To Whom Do Our Children Belong? (1)
Today we are delighted to share the first instalment of an important work from Geoff Thomas, “To Whom Do Our Children Belong?”
Geoff was the pastor at Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, Wales, for fifty years. He is retired, and the author of many books and articles, having been a frequent speaker at conferences throughout the world. He still preaches at the Chapel he attends in London, as well as travelling extensively to speak in different churches.
We will be releasing “To Whom Do Our Children Belong?” in instalments, and will work our way through who our children do not belong to, who they do belong to, and what that must mean for their nurture and development.
To Whom Do Our Children Belong?
This is one of the most important questions confronting the whole world today. The question is not simply a social or philosophical question, it is deeply practical. “Who am I and to whom do I belong?”
This is a background worry for numbers of people, especially for adolescents growingly self-conscious, but for parents too. Whose are your children? Are they yours, or the state’s, or the church’s, or do they belong to themselves, or do they belong to their Creator and Redeemer? Who is responsible for how they live, what they live for, what they are to believe, of what do they disapprove, what is their morality to be?
The first thing that must be done in coming to an answer to these questions is to attempt a clearance of much of the confusion that surrounds this issue.
Our children do not belong to the state.
The Lord Jesus was once asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22). He took a coin and showed it to them and asked them whose image was on the coin. “Caesar’s image,” they replied. Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, replied Jesus.
As Dr. Lloyd-Jones said, “He told them to pay their taxes. So we have to say that it’s the business of Christians to behave as citizens in the world, to feel a sense of responsibility for what is happening and to do what they can or are called to do in local, national or even international politics. There must be no question about all this at all. The same applies to art and literature. The Christian is not some philistine. He is not some kind of boorish person. I am afraid there are those who have sometimes given this impression and they have therefore antagonized people. But that is not being true to our scriptural teaching. We believe that all these gifts that are exercised in art and culture and economics and various other respects have been given by God to men, and we are meant to use them. There is such a thing as common grace, and it is not part of the gospel to say that the Christian is to take no interest whatsoever in these various aspects of life. They are all perfectly legitimate” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Unity in Truth).
Our Lord did not stop there. He went further in his answer to them. “And . . .,” he said; in other words, he had something more to say to them. It was this . . . And to God the things that are God’s. They were men obsessed with the material things of life, maybe some were experts in how to pay as little tax as they could. They had the Scriptures and the Old Testament means of grace in the Temple of Jerusalem, the priests and sacrifices, all of that, but their concern was focussed on the percentage of their money that Caesar required. They had marginalized the supernatural. They had put the living God out of their thinking. Jehovah Jesus was there before them and they could ask him a question about anything under the heavens to receive from him the definitive, infallible and eternal answer, but what issue did they raise? The issue of taxation.
How does Jesus answer them? By using the image of Caesar that had been created and set upon their precious coinage. Whose image is on this coin? “Caesar’s.” Correct, but in whose image are you and your children? You are not made in Caesar’s image. Caesar has no children. You do not belong to Caesar. You belong to the living God who made you and sustains you. What is your response to this reality? What are you giving to God? Do you know anything about saying to your God, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee”? Or even more, in a high response to such a being as our Creator, the One whose image you bear yet, “Take myself and I will be ever, only, all for Thee”? God has shown his mercies to us, and we can respond – when grace has conquered our hearts – by presenting ourselves as living sacrifices to him.
This is the kind of thing we are to say to God, in the words of Longfellow,
“Tell me not in mournful numbers life is but an empty dream.
For the soul is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal.
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest” was not spoken of the soul.
Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act – act in the living present! Heart within, and God o’erhead!”
While we must be obedient, law-abiding citizens and indeed be an example of that to everybody else, we do not stop at that. Why? Because there is a limit to what Caesar can claim and do. We must preach that.
The great Caesars, the great dictators, there is a limit to their authority and power . . . they can do many things to us, but thank God there are some things that they cannot do. They can throw us into prison, but they cannot stop us thinking. They cannot stop us loving. They cannot stop us imagining. They cannot touch us there. And after all, your great Caesars are but mortal men.
‘Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them as a breath has made,’
“The greatest Caesar, the greatest dictator, must needs get old and die and his authority ends. He can even put you to death, but when he has done that he can do no more.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones).
What is Caesar able to do? Much in many ways.
