Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace to you!
This Lord’s Day is Mother’s Day. I want to greet every Christian mother and offer you a special tribute. Every unique relationship is created by God and carries profound significance in the history of redemption.
For example, as wives, sisters are specially chosen by God in Marriage to symbolize the church for whom the Lord Jesus gave his life on the cross. You are called to embody, through your submission to your husbands in Marriage, the spotless church, cleansed and filled by redeeming love.
But today, I especially want to honor you not as wives but as mothers, chosen by God to symbolize the Lord’s church. In Galatians 4:26, Paul calls the church the mother of believers: “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.”
Paul says that in Christ, you are not “bearing children for slavery” but raising “children of promise” (Gal. 4:24, 28). He refers to the church as our mother. The world often praises the greatness of mothers, but they do not understand why mothers are great. If it is only because of your labor and sacrifice, your tireless care for your children, your sleepless nights and longsuffering, if you are praised only because you endure pain and hardship without complaint, then such praise is not praise at all but a curse. For in Genesis 3:16, this is precisely God’s curse upon Eve after the Fall: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.”
In other words, motherhood without the gospel is not great at all—it is pitiable. The more a mother gives, the more pitiable she becomes. The deeper her concern for her children, the more tragic her end. She will ultimately lose what she loves. She tries to cling not only to her children but to life itself, and yet, even though life comes from her, she herself cannot hold onto it, for she is under a curse. The pain of motherhood is a mark of humanity’s fall. A mother must lose what she has raised. She must reap death from her children. This is a harbinger of man’s ultimate demise. The life of every weary mother reflects this. If humanity is destined for extinction, if death is to rule over us, then it would be fitting to curse the womb that bore us, as Job and Jeremiah did. For the pain of childbirth would have no ultimate meaning.
Let me remind you, then, of the greatness of motherhood. The only thing that can transform a mother from a tragic figure to one who laughs at the time to come is the gospel proclaimed in Genesis 3:15: “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
In this promise, the curse of childbearing is turned into a blessing by the Messiah of mankind—the only begotten Son of God, our Savior Jesus—who came forth from a mother’s womb as the “seed of the woman.” It was not mothers who redeemed mankind but rather the Savior of mankind who redeemed mothers.
Among all the children ever born, there was one who condescended to enter a mother’s womb: Jesus. Without the incarnation of the Lord, mothers could bear no life—only death. But now, you mothers who trust in the Lord Jesus can bear life. For “in him was life, and the life was the light of men” (Jn. 1:4).
Dear mothers, and sisters who are called to be mothers, I honor you because the Lord has blessed your wombs with life and the light of men. Through the cross of Jesus, the role of “mother” has been restored. Through redeeming love, mothers have once again been entrusted with a mission in God’s kingdom to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). As a result of this gospel calling, mothers now symbolize the church.
We can now truly acknowledge the greatness of mothers. All of your labor and sacrifice, your tireless care for your children, your sleepless nights and longsuffering, your patient endurance and hardship—all of these things are now worthy of remembrance and praise. For they no longer point to the just curse upon Eve but to the labor pains Christ endured for his church. As mothers, you share uniquely in the sufferings of Christ and will also share uniquely in his glory.
To the young women, I want to say that in the Bible, Christ has given you a promise that is especially and exclusively for you: “Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control” (1 Tim. 2:15).
To those women whose husbands and children have not yet believed, I want to say that in the Bible, Christ has also given you a Mother’s Day gift that is especially and exclusively for you: “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” (1 Cor. 7:14).
To those women who have lost children or never borne any, I want to say that the Lord has not forgotten you. When Paul uses mothers as a symbol of the church by calling the church the mother of believers, he provides in the following verse a promise and a mission from the Lord Jesus especially for you: “For it is written, ‘Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.’” (Gal. 4:27).
Dear sisters, let me say this to you: In the gospel, every woman will eventually become a mother—whether married or single, whether a physical mother or a spiritual one. A woman in Christ is destined to become a symbol of Jerusalem, the church beloved by the Lord. And the most beautiful act she performs is pouring her life into children and youth through the pain and sacrifice of motherhood.
For this reason, Solomon describes the stately beauty of a woman as follows: “You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners” (Song 6:4). A mother is lovely because she symbolizes the Jerusalem loved by Christ. A mother is awesome because from her womb and cradle come forth great armies of the Lord.
Dear mothers, may the hand that rocks the cradle also shake the gates of hell. May the tears you shed in secret become streams flowing through the Holy City. May all that you pour into the lives of present and future children become for you a crown of glory in eternal life.
Because of your great calling, Mother’s Day may also be called “Church Day.” Who among us has not, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, been reborn as if from a mother’s womb? Who among us has not been nourished in the church of the Lord with the pure milk of the Spirit? That is why the Apostle John refers to one church as “the elect lady and her children” and to another church as “the children of your elect sister” (2 John 1:1, 13).
Finally, I sincerely hope that each of you mothers, together with the Lord’s church, our common mother, may laugh at the days to come. May the whole church be blessed by your faithful service in the home. May each of you give thanks to the Lord for His church, the Jerusalem that is above. And may each of you know the glory of your calling as mothers because of Jesus and his calling as the son of man.
Your servant who blesses every mother in Christ,
Wang Yi
May 13, 2017, Yueqing, Wenzhou
