to be fruitful and to subdue it as God’s vicegerents (Gen 1:26–27), those who are authorized to exercise “a delegated power on behalf of a sovereign.”6 What a glorious privilege we have to steward creation and to bring into the world more image bearers to serve and glorify God!

Notes

  1. David Mark Rathel, “Eunuch,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Lexham Press, 2016).
  2. In his commentary on this passage, Calvin chides the disciples for their whining. See John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2 of Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. T. H. L. Parker, ed. David W. Torrance and T. F. Torrance (Eerdmans, 1972), 248. Calvin’s exhortation to men to grow up and his defense of wives is worth reading and a challenge to the lazy caricature of Calvin as tyrant.
  3. Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 2:249.
  4. Kim Riddlebarger, First Corinthians, Lectio Continua Expository Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Joel R. Beeke and Jon Payne, 2nd ed. (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), 158.
  5. Here is a discussion of some of these issues on the Heidelcast from January 1, 2025.
  6. Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford University Press, 2017), under “vicegerent.”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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