Married Christian Couples Deciding Not to Have Children
Is it sinful for married Christian couples to decide they are not going to have children if there are no medical or health problems? Yes, I believe that it definitely is sinful since God commands young women to “marry, bear children, and guide the home” (1 Timothy 5:14). Therefore, if they intentionally decide not to have children, they are disobeying this command. God also commanded His children to be fruitful and multiply and tells us that a man who has a quiverful is blessed. Before birth control, all Christian couples who were able to have children had children and the Church taught against birth control for many years after it became available in America. The Church clearly knew that children were a blessing and to be treasured as such.
Some don’t believe it’s a sin if Christian couples don’t have children. My question to them would be: Is it okay for all Christian couples to not have children then? (No one has answered me with a yes or no on this one when I’ve asked.) Of course it’s not okay for all Christian couples to not have children when one of the main reasons God gives for getting married is to be one flesh and out of becoming one flesh, children are conceived. God is the One who created sex and it is good when saved only for the marriage bed to bring pleasure and to bear children.
The only way that married couples can decide to permanently not have children is to use birth control or abstain completely (which is not biblical according to 1 Corinthians 7:5). Please study the roots of birth control and the desire to eliminate the black population. (Study specifically Margaret Sanger) Hint: birth control has evil roots and is not from God. Birth control has eventually led to the slaughtering of millions of unborn babies and the devaluing of children’s lives. Many mothers don’t even want to raise their own children anymore. They prefer their careers instead.
God’s will for most believers is marriage, sex, and children. They all go together and are intertwined. He created them all and they are good. Divorcing sex from children has been catastrophic for our culture. Birth control gave way to sex anytime with anyone and couples deciding to not have children or having children out of wedlock. God’s formula is marriage + sex = children, but many in our culture, even Christians unfortunately, don’t understand the value of children in God’s economy. Many put off having children or decide not to have children.
We, as believers in Jesus Christ, should fully support accepting children into our families. They are gifts and blessings. One of God’s purposes is for us to raise godly offspring. Sex should never be divorced from bearing children. Yes, child bearing is difficult but we are not promised an easy life without suffering. Our lives here on this planet are short and need to be lived to bring God glory. Bearing and raising children for Him bring Him glory.
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Psalm 127:3-5
*If you have never read the book The Way Home by Mary Pride, I encourage you to read it!
33 thoughts on “Married Christian Couples Deciding Not to Have Children”
Children are a blessing, and joy, but so many treat them like an inconvenience! I’m constantly appalled at the attitudes many people have towards their own children, rejoicing in their absence, putting themselves first, treating them like property, dismissing their needs for your own etc… etc… Children are not pets, they’re not property, and they’re not burdens! They never chose to come into this world and have you as their parent. They never asked to “ruin” your life or “stall” your career! They are innocent, and NEED you to care for them and give them a happy childhood and stable home! Their feelings matter too, and yes, you ARE accountable to them and owe them an answer for why you divorced and tore apart the family, and their lives! The “any family is a real family” lie is disgusting, and has raised a generation of people who are self centered, view their own children as inconveniences or second fiddle, and in adulthood, will treat their sub-par parents with the same disdain once they grow old and dependent. You shouldn’t have more children than you can properly care for, nor children who will only be raised with resentment and bitterness by selfish people! I only hope that traditional values make a comeback, and the nuclear family will be valued again…. Every child deserves a loving home raised wanted and planned for. What a sick society we are in currently though!!!
Amen a hundred times over.
i have an honest question, i am a Christ follower and want to honor Him with all of my actions. so my question is, what if i do not want to conceive my own children. is that wrong? i want to have a family and children, but i feel this strong desire to foster and adopt instead of having my own children. there are so many sweet babies and children who need a chance in this world and i would like to provide that for them. i also do not want to dishonor the role laid out for my life either. thank you
God’s command to young women is to “marry, bear children, and guide the home.” If you want to do foster care and adopt, you can do this along with obeying God and bearing children. I know families who have done this while raising their own children. Without birth control and its evil roots, you wouldn’t even be asking this question.
Lori – you have absolutely hit the nail on the head. It is absolutely clear that one of if not the most important the purpose of marriage is the creation and raising of children and that women are commanded to marry and bare children.
This was absolutely a given before the sinful practice of contraception and birth control generally corrupted the purpose of intimacy.
For the overwhelming majority of women marriage should as a matter of course (and in God’s time not always ours) be followed by motherhood. And for all married Christian women complete openness to Gods gift of life in her womb is part of our vocation.
It’s sad when Christian couples deliberately choose not to have children because they don’t like them or they think they will get in the way of their lives. I know there are Christian couples with severe health issues who can’t have children. I’m not referring to them. I’m talking about perfectly healthy couples who selfishly reject children because they are just not “feeling” it.
I know two Christian couples who are in their 50s now who don’t have children and I know they would have had the most beautiful children. I’m sure they would have been awesome parents, too, just buy their demeanor.
I really don’t buy into the “we can’t afford them” lie. If they really trust God, He will supply their needs. He’s not going to give children if He is not going to provide a couple’s needs. Even if He chooses to give a couple only one child, He will supply the needs to care for him/her.
And no birth control doesn’t mean God will give you 25 children! My husband and were blessed with only three plus two in heaven. Would have loved to have more but we are content and love our girls very much.
You are a wise woman, Regina!
Birth control is a huge sin. Repeatedly the bible makes it clear that GOD opens and closes the womb. If you haven’t already, you should check out a video on YouTube on birth control by vaticancatholic.com. Catholicism is idolatry, but his points on birth control are spot on. GOD struck onan dead for wasting his seed on the ground which is actually more “natural” than taking a pill that causes silent abortions, and still GOD killed him for it. Many people say, well, GOD killed him because he violated the levitical law to give children to his brother’s wife, but that law hadn’t even come yet and when you read the punishment for violating that law in Deuteronomy it’s being spit in the face and having your sandal removed by the brother’s wife, not death. In the book of Jasher it describes the evil things people were doing in Noah’s days and one of them was giving their wives a potion that kept them from getting pregnant.
All Christian denominations renounced birth control until the Lambeth Conference in 1930, all Christians should know and understand that it is a sin and every Christian wife should put her faith in God.
Thank you for this post, Lori.
Birth control is a massive sin, and 90% of the Christian churches do not teach against it. So they have members who are exterminating their christian heritage and killing off America, with no help from our enemies. The lying left has fed them the myths of ‘overpopulation’, and ‘climate change’, to make their selfish choices appear to be generous.
The sex drive has two main objects: Marriage and children.
Our culture has perverted this, and selfish men and women are miserable and can’t figure out why.
Sex is not solely for procreation. Not every time a couple has sex is for the intention of creating a child. Sex is also for enjoyment between a husband a wife, bringing them together both physically and emotionally. It makes a marriage stronger by satisfying the need for closeness between partners.
No one said that sex was solely for procreation, but that is it’s primary purpose and more important in moral terms is that, whether or not it results in conception is a matter for God to decide not for us.
Hey Lori,
Do you have anymore godly book recommendations for young ladies who are newly married and soon to have a child?
Thank you ?
I know this isn’t popular, Sasha, but the Pearl’s book “To Train Up a Child” is great for child raising and, of course, Created to Be His Help Meet for young women (best marriage book ever!). BUT these should only be given to those women who truly love the Lord and His ways and don’t get offended easily but want the truth even the hard truths.
Sadly, too many self-described “Christians” share the culture’s attitude that children are an inconvenient burden to be tolerated (or are at best a status symbol to be “benignly neglected” once given birth to) rather than a blessing to be cherished and nurtured. I suppose I could grudgingly accord a smidgeon of respect to Christians who make it clear they don’t want children and are at least honest about it, however sinfully misguided they are, as opposed to those who have them but make it clear through action and attitude that they’re not wanted.
Another sad symptom of our terminally selfish society.
The saddest thing I ever saw was a Christian woman pregnant with her first child obsessing over her adoption of a child from overseas.
She didn’t care about the child in her womb, she cared about being a savior…a god…for the one she adopted shortly after the birth of her biological child.
I was part of a church where the founding Pastor supported abortion and advocated vasectomies for the pastors.
Took me a while to figure out their stance on children. Here is what I heard,
– that this world is a wicked place and why bring children into the world to suffer. Yes the pastor sometimes saying this had children but if he had known what he knew now, he would not have had any. I would add the members believed in this and many newly weds who had no financial constraints did not/do not want children.
– the founding pastor stating to the pastors that if they choose to have children, then the church will not be responsible for them and they are idiots for doing so. Yes that is what he said. In other words, we will pay you the same salary and send you still to a war zone with your pregnant wife. Many pastors kids then grew up and went into the ministry had no children of their own in the same church. Their reason – childhood was horrible because they had to live in very basic conditions in war zones with not much food and they had to move around very frequently and experience abuse by the babysitter.
That children will hamper your work for God (for the newly wed Pastors) as you have to sort out their schooling, you will be move around quite often by the church and you don’t want to subject your children to the horror scenarios that I mentioned above.
That the world is heavily populated enough ( for both pastors and congregants)
That children change everything. Therefore if you still are determined to have them, (and we think you are nuts and crazy), wait at least five years after marriage.
From the leader – I support abortion because it is better than the child being dumped in a bin because in (name of country).
Yes you can see ‘ how much’ they were for children, but God considers children good and not a curse. I know all about the Sanger woman. However, I do believe that planning should take place before having children. I do not support chemical birth control which is what Sanger was all about and I believe that it causes a destruction of life, but at the same time, I am not against someone using NFP if they are sick or poor. It is really for the baby’s sake why I say this.
And again, there was no logical reason for not having any children amongst the couples at the church. They were all healthy both physically and financially. A few have brought houses, flown first class and can buy a different outfit for each friends wedding. I have to make do with my my matronly dress because my income is quite modest and I have no husband. I would not bring up a child in the environment where I live, hence the reason why my future spouse must be financially sound.
If not, I would rather stay single and have no children as God will not punish me for this and I am doing we everyone a favour. However if a Christian couple have no impediments, then they should have children and consider it in biblical for a church to say the opposite!.
Yes, well said, Susanne,
God decides, not married couples.
The issue is with sex which circumvents God’s design, which is most of the married sex today. We have married couples and single people, having all kinds of sex, and deliberately trying not to have children. They destroy their own heritage and nation.
I’ve done it myself, and knew better, learning from hard experience. That said, finding a woman in California who doesn’t believe in birth control to marry is less than 2% of the eligible single women. I grew impatient at 33, and like Abraham, did not believe God’s promises. Big mistake. Doubting God’s promises cost the Jews in the wilderness big time, and it cost me as well.
What a terrible church.
Pharaoh weakened the Jews by limiting their children. The church destroys its future by doing this. The question is not whether people can afford children, it is whether they can afford not to have children, and no nation that wishes to remain strong can do that. Since contraception was legalized in 1965, the problems in America have EXPLODED, along with national debt. We are becoming a third world country, because our moral habits are imitating theirs.
‘We are becoming a third world country, because our moral habits are imitating theirs.’
This is an odd and ignorant statement. What moral habits do you speak of? Third World Countries tend to be over populated and continue to celebrate the institution of marriage and encourage family. Take for example India which has a huge population and sound moral habits that are more Biblical than America. I think America’s quest for growing increasingly modern is in effect the breakdown of previously held moral habits. America’s moral habits are not imitating the Third World they are inviting the Third World to imitate them. American’s have introduced birth control to the third world, they’ve introduced live in relationships, divorce and alternative lifestyles. These were not the norm in the conservative third world till recently with the onset of globalization and the unending assault of westernization.
Sally what an extraordinary attitude for a so called Christian Church to take.
Do not let this evil mindset put you off marriage and motherhood.
It is undoubtedly true that the legalisation of contraception in all countries has lead to a catastrophic moral decline, the destruction of the traditional Godly family and the undermining of femininity as a virtue.
No, pagans and heathens have practiced sex outside of marriage and birth control for thousands of years. Literacy and Christianity have transformed every culture for the better. India is not doing well because it’s two dominant religions, Hinduism and Islam, are both barbaric and have led to mediocre results for centuries. Islam and Hinduism High birth rates, but both lack the moral character that only Christianity develops.
America was the only nation in world history founded upon Judeo Christian values. Contraception, abortion, adultery, fornication, porn, and homosexuality were all illegal in America until the 1960s, when libertinism and Marxism swept the nation. It’s so bad now, that many Americans think our early virtues are some kind of Muhammadanism.
Practicing Hindu’s, Muslims and Buddhists do not practice sex outside of marriage. A majority of Indians have conservative values. A majority of Americans do not. Indian films still rarely display physical affection while Hollywood has soft porn in mainstream films. India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and alongside China will grow as a world power in the emerging New World order. They will do so with long held conservative values. Whether those values stand or decay with success as they did in America is yet to be seen. But heathens and pagans the world over revere sex, marriage and relationships far better than Americans. You need only look at how the average Muslim woman conducts herself as compared to the average American woman to see what modesty in action is. As much as you are offended by young Americas perceiving Americas founding values as Muhammadian you seem to overlook that Christian values are the foundations for Muhammadian values. Christianity originates in the Middle East and is the inheritor of the firat Abrahamic tradition; Judaism and precursor to the last Abrahamic tradition; Islam.
What does silent abortion mean?
Kathy, as someone who was adopted overseas, I found your comment painful and insensitive. My mother has both biological and adopted children, and we were all part of the family and equally important. I needed a mother since my parents had forsaken me.
I have a 2 month old daughter born out of wedlock I am 34 years old there is a real possibility of reconciliation with her dad and marriage too. Unfortunately he is currently using hard drugs and abused me in many ways. I know God can change all of that and I still love him but I know that if we were to get married (and I must reiterate, I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing unless he became a blood washed born again Christian, not the kind of weak Christian he has been in the past, served his jail term, completed Domestic Violence Prevention and Drug detox programmes to even consider a relationship with him again) but I know that if we were to get married we’d end up having more children and I don’t think I want any more. One is wonderful and I love her so much but I don’t want to make my life any more difficult or have even less time to spend with God than do now. I’m so busy already. So I guess I’ll have to say goodbye to my dreams of marrying this guy as also I have to consider I’m only 6 years away from 40 and the rate of birth defects goes up by then. I don’t want to be pregnant in my mid 40s…the risk of miscarriage, still birth etc I don’t want to deal with. Its hard but I think ill have to get used to the idea of being alone for the rest of my life. And I know I’m not really alone because Christ us always with me!
I disagree that not having children is a sin. 1 Timothy 5:14 is Paul writing about young widows. Please read 1 Timothy for yourself and pray about this issue. I’m sure God will guide you in all Truth. Please don’t feel guilty if you choose to remain childless. It’s not breaking any of the 10 commandments. God Bless you, men and women with of without children!
Thank you, Follower of Jesus, for providing clarity & balance to this topic. I appreciate you looking at the full passage for biblical context – like a Berean, you examined Scripture. Thank you for your lovingkindness toward other readers. Blessings!
Wow, Kathy, this is a ridiculous comment. Your logic then stands that helping or loving is for personal gain. A mother who adopts is EQUALLY a mother to one who bears a biological child. Shame on you. If she gushed over the child in her womb then one could easily say she’s obsessed with the power she has to do so and has nothing to do with love. We are adopted children on Christ, if anything adoption paints the ultimate picture of His love to us.
Hi thank you for your wisdom, I have a question regarding my family we have had two children with a severe genetic disorder, one has passed away and the other is in palliative care ,we also have 2 healthy children, and I am always struggling with the understanding of if it would be against the biblical teaching to not have more because of the 50/50 chance of it happening again
It’s best to walk by faith rather than by fear. Seek the Lord in wisdom.
I grew up in a house where my parents were miserable and married. Of course, I equated the two together and avoided formal state ordained marriage. My daughter’s father and I lived together as Adam and Eve did. There’s no testimony of them being married except in the eyes of God. Which isn’t the same as man’s eyes. Did the common law marriage with her dad last? No. He became an abusive alcoholic and I decided our daughter was more important than his addiction. Florida is one of those states that removes children from homes where there’s domestic violence. Rightfully so.
At 52, I know understand that marriage didn’t make my parents miserable. They were miserable prior to meeting. My next relationship will lead to marriage in God’s eyes. Maybe not man’s. But man gave us Rockefeller Women’s Liberation nonsense.