Contracepting Questions

When considering the issue of contraception we must ask questions and look at the issue scripturally:

- What is God’s purposes for marriage, and can these be separated at different times?

Companionship, procreation, help, completion, intimacy, to curb sin, and as an expression of the relationship between Christ and the church are founded within Scripture.

Genesis 1:28: “And God blessed them.

And God said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”

Genesis 2:18-24: “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 5 also shed light on marriage.

There church rightly declares it to be sin for separating some of these from marriage and sex without companionship and intimacy you have rape, without help and completion there is a lack of love and an inaccurate picture of what marriage is to be, without the curbing of sin there is fornication, and without Christ and the church there is unbelief. And no one would encourage a couple to be married without these elements present in their marriage.

So why this approval for separating procreation?

- The next question is, how ought Christians to view children?

Psalm 127, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,

the fruit of the womb a reward.”

God has blessed us to be fruitful and multiply. He has not said how much nor given any indication of this being fulfilled. To think that we have fulfilled this by having 2, 3, 4, or however many children is to bring a sense of legalism within this blessing. The mindset that one has been fruitful and multiplied or that one intends to be fruitful and multiply is to seek and look to the self for fulfillment. But as with all of God’s promises, there is nothing that we can do to fulfill anything. Only God fulfills his promises, God gives blessings.

Trying to control God’s blessings is beyond our Christian freedom, with any of God’s blessings we are only recipients. To attempt to control God’s blessings, to control the blessing of life itself, is to put yourself in the place of God!

God alone is the giver of life. He created us to join together in one flesh, and gave us the blessing of being fruitful before the fall. This is God’s created order.. He has created us to be his creatures, and even though we have fallen in sin he gives us forgiveness, life, and salvation. And He continues to give us other blessings. As children of God, we continue to do what it is we do with all of God’s gifts – receive them by faith.