About Lawn Gospel: Pursuing Kingdom Families

Welcome to Lawn Gospel.

My name is Hank. I’m currently an M.Div student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I go to church here.  And I cling to this promise from the Creator God himself.

In his work entitled, The Gospel of the Kingdom, George Eldon Ladd wrote, “..the righteousness which God demands of us, He must give to us, or we are lost. The only life which can be made pure is the life which knows the power of God’s Kingdom, His rule.” It is no secret in Scripture where righteousness comes from. God alone is the Righteous One (Acts 22:14) who, in his own good pleasure, freely imparts his righteousness to believers confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Indeed, it is this very doctrine of “alien” righteousness that caused one of the early Church Fathers to exclaim:

“O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!”

It is clear in Scripture that man has no righteousness of his own (Romans 3:10), but instead must cry out for the righteousness of Christ Jesus the Lord. Nor it is a secret that this righteousness is found only in God’s Kingdom, which is expressed in his rule, or kingship authority. Indeed, Scripture is explicit that the Kingdom of God consists in the placing of “all things” (Col 1:20) under the feet of Christ the Righteous One, the rightful “heir of all things” (Heb 1:2). God’s rule and righteousness go together. We can never purpose to have one, and not expect to have the other.

This truth is challenged, however, in the way many Christians view their families. Often we cling to texts such as Ephesians 5, knowing that sacrificial male-headship, and the complementarian view of gender roles are God’s purposes and plans for producing righteous marriages — and yet, far too often we pretend as if God doesn’t have those same intentions and designs for the place of children in our marriages.

We must understand something here: it was God’s intention to “create them male and female” (Gen 1:27), just as it was His idea to say to them “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). It was God’s intention, or rather I should say it was God’s prerogative, His divine pronouncement, that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). These things are undeniably true, righteous, and just – because God has divinely established them to be so. He has exerted his rule and authority over gender, fertility, and marriage, and ordered them as He has for a purpose — namely, to orient us towards Christlikeness.

Hence, we must admit that the Bible is not as silent as we may like to think when it comes to the doctrine of children, as seen over and against our “family planning” mottoes. Christ does have a will for our fertility (as well as infertility), else he would not have come to redeem them from the curse of sin (1 Cor 6:20). That “will” is poignantly Christ-centered, and has everything to do with his redemptive purposes on the Cross. No doubt, the Messiah has come bringing eternal life, but (as G.E. Ladd notes) that eternal life has to do with “the total man” (Romans 8:23).

To pretend that “if God wanted us to have kids, he would find a way around our birth control” is a misunderstanding of both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man to pursue the rule of God in our lives. It rejects our responsibility as redeemed believers to pursue conformity with Christ in our total man (1 Cor 6:20, 1 Pet 1:15). We need to realize that Christ will not force us to accept his reign in our families, for his present kingdom is persuasive, rather than compulsive.

Because of this, a challenge is laid before every family purposing to exchange the natural family for that which is willfully manipulated towards childlessness. The question must be answered: Does your family planning express a dependence upon God, and a redemptive expectation in Christ (Gen. 30:2, Isa 66:9, Psa. 71:6)? Does it affirm, in both practice and piety, the rightful Lordship of Christ over your fertility (Rev. 4:11, Heb. 13:18, Phi. 3:21)?

As you consider that, let’s close with these words by G.E. Ladd on why this Kingdom understanding is so important:

“Sin is primarily religious and secondarily ethical. Man is God’s creature and his primary responsibility is towards God. The root of sin is found in his refusal to acknowledge in grateful dependence the gifts and the goodness of God (Rom. 1:21, [Psalm 127:3]), which are now imparted in Christ. Darkness is the assertion of independence rather than God-dependence.”

Seek the heart of the Creator, brethren, and ask of him if he has changed his Christ-ward intention for marriage and children. I’m quite certain that you will find that he has not… So yeah, we’re going to wrestle with Scripture here, but we’re also going to wrestle with general revelation (as it too is Divine in its origin, and it’s ultimate ends (“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” -Psa 19:1). We’re not going to get caught up in contemporary assumptions, rather we are going to get caught up in a reformation of our worldviews.

If, at the end of the day, we end up somewhere that we did not intend, so be it. But the path I’ve purposed to trod is one that’s been graced with a certain pair of dusty Galilean sandals that we are quite unworthy to unloose, but undeniably drawn to. We’ll be looking towards both a path and a Man, a Way, and a Life. Indeed, a Life that will change the way that we live ours.

So, let’s have ourselves a conversation, how ’bout it?

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email. I hope you enjoy your visit to lawngospel, and come back soon!

‘Brother Hank