If they say it’s not about the Bible but about Jesus, run!

This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

What is the biggest red flag you should be aware of when you talk to so-called Christians about abortion? I’ll tell you what that is in just a minute, but welcome to The Case for Life program. We’re delighted to have you. I want to remind you again, if you have not taken advantage of our course, Prolife 101, that in just one week will equip you to make a case for life, I hope you’ll do that. See our websites for information on that.

Okay. I teased you a moment ago with an intro about the biggest red flag when you talk to Christians about abortion or people who say they’re Christian. And here’s what it is. I follow Jesus, not the Bible. Now, lest you think I’m making this up, I have been in dialogue and have been commenting on a progressive pastor that I’ve been in relationship with talking about abortion. And there are certain trends you can always point to when you talk to progressives. And one of them is this.

They almost never engage the actual argument. They’re going to try to change the rules on you. It’s a slight of hand. It’s sort of like, hey, let’s not worry about the evidence. Let’s not worry about the arguments. Let’s change the playing field here. So instead of appealing to what scripture says, we get this pastor saying this, and I’ll quote you his words. He says, “The question of abortion is not what the Bible teaches, but what Jesus would do.” Okay? When you hear that, run.

If you’re attending that guy’s church, run. What he is doing is basically saying the way we know Jesus is through his own subjective take on him not what the scripture objectively teaches. Look, there is no way you can draw a divide between the words of scripture and Jesus. The Bible is the word of God. Jesus is God, the second member of the Trinity. Therefore, the things we read in scripture are Jesus’s words. They are the direct teaching of what God thinks on issues like abortion.

So, watch for this because it’s a big problem. Now, here’s what he does next that is really interesting. He goes into his sermon justifying abortion by saying he’s going to bring a special word from the Lord that God has put on his heart. Now, can I just say to you, whenever I hear a preacher say, “I have a special word from God that he put on my heart at 11:00 last night, before preaching it on Sunday morning, I cringe.” And here’s why.

Without exception, it’s going to be a crummy sermon. How do I know that? Because the best sermons are not immediate revelation. They are the studied word of God where the sermon has time to ferment in the in the preacher’s mind. In a good way, ferment for you Baptists out there. And what I mean by that is the pastor has time to consider the studied word of God. Learn what it’s saying objectively and then convey it to you, his parishioners, so that you can digest it and learn as well.

This idea that the best word from God is something we get in a subjective moment of enlightenment is not biblical Christianity. I think it’s mythology myself quite frankly. And I think we need to be wary of people who attempt to sidestep the real abortion debate and talk about their own subjective opinions instead. And they baptize it by saying, “Oh, well, the Lord told me this. I have a special word from God. Now, here’s what’s interesting. The same pastor said something else you need to be aware of.

He said, “Look, I am not a politician. I’m not a lawyer. I wanted to add, you’re also not a theologian, but I didn’t because I was trying to be nice.” But notice his attempt to say, “Look, I’m not I’m just trying to be a humble guy here. I’m just trying to speak what God has put on my heart.” And that’s an attempt to manipulate the discussion away from the argument that is in play. Now look, if this pastor claims to be a thinking Christian with an anointing from God, here’s what he needs to do.

He needs to demonstrate from scripture that the pro-life position does not align with Christian teaching. He needs to show that the unborn are not human beings, that they’re not made in the image of God, and therefore destroying them through abortion, does not violate biblical ethics. He does none of that. Instead, what he’s going to end up doing, which I just find unbelievably frustrating when I talk to progressives, but it’s very typical, and you might as well be aware of what you’re going to face when you do it.

The first thing he’s going to do is try to muddy the waters by making all sin morally equivalent. Let me give you a heads up. When somebody says to you, “Sin is sin.” And I don’t like to single out particular sins and focus on those when all sin is sin and we shouldn’t you know segregate some acts as being worse than others. The Bible does not teach that. Now, of course, the Bible does teach that we all have a sin problem, and that is namely our sin nature.

That all of us, whether we are pastors, whether we are murderers, whether we are car thieves, or whether we’re Mother Teresa, here’s our problem. We have an inherent sin nature that is in rebellion against God. Every last one of us have that. And that’s a big problem. And because of that sin nature and the acts that spring from it, we are by default under the wrath of God outside of a saving relationship with Jesus, our substitute. Okay? In that sense, we are equal.

But it doesn’t follow that because we equally share a sin nature that all acts that spring from that sinful nature are morally equivalent. There is a difference between stealing a pencil and shooting somebody in the head just cuz you want to do it. That is clear. I if you don’t recognize that, there’s something deeply wrong with your moral compass. The other thing that you will find from progressives is they immediately will go after your motive. They don’t deal with your argument.

They’ll say, you know, the reason why conservatives got involved with abortion is because the Southern Baptists in 1980 wanted to preserve segregation. So, they got in bed with the pro-lifers and tried to form this coalition that would allow them to keep their racist agenda alive and well. Okay, first of all, that’s ludicrous. It’s stupid because Christians have been pro-life long before 1980. You could go back to the earliest of the church fathers, the earliest Christian literature. The dedicay makes it very clear that there is a way of life and a way of death and abortion is aligned with the way of death in the dedicay.

You can read other literature from the earliest Christians and see that they maintained the Jewish belief that human beings bear the image of God and that abortion was wrong. That never changed. But this idea that somehow it wasn’t until 1980 that Christians became concerned about abortion and became pro-life, it’s factually wrong. But here’s what I want you to do. Don’t even go there. Instead, what I want you to do is look the progressive in the eye and say, “Okay, suppose we didn’t give a rip about this issue before 1980.

Suppose our motive was totally dishonorable. We just are a bunch of racists who want to preserve segregation. We’re that bad. How does that refute our argument that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings? Abortion does that. Therefore, it’s wrong. That argument has to be refuted by showing it’s either invalid or unsound. It does no good to question my motives or anybody else’s motives. Do the hard work of actually refuting the argument. I’ll tell you, one of the things that that if I were just to let my emotions run free here, one of the things that really crawls under my skin is how intellectually lazy leftist progressives are.

And Christian progressives are the worst. I’ve never met lazier thinkers than people like John Pabloz and others who just spill out all this stuff that they never bother to argue for or defend. They throw out cliches and think they’ve carried the day when they’re really quite lazy. Always ask the question, how does this objection refute my case? In fact, that’s what you should do before you engage any claim from the left. Always ask yourself, suppose they’re right. How does this refute what I believe?

How does it refute my argument that abortion is wrong? Could abortion still be wrong even if every single pro-lifer on the planet was a bad evil person? And of course the answer is yes because the argument stands or falls on its merits. Now there’s a third thing you will notice from progressives. They’re going to appeal to precedent. They’re going to say look before the DOS case the Supreme Court decisions that went down all were in favor of abortion. And now all of a sudden we’re throwing all that precedent away.

We are no longer progressing. We’re regressing. Okay. If it’s always wrong to challenge past laws, a couple of problems ensue from this. First, you’re going to have to say that we should reinstate segregation because after all, Brown versus the Board of Education case that got rid of segregation overturned pie versus Ferguson, which affirmed segregation. You would also have to overturn Ro. Wade. And here’s why. Because Roie Wade overturned the established historical laws of all 50 states on abortion. Those that had liberalized their laws and those that hadn’t.

When Row was passed, roughly 31 states had laws procribing or prohibiting abortion to some degree or another and 19 states did not liberalize their laws or I’m sorry, 19 states did liberalize their laws. And so Ro comes along and throws all of those under the bus and says, “No, the only law that matters right now is what we nine justices say on the Supreme Court.” So if we can’t attack legal precedences, if we aren’t allowed to change what is historically law, then Roie Wade should have never become the law of the land. So this is the kind of stuff you get from progressives.

You don’t get actual argument showing where your pro-life argument fails the test of reason. You get this kind of stuff that is really just distraction, but it works to silence a lot of Christians. Now, the big thing he’s going to argue that this progressive pastor that I’ve been engaging with, he is going to argue the Bible is silent on abortion. We’ve dealt with this on this program before, but I’m going to go ahead and go back into it because I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen.

The left realizes they are losing a lot of debates culturally. Right now, critical race theory or what we call wokeness has almost become a cuss word culturally. I mean, people are sick of it. They’re tired of being preached at that they’re inherently racist just because of the color of their skin. They’re being tired. They’re tired of hearing that they’re an oppressor just because of the way they look because somebody who looked like them once did something bad to other people who look differently that therefore the people today are guilty for what was done in the past.

People are getting tired of that. They’re also getting tired of being told they have no right to care about national security, their own borders being secure, and they have no right to want to see crime reduced. People are getting fed up with this and they’re also getting tired of being told that they’re oppressors because they don’t want grown men going into girls bathrooms and they’re being tired of being told, “Look, you’re somehow an evil person because you won’t accept our claim that a man can actually be a woman.” Now, culturally, what’s happening is a lot of people are going, “Wait a minute.

This is just dumb. We’re not going for this anymore.” you. They recognize that the left is at war with reality. The left wants you to believe that just because a man thinks he’s a woman, he is a woman. And common sense is beginning to carry the day here. And people are saying that’s just absurd. You’re wanting to be something doesn’t make you that. I may want to be a 5 foot2 Asian. It doesn’t make me a 5 foot2 Asian just because I may want it.

And I think that’s starting to dawn on people at a level maybe it didn’t even a couple of years ago. But what the left does know is that there are a lot of Christians out there who are not grounded theologically and not grounded biblically. And they are at risk for falling for these kinds of phony arguments we see like oh the Bible nowhere mentions abortion or hey you know the roots of the pro-life movement are really misogynistic or racist or this idea that somehow all moral acts are the same.

There are Christians vulnerable to this and what I think is happening is you’re seeing a lot of people try to make the Bible a supporter of abortion and they’re not doing it in good theological manner. They’re doing it in ways that are very very dishonest intellectually. Now is abortion morally complex? No, it’s not. And the best way to illustrate this is when your critic says, “Well, you know, abortion is a complex issue. There’s a lot of factors to consider. You know, every individual woman has a different circumstance and every woman who has an abortion has things going on in her life that drove her to it.

And who are we to judge her? We shouldn’t be making laws that curtail her individual liberty and freedom.” I think the best way for you to respond to that is to look at the progressive and say,”I agree with you completely. I agree there should be no laws on abortion. I agree that every woman should be allowed to decide for herself what she wants to do. Heck, I agree with you that proifers like me are wrongly imposing their views on people like you.

I agree with everything you’re saying.” If what if the unborn are not human? But I need you to argue for that, not merely assume it. And once you frame the debate that way, all this alleged phoniness about it being a complex debate and that we shouldn’t judge and this idea that we need special revelation from God to understand the issue, it all just falls apart. The real issue here is what is the unborn? And I will warn you, progressives will do everything in the book to avoid addressing that issue.

Don’t let them get away with it. Now, I mentioned a moment ago that I would revisit this idea that the scriptures are silent on abortion. Let me just do this. Here’s what scripture teaches. It teaches unequivocally that all humans bear the image of God and thus have intrinsic value. Genesis 1 teaches this in the old covenant. James 3 teaches it in the new and it’s spread throughout scripture. But in addition to that, there’s a second premise we know from scripture. If premise one is that all humans have value because they bear the image of God, the second premise or what we call the minor premise is this.

Because humans bear the image of God, scripture forbids the shedding of innocent blood. And by shedding of innocent blood, it means the intentional killing of innocent human beings. And we’ve gone over scriptures here in previous episodes. I won’t read them all here. I’ll just read you a couple that indicate that what I’m saying is true. You can look, for example, at Isaiah 1:15-16. The Lord tells his people, “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil.” Okay, I’ve got at least six other scriptures here I could cite that make the point that the shedding of innocent blood in scripture is particularly egregious to God. It’s not just one wrong among many. It’s not equivalent to stealing a pencil. It is particularly troubling to the Lord. And he responds to it in that fashion. And this is something you need to know and point out that when it comes to something like abortion, you can simply go and point out that scripture teach teaches the shedding of innocent blood is deeply evil and problematic.

Then that leaves us with just one question to resolve and it’s not complex at all. The question is very simple. Well, are the unborn image bearsers? Because if they are human beings, meaning image bearsers, then they too should not have their blood shed. They too are imagebears worthy of protection. And as we’ve cited on this show again and again, and we’ll do it until all, you know, until we enter eternity if we have to, the science of embryology is very clear that from the earliest stages of development, each of us was a distinct living and whole human being.

We weren’t parts of other human beings like skin cells on the back of my hand. We were already whole living members of the human family, even though we’d yet to grow and develop. Every embryology textbook in the world teaches that. Now, if that’s the case, then it’s very easy to conclude what the Bible thinks about abortion. If the Bible teaches that all humans have value because they bear the image of God and it also teaches that the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden because humans bear the image of God.

And if we know the unborn are human, then the same commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do everybody else. So this attempt by progressives to muddy the waters by making it about the motive of pro-lifers or trying to make it look like all sins are equal therefore sing singling out abortion is somehow wrong or their faulty appeal to say hey look we’re just overturning established law and that isn’t right. All of that is just nonsense and a distraction.

But I want to come back to the thing I opened with and that is be very careful of anyone who tells you that they got special revelation from God. That is almost always a sign of one of three things. One, they’re a spiritual nut job. Two, they’re trying to deceive you and they’re going to try to win the argument by invoking God rather than doing the hard work of arguing for their position. Or three, they are up to something very sinister in wanting to deceive people wholesale.

So, it’s all bad news. However it is that they’re invoking God, don’t fall for it. Okay. When we come back, I want to talk about a way believers do this as well. Because you know what? I have heard pro-life Christians appeal to God giving them subjective messages when it comes to their faith, their views on pro-life. And I’m actually going to talk about for a few minutes why I think that’s deeply problematic and why I think that scripture nowhere teaches that believers ought to pursue getting private revelation from God.

And I’ll talk about that when we come back. So I’ll see you on the other side.

Hello friends, welcome back. Good to have you with us today. I teased you with a line before the break that pro-life Christians sometimes fall into this trap of invoking God giving them personal revelation to either make decisions or approach a moral issue. I’ve actually had people say to me that they don’t have a piece about outlawing abortion, that they somehow feel that isn’t in line with God’s heart, that he is more compassionate, that he is more tuned in to the needs of his creation than just saying we’re going to ban a particular bad behavior.

But there’s even well-meaning people who are pro-life, who are conservative, who have bought into a theology that is just as troubling as that progressive pastor on many levels. And they will say things like, “Well, I’m really learning how to hear the voice of the Lord speak to me.” And of course, my question is, “Well, that sounds great. What scriptures are you reading right now that you hear the Lord speaking?” Oh, no, not that. It’s that he’s speaking things to my heart.

He’s giving me insights as to what a text means. Can I just say to you, if you’re a believer, the Lord does not give you the meaning of a text subjectively. The text has an objective meaning of its own. And our job is to get at that meaning and mine it for all its worth. Learn from it, apply it to our lives. The Holy Spirit does not teach you what that text means to you. That is not the way to approach biblical interpretation.

But I have had pro-lifers say to me things like, “Well, how did you get into this work? How did God call you into this? How did you sense his leading?” Here’s my answer, and it may shock you. I didn’t. I didn’t even pray about this. I just started doing pro-life work because I was driven to do it. Now, I can tell you this. I think God was the one driving me to do it. And I can look back in my life and say,”I see how God sovereignly put things in place so that I ended up doing what would best glorify him with my vocation.” I’m fine with recognizing God’s sovereign hand in bringing things about.

But to say that you’re going to get personal revelation from God, that he’s going to speak to you to give you decisionmaking ability. There’s even books out about this. I think a Henry Blackabe’s book, Experiencing God. And I’ve run into Christians who make decisions about issues like how a church ought to be involved with abortion by wanting to hear from God rather than making decisions based on what is the clear teaching of ethics and scripture. And this is troubling to me.

I don’t see anywhere in scripture where it says believers should expect or develop a talent for hearing from God subjectively outside the printed word of scripture. And I’ve had people say, “Well, think about John 6. My sheep hear my voice.” Okay, that is totally taking that verse out of context. John 6 is talking about the effectual call of God calling his people to salvation to belief in his son. That is about the call to salvation, not getting private revelation. I’ve heard people say to me, “Well, Samuel heard the voice of the Lord.” We should, too.

There’s only one problem with that. If you go back and actually read the text, it makes it very clear in the very passage talking about Samuel hearing the Lord speak where he says, “Speak Lord, here I am.” it says very clearly that Samuel was not yet a believer. He did not yet believe in God. He did not yet know God is what the text says. So, you can’t use that as a text for how believers ought to learn to hear the voice of God.

Can I encourage you as a believer when it comes to discussing moral things that are theological weighty, let’s lose the language of,”Well, the Lord told me, I God told me. God led me to do this.” It’s cringe-worthy and it’s not biblical and it gets us into all kinds of trouble because someone can come along and say, “Well, God told me something else.” like this progressive pastor I looked at a moment ago who said he had an anointed word from God about why abortion ought to remain legal. Well, you if you’re offended that he would do that, we should be offended when we do it on our side.

Let’s not do that. Let’s look at the evidence. Let’s look at the arguments. Let’s be Christians who are Bereans, who are of sound mind, who examine the scriptures objectively for what they say. We do the hard work of getting at the meaning of a text. We don’t punt to a subjective, well, I feel the Lord is telling me that this text means to me this or that. The text does not have a meaning for you that it doesn’t have for all of us universally.

The text has an objective meaning. We as biblically grounded pro-lifers above all else should be committed to the truth of scripture objectively and not be looking for subjective messages from the Lord on high that don’t apply to anybody but us personally. Let’s be grounded Christians. That’s the most important things. Thanks for joining us today. Look forward to seeing you next time. Heat. Heat.