Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, everyone. We open this new week on the podcast addressing one of the many questions we have not addressed directly — embryo adoption. There are several versions of the question. I’ll put them all on the table, Pastor John.

A listener named Sveta writes in. “Hello, Pastor John. I have a follow-up question to APJ 1165. What do you think about so-called ‘snowflake adoptions,’ in which a frozen embryo, left over from another family’s IVF process, is implanted into a woman to give this child a chance at life?” Laura, a listener, wants to know if there’s “a moral difference between adopting the orphaned-born versus adopting the orphaned-unborn?” Likewise, Audrey asks if embryo adoption should be considered something that Christians value “as much as after-birth adoptions?”

In fact, several listeners have asked, in essence, Are frozen embryos as much orphans to concern the church as living, breathing orphans? And this is a very real question for one couple: “Hello, Pastor John. My name is Carien, from Australia. I recently read some articles about considering embryo adoption to help those babies live their God-given life with a loving family. My husband and I are considering this option. We lost our only child in 2019 and we feel ready to love a child again. But my husband is subfertile and the normal adoption process in Australia is long and expensive. But my question is, How could I be sure that adopting an embryo is what God intended for us? We want a child. But does embryo adoption allow us to ‘play God’ and choose parenthood? Maybe God made my husband subfertile for a reason. I guess I just want to make sure that this is God’s will and not our will here.

“Also, another concerning fact about embryo adoption is that the clinic transfers all the donor’s embryos to the recipient. What if the donor has three frozen embryos and we can only afford to grow one baby? Then it does not help the other two frozen babies left, as one will have to decide to keep them frozen or destroy them. Maybe we are overthinking this process, but we want to do what is right in God’s eyes.”

There are so many angles from which we could come at this question. I hope the angle that I take will prove helpful in the end, even though it’s somewhat indirect concerning the question of God’s will for this couple’s life. I assume what they are asking is not that I tell them whether to adopt a frozen child, but whether there is anything in God’s word, God’s revealed will, that would make such an adoption sinful.

Upstream and Downstream

Now, the angle I want to take is to make the observation that when we have a tragic situation, we who are Christians should feel a desire to take action to mitigate the tragedy in two ways. One way is that we should be thinking about how to get at the causes of the tragedy upstream, so to speak, from the actual tragedy, and do what we can to hinder the tragedy from becoming worse by dealing with those causes.

The other way we should be thinking is how to mitigate the tragedy, not just by looking upstream to its causes, but by looking at the tragedy as it is right now and downstream to its effects. We should be moved to take action so as to make the present situation and the future situation less destructive and heartbreaking than it is.

Tragedy of Frozen Children

Now, I think the existence of 750,000 frozen children in America, and 120,000 in Australia, is a tragedy. God’s revealed will in his word for the conception and pregnancy and birth and rearing of children is not that it be done in such a way that results in hundreds of thousands of eventually abandoned children. This means that, upstream from the tragedy mingled into whatever sorrowful situations may motivate in vitro fertilization — which results in so many extra conceived children outside the womb — there are sinful desires and practices. They’re mingled in.

“I think the existence of 750,000 frozen children in America, and 120,000 in Australia, is a tragedy.”

Nobody forced this tragedy on anyone. It’s not like the result of a hurricane or a pandemic that leaves orphans. These hundreds of thousands of orphans are not owing to the death of their parents. Choices are being made that result in this heartbreaking reality of hundreds of thousands of unwanted children. Some Christians should devote energy to looking upstream and trying to reverse the causes of this tragedy.

For example, Germany has a law that says only three embryos can be created in one in vitro fertilization cycle, and they must all be transferred into the mother’s womb. This, in effect, prevents the tragic situation of thousands of frozen children accumulating and eventually being unwanted. Some Christians should be looking upstream to work for those kinds of preventions.

I think Jennifer Lahl, the president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, is a person like that. She relentlessly tries to draw our attention to the moral problems that multiply when we take the processes of conception and pregnancy into our own hands outside the womb. For all the joy that may come for some couples, we need to be aware of the legal tangles and the personal tragedies that also result.

Adopting with Eyes Wide Open

So, I think one of the first things that Carien and her husband need to come to terms with is that they are dealing with a tragic situation with some innocent and some sinful causes. It’s not a neutral situation. If they move forward with adoption of one of these frozen children — and frankly, I hope they do — I think it will spare them future pangs of conscience if they do it with eyes wide open.

Someone will accuse them of participating in a system that is shot through with processes and procedures and priorities that are unwise and sometimes sinful. Others will point out that children created in this way will face many difficult and troubling realities as they come to know and understand their conception stories. I think Carien and her husband need to be ready, just for their own conscience, to respond to such concerns with wisdom in patients.

That’s why I introduced the second way of approaching a tragedy like this — not just looking upstream for ways to prevent it, but looking at it for what it is and asking how we might mitigate, at least in a small way, the tragedy right in front of us. And one strategy of taking that approach is the strategy of adoption.

I know two couples who have embraced this way of life, and I admire them for it. They are not naive, and they are moved both by their principled opposition to the destruction of these frozen children and by their loving longing to have some of these children in their own family.

Risk Is Right

I wrote a little book one time called Risk is Right. I didn’t mean that anybody should jump off a cliff thinking an angel would catch them, but I did mean that for the sake of love, and for the glory of God, and for the peace of conscience, it is right to look all of the possible future heartache and pain in the face that may come with such an adoption, and then to act like Esther did.

For the sake of saving her Jewish kinsmen, she approached the king, which was illegal, and the only way she would survive this disobedience was if he graciously lifted his scepter. She asked her family and her friends to fast and pray for her, which is what we should do when we adopt children, and then she said, “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). That’s the kind of risk I think glorifies God.

“We embrace the ambiguities of this fallen, tragic world, and we do our best to act in love.”

She wasn’t trying to make a name for herself. She wasn’t trying to be a hero. She was trying to save people who were going to perish if she couldn’t change the king’s mind. And so it is with thousands of these frozen children. They’re going to be disposed of sooner or later if they’re not adopted.

It is a wonderful thing to be a Christian and to know that Christ died for our sins so that even if we are not completely sure about all our motives and all our tactical efforts to be loving, and even if we’re not sure that we have all the wisdom we need, we can be sure of this: the record of our debts is nailed to the cross. With that assurance, we embrace the ambiguities of this fallen, tragic world, and we do our best to act in love.

I do not doubt that God will guide Carien and her husband in the path of love and meet every need that they have for the next fifty years, according to his riches in glory, and according to his promise.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, everyone. We have a big week on the podcast. First up, our inbox is full of emails asking whether or not it’s a good idea to dramatize Christ’s life for television. A listener named Jim asks it this way: “Dear Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast. I’m wondering of the dangers and benefits of watching biblical historical fiction, particularly of television shows and movies about the life of Christ, of him acting and saying dramatized things beyond what we read in Scripture.”

One anonymous man writes to say, “Dear Pastor John, thank you for the podcast. It has been used by God to help me and my family here in Kazakhstan. I would like to know your thoughts on television shows and movies about the life of Christ. Are they helpful or unhelpful? What are your concerns?”

Sam, a church leader, wants to know the place of visuals, particularly screen dramatizations about the life of Christ. One recent show is “beloved by many” in his church, and he says, “I feel that it has enlivened my own walk with God and helped me imagine what Jesus’s world could have been like. This has the effect of making the world of the Bible more accessible to me. But imagination can only take you so far. Can we enjoy shows like this personally, even include them in a teaching context, without violating the second commandment?”

Another listener, Lisa, is less optimistic. She says television dramatizations of Christ’s life “don’t sit well with me.” As she considers Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18, she wonders if these dramas are “adding to or altering Scripture,” amounting to heresy. Pastor John, for these listeners, do you have any thoughts?

There is no way that I can avoid this question, because it touches on my life. For 25 years — and I still do it one way or the other — when I was a pastor at Bethlehem, every Christmas season, I created and read to the people in worship what we called “Advent poems,” one for each Sunday during advent. The poems took about ten minutes to read. They created a story built around a biblical character or biblical situation in which I invented persons, dialogue, and circumstances that were not in the Bible but were intended to clarify and confirm and intensify realities that are in the Bible, that the Bible itself teaches.

So, the question is not abstract for me. The question is, Was I doing something sinful? Was it wrong to create those poetic, imaginative expressions?

Safeguards Against Distortion

Let me mention the safeguards that I put in place to avoid the dangers of distorting Scripture or replacing Scripture or diminishing the authority of Scripture, and then I’ll give some positive reasons for why I think imaginative explanations and illustrations and representations of biblical truth are not only legitimate, but are even encouraged by the Bible.

Not Adding to Scripture

First, was I guilty of disobeying Proverbs 30:6 or Revelation 22:18, which says that we should not add to the words of God or to the prophecy of Scripture? No, I was not guilty of disobeying those Scriptures because those Scriptures forbid the presumption that one could add scripture to Scripture or prophecy to prophecy. Those texts are not condemning explanation and elucidation and illustration and representation of Scripture that make no claim in themselves to have any Scripture-level authority.

Those texts are condemning every attempt to use words or images or representations that claim to be on a par with Scripture. And in fact, I would say that the Roman Catholic Church is guilty of this error when it elevates the papal pronouncements ex cathedra to the level of infallible biblical authority. That’s my first safeguard.

Clearly Imaginative

Second, I made clear that the poems I was reading were not Scripture. I made it clear. They were not divinely inspired. They were not infallible. They were imaginative illustration, explanation, and representation of truth that I saw in the biblical text.

I made this distinction not only when reading poetry but when preaching. My preaching is not Scripture; it is based on Scripture. It uses language that is not in Scripture — all preaching does, all teaching does. It derives any authority that it has from the degree that it faithfully represents the reality put forth in the Bible. So it is with imaginative poetry — or drama, for that matter.

Consistent with Scripture

Third, I promised never to create any dialogue or any character or any circumstance that could not have happened in view of what the Bible actually teaches. In other words, even though I created things that were not in the Bible, nothing I created contradicted what was in the Bible. Everything had to be possible and plausible in view of what was in the Bible. Nothing was allowed to call Scripture into question.

Focused on Scripture

Fourth, I made every effort to draw attention and affection to the same reality in my poems that I saw in the Scripture itself. And fifth, I never replaced expository preaching with imaginative poetry.

In other words, I tried to make plain that God had ordained the expository preaching of his infallible word as central to congregational life and as the main corporate means by which God protects his word from distortion. Through every other form of representation, preaching stood. Preaching remained dominant and essential. And in my case, the sermon was never, not once in 33 years, intermingled with any kind of visual media. I think that’s a bad practice in preaching and is usually owing to a loss of confidence in the preached word to do its amazing work.

Biblical Warrant

Now, those are the safeguards that I put in place to keep from diminishing Scripture or distorting Scripture or replacing Scripture, but I think even more important is the fact that imaginative representations of biblical reality are warranted by Scripture itself.

“Imaginative representations of biblical reality are warranted by Scripture itself.”

Of course, in biblical times, nobody had ever heard of movies or videos, and so nothing directly is said in the Bible about them. But short of that, pointers to imaginative representations and drama are everywhere in the Bible.

Imaginative Language

First, the Bible itself uses imaginative language that creates pictures in our minds that are not the same as the reality being discussed, but that shed light on the reality by not being the reality itself. We call these metaphors or similes or word pictures or parables. For example, just listen to Jude 12–13 describing the false teachers and the troublemakers in the church:

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

That’s amazing! He’s talking about human beings, bad people who are ruining the church. What does he do? He creates pictures in our brains with words like “hidden reefs,” “selfish shepherds,” “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees,” “wild waves,” “wandering stars.” In other words, he tries to make plain one objective reality by comparing it to a very different reality.

Jesus did this with parables, didn’t he? “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” — like a mustard seed, like leaven, like a treasure, like a merchant, like a net, like a master of a house, and on and on. Or consider the prophets like Zechariah. He sees a reality; he wants us to know the reality. How should he help us see and savor this reality? He says, “I see a measuring line” (Zechariah 2:1–5). “I see a lampstand” (Zechariah 4:1–3). “I see a flying scroll” (Zechariah 5:1–4). “I see a woman in a basket” (Zechariah 5:5–11).

“The job of the preacher or the poet or the teacher or the parent is to help others see and savor reality.”

The Bible does this kind of thing hundreds and hundreds of times. It’s the very nature of language to be different from the reality it points to. The word love is not the same as the reality of love. The word God is not the same as the reality of God. The word salvation is not the same as the reality of salvation. And once you realize that all language is pointing to reality, that the job of the preacher or the poet or the teacher or the parent is to help others see and savor reality, then you realize all the amazing and various potentials that language has.

Imaginative Action

Then there’s not just imaginative language, but there is imaginative action in the Bible — acted-out dramas of biblical reality. Jeremiah was told to make yoke bars and walk around with this heavy yoke on his shoulders to dramatize the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar on the people (Jeremiah 27:1–22). And Ezekiel was told by God to lie on his left side for 390 days to illustrate Israel’s years of punishment (Ezekiel 4:4–8). And then there’s poor Isaiah. God said, “My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush” (Isaiah 20:3).

Pursuing Reality

So, my conclusion is that if we pause and ponder why the Bible itself employs so many imaginative means of explaining and illustrating and representing reality, we will see that the Bible itself:

offers us examples of truth-clarifying, truth-intensifying drama, poetry, language
encourages us to use language this way
protects us against distorting or replacing or diminishing Scripture

Audio Transcript

To be a Christian is a wonderful thing. The greatest thing, in fact. To find forgiveness in the cross of our Savior, to be united to Christ by his Spirit, to have the Father as our own Father, and to commune with him as his child — these are the greatest gifts a creature can receive. And so, we give thanks. And yet we also look forward to our resurrection, and to new bodies that will enjoy God forever without any sinful impediments to our giving God all the glory he is worthy to receive from us — and by it, experiencing the fullest possible joy we can experience in ourselves. Can’t wait!

But for now, we wait. For all the incredible gifts and blessings we now have in Christ, to be a Christian in this life doesn’t mean we are free from our disordered loves. We’re not. Every Christian feels an ongoing civil war on the inside, in our twisted loves and longings. We both love God and find in us the remains of a treasonous impulse against the God we love, in our attraction to sin. The Bible explains this civil war. Arguably, Romans 7:14–25 makes the point. Less arguably, Galatians 5:16–17 makes the point too.

So then, what do we Christians — redeemed by Christ’s blood, sealed by the Spirit, adopted by the Father — what do we do with the disordered loves that we find still at work inside of us? Pastor John explained at the end of a sermon on Romans 7, preached in 2001. Here he is, drawing out pastoral application.

“We should not be surprised when we meet in ourselves some really excessive and distorted bodily desires.”

In view of all that the Bible says to us about our condition, our fallen condition with this body of death, and our sinful condition with the body acting in treason to join forces with the power of sin to tempt us — in view of the fact that there’s a law of sin still active, and there’s a body of death — we should not be surprised or thrown off balance when we meet in ourselves, and our children and our spouses and our loved ones and our colleagues and our roommates and our neighbors, some really excessive and distorted bodily desires.

Let me give you some examples, and then say how I think we should respond.

Excessive and Distorted Desires

Remember, we are being redeemed in stages. Guilt is taken away right now. All your sins are forgiven right now. The Holy Spirit is dwelling in your life by faith, if you’re a believer, right now. No condemnation is hanging over you at all right now. And yet, we wait for the redemption of our bodies, and those bodies are bodies of death, and places where sin sets up a base of operations often, and tempts us with excessive and distorted bodily desires.

For example, we see excessive desires for leisure, tempting us to laziness and sloth. We see excessive desires for food, tempting us to gluttony and all of its damaging effects. We see excessive desires for drink, tempting us to alcoholism. We see excessive desires for sex, tempting us to lustfulness and fornication and adultery.

And on top of all of those excessive desires, this law of sin operating in our members produces distorted desires. That shouldn’t surprise us either. The whole world is bent out of shape under the fall. That’s much of the point of Romans 1–3. It’s much of the point of part of Romans 8.

For example, we see distorted desires for food. My father-in-law treated people, before he died, who had this incredible hankering for gray river clay in Georgia. They ate clay until it filled their bowels and they died. He would warn them not to take laxatives because it would kill them. Why would anybody want to eat clay?

Or the whole issue of binging — bags of cookies and so on. Those are distortions of a good thing called appetite, desire. Or we know about distorted desires of sex. The desire to have satisfaction with one of your own sex, whether homosexuality or lesbianism or bisexuality, is one of many kinds of fallen distortions. Another example would be the distortions of desire for pleasure, a kind of high, and people resort to marijuana or speed or cocaine or LSD.

Why? What are these distortions, these artificial ways of getting some kind of satisfaction and happiness? The world is just shot through our bodies. These bodies of death are shot through with excessive desires and distorted desires. There’s not a person in this room who doesn’t have one of those.

Who Will Deliver Me?

Now, what do we do? I’m calling you, pleading with you week after week for a biblical realism in Jesus Christ. In Christ, by faith, we are united to him. Before any of this is fixed, hear this now: by faith we become united to Jesus. Faith alone! We are united to him, and his purchased pardon becomes perfectly ours, and his perfect righteousness clothes this excessively desiring, distortedly desiring body first. This is the gospel.

“Will you make war all your life until your body is finally redeemed at the resurrection? That’s the issue.”

Now, what’s the issue then? The issue in your life, believer, is not, Do I have excessive desires? Do I have distorted desires? I say it with joy in my heart for those of you who struggle with homosexuality or with eating disorders or with drugs or with laziness — I say it with joy in my heart: The issue is not whether you have those excessive and distorted desires. The issue is, will you say, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” and look away from yourself and your resources and say, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, who gives the victory”? And will you not make peace with the law of sin and find yourself at home in the body of death, but rather make war all your life until your body is finally redeemed at the resurrection? That’s the issue.

So you walk up to me at the end of the service in five minutes and say, with trembling, “I’d like you to pray for me because I’ve never told anybody, but I really struggle with homosexuality.” I’m not going to be surprised. Happens a lot. You say to me, “Nobody knows what I’m doing with food. Nobody knows.” I’m not going to be surprised; nothing surprises me anymore.

But I will call you to a massive hope that through faith, there is justification, and through faith, there is forgiveness. And then, by that same Christ, comes incrementally — sometimes in leaps and bounds, and sometimes through long, agonizing wrestling — a triumph that will be secured in the last day because of the blood of Jesus.