Category: Christian Living

Q. Must women have children in order to be “redeemed” or “absolved from reproach”?

In some of my recent readings in the Bible, some of the women mention childbirth as a way to be saved from disgrace. For example, in Genesis 30:23, Rachel gives birth to a son and  says God has taken away her disgrace. Similarly in Luke 1:25, Elizabeth becomes pregnant and declares that God has taken away her reproach among people.

I had originally viewed these passages from a more cultural lens. Women were generally expected to have children, and having a child, particularly a male one, was a sort of insurance. If the husband died, a son could potentially care for his widowed mother.

However, in 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul writes that women are saved through childbearing. Now recently I’ve been considering committing to the advice in 1 Corinthians 7:8, which is to stay single and remain devoted to God. However, this advice appears to conflict with what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy. Is this a case where Paul, as a human, fell short of the mark and made a mistake? Does the advice in 1 Corinthians only apply to men, and women should marry and bear children for some sort of repentance for Eve’s transgression, as referenced in 1 Timothy 2:14? Or is there some other passage I’m missing with crucial information that can reconcile the two opposing ideas?

A. Thank you for your thoughtful question. It does not seem to me that Paul would be saying in the statement you cite that a woman needs to have children (presumably if possible—not all women are able to have children) in order to be saved. This would be contrary to Paul’s entire message of salvation by grace. Paul taught everywhere else that there is nothing we can do in order to be saved and that we do not need to add anything ourselves to what Christ has done for us on the cross. It is unlikely that he is saying differently here. So interpreters of the Bible tend to understand Paul to be saying something else than that women need to have children to be saved.

One possibility is that Paul is saying that women “will be kept safe through the process of childbirth,” as the NTE translation puts it. Other translations say  similar things. There is archaeological evidence from this time of the cult of a goddess whom women worshiped in the hopes of being preserved through childbirth. Paul could be saying that even if they abandoned the worship of this goddess—as they may have feared to do—they could trust God to protect them.

Another possibility is that Paul is saying that a role as wives and mothers can be a divine calling from God and that women do not need to forsake that role in order to live truly spiritual lives. We can see in Paul’s other epistles that some followers of Jesus at this time were so influenced by the Greek idea that matter was bad and spirit was good that they believed they should not get married. (This lies behind Paul’s discussion of marriage in 1 Corinthians, for example.) Note that there is a qualification on what Paul says in 1 Timothy: “Women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” This is similar to what Paul says later in 1 Timothy about younger widows. Apparently they could have been “enrolled” as part of a special guild committed to singleness and devoted to service in the church. But Paul knew that many of them might change their minds and break that commitment, so he wrote, “I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes, and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.” One way of life was not superior to another, in other words; both were spiritual callings.

While these are possibilities, 1 Timothy 2:15 remains a puzzling statement, and so I would apply the principle of trying to understand what is obscure in light of what is clear. I think that whatever Paul might mean, based on the rest of his writings, we can be very confident that he is not saying that bearing children is necessary for salvation. We should also apply the principle of comparing Scripture with Scripture in order to understand the whole counsel of God. While there are places where the Bible commends celibacy, for example, in 1 Corinthians as you mention, in other places the Bible praises marriage. For example, Proverbs says, “Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” God himself said at creation, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.” (The word translated “helper” actually means “strong ally”!)

Given this balanced teaching in the Bible, I think your inclination to understand the passages about Rachel and Elizabeth (and similar passages) through a cultural lens was correct.

In the end, I think each person needs to discern how God is leading, whether towards marriage or whether towards singleness. According to the Bible, each situation in life offers opportunities to serve God in distinct ways. The Bible does not say that situation is better than the other. So this is a matter of individual discernment.

However, people often do not see it that way. They may simply assume that God wants them to get married, or, on the other hand, they may not want to get married and so not seek God’s guidance about that. I commend you for recognizing this to be a matter of discernment and for being willing to commit to singleness if that is God’s will for you. I trust that you are also willing to be married if that is God’s will. May you hear clearly from God as you continue to seek direction!

Q. I’m conflicted about something. My spirit is torn about it—confused. So, I met this lady while I was still had the power of the world controlling my thoughts and and decision. But I have come to a place where I have a better and intimate relationship with God. She seems motivated my the steps I have been taking in getting closer to God and doing the same. Mind you, we started off as an ungodly relationship. I don’t know what to do, given that I’m more developed in the walk than she is. I teach her the gospel as well, which I really love doing. It helps keep me in check as well. I guess what I really want to know is do I end this relationship or continue. We’re both in our 20s and both learning about Christ in our way. Could someone speak on this?

Thank you for your question. To read between the lines a bit, if I’m not mistaken, when you say that you are in an “ungodly relationship,” I imagine this means you are living together.

If that is so, then it seems to me that you have more than two options. You don’t have to choose between continuing to live together or ending the relationship entirely. You could continue in a serious relationship but re-establish separate living arrangements. It seems to me that this would show the lady in your life that you are serious both about God and about her. But if you continue to stay in an “ungodly” arrangement, then that will suggest to her that you are not really serious about God, no matter what you might say about him, and that she doesn’t actually have to take God all that seriously either.

Indeed, if you truly love this woman (and it sounds as if you do), you will want the very best for her, which means wanting her to be able to love and obey God and live in a way that honors God. I believe that if you explained that to her, and made it very clear that by re-establishing separate living arrangements, you would not be breaking up with her, but rather working to put your relationship on a solid footing from which it could grow into a flourishing, God-honoring relationship, I would expect that she would be happy and encouraged about that. She would see that you really mean everything you have been saying about God, and it would give her joy to know that the gospel is so real that you are prepared to do something risky, difficult, and sacrificial to follow Jesus.

May God lead you and guide you as you take these steps forward. And please write back to let me know how things go! Thank you.

Q. If Jesus had communion with his disciples as part of the once-yearly Passover meal, why do modern Christians usually have communion much more often (sometimes every week!)?

The observance of communion or the Lord’s Supper is based on more than the once-yearly Passover meal. It is true that the observance draws great meaning from its continuity with Passover, with Jesus seen as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” But the observance is also based on the fellowship offerings that are described in the Old Testament. Those were a frequent occasion for worship in the life of the Jewish community in the time of Jesus.

These fellowship offerings were understood to be a meal that was shared by the worshipers with God. Part of the animal whose meat provided the meal was completely burned up. That was God’s share. The person making the offering would share the rest with invited guests, the priests, and even with the poor. These offerings could be made in fulfillment of a vow, in thanks to God for help, or spontaneously (as a “freewill offering”) specifically in order to provide the occasion for such a shared meal.

We can see the analogy to communion, which is understood to be a meal shared with God. (Indeed, the word “communion” means basically the same thing as “fellowship.”) And since fellowship offerings were made frequently, it was natural for Jesus to tell his disciples at the Last Supper, when they were sharing the Passover meal, that he wanted them to re-enact the same observance whenever they ate together. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

So Jesus himself said to observe communion frequently, and his first followers understood that this was his intention. That being the case, perhaps the question should now be  why most Christians observe communion more than once a year. Instead, perhaps we should ask why most Christians do not observe communion even more often than weekly or monthly. There seems to be a case for Christians to have communion every time they gather together for a shared meal.

Q. If we sin and ask forgiveness, is God our friend again?

I do believe I can reassure you that if we genuinely recognize and acknowledge that something we have said or done is wrong, a sin against God, and if we ask God to forgive us, God not only forgives us, based on what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, but God also restores our relationship to him.

Sin does create a break in our relationship with God. We relate to God as creature to Creator, as child to Heavenly Father, and ideally, as you have suggested, as friend to friend. Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

However, just before Jesus said that, he said, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” So obedience to God is consistent with friendship with God, and disobedience to God is inconsistent with friendship with God. It breaks that relationship. However, repenting, confessing, and receiving forgiveness  restore that friendship, particularly if we make it our resolve to obey in the future where we have disobeyed in the past.

We should bear in mind that it is God who takes the initiative in cultivating a friendship with us. God is the one who sent Jesus to save us so that we could be restored to relationship with him as his children and friends. God is also the one who sends the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of sin so that we will repent, confess, and ask forgiveness. So we should not be wondering whether God still wants to be friends with us. Instead, we should respond gratefully to God’s initiative to create and preserve the friendship by confessing and forsaking our sins and then eagerly embracing God’s offer of continuing friendship.

Q. I have a question about 2 Samuel 11, but not about the behavior of David or Bathsheba. My question is about the behavior of Uriah. He is often seen as heroic, manly, virtuous because he does not spend the night at home with his wife but sleeps with the servants as a show of solidarity with the troops who are still on the front. Certainly as a soldier he has a commitment to the troops. But as a husband, he also has a commitment to his wife. I think his behavior is not all that commendable. We all face competing competing commitments, obligations, etc. when they all seem worthy. How do we sort out the correct choice?

I will address your question about sorting out competing commitments, but I would like to observe first that one possibility we do need to consider in this passage is that Uriah knew about David’s crime against his wife Bathsheba, or that he at least suspected it. If that is true, then he would also have recognized that by arranging for his return to Jerusalem, David was trying to make it appear that he (Uriah, not David), was the father of the child Bathsheba was expecting. We can then understand all of Uriah’s behavior as something he pursued in order to prevent that false appearance. He was not neglecting his wife, he was preventing a coverup.

Bathsheba could have sent word to Uriah, just as she did to David, that she was pregnant with David’s child. Or one of the many servants in the palace who knew what happened could have told Uriah when he arrived. Or Uriah might just have found the circumstances of his recall to Jerusalem a bit too suspicious. I am not an expert on ancient military practices, but it seems to me from what I read in the Bible that a warrior champion such as Uriah (he was one of “The Thirty,” David’s mighty warriors) would not ordinarily have been sent from the front just to provide a report on how a campaign was going. That was the work of messengers. Fighting in those days centered around these warrior champions, so it seems to me that it would have been unusual to send one of them away from the front during an active campaign. I may be wrong about that, but in any event I think there are grounds to believe that Uriah knew or suspected what David had done to Bathsheba, and so by staying away from home, he was preventing David from creating the impression that the child Bathsheba was expecting was his.

However, your question also deserves an answer on the premise that Uriah did not know or suspect anything about what had happened. Could we still commend his behavior under those circumstances? I think we could.

Each one of us needs to strike a balance between our competing commitments. For example, we should not neglect our families for our work, but at the same time we need to meet the reasonable obligations of our work and not fail to meet those because we are spending time with family and friends when we really should be working. And the balance that we strike needs to be sustainable. That is, it needs to be something that ordinarily holds for the long term.

However, from time to time there will also be extraordinary circumstances that call for us to make an exception to the usual arrangements. For example, to honor his responsibilities both to his family and to his church, a man might commit to arranging his work schedule so that he is, as a rule, free every Wednesday evening to participate in a home group that his church sponsors. But what if, one week, there is a project at work that requires his participation, is vital to the company’s success, and has a deadline that can only be met if he works late into the evening that Wednesday? Under those circumstances, he could miss the group that week, and that in itself would not throw his competing commitments out of balance. If that happened every week, it would be a problem. But if he were back in the group the next week and the weeks that followed, this would be seen as a genuine and legitimate exception.

I think we could understand Uriah’s actions in this light. For all he knew, he was being sent back to Jerusalem on an overnight mission to give a quick report on the campaign and then return to the front. (It was David who extended the visit to two nights in an effort to make Uriah look like the father of the baby.) Under those circumstances, it seems, Uriah felt that his commitment was to his fellow troops and that he needed to show solidarity with them. If he never went home to his wife, even when the army was not in the field, that would be a different matter. But I think that under these exceptional circumstances (and I believe they certainly would have seemed exceptional to Uriah), we can give him the benefit of the doubt for honoring the commitment that he felt needed to take priority at the time.

Q. I gave my life to Jesus over 40 years ago and throughout those years, I have had times where my walk with Him has been blessed and I knew He was with me. However, many of these years have been done by will power. I know God is with me, but that is mostly an intellectual choice. I have been water baptized, but I have never been “baptized” with tongues, although I have prayed and prayed and prayed for it. I love God as best I can, but I feel like God has chosen my life with Him to be one of service by willpower with drops of his Spirit to keep me going. This can’t be what He wants for anyone who wants Him. Do you think it is because I haven’t been “baptized” in His Spirit by speaking in tongues? I know there are disputes about what baptism means, but if it is, why wouldn’t He want this for someone. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. God Bless.

Thank you for your question. I do sympathize with what you are feeling and I understand what you are asking. Let me respond to your specific question about “speaking in tongues” first, and then let me respond to your general concern.

The phrase “speaking in tongues” refers to a spiritual gift that God gives that allows people to speak a language that they have not learned. (The word “tongues” in this phrase is being used in the older sense of “languages.” So “speaking in tongues” means “speaking in languages,” that is, languages that the speaker has not learned.)

I believe that the teaching of the Bible is quite clear that not every Christian receives this gift. Paul asks, rhetorically, in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Do all speak in tongues?” The expected answer is “no,” just as that answer is expected to his other questions, for example, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?” (I say this with no disrespect for the Christian traditions that teach that “tongues” in the form of a “prayer language” is a gift available to all believers. I do not find that the Bible teaches that, but as I said, I intend no disrespect for those who hold that it does.)

So while I do believe that this gift is still available today, I do not believe that every Christian should seek it or expect it. I certainly would not say that having it is the key to a life in which someone experiences the presence of God all the time. In fact, if you have prayed and prayed and prayed for it and God has not given it to you, then I would conclude that you are not one of the Christians who is going to get this gift. But this only means that God has another wonderful gift for you. It is probably already in your life and you just need to recognize it for what it is and develop it for God’s glory and for greater fulfillment in his service. Please see this post: Why haven’t I received a spiritual gift like tongues or prophecy? Please also see this post regarding the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”: Are people “filled with the Holy Spirit” once or multiple times?

Beyond this, to speak to your larger concern, I would encourage you to consider that perhaps you are someone who will experience God’s presence in your life not primarily through your emotions but through other means. Every person is different, and every person who knows God experiences God differently. Jesus said that we should love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Perhaps different people will love God more with some of these than with others. I actually hear in your question how you are already loving God with your mind (intellectually) and with your strength (willpower). Maybe the thing to do is to recognize these as genuine ways of loving God and to realize how much God values and appreciates receiving love from you in these ways.

If the feeling of God’s presence continues to come and go, please don’t be discouraged by that. That is the nature of feelings. They come and go. But I hope you can always experience satisfaction in your faithfulness to God. Our hope is not that when we stand before God in heaven, he will say, “It was so nice that you felt I was there all the time.” No, our hope is that he will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” So let us seek to be good servants and faithful servants. If we are, we can be sure that God is pleased with our lives, no matter what we are or are not feeling at any given time.