The Gospel & Abortion

Russell D. Moore, Andrew T. Walker

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781433690396
• eBook ISBN: 9781433646539
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The pro-life movement didn't begin in the 1960s, but in the Garden. Abortion has been a divisive issue in American culture since the sexual revolution. Yet the Bible is an unapologetic defender of human dignity. Moreover, Christians have always cared for the unborn, the orphan, and the least among us. The time is now for this generation to reaffirm what believers have always believed: everybody is created in the image of God. So, what now? Editors Russell Moore and Andrew T. Walker of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) assemble leading voices to frame the issues with a gospel-centered perspective. The Gospel for Life series gives every believer a biblically-saturated understanding of the most urgent issues facing our culture today, because the gospel is for all of life.

Chapter

What Are We For?

Jim Hamilton

IF YOUR EXAMINATION OF THE BIBLE IS ONLY SURFACE LEVEL, when you come to a question like the one addressed in this chapter, you might conclude that the Bible says nothing about abortion. You could come to this conclusion from looking at the concordance in the back of a Bible and seeing no entry for the word abortion. You might even press a little further by going to a website such as BibleGateway.com and search the NIV for the word abortion, get no hits, and have your unfortunate conclusion reinforced.

Such a conclusion, arrived at in such a way, is as tragic as it is shallow. This method of determining what the Bible teaches would also lead one to think that the Bible says nothing about the Trinity or the two natures of Christ, that it says nothing about original sin, and that it pronounces no prohibition on pornography or mind-altering drugs, all because those specific words are not used. The Bible has clear teaching on all these issues, and the Bible’s teaching can be applied to every possible ethical question people face.

The truth is that the Bible isn’t silent on the issue of abortion. We know this because the Bible is not silent about the value of human life. At its deepest levels the Bible celebrates the birth of children. Scripture teaches that every person is created in the image of God and that every life is precious and miraculous. The celebration of new life lies at the heart of the biblical message heralding the triumph of life over death. So it is misguided to say the Bible doesn’t speak to the abortion issue. It does, and its message is clear.

The thesis of this chapter is very simple: God is a God of life, and according to the Bible’s inner logic, every human life is sacred and abortion is evil—in the same way that murder is evil. And we can go one step further and say this: in the Bible, were there no childbirth, there would be no salvation.

To justify these assertions, we have to set forth the Bible’s inner logic. To do that, we need to look at specific statements and how they fit in the Bible’s wider narrative. Prior to that, however, there are certain emotional realities to which we should allow the Bible to speak. The emotional realities I have in mind are the sorts of appeals that advocates of abortion use to deploy compassion—a biblical virtue—as a weapon in the war to justify something the Bible condemns: abortion.

Let me make one other, perhaps more personal, comment about emotions and abortion. Perhaps you yourself have had an abortion, or maybe you supported someone dear to you through an abortion. I understand the apprehension you may feel about reading further. Any consideration of this issue will be painful. There is hope for you, though, because pain often leads to healing.

Healing from spiritual and emotional pain can only happen by God’s grace as a result of repentance. If you are going to get better, you are going to have to look this full in the face and see there all the ugliness of the evil you have done.

Proverbs 28:13 states, “The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.”

There is no sin that the blood of Jesus cannot cover. He died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. The only way for you to make progress on this issue will be for you to repent of all your sin, including abortion, and trust in Christ. In Christ, you will find forgiveness, mercy, and grace. In Christ, you will find peace and hope. And in Christ, you will find freedom from the weight and burden of all your sin. Everything that follows in this essay is designed to help you do that.

The Bible Is for Neighbor, God’s Image, Dignity, and Least of These

Before making the case for the Bible’s view of human dignity, I must respond to several common questions about abortion. In this section, I will address the topic of abortion from a biblical perspective, and some of these arguments will be further developed later in the chapter.

According to the Bible, God made the world and its rules, and those rules forbid abortion. God’s rules are not unnecessary restrictions that keep good things from people. Rather, God’s rules are the kind of loving boundaries parents put up around their little children to protect them from ways they could get hurt. God’s laws forbid things that are bad for people. God’s commandments, instructions, prohibitions, and teachings promote what is best for us: love for God and neighbor.

We are called to love our neighbors. The Bible’s perspective on love for neighbor can be boiled down to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matt. 7:12). Who would want to be slain before they ever left the womb of their mother? There is no golden rule way to defend abortion. Abortion necessarily prevents us from showing love to others.

Furthermore, Christians also oppose abortion because we affirm that the following: the Bible teaches that humans are made in God’s image and are thereby endowed with sacred dignity (Gen. 1:26–28); that human life begins at conception (see the discussion of Jer. 1:5 and Ps. 139 below); and that a death warrant cannot be put out on a person because of their size, level of development, environment, or degree of dependency.

Sometimes people defend their support for abortion by asking these kinds of questions:

1. Should a child, a daughter, for instance, be punished for a mistake?
2. What about the health of the mother?
3. What about cases of rape or incest?
4. What about the back-alley abortions that will happen anyway?

We will consider these one by one.

1. Should a child, a daughter, for instance, be punished for a mistake?

The problem with the reasoning reflected here is simply that it does not take into consideration all the children involved. In this scenario, the would-be grandfather/grandmother inexplicably considers his/her child, but not the grandchild. Christians recognize that both lives—the mother and child—are precious in God’s sight and worthy of protection.

What kind of grandfather, for example, would have his grandchild killed rather than cause difficulty for his child? A pregnant child will face difficulties, but that does not warrant the execution of the child in the womb.

While we understand the impulse to protect one’s child, this approach to parenting is clearly sinful: instead of a father leading his daughter to take responsibility for her actions, he seeks to get her off the hook by sanctioning the death of her child. Of course fathers should teach their children to save sexual intimacy for the marriage bed, but fathers should also teach their children that the conception of a child is a miraculous gift to be celebrated. Circumstances do not determine the value of a human life or the wonder of its existence.

2. What about the health of the mother?

Life-threatening cases are tragic and sometimes come with very difficult choices. But in these cases, we should promote medicine aimed to preserve life. We must not default to a position of ending one life to promote the other. Instead, we encourage physicians to make every attempt to save all lives involved.

3. What about cases of rape or incest?

Again, in these cases pregnancies sometimes arise from tragic circumstances. And victims of rape or incest certainly deserve our compassion. But to answer this question, we must ask another question: is it permissible to punish a child for a sin they did not commit? In no other instance would we give a death sentence to a child, especially not one that bears no moral culpability. No, we would insist that even in these instances, the life of the unborn child is valuable and fully deserving of protection.

4. What about the back-alley abortions that will happen anyway?

This line of reasoning will not stand up to scrutiny. If we recognize that the unborn life is a human being, there is no reason to deny him or her full legal protection. It is certainly regrettable that an unplanned pregnancy might cause such distress in certain cases, but this too is insufficient grounds to sanction the deaths of millions of children.

Though these appeals to emotion weigh heavy on our hearts and minds, they can never justify giving the death penalty to an innocent child in the womb of his or her mother. Unfortunately, these arguments often distract people from the real issue, namely that abortion is nothing less than ending an innocent human life. These questions may appeal to human kindness and decency, but they contradict themselves and distort reality. If we truly desire to live in service to our fellow man, we must recognize that abortion is an obstacle to this task. We deem others worthy of our kindness and respect because of our common humanity, yet we undermine this very truth by denying the personhood of the unborn. In our day, truly being people of kindness and decency is directly related to our affirmation of the dignity of every human life.

The Bible’s Inner Logic: God Is for His Creation

Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord.” The assertion that all territory and all life—all life, even the unborn—belong to the God of the Bible stands on the psalm’s next statement. Psalm 24:1–2 celebrates God as the Creator of the world and everything in it. Psalm 24:1 says God owns all, because we are told in Psalm 24:2 that God created all. The Bible’s logic is simple: since God made the world, everything belongs to Him; and the fact that He made and owns everything further grants Him the right to make the rules. God is King, Lawgiver, Judge, and Savior (Isa. 33:22).

Under these premises, as the only giver of life, God is the only one with the right either to take life or to authorize its taking by others. God was so serious about life that at first He only authorized people and animals to eat plants (Gen. 1:30). After the flood, however, he authorized men to eat the meat of animals (9:3), though not meat containing the blood of life (9:4). And there is nothing more precious in all of God’s good creation than human life. This is why, after the flood, God also authorized humans to put murderers to death: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in His image” (9:6). Human beings bear and reflect the image of God. Humans are valuable because God is valuable. And protecting the image is paramount. For...

Table of contents

• Series Preface
• Introduction
• A Letter: Are You Considering an Abortion?
• Chapter 1: What Are We For? (Jim Hamilton)
• Chapter 2: What Does the Gospel Say? (Matt Chandler)
• Chapter 3: How Should the Christian Live? (Karen Swallow Prior)
• Chapter 4: How Should the Church Engage? (Charmaine Crouse Yoest)
• Chapter 5: What Does the Culture Say? (C. Ben Mitchell)
• Additional Reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the ERLC
• About the Contributors
• Notes