This Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of National Sanctity of Life Day, when we celebrate human life, especially the lives of the unborn. Over the past forty years, many changes have occurred in the pro-life movement. The development of sonogram technology has advanced the pro-life cause as people see more clearly that what is growing in the womb is not merely a clump of cells but a human being. Movies and other pro-life campaigns have also helped expose the true evil of those who murder children in the womb. Of course, the most significant development was the U.S. Supreme Court rightly overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Alongside these positive developments, however, are concerning elements of the pro-life movement among Christians. We live in a highly charged political environment, and many Christians view abortion as more of a political issue than a theological and spiritual issue. This perspective often leads to prioritizing political solutions even at the expense of theological truth and spiritual power.
Some professing believers, especially those in younger demographics, have mistakenly conflated the issue of abortion with social issues such as immigration, health care, and poverty alleviation. This conflation of issues has led to confusion about abortion and the necessity to oppose it for its inherent evil.
A third issue is that some Christians do not fully grasp why we should oppose abortion. For example, there are people who say that we have failed to find the cure for cancer because the person who could have discovered it was murdered before birth. This idea suggests that we oppose abortion because of the net negative effect on society.
As we seek to eradicate the evil of abortion from our nation and pray the gospel changes hearts of women who seek abortions, we must understand biblically why Christians oppose abortion. Let me give three reasons why Christians should strenuously oppose abortion.
First, abortion attacks the character and nature of God.
When the Bible describes who God is, one key attribute of God is that He is the source and giver of life. In the Creation account, God brings all life into existence in the world. The world God made was very good, and it was devoid of death.
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Furthermore, when God created humanity, He created us in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). We were created to reflect the reality of who God is. Because we are the image of God, any attack on human beings without divine sanction is an attack on God Himself. That includes murder on babies being knit together in the womb.
As Christians, we must oppose abortion, not for pragmatic reasons, but because abortion is an assault on God’s character and nature. To call abortion a “right” or to laud it as something “good” is to say that death is good and that God’s image is so trivial it can be discarded on demand.
Second, abortion attacks those God cherishes.
Throughout Scripture, we see the divine importance placed upon children. Jesus Himself was the chief example of God’s love for children. In Luke 18:15-17, people brought their babies to Jesus to be blessed by Him. The disciples found this to be inconvenient for Jesus, and they rebuked these parents. Our Lord, however, far from finding children to be a nuisance, loved them and desired they be brought to Him to bless them.
Jesus’ example reminds us of the importance of children in God’s eyes. Too often in our society, children are cast aside, treated as unimportant, or seen as obstacles in the way of career advancement, wealth accumulation, or exciting vacations. To treat children this way is antithetical to the way of Christ, and to murder them while they are developing in the womb is to destroy those God is in the process of creating. Christians should cherish what God cherishes, and hate what God hates. God loves children, and He hates the murder of these small image bearers. Because we fundamentally want to model the holiness of our Lord, we must oppose this horrific evil.
Finally, God has commanded us to defend the weak and vulnerable.
No one in society is weaker and more vulnerable than children. They are mentally weak and unable to discern threats from evildoers. Children are also easily deceived and harmed. This is especially true for those within the womb, whose cries for help are unheard, and whose screams from the pain of being torn to shreds in the womb are silent to outside ears. When mothers forsake their children and give them up to be butchered, how can we not lament and weep over this great evil? How can we not speak against such bloodshed of the most innocent and vulnerable among us?
Psalm 41:1 says, “How blessed is he who considers the helpless; the Lord will deliver him in a day of trouble.” The Scriptures repeatedly call us to defend the orphan. James 1:27 defines pure religion as caring for orphans in their distress. While those being murdered in their mother’s wombs are not orphans in the sense that their parents have died, they are orphans in the sense that their parents have abandoned them to death. To speak against such evil, to pray for God’s mercy to bring it to an end, and to call sinners to repentance for committing murder or sanctioning murder, is incumbent upon us as those God has called to defend the fatherless and rescue those being taken away to death.
Abortion attacks the character and nature of God, assaults those God cherishes, and destroys the weakest and most vulnerable among us. This Sanctity of Life Sunday, let us remember as Christians why we value life, why we oppose the murder of those in their mother’s wombs, and why we seek to abolish such murder from our land. And may God pour out His compassionate mercies upon us and change the hearts of our fellow Americans, that we might live in a nation whose people love life because we love Christ.
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