I receive many messages from young men navigating the aftermath of miscarriage. A lost pregnancy is one of the most difficult conundrums a man can walk through because as men, our natural response when we encounter resistance is to simply find a way through it. “Figure it out,” we say. If we can’t pay the bills, we find a way to make the money. If our kids are hungry, we find a way to feed them. We have a bias for action rooted in our having been created to subdue and take dominion over the earth. But what about problems that can’t be solved by putting in some overtime?
Perhaps you had visions of yourself holding your new baby, rocking him/her to sleep, playing catch in the front yard, and driving to town in your truck to get ice cream. And now, it’s all just vapor. It is a torturous reminder that this is not our final home, and we long for a day when all things are made new and our last enemy, death, is destroyed at last (1 Corinthians 15).
Every man I know, myself included, would gladly deprive themselves of sleep, food, and comfort if it meant taking away the pain of miscarriage from their wives. But that’s not the way it works. We are all but helpless, aside from offering bedside moral support for our heartbroken brides in their moments of incomprehensible sorrow.
A number of years ago, we lost our second child at around 15 weeks. My wife still had to endure the pain of labor knowing there would be no crying baby on the other side, just a tiny, lifeless, exhausted body. What can anyone do in a moment like this besides cry out to God? The responding doctor at Lejeune Naval Hospital was actually a guy I had served with in Okinawa on the MEU years prior. He is a good man, and God graciously orchestrated his being on duty that day.
Now, this is the part where many readers would like for me to stay religiously neutral and offer a vague, general hope that you might see on a Hallmark card or hear from a motivational speaker. I can’t do that, because I don’t want to lie. But what I can do is offer you the hope that I have, because it’s not a hope that relies upon my good ideas or my presentation skills. My hope is in the word of a covenant-keeping God who has assured me that His promises are not only for me, but also for my children, and for their children. There’s a very good chance you will disagree with my stance on any number of these verses due to denominational/doctrinal differences, and that’s okay. The intent of this piece isn’t to change your mind on any of that.
But I do want to offer you this hope from the Canons of Dort:
Article 17. Since we are to judge of the will of God from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they, together with the parents, are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children, whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy.
Surely, these men knew the Scriptures which teach that all of mankind is sinful from conception. On what basis did the Synod of Dort make this claim?
On Genesis 17:7: “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”
And on Acts 2:39: “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.”
And finally on 1 Corinthians 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”
Theodore Beza, the French theologian, scholar, and successor of Calvin himself, agreed, saying:
“With regard indeed to infants born within the pale of the church and divinely elected (of which character I have said, we must not rashly conclude everyone to be) and dying before they attain to the use of reason, I have little difficulty in concluding on the basis of the divine promise that they are engrafted into Christ from their birth.”
Johannes Cocceius, the 17th century Dutch theologian, adds:
“All this we believe on the ground of the promise given to Abraham, and through him to all believers, that Jehovah would be the God—that is, the sanctifier and the justifier—not of him only but also of his seed.”
Children of believers are different from those of unbelievers. That might seem harsh, but it’s undeniable throughout the Bible. Just as God instructed Abraham to circumcise all of the males in his household as a sign of their being in the covenant (even before they could profess belief), so too are the children of believing parents “set apart” from the world in a way that children of unbelievers are not. Again, I’m not saying it’s an easy concept, but I do believe it’s Biblical.
God speaks of His indescribable omniscience regarding the salvation of His people, whom He “knit together in their mother’s womb” and “chose in Him before the foundation of the world,” “predestinating them for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the promise of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which he has blessed them in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1). These are the actions of God, not man.
I pray that this truth from the Canons of Dort would encourage you, especially if you are dealing with the aftermath of a miscarriage. Our Lord knows what it means to suffer; but in Him, we have the hope that none of our suffering is ever meaningless, nor is it permanent.
If you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as your only hope for salvation, know that God will by no means forget your children, and that it is not a mere profession of faith which saves us, but the atoning work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. For it is “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
“Godly parents” (believers) have every reason to believe, even through pain and suffering, that their departed infants are now with Christ, not because of their works, but because of His.
“I’ll see you again,” as the saying goes, but for the first time, really; where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
“He saved us, not because of works done in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit…” (Titus 3:5).
“But Jesus said let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).
In Christ, the One, True King,
LC
P.S. If you need a Bible or other Christian books and can’t get them due to location, finances, or other reasons, shoot me an e-mail (lancecaptainusmcr@gmail.com) or DM on Instagram.