This is why the New Testament, over and over again, holds up motherhood as such a high calling. It was for this reason that a Christian widow was to be honored in 1 Timothy 5:10, if she has brought up children. Then, in verses 11 to 15, Paul counsels younger widows to remarry and to multiply (“to have children”), as a safeguard against temptation. And God’s way is always best, no matter how “politically incorrect” it may sound at times.
Titus 2:4-5 says that the older women should teach the younger women to be godly homemakers who love their husbands and their children, for the purpose of advertising God’s Word to a watching world. I try to never ask a married woman (especially if I know she has kids), “Do you work?” How insulting. Rather, I try to say, “Do you work outside the home?” This question acknowledges that a homemaker also works a full-time job, and then some! I remind my wife often of her God-given high calling as a wife and mother. Through her devotion to that calling, God multiplies godly offspring. I don’t know where I would be today if my own mother had not been committed to these same priorities.
CLOSING CHALLENGE
So we’ve seen from the Old Testament that children are a great blessing, not just because they increased wealth in an agrarian society, but because they were a gift from God and the means by which the deliverer would come and the nations would be blessed. In the New Testament we have seen that God is still passionate about multiplying godly offspring in his world and that the role of mothers are central to this great cause.