THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"The High Calling of Motherhood"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak)
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Dear Radio Friends,
On this day when we celebrate the great blessing of God to the Christian church and
to families of Christian mothers, I would call your attention to God’s Word as it is
found in I
Timothy 2:15. There we read these words: “Notwithstanding she shall be saved in
childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”
The words of holy Scripture to which I direct your thoughts a few moments today are
spoken for the comfort and the encouragement of godly mothers. If you are acquainted with the second chapter of I
Timothy, and are acquainted especially with the last part of that chapter, perhaps that
strikes you as not being true. You might be
acquainted with that passage and conclude that the apostle is being rather hard or even
harsh upon Christian mothers. He has said, in
the verse just before, that the woman being deceived was in the transgression. That is, he is saying to us that it was the woman,
Eve in particular, who played a prominent and important part in bringing God’s curse
upon sin, for she in her pride ate of the forbidden fruit and tempted Adam and thus
figured prominently in Adam’s sin. And
it was Adam’s sin that brought spiritual death upon all men.
But our text, I insist, was spoken for the comfort and the encouragement of godly
mothers. It begins with the word
“notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing.” That is, as she figured prominently in the fall of
man into sin and ruin, so also, by the wonderful mercy of God, the woman figures
prominently in the work of God in salvation. As
sin sought to use the woman for its ends, so the mercy of God is pleased to use the woman
in a vital and wonderful way in His purposes. The
devil sought to use Eve to accomplish his purpose. But
God in sovereign mercy uses Christian women, and specifically now Christian mothers, to
accomplish His glorious and eternal purposes of love and grace in Jesus Christ.
As the woman, then, figured prominently in the fall of man into sin, so the woman,
and specifically Christian mothers, figure prominently in God’s mighty work of the
salvation of a church. We need to hear that
word today because, as a result of sin,
motherhood is filled with many pains and sorrows. God
said, you will remember, to Eve and in her to all women, “I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy
children.” A woman brings forth children
in birth pangs. And for some those pains are
so intense that one would despair of life.
As the woman figured prominently
in the fall of man into sin, so the woman,
and specifically Christian mothers,
figure prominently in God’s mighty work
of the salvation of a church.
Still more, the calling of a mother is one that our flesh feels is so degrading. Our flesh would recoil from the constant calling
of a mother for self-sacrifice, a mother’s need for self-denial and selfless
footwashing of her children and of all of her family.
So often a mother, even in Christian homes, does not see the blessing of God upon
her but sees, perhaps today, fighting kids and a messy house and all kinds of stress and
pressures. So it is very important for us to
turn to the Word of God and to know that God honors Christian mothers. God sees their place (your place as a Christian
mother) of vital importance in His whole purpose of salvation in Jesus Christ.
So let us hear that word of encouragement of the high calling of a mother.
What exactly is the calling of a mother? The
apostle says, “nevertheless she (that is, Christian mothers) shall be saved in
childbearing.” Notice with me that the
word of God does not say that the woman is saved by childbearing, but she shall be
saved in childbearing. The idea is not
that by giving birth to a child a woman earns salvation or contributes to salvation. That is not the idea. That is, of course, contrary to the whole gospel
of the grace of God. Our salvation is
exclusively the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Our
works do not earn or contribute to that salvation. Besides,
what would that be saying to single Christian women, to those who are not married and do
not have children? What would that be saying
to those women who by the very hand of God are prevented from having, or not able
physically to have, a child? No, the idea is
not that the woman is saved by the fact of her childbearing. We are saved by the fact of the work of Jesus
Christ upon the cross. That is our comfort.
Then also to women who, perhaps, are not married, or cannot have children, the Word
of God is rich. It is your comfort. The Word of God would say to you that salvation,
the grace of God giving you salvation, is worked out in your life and that God’s
will, however He leads you, is a good will. He
is showing you through all things that He, as your Savior, is the portion of your soul.
So what does it mean, then, if it does not mean that we earn salvation by having a
child? It means this, that a godly mother,
that is, a married woman who is given a child, walks in the path of her salvation in the
way of nurturing her children. When we are
saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to a place of service. When we are redeemed by our Savior’s
wonderful blood and the Holy Spirit works in us our salvation, then Christ assigns to each
one of us a place in His kingdom, a place of service.
He assigns to us what we call “our calling in this life,” our Christian
calling. And we are to walk in that calling
to the glory of God. The idea is this, that a
mother is saved, that is, she walks in the calling that her Savior has given to her, in
the way of nurturing and bearing children. So
to speak, God works out our salvation, that is, we walk in the paths of salvation and we
show forth our thankfulness and we show forth our service to Christ in the way of bearing
children and nurturing those children in His name. That
is the idea. We walk in the way of our
salvation as a Christian mother by nurturing and caring for and rearing and raising our
children whom the Lord gives to us.
We ask the question then: How do you
serve your Savior as a mother, as a redeemed woman in the blood of Jesus Christ? How do you do that?
Do you have to prove yourself to be equal to a man?
Do you have to go out and prove that you can make it in the business world or in
politics or even in the ministry or being an elder? Do
you need to escape the drudgery of your home? Should
you say, “I’m tired of being buried under these diapers and I’m going to
abandon motherhood for the office or for the factory”?
No, that is all wrong. The pathway to
the experience of your salvation, the pathway of real service to your Lord has been
appointed by God. It is this: Motherhood, in bearing children or mothering,
nurturing, and caring for the children God has given to you. That is a gift of God’s grace. God has redeemed you and He has blessed you with a
child. He has blessed your marriage. And now He has given you a calling. What is that calling? It is a great calling: bring up your children in the way of the Lord.
We could say, then, that the mother’s task is to oversee the forging of
Christian character and faith in her sons and daughters.
The Christian mother is the one who sets the tone in the home for the entire life
of the family and children. Yours is the
calling to take the great Christian principles and doctrines and apply them practically to
the everyday affairs of your children, and to do that, so to speak, naturally, within the
context of your daily living with your children. That
means that you become a student of each child personally — learning its mental,
physical, emotional, and spiritual abilities or weaknesses.
That you are a mother means that you are to develop, by the grace of God, the
child’s talents and to instill knowledge and virtue into his heart and to correct his
faults, to love him and to discipline him. In
short, you as a mother are used of God to build godly men and women for the church of
Jesus Christ. As Paul says of Timothy in II Timothy
1:5 that he calls to remembrance the unfeigned, that is, the real faith that was in
Timothy. Where did that faith come from? It came from God, yes. But God used means.
And what were those means? Listen: the unfeigned faith which dwelt first in thy
grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded that is in thee also, Timothy. God used the means of a godly mother to nurture
faith in the heart of Timothy.
We could say, then, that the mother’s task
is to oversee the forging of Christian character
and faith in her sons and daughters.
Or we could use the example of Moses and his mother Jocebed. You remember that at that time in Egypt the
commandment had gone forth that all the male children of the Israelites were to be killed. Jocebed and her husband hid the baby Moses. They had put their son in an ark. Pharaoh’s daughter found him and gave him to
Jocebed to nurse for her. But soon she would
send her officers to take Moses out of Jocebed’s home and Moses would be brought into
the home of Pharaoh. All of the religious
instruction that Moses had before he was forty years old took place in a few short years
by his mother’s side. How old was he
when he was taken away from her and brought to Egypt’s courts? He could have been very young — three, four,
five. But during those first formative years,
those little years, his mother taught Moses all the truths of Jehovah, the God of His
covenant — His promise to redeem Israel, the promise even of a great deliverer, Jesus
Christ. She did that in poverty. She did that in times which were dark and evil,
inside a little reed hut, perhaps plastered with mud.
She taught him to place his complete dependence upon the living God — until
one day those officers did come for little Moses.
And she watched him go.
After that, for the next years of his life, Moses was taught all the philosophy of
Egypt, all of Egypt’s morals, and all of Egypt’s gods. But it was the instruction that he received from
his mother in those first two, three, four years of his life which became the backbone of
his spiritual life. When he grew up to
manhood and he was offered the treasures of Egypt, he refused those treasures, choosing
rather to suffer reproach with the people of God (the book of Hebrews tells us that). Why? God’s
grace, yes, of course. But God worked that
grace through a mother and through a mother’s nurture and instruction.
All of the religious instruction that Moses had
before he was forty years old
took place in a few short years by his mother’s side.
That is the high calling, that is the purpose that God has in mothering. God has a purpose of forming and building His
church, building godly men and godly women. The
greatest servants in the history of the church of Jesus Christ, who have dealt the
strongest blows to Satan’s kingdom, have been raised in stable homes under the
nurture and tutelage of devout and believing mothers.
Nothing can replace the training of a Christian mother. It is of the most profound significance in the
purposes of God. Your children follow you as
you are in the house. They look upon you. And they follow your faith. That is the great calling of a Christian mother.
So the apostle says that the great blessing of God, even though the woman figured
prominently in the fall of man into sin, yet by the grace of God she figures prominently
in a most important place. For she shall be
saved in childbearing.
Now we ask the question, How do I do that as a Christian mother? Exactly how do I fulfill such a glorious task and
calling? The answer is what the apostle
concludes the verse with: If they continue in
faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. That
is how. Now if you think about that answer,
then you see that the answer that God has given to you is:
First, take heed to yourself. Whenever
God entrusts us with the care of another in His kingdom and covenant, whenever God gives
to us a place of authority and we take up that calling seriously (we must bring up our
children as a mother in the way of the Lord) and we ask the Lord, “Lord, how am I to
do that?” then immediately the Lord answers, “The most important thing for you
to do is to take heed unto yourself, and to take heed especially to your own spiritual
life.”
Let that sink in a little bit. That
means that a good Christian mother is not first of all someone who knows how to sew or to
wash or to bake bread with the best of them or has graduated from a home-ec class, and all
the rest. Not that those things are not
important. Those are wonderful things. But the point is that you must not begin to
compare yourself to other sisters and say, “Well, I’m not a very good mother
because I can’t make homemade bread,” or something like that. No, no, no. The
Word of God says, “Concentrate first of all on that wonderful relationship that you
have with God through grace. And walk in
faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” Be
a woman of faith in Jesus Christ. Live a life
of trust. Live a life nurtured in prayer. Live a life out of the Word of God. Live a life of faith! Take heed to your own faith in Jesus Christ.
What is the most important thing for your child to see in you? What do you want your child to remember about you
when you are gone? Do you want him to say,
“Well, Mom always tried to hold on to her youth, her girlish ways, her figure.” Is that what you want him to say? Or do you want him to say, “By the grace of
God, Mom held on. Mom abided in faith in
Jesus Christ. She groomed herself
spiritually. She clung to her God moment by
moment in dependence upon her God. There was
something about the presence of God in my mother.”
Continue in faith!
Continue also in love or charity. That
is the gift of God whereby we cling to God with devotion and affection in our hearts. The love of God — abide in His love. Stay fixed upon the love of God. Love God and therefore love your children. Let your children know that Mom loves God, and
that out of her love for God she loves her children, feeding them and carrying them and
bandaging them and clothing them.
Still more. Continue in holiness with
sobriety. Holiness is that daily fight
against sin. It is the desire to be conformed
to Christ in all of our thoughts, words, and deeds. It
is faithfulness to your own husband. It is
modesty in your dress. It is charity toward
others. How crucial for your children, for
they learn in you and from you what sin is. They
learn from you as a mother what their attitude ought to be about sin. Let them not learn a critical Phariseeistic
attitude, a self-righteous attitude about sin, a holier-than-thou attitude. But let them learn a humble loathing of sin and a
repentance before God through you.
You see, the Christian mother, by taking heed to her own spiritual development,
stands before her children and is an example of all these things. In this way, bring up your children.
The reward? The reward is wonderful. The reward is something that will be with you
every day. You will know that you have the
approval and the smile of your Lord. The
reward of motherhood is simply this: It is
the reward of every servant of Jesus Christ. It
is His words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Is that your goal?
Is that precious to you?
Is that more important even than the words that sometimes your own mind says to
you, “Look at all my failures. Look at
all my shortcomings.” Do you rather hear
these words: “Well done, good and
faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful in
little. I will reward thee in much.” You see, the reward is the favor of the Lord not
because you are perfect, not because you have done things perfectly. The Lord knows that. We are sinners in His service, every one of us. But the Lord rewards you with His favor. And the Lord assures you of His love because He is
pleased with you. He is pleased when, by His
grace, you devote yourself to the Christian nurture of your children.
To every mother who has diligently trained her children and spoken to her children
of the majesty and holiness of God from their infancy on, and who is now grieving over an
impenitent son or daughter, may Jehovah comfort your sad heart. May you pray that God will yet bring such a child
to his spiritual knees, if it be His will, as Augustine, the great church father wrote: “It was on my mother’s arms that I was
first brought to Thy temple. And it was when
she betook herself again and again to intercede to Thee for me that I was brought back to
Thy temple.”
There is a word here, of course, to us as a family.
There is a word here for you as a father. That
is that you thank God for your wife. And you
tell her that you admire her for all that God does in and through her. You pray for her and you see to it that your
children respect and reverence her. God
forbid that there ever be any slighting of the lofty calling of motherhood within our own
families. There must be love and respect for
our Christian mothers.
Then be home, father. Be home with
that mother. Be home with your wife. Be home as parents with your children. And you, father, you walk in faith and love and
holiness with your wife before your children. I
have never talked to any man on his deathbed who said to me, “Reverend, I wish I had
spent more time in building my business.” I
never heard one Christian man on his deathbed say that to me. But I have heard good men of God near death choke
out these words, “I regret, oh how deeply now do I regret that I did not spend more
time with my wife and with my family.” Spend
time with those Christian mothers and wives.
Young girls, this is the high calling. This
is the greatest calling on earth— to be entrusted with Christ’s little ones. Take this calling seriously and the Lord will give
you all the satisfaction of your heart. Someday,
mothers, the fruit will be reaped by Jesus Christ. We
cannot always see that fruit right now. But
some day that fruit is going to be reaped. And
you shall enter into the presence of your Lord, rejoicing in the harvest and thanking Him
for the privilege of rearing His children.
Hear the words of the Lord, Christian mothers:
“And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold
water only, ... verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.”
Last modified: 28-May-2003