Suppose you just got word that in the next ten days you are going to give a talk to post-abortive women and men, and you are wondering what on earth you should say. Maybe it is a sermon. Maybe it is a Sunday school class or a homily of some sort. Scott Klusendorf has this very talk coming up, not long from now, in front of a large number of people who have had experience with abortion, and he walks through what he is preparing to say.
It is important to get it right, because if you get it wrong, one of two things will happen. You will come off too soft, to where you don’t fully communicate the gravity of the situation. Or you will come off as a flamethrower, with a lot of condemnation that doesn’t offer anybody any hope. You want to do two things: communicate biblical truth, and communicate the fix for those who are wounded by abortion.
Three Questions Every Talk Must Answer
Any good sermon or talk on abortion to people who have had experience with it ought to answer three key questions.
- What does Scripture say about shedding innocent blood? We need to be clear on that. We don’t want to minimize the Scripture there. We want to be very direct and clear on what it says.
- What is the fix for the shedding of innocent blood? We need to know what we offer in terms of hope to people who have committed the sin of abortion.
- What should their response be? That is, their response both to the truth of Scripture on the shedding of innocent blood and to the truth of Scripture on how we find justification, or peace with God, having committed a sin like abortion.
Is All Sin the Same?
The first thing to do in a talk like this is to dive into what the Bible says about the shedding of innocent blood. There is a reason to start there. Our culture has a very bad way of thinking, and you see it in evangelical circles in particular. People say, “You know, sin is just sin. It doesn’t matter. One sin is no different than another. Why should I focus on something like abortion, or shedding innocent blood, when sin is sin?”
That is not something the Bible teaches, and it bears repeating.
It is true that we all equally share a sin nature. All of us, whoever we are and whatever our station in life, whether clergy or laymen, professors, or Christians of fifty years or five minutes, share equally a sin nature. Biblically, that means we not only do bad things, we are bent toward evil in our very nature. We have a nature that is in rebellion against God. You see that in places like Ephesians 2, which speaks of us being dead in our trespasses and sins and, by our very nature, enemies of God. We are bent toward evil. We are prone to go there. We are prone to wander there. So it is no surprise that people do things like have abortions, steal things and treat their fellow men poorly. That shouldn’t surprise us.
But it is not true that every sin is the same. There are some sins worse than others, and Scripture is very clear that the shedding of innocent blood represents a preeminent moral crisis.
What Scripture Says About Innocent Blood
Start with Proverbs 6:16-19:
There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
There is much more. In Psalm 106:37-41, the psalmist speaks about God’s own people:
They sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the whore in their deeds. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage; he gave them into the hand of the nations, so that those who hated them ruled over them.
In Isaiah 1:15-16, the prophet again quotes the Lord speaking about his own 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.
That sounds serious. And in Isaiah 59:7, the prophet says of the people, “Their feet run to evil.” Notice, it is not that they slipped into it. They run to evil, “and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways.”
We could go on, but here is the key point. While all of us equally share a sin nature, Scripture clearly does seem to distinguish between certain types of sins. Some are worse than others. They are not all equal. You don’t think, for example, that stealing a pencil is morally equivalent to raping and murdering someone. Scripture clearly does seem to draw a distinction between certain acts. We equally share the sinful nature, but the acts that spring from it are not morally equivalent.
Is Abortion the Shedding of Innocent Blood?
Having seen the Bible put a pretty big premium on shedding innocent blood, we then need to ask: is abortion the shedding of innocent blood?
The answer is yes, if the unborn are human. And pro-lifers have a case to show that the unborn are in fact human. We can argue from the science of embryology that they are distinct human beings. They are not part of another human being, like skin cells on the back of your hand. They are themselves distinct members of the human family, even though they have yet to grow and mature. And we can argue philosophically that there is no essential difference between you the embryo and you the adult that would justify killing you back then. Differences of size, level of development, environment (meaning where you are located), and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now.
What does that mean? It means the same scriptures that foreclose on the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do to everybody else, because the unborn are image bearers, just like you and me.
The Biblical Case Against Abortion
How do you argue strictly from a biblical perspective that abortion is wrong? Here is the basic formal argument.
Premise one: Scripture teaches that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Genesis 1 teaches that in the old covenant. James 3 teaches it in the new. And you find that teaching scattered throughout Scripture: we have value because we bear the image of God.
Premise two: Because humans bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood, meaning the intentional killing of an innocent human being, is strictly forbidden.
Just those two points leave us with one question: are the unborn human beings? If the answer is yes, the commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to them as they do to everybody else. And we know from the science of embryology that the unborn are members of the human family. Therefore, we don’t need Scripture to say “abortion is a sin” in a chapter and verse. We just need to know if the unborn are human. If they are, the commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to them.
So, to review: the shedding of innocent blood is a serious moral crisis in Scripture. It is not just one of many sins that we can cavalierly dismiss because “sin is sin.” Scripture makes a big deal about the shedding of innocent blood, or what we would call the intentional killing of innocent human beings.
Silence Spares No One
If abortion is a serious moral wrong, what is the fix for people who have participated in it?
This is where a lot of church leaders get in trouble. They say, “Look, we don’t want to lay a guilt trip on people by talking about abortion as a sin, so we are going to be quiet about it.” The problem is that when they do that, they don’t spare post-abortive women and men a guilt trip. They spare them healing, because unconfessed sin keeps them out of full fellowship with Christ.
The Culture’s False Fix
Our culture has a fix for having had an abortion, and it is the false one: shout your abortion. Make a big deal about it. Wear a T-shirt. Scott once saw a young woman wearing a T-shirt that said, “I’ve had 21 abortions.” Hard to believe, but she was wearing it, and he will take her word for it. There she was, doing exactly what the culture tells us to do. Don’t repent. Shout your abortion. Be proud of it. Proclaim it boldly.
Scripture gives a different answer for people who have sinned on the issue of abortion. You don’t shout your abortion. You trust in God, who justifies the ungodly.
What a statement. Trust God, who justifies the ungodly. That is exactly what Scripture teaches, and there is an example from the Old Testament and one from the New.
Woe Is Me
In Isaiah 6, we get an unbelievable picture. The most holy man in all of Israel, the prophet Isaiah, sees a vision of the exalted Lord. The Lord is seated on high, the temple is radiating his glory, and the prophet is undone. The vision is absolutely terrifying to him.
Keep in mind, this is the most holy man in all of Israel, and look at how he responds. He does not say, “Oh God, it’s so great to be sweetly in your presence right now, and I feel so close to you.” He says, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. I am undone.” He looks at the holy God seated on high and, in effect, says, “I’ve got nothing. Nothing but a corrupted self. Here I am in the presence of this most high, holy God, and I’m in real trouble, because I’m not holy.” The most holy man in all of Israel cannot find anything in himself to commend himself to the holy God in whose presence he now stands.
And it is interesting what happens next. God doesn’t ask the prophet to look inward to find justification. He sends an angel with hot coals to purify the prophet’s unclean lips, so that the prophet can be in the presence of this holy God. The solution comes from outside of the prophet.
Abraham Trusted God Who Justifies the Ungodly
We see the same thing in Romans 4, where Paul speaks of Abraham. To paraphrase Paul: Abraham did not get right with God through works. Rather, he trusted in God, who justifies the ungodly.
In other words, Abraham wasn’t looking to himself to produce holiness. That would have been scandalous to the Jews of Paul’s day, because in their minds Abraham was the picture of virtue and goodness, the man you wanted to emulate. And Paul says no. Abraham didn’t look to himself to get right with God. He trusted in God, who justifies the ungodly. Abraham was declared righteous because of something outside of himself.
Houston, We Have a Problem
That raises a question. How can a holy God declare righteous people who are not righteous?
It is a big deal, and there is another troubling question behind it. Scripture is clear that without righteousness, nobody enters the kingdom of God. That is pretty dark. Then it gets worse: Scripture says there are none righteous. Houston, we have a problem. Without righteousness, nobody goes to heaven, and nobody is righteous. What is the fix for that?
Paul gives the answer in Romans 3:21-25, where he speaks of a righteousness that is outside of ourselves. To paraphrase the passage: now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been revealed, a righteousness that comes through faith. Paul goes on to say that this righteousness is found in Jesus, whom God put forward as (get ready for a big word) a propitiation for sin.
Why “Propitiation” Matters
You might be tempted to think it is just a big word. Here is why it matters. Propitiation conveys the idea of pacifying the wrath of a deity: an atoning sacrifice that turns away the wrath of a deity.
What Paul is saying is that God’s wrath against sin, including, by extension, the sin of abortion, is turned away not by looking inward to a righteousness we have, and not by a righteousness that comes from keeping the law, but by a righteousness God himself provides by sending forth his Son as a propitiation for our sin. The very righteousness God demands for heaven, he provides, by sending forth his Son as a propitiation that turns away his wrath against our sin.
That is incredible news for men and women who have sinned on the issue of abortion.
An Alien Righteousness
Notice that it is not a matter of trying to justify ourselves. It is a matter of looking to a righteousness outside of us, what the Reformers called an alien righteousness.
So in a sermon on abortion, the solution for the sin of abortion, the fix, is not found by looking inward. It is not found by shouting your abortion. It is found by trusting in God, who justifies the ungodly. And how does God justify the ungodly? By sending forth his Son as a propitiation, a sacrifice that turns away his justifiable wrath against our sin and rebellion. That is the great news of the gospel. And God proved that the sacrifice Jesus made was sufficient, because he raised him from the dead. So we can have confidence that we have good standing with God, not because of our good works, but because of what he has done.
The Response: Rest in Your Justification
That brings us to the third question. What should the response be from those who have had abortions, to both the truth of Scripture that the shedding of innocent blood is a preeminent moral crisis, and the truth of Scripture that hope is found not within us but outside of ourselves, in an alien righteousness that God provides by sending forth his Son as the sacrifice we need to atone for our sin? What is the response if you have had an experience with abortion, whether you are a man who encouraged a woman to abort or a woman who made that choice because you thought you had no other way out?
The first thing to say is this: rest in your justification. Don’t look to yourself for some way to make amends, some way of making up for it. You can’t. None of us can make up for our sin. Our sin is so egregious to God that there is nothing we can do to make our good deeds atone for our bad ones.
Again, contrast what the culture says with what Scripture says. The culture says, “Oh, you’ve had an abortion? Shut up. You have no right to speak on this issue when you did the very thing you now condemn.” That is the world’s view, and the world is ruthless with people who have abortions and then repent and say, “You know what, I made a mistake.” You are not allowed to say you made a mistake. You are not allowed to say you sinned, repented and changed course. They don’t like that.
But here is what Scripture says: such were some of you. You once were these things. You once were adulterers. You once were thieves. You once were slanderers. But now you have been washed in the blood of Christ. Such were some of you, but not now.
Pro-Life Work From God’s Favor, Not for It
So how do you walk in the freedom and forgiveness you now have in Christ?
Yes, go ahead and get involved in pro-life work. But note your motivation. You don’t get into pro-life work to earn God’s favor. You get into pro-life work because you now have God’s favor. And how did you get that favor? Not by doing good stuff. You got it because you believed in his Son, whom he put forward as your atoning sacrifice, your propitiation. You are no longer looking at God the Father as your judge. You are looking at him as your heavenly Father, who has adopted you into his family because of what his Son Jesus did on your behalf.
That gives you a whole new motivation for pro-life work. You are absolutely qualified to reach out to other people you know are wounded by this issue and convey to them the truth you have found by believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You are absolutely qualified to make a case for the pro-life view and say, “Here are my arguments.”
Don’t Make Your Past the Main Event
One more thing needs saying, and Scott says it gently. He has met some Christians (he doesn’t mean to sound sexist, but they are predominantly women) who seem, to him anyway, not fully healed of their abortion experiences, and who insist on telling their story over and over again. Listening to them, he gets the sense: is there some point at which you can rest in your justification, knowing that God has declared you righteous, not because of you, not because of what you have been through or because you have shed enough tears, but because of what Jesus did for you?
So, very gently, to post-abortive women in particular: before you go out and try to convey your story as a healing mechanism for others, make sure you have the confidence of knowing that you have been adopted into God’s family, and that he now judges you on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, not your own. You want to communicate what God has done more than what you have felt and been through.
Scott finds it particularly encouraging to work with post-abortive women who have a story but who also know very well how to communicate the moral logic of the pro-life view, and whose story tends to be about what God has done for them in Christ more than their own story of hurt and pain. He thinks of Kim Ketola, who does a great job sharing her story. She had an abortion, later came to faith in Christ, was healed, and is also trained in pro-life apologetics. She can defend the pro-life view with the best of them. There are others, and you may know some as well.
Make sure you are healed, and that goes for men as well. Don’t wallow in the sin of what you did. It is fine to communicate that what you did was sinful, and to communicate the truth of Scripture about the shedding of innocent blood. But don’t make your past the main event. Make God interrupting your past the main event: how he broke into your life, and how, through sending forth his atoning sacrifice as your propitiation, you found faith, grace and forgiveness. That is what you want to focus on.
Not a Second-Class Pro-Lifer
The other thing to say is this. Don’t think that because you have had an experience with abortion, you are now a second-class pro-lifer. That is not true. In the same way, you shouldn’t think of yourself as a first-class pro-lifer with authority to tell everybody else how to do it. Having had an abortion doesn’t give you the authority to say, “Here’s how we ought to do pro-life activism. Here’s how we ought to pursue our strategies.” Having had an abortion doesn’t disqualify you, but it also doesn’t give you special privilege.
You are like all of us: sinners who come to the pro-life issue and serve out of gratitude that we have been redeemed, that we have been made right with our Creator thanks to the work Christ has done. We don’t come to this wearing special badges, because we have had experience with abortion or because we haven’t. There is no room for self-righteousness on either side. What we need to be are sinners who recognize humbly that we get the privilege of serving God on this issue, not to make up for a past sin, not to atone, but because God has adopted us into his family. We do pro-life work because we have God’s favor, not to earn it.
It is vitally important to keep that in mind and keep the gospel at the front. You can use your testimony to point people to the gospel, because even those who have not had an experience with abortion still need redemption. They still need to be declared righteous, and they will experience that because they have heard the gospel. So always think about eternity. Ask how your words can point someone to the fix that will set them up for eternity, the fix found only in Jesus.
Pastors, Don’t Sugarcoat It
Pastors, if you are preaching on this issue, tell the truth about abortion. Don’t sugarcoat it. It is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. And don’t sugarcoat the fix either. The fix is not found in you. It is not found in the person who has had an abortion. It is found in the work of Christ, which is sufficient to cleanse all of us.
That is what we need to focus on when we talk about abortion. It is the only way we can convey truth and redemption, and see the world change through our testimony.