God created the universe and all it contains. To the ones He created in His own image He gave the instruction to be fruitful and multiply. The message from the heart of the Creator is essentially I want more of you. That God wants there to be more of us is a surprising idea if we view Him as being displeased with us and ever poised for pouring out His wrath in judgment. So maybe He isn’t as displeased with us as we’ve come to believe. God knew when He issued the commandment to fill the earth with people that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit, that their son would kill his brother, that by Noah’s generation people’s intentions would be continually evil. Yet He still wanted more of us.
So the history of mankind’s actions is tarnished with disobedience and rebellion against God. But there’s one natural and passionate obedience that abided in them. So many evil intentions, so much sinfulness, yet this one passion seemed as natural to them as their need for food and air. They possessed a natural longing to procreate.
Consider Lot’s daughters. Their hometown of Sodom had been decimated by the fires of judgment, only they and their father escaping to the mountains. Both of his two daughters possessed such a yearning to have children to promulgate their father’s heritage that they did the unthinkable. They got Lot drunk and took turns from one night to the next sleeping with their own father to produce sons from him. (Incidentally, Lot is the only person I know of in history to be both father and grandfather to the same children.) Whatever appalling reasons anyone can think of for those women to do what they did, it was trumped in their minds by their desire to produce children.
Then there’s Tamar. This lady was so desperate to have a child that she tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into sleeping with her by posing as a prostitute after never having become pregnant by either her first or second husband, Judah’s two now dead sons. She actually risked her life to become pregnant, since being found with child as an unmarried woman would have gotten her stoned in her culture, and it almost did. That was the power of her natural drive to have a child.
Look at the anguish of Hannah. One of her husband’s two wives, she being the one he loved dearly, she was barren and could find no comfort as long as she was childless. Her desire to birth a child was so strong that she promised God she would literally give the child up for His service if He would make her womb fruitful. That child was Samuel, and Hannah was good for her word.
Boaz demonstrated the priority of producing children by his willingness to marry Ruth and have a child with her that wouldn’t even be his heir, but rather Ruth’s first husband’s who had died and left her childless. He held a desire to be fruitful, not just to promulgate his own legacy, but to fulfill the God-given desire to bring children into God’s world.
Fast forward more than a millennium and Jesus, the original Creator all things, issued a new command not that different fom the original one. Instructing His disciples to go and make disciples, He’s still saying I want more of you.
Then we see a very similar innate desire to reproduce themselves in the disciples that we saw in the earth’s earlier inhabitants. Peter preached passionately at Pentecost to win three thousand newbies, those in whom old things had passed away and all things had become new. They’d been born again.
Soon there was trouble. Of the persecution persuasion. But the persecuted Christians didn’t stop everything and put their heads between their knees. No, the simply took the life-giving gospel all over the known world as they fled to keep themselves and God’s kingdom alive. They continued to make disciples everywhere they went. The sense in the early church is that Christians had a passion to reproduce themselves.
Now let’s fast forward two more millennia. Where is that very natural passion to birth new believers? Something has perverted our very natural desire to cooperate with God in making more of us. The literal meaning of pervert is to turn completely away from the goodness of God (vert: turn. per:through or thorough) Our enemy, the devil, would pervert any and every one of us. And I doubt there’s a higher priority for him than to pervert our producing more of us for God.
The most direct antonym of pervert is repent. It means to turn all the way back around to God (pent: turn. re: again.) So our response to becoming perverted as agents of reproducing is to repent.
How do we repent? We turn back to God. But in what way, exactly? There are a couple things that need to happen. First, we need to walk according to the Spirit. God has given His Spirit to those who follow Him. It’s the Spirit from whom we’ll regain our natural passion to see more people become followers of Jesus. That’s the most important change we need to make. It isn’t about trying hard to implement a method. It’s about being in step with the Spirit who makes anyone new.
And yet there is method we need to follow, and it’s surprisingly simple. Maybe not always easy, simple to understand. It’s simply love.
First it’s Jesus followers loving each other. That means we don’t criticize each other, but speak highly of one another. It means we don’t neglect one another, but we come to each other’s aid when they need help.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Onlookers who aren’t following Jesus yet will have their interest piqued and decide to follow Jesus themselves. We can get back on track with helping God have more of us. And it’s simple: the Spirit and love of Christ. Be fruitful and multiply!
Lot’s daughters
Tamar
Boaz
Hannah
Make disciples
Acts (Pentecost, dispersion, Paul)
How: Love inside and out