Godly Offspring
By Jeff Keaton
Renewanation Founder & CEO
A
FEW MONTHS AGO I was privileged to hear
Dr. Del Tackett speak in person. Dr. Tackett is the
teacher on The Truth Project; he worked in the White
House for the first President Bush, and has experienced a
lifetime of amazing accomplishments. He always has some-
thing informative and challenging to say but at this event
he grabbed my attention when he said something like, “The
primary purpose for marriage is to produce godly offspring.”
He went on the say, “The primary purpose for marriage is
not your personal pleasure, happiness, companionship, etc.
It is to produce godly offspring.”
I have always known that producing godly offspring is a
major part of God’s design for marriage, but I never quite
thought of it as the primary purpose.
As I was thinking about his words, I read one day in my
devotions from Malachi 2:13-15 (emphasis mine). 13 Another
thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep
and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offer-
ings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 14 You
ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you
and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her,
though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
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Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body
and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.
So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of
your youth.
Other Scriptures support the idea that God is very
concerned that we raise children who know Him and His
truth. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 specifically instructs us to teach
our children God’s truth every day and all day. Proverbs 22:6
instructs us to “Train up a child in the way he should go and
when he is old he will not depart from it.”
As I have been mulling over Dr. Tackett’s bold statement,
I have come to a few conclusions. First, whether or not we
agree that producing godly offspring is the primary purpose
of marriage, we can all agree that it is surely one of the primary
purposes of marriage. As I have been thinking about this fact,
it has dawned on me how secular we have become as Chris-
tians when it comes to marriage. Couples are waiting later
and later to get married and have children because children
are such an inconvenience to their life plans. Couples often
count the financial cost and decide that they can only afford
to have one or two children. When couples do have children,
they often see them as an extension of their own personal
desire for pleasure or happiness. Perhaps this is why so many
parents try to relive their childhood through their kid’s lives.
We often try to give our children everything we didn’t have,
and some even try to fulfill unfulfilled childhood dreams
through their kids. As a result of trying to live through our
kid’s lives, as well as make ourselves look like the perfect
parents, we often drag our kids through life ignoring what
is best for them.
Our lack of a more biblical approach to marriage and
parenting is literally destroying Christian culture. Whereas
Muslims in many places are producing more than eight
children per family, Christians are producing far less. Some
project that in just a few decades, Islam will rule Europe
simply because of the large gap in birth rates.
If we really believe that “producing godly offspring” is one
of God’s primary reasons for marriage, maybe we should
start producing more children. The Christian family is the
#1 tool to produce new Christians. Lest someone assume
that I come from the “no birth control” school of thought,
I don’t. My parents had nine children, but my wife and I
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