Abortion and the church
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Right off the top here today, I want to warn you that today’s message is likely to be a painful one for some of you to hear. Perhaps it will bring back hard memories. Perhaps it will challenge long-held beliefs and carefully constructed world views.
Before I am done here, I expect that I will have offended someone, perhaps someone in this room or someone watching online.
Even after I am finished, I expect that someone watching here or online may have questions about this topic, and I want to encourage you right now, if you do, to please contact me. I am eager to talk to you.
I would not be surprised if someone were angry with me for some of what I’m going to say today.
Please hear this: I do not preach today’s message from a place of judgment. I preach today’s message from the position of a sinner saved by grace and from the position of a pastor who desperately wants you to experience the same life-changing grace of God that changed his own life.
You may never have committed the sin we will speak about today. You may never have encouraged it in another or supported it as public policy or with your charitable contributions.
But I can assure you that someone close to you — perhaps a family member or a close friend — almost certainly has done one or all of those things.
And what I want to say to you, whether or not you have been guilty of this sin, is that nothing you may have done in your life — and each of us has done despicable and horrible things in the eyes of God — nothing can cause the God who sent His very Son to die for our sins to love you any less.
For God SO loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOEVER believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
There is no sin so great, no shame so deep, that God will not forgive you if you turn to Jesus Christ in faith that His sacrifice on the cross on your behalf paid the price that you never could pay in retribution.
Abraham was a liar. Moses murdered a man with his bare hands. David committed adultery with a woman and then had her husband killed to cover up the crime. Paul tortured and killed Christians.
But all of them found forgiveness by God’s grace through faith in Christ.
God’s grace is sufficient for your forgiveness, too, if you will only place your faith in Jesus as the innocent Son of God who died to take the penalty for your guilt as a sinner.
And that guilt falls upon every man, woman, and child who has ever lived. There is none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
And before this perfectly righteous and holy God — before this God who is the very definition of goodness and righteousness — any sin is loathsome and damnable, whether it’s lying or murder.
I want to make that point clear right up front, because I think it’s easy sometimes for church people to fall into the trap of condemnation when it comes to a sin like abortion.
We rightfully believe — and I’ll lay out why it’s right to believe this in a minute — that abortion is murder, and maybe we then judge those who have stained themselves with this dark blot as being beyond the reach of God’s grace.
In doing so, we forget the long lists Scripture gives of how we all have fallen short of the glory of God.
In describing why we are so desperate for God’s grace, the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans, chapter 1:
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Who is desperate for God’s grace? Murderers, to be sure. But also gossips and liars and the arrogant and those who have been disobedient to their parents. In short, every one of us is desperate for God’s grace.
And so I want you to understand today that I do not stand here in condemnation of any woman who has had an abortion or of any man or woman who has encouraged it.
But I DO want you to know on this day when we honor the sanctity of life what we can learn about God’s view of abortion from His word.
Let me start by acknowledging that Scripture never uses the word “abortion.” There is no explicit commandment against it in the Mosaic Law nor in the Levitical law. Jesus never spoke about it directly. The Apostle Paul never wrote about it distinctly.
So if we are to work out God’s view of abortion, it will be necessary to tease out that view through a survey of a variety of scriptures.
It will be necessary to understand God’s view of human life, to see what the Bible tells us about how and when life begins and ends and to hear God’s warning against the taking of innocent lives.
So let us start today by understanding God’s view of human life. In short, He considers human life to be sacred.
Now the word “sacred” means “devoted to or dedicated to a deity or for some religious purpose.” So how do we conclude that human lives are sacred, or devoted to God?
In his account of the six days of creation, Moses wrote this in Gen 1:27.
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Now, there has been a lot of discussion over the thousands of years since Moses wrote this about what it means to say that man is created in the image of God.
Scripture tells us that God is spirit — that He does not have a corporeal body — so we’re not saying that we look like God or that He has bones and flesh and organs like we do.
What makes more sense in light of the rest of Scripture is that mankind was created to represent God here on earth. We were given the job of demonstrating His character and displaying His kingdom throughout the world.
We have all failed at that task, all the way back to Adam and Eve, but the commandment to rule over His creation — to be His vice-regents here on earth, ruling with perfect righteousness and justice and love and peace, just as He rules — that command was never rescinded.
We were set apart from the rest of creation — we were made sacred — for this task. So, from the beginning, back in the Garden of Eden, God considered human life to be sacred, to be sanctified or set apart to Him.
But this begs the question that has so often defined the parameters of the debate surrounding abortion: When does life begin?
Even among the most fervent supporters of the so-called right to choose, we would be hard pressed to find anyone who would not be appalled at King Herod’s command to kill all the male children two years and younger in and around Bethlehem or of the Pharaoh’s command to kill all the male children born to Hebrew slaves.
But what about those who have not yet been born? At what point in the mother’s pregnancy can it be said that she carries a human life in her womb?
“Medical authorities determine a person to be “alive” if there is either a detectable heartbeat or brainwave activity. With that in mind, it is eye-opening for some to realize that unborn children have detectable heartbeats at 18 days (two and a half weeks) after conception and detectable brainwave activity 40 days (about five and a half weeks) after conception. What is so shocking is that essentially 100 percent of abortions occur after the seventh week of pregnancy.” [Charles Swindoll, Sanctity of Life, (Word, 1990), 11-12]
But as with so many other things, God’s standards for the beginning of life are even higher.
We see in the book of Jeremiah, as well as numerous other places in Scripture, that it is God who plans the birth of children. Speaking to Jeremiah, God says:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
God already had a plan for Jeremiah’s life before the prophet had been conceived. We see the same thing in God’s promise that Abraham and Sarah would have a son, Isaac. We see it in His promise that Elizabeth and Zacharias would have a son, John the Baptist. We see it in God’s promise that Mary would have His own Son, Jesus.
It is, therefore, safe to conclude that no child is conceived by accident. It may have happened unexpectedly, and the pregnancy may be unwanted, but it is not an accident. Our sovereign God is sovereign even over pregnancy.
In fact, we see in the book of Genesis that our sovereign God closed up the wombs of the women of Egyptian King Abimelech’s household when he took Sarah as his wife after Abraham had said she was his sister.
God is not only able to allow a pregnancy where it might be unwanted or unexpected; He is also able to deny it where it might be wanted.
And from King David, in Psalm 139, we read that the God who had a plan for Jeremiah and for each of us even before we were conceived is the one who forms the very life within a mother’s womb.
For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
The prophet Isaiah says something similar in Isaiah, chapter 49:
Listen to Me, O islands, And pay attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called Me from the womb; From the body of My mother He named Me.
Both of these passages speak of God in relationship to the unborn child.
Dr. Luke, writing in his gospel, speaks of Elizabeth’s unborn child, John, leaping in her womb when he recognized the unborn Christ in the womb of Mary as she came to visit her cousin.
The interesting thing is that the Greek word that is translated as “baby” in the case of Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting is the same word used for the infant Jesus during the angels’ announcement to the shepherds that he had been born. And it’s the same word used in Luke, chapter 18, of the children who were brought to Jesus so that he would touch them and bless them.
Science — and the American legal system — might distinguish between a fetus and an infant, but the Bible makes no such distinction. Biblically speaking, life is present at the moment of conception, and it happens because our sovereign God makes it happen.
We can also see from Scripture that it only God has the authority to determine when a life should end.
Speaking of the inevitability of death, Job said:
“Man, who is born of woman, Is short-lived and full of turmoil.
“Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass.
And even as He gave direction as to how and when capital punishment might be meted out by the people of Israel, God made it clear that innocent lives must never be taken when He gave that nation the 10 commandments.
“You shall not murder.
There is evidence that abortions took place in Old Testament times. There are Egyptian texts from as far back as 1500 B.C. that refer to the chemicals that can be used to induce abortions
Abortion and infanticide were common means of birth control even into the Middle Ages.
And infanticide, the killing of infants, was one of the ways the pagan people of the land of Canaan sought to appease their gods Moloch and Baal. In fact, sacrificing children to these gods was one of the sins for which God judged His people Israel and sent them into exile.
He spoke of this through the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel, chapter 16.
“Moreover, you took your sons and daughters whom you had borne to Me and sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter? “You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire.
I would suggest that even today, abortion, by and large, represents a similar sacrifice to the false gods of comfort and economic stability.
The pro-choice movement likes to claim that when it argues for the need for abortion to be legal, it is concerned about women who are victims of rape or incest or whose lives are endangered by their pregnancies.
But the Alan Guttmacher Institute — the research arm of Planned Parenthood — determined in a 1989 survey that only 1 percent of women seeking an abortion did so because of rape or incest. Another 1 percent had babies with fetal abnormalities. Just four percent of those women had doctors who said their health would suffer if they continued their pregnancies.
What about the rest? Half of the women surveyed said they didn’t want to be single mothers. Two thirds of the women surveyed said they couldn’t afford a child. And three quarters of those surveyed said that a child would interfere with their lives.
We may shake our heads in wonder at the thought of sacrificing babies to Moloch, but vast majority of modern abortions are no less a sacrifice, and God is no less offended by them than He was offended by those sacrifices in Old Testament Israel.
As the 2nd-century Christian writer Tertullian put it: “Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away, or a life in the act of being born that one destroys; that which is to be a human being is also human; the whole fruit is already actually present in the seed.” [John Stott, The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott, ed. Mark Meynell (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).]
So what are we as the church — as followers of the Christ who proclaimed Himself “the Way, the Truth, and the LIFE” — to do?
Well, one of the things is for us to wholeheartedly support organizations like the Crisis Pregnancy Center, for whom we will take up a special offering in a few minutes.
This organization works to graciously and compassionately intervene into the decision-making process of girls and women who are considering abortion.
They show them incredibly detailed ultrasound images of their babies. They counsel them about alternatives to abortion. They put them in touch with adoption agencies if that’s the preferred solution. And they provide parenting classes and material support if the women choose to keep their babies.
And along the way, these women learn about Jesus Christ, the Savior who gives eternal life to all who come to Him in faith.
But that’s not all they do. They also direct those who have been involved with abortion to support groups where they can grieve together and find the healing that is offered in Jesus Christ.
As a church, we must continue to support organizations like the Crisis Pregnancy Center in their important, life-saving and soul-winning work.
As members of the church, we must look for the opportunities that God gives each one of us personally to love sacrificially.
Maybe this means raising a grandchild who might otherwise be aborted. Maybe this means adopting a child who was rescued from abortion. Maybe it means coming alongside a frightened young woman who doesn’t know how she can afford to raise a baby.
Maybe it means helping a single mother find a job or childcare. Maybe it means volunteering to work on the CPC hotline in Chesapeake. Maybe it means dedicating a portion of your income to the their ministry.
As a church, we must also pray. We must pray that our nation will turn to God. Abortion is not just a sin. Abortion is evidence of our sinfulness and of our nation’s lost state.
If we want to reduce the number of abortions in this land, then we have to give those considering abortion a reason to choose life instead. Pray that God will open their eyes, and then go and tell someone about the Christ through whom they can have eternal life. And then go and tell someone else. And someone else.
And through it all, as a church, we MUST be people of compassion, people of grace, people who see the woman caught in the snare of this great evil as someone who is loved by God and made in His image.
We must see her as no more or less a sinner than you or I. We must love her and make her know that nothing she has done has made it impossible for her to be forgiven and redeemed and that God loves her so much He provided a way for her to be forgiven and redeemed through His own Son.
If we want to show that we cherish life, then we must take the actions that prove our commitment goes deeper than political posturing.