The creation account of Genesis 1–3 shows that God made a division of labor between husband and wife. While the husband is to focus on work to provide for his family, the wife is a helper who is to focus on providing children:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15; cf. 3:17-19).

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18; cf. 3:16).

Woman is a life-giving being. This is why Adam “called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). (Eve means “life-giver” in Hebrew.) Motherhood is a glorious and special task that woman carries out, and the Bible ascribes great value to it.

As the Psalmist says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. 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!” (Psalm 127:3-5).

Thus, Christians should seek to have many children, as they can be a great blessing. However, such children can also become a curse if parents neglect the task of raising them according to the ways of the Lord. In raising them, we must do our part, while relying on God in the process. For as this same Psalm says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

God loves children, and we should too. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus blesses children and welcomes them into His kingdom (Matthew 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17). Children are part of God’s covenant, seen in male children in the old covenant receiving the Abrahamic sign of circumcision (Genesis 17) and new covenant children being told to obey their parents “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1; cf. the “household” baptisms in Acts).

Children are part of God’s way of growing His kingdom, as He brings a husband and wife together to produce a “godly seed” (Malachi 2:15). God does not only work through missions and evangelism.

Sadly, the modern Western church has often focused on world missions while neglecting their own households. We send missionaries to plant churches in foreign countries and then abandon our children to anti-Christian missionaries in the public schools, who make it their goal to indoctrinate them into radical leftist social, religious, and economic thought. This ought not to be. We must get our priorities straight. First get your own household in order, and then worry about others.

Making the Wife’s Work at Home Primary

One of the chief goals of the Christian household is to bear and raise children to become godly men and women. Christians should order their entire lives around this task. But how can such a task be performed if parents are rarely with their children? How can children be nurtured and the house be ordered if the mother is gone all day at work? The Bible does not prohibit women from working outside the home, and the excellent wife of Proverbs 31 even brings in income to aid her family (Proverbs 31:18, 24). However, the wife’s primary task is motherhood and working at home (Titus 2:4-5). Such work has a tremendous influence on children.

Feminists have attacked family life, but it really is the best thing for women. As Herman Bavinck says,

When it comes to the bottom line, the woman can nowhere land in a better situation than in the family, at the side of a husband who loves her, surrounded by her children whom she tends and nurtures. Her nature is designed for that, her orientation lies in that direction, there she best fulfills her calling and best reaches her destiny (Bavinck, The Christian Family, 145).

For this reason, Bavinck attacks the idea of a mother handing over her weaned children to the community, a criticism that has implications for modern daycare and government schooling:

There is then no more foolish requirement and no more unnatural compulsion than to propose to the wife that in the coming political state, she must give up her children, once they’re weaned, to the community. The mother for whom maternal love is the unspeakable mystery and inexhaustible power in her life will never allow herself to be separated from her children in this way; she desires not merely to give them birth, but also to raise them, and she remains bound to them until the hour of her death (Bavink, The Christian Family, 145).

Like men, women should also serve their churches. But this will look somewhat different for the sexes. Some men will serve as elders or deacons, while women’s ministry should focus on serving women. Women can lead and attend women’s Bible studies, and they should particularly focus on discipling younger women. That is Paul’s command in Titus 2, that the older women should train the younger women to be good wives, mothers, and homemakers (Titus 2:4-5). Many disparage this role, but it is of vast importance.

Part of the reason why so many Christian women have become so career-driven is because older Christian women are not training the younger women in the domestic sphere. Healthy churches will have strong women’s ministries geared towards this task. It is not appropriate for men in the church to mentor the younger women. Therefore, this task belongs to the older women in the church.

Parenting Is the Most Important Task on Earth

Christians should desire to leave a godly legacy. This should involve leaving a legacy in a particular field of work or ministry. However, a man’s greatest legacy is his children. The same goes for a woman. The fact that so many people are having so few children or forsaking them completely is a sign that men and women today do not care about their legacy. Or at least they only think of legacy in terms of career and material wealth. But what good is material wealth if you have no children to pass it on to when you die? We live in a selfish age. This is further evidenced by the economic disaster prior generations have created by borrowing money from future generations (just consider the national debt).

Godly Christians care about the future of humanity, and they therefore care about children. They care about the children of others, but they have a special care for their own children. In order to inspire you in this task, we can do no better than to quote from R.L. Dabney’s 1870 sermon, “Parental Responsibilities”:

Seeing the parental relation is what the Scripture describes it, and seeing Satan has perverted it since the fall for the diffusion and multiplication of depravity and eternal death, the education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making, ought to be subordinated; and every parent especially ought to feel, every hour of the day, that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God—this is his task on earth.

On the right training of the generation now arising, turns not only the individual salvation of each member in it, not only the religious hope of the age which is approaching, but the fate of all future generations in a large degree. Train up him who is now a boy for Christ, and you not only sanctify that soul, but you set on foot the best earthly agencies to redeem the whole broadening stream of human beings who shall proceed from him, down to the time when men cease to marry and give in marriage. Until then, the work of education is neverending.

The generation which is trained for heaven is the one that dies; the one that is born into its place is born in enmity and under the curse. Thus the task of training is ever renewed, until the final consummation shall make the race equal to the angels (Dabney on Fire, 36).

Educating children for Christ is “the most important business” on earth. This is the Christian’s greatest task next to securing his own salvation. On this training of children today rests “the fate of all future generations.” The above quote is worth reading twice.

Dabney follows by proclaiming God’s purpose for the family—“We hear him declare in Malachi 2:15, long after the fall, that his object in founding the family, in the form of monogamy, was ‘to seek a godly seed.’ Thus the supreme end of the family institution is as distinctly religious and spiritual as that of the church itself. Civic legislators speak of the well-ordered family as the integer of which the prosperous commonwealth is formed. But God assigns the family a far higher and holier aim. The Christian family is the constituent integer of the church—the kingdom of redemption. The instrumentalities of the family are chosen and ordained of God as the most efficient of all means of grace—more truly and efficaciously means of saving grace than all the other ordinances of the church. To family piety are given the best promises of the gospel, under the new, as well as under the old dispensation” (Dabney on Fire, 37).

Thus, God has brought marriages together to raise “a godly seed.” The family is a religious institution and God’s means of grace for the salvation of His people. Parents have the great responsibility—and great opportunity—to raise godly men and women.

Ordering Life Around Children

Parenting is the most important task on earth. Thus, a biblical worldview should lead Christians to focus on the natural family and the productive household. Christians should have children and order their lives so as to aid the household. There are three points of application for Christians in this regard.

First, Christian couples should seek to have lots of children. Do not follow the culture and just have one or two. That is not “multiplying,” at least not in the sense of increasing the population. God commanded the first humans to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), which implies that parents should seek to have at least three. However, the primary issue is one’s mindset towards children. Seek to have as many as you can possibly support and raise well. This will probably require having more children than you think you can afford, while trusting God to provide for the children He gives you. Think of birth control as the exception rather than the rule. Our society uses birth control as the default in marriage, as if we should only seek children on our own terms. And if you cannot have children (or cannot have as many as you would like), consider adoption. There are many children in the world who do not have parents to raise them.

Second, Christian couples should order their household around supporting and raising many children. This requires the man to bring in enough money to support his family and keep his wife at home to raise them. However, this also means Christians should take radical steps to save money and sacrifice material wealth for children. We all place value somewhere. Christians must value children more than material possessions or vacations.

Third, Christian parents should provide their children with a Christian education. Having children is not enough. You also need to raise them in the faith. Sending children to daycare and public school—and then giving them unfiltered access to media and technology—does not cut it. Christian children need a Christian education, and this means they need something radically different from what our modern secular culture is giving them. God has commanded Christian parents to teach His Word diligently to their children throughout all of life, bringing them up in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:6-8; Ephesians 6:4).

The atheistic training of the government (“public”) schools fosters godlessness. In contrast, a robust Christian education trains children to honor Christ in everything and consider every subject from a biblical perspective. High-quality Christian schools can accomplish this, though homeschooling is much more affordable. Men who seek to provide for their family so the wife can stay at home are in a good position to homeschool their children, especially with the online resources available today.

Christian parents should homeschool their children or send them to a good Christian school. Another great option is to start a Christian school, even if it is just a group of homeschoolers meeting for instruction by parents once or twice per week (what is known is hybrid homeschooling). The goal is to raise godly men and women. This is a difficult task, and we must therefore place high value upon it. It takes hard work and sacrifice, often of material comforts.

Children and the Battle for the Cosmos

The way Christians treat the issue of bearing and raising children has a monumental impact on the world. If Christians had more children (say four to five per family instead of one to three as is currently the practice), then we could outpopulate the secularists in a couple generations. However, that is not happening. Many secularists still have a child or two to keep pace.

Worse, we are not even maintaining our current numbers. Because of our low fertility rates, the church is dependent upon converts. But for every convert, we lose several children of the covenant to the influences of secularism. This is in large part because Christians hand their children over to the government schools to be trained in another religion. Because of the low fertility rate of the secularists, this is their primary means of proselytization. Leftists seek to propagate through the public schools, and they are proving quite successful in adopting Christian children as their own.

Thus, we see that children are the key players in this battle for the cosmos. And this is all wrapped up in the nuclear family. But because Christians have given up too much to the unbelieving world, we are in for a long slog instead of a quick victory lap. Do not misunderstand—Jesus will win in the end. However, the church may be put through further tribulation because of its failure to keep covenant and steadfast love with the Lord.

The Western church has failed to maintain the family unit, failed to raise children in the Lord, failed to worship God according to His ways, and failed to keep God’s commands. We are an adulterous people, and it should surprise no one that spiritual adultery leads to societal chaos. Our only hope is repentance through the mercy found in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But take heart—Jesus has overcome the world. The time for repentance is now.

This article is adapted from chapter 12 of my book Masculine Christianity (Zion Press, 2020).