If they say it’s not about the Bible but about Jesus, run!
Article adapted from episode content.
Friends, let me cut right to the chase. There’s one colossal red flag you absolutely must be aware of when you engage with folks who claim to be Christians but hold progressive views on issues like abortion. The biggest red flag is this statement: “I follow Jesus, not the Bible”. If you hear that, or if you’re attending a church where such a sentiment is preached, run. Get out of there.
I’ve been in dialogue with a progressive pastor about abortion, and this phrase encapsulates a fundamental problem. It’s a classic progressive tactic: they almost never engage the actual argument. Instead, they try a “sleight of hand,” changing the rules of the game to avoid discussing evidence or sound arguments. This pastor, for example, explicitly stated, “The question of abortion is not what the Bible teaches, but what Jesus would do”.
This is a dangerous and unbiblical division. You cannot separate the words of Scripture from the person of Jesus. The Bible is the Word of God, and Jesus is God, the second member of the Trinity. Therefore, what we read in Scripture are Jesus’s words; they are the direct teaching of what God thinks on critical issues like abortion. When someone tells you they follow Jesus but not the Bible, what they are really saying is that their understanding of Jesus is based on their own subjective take, rather than what Scripture objectively teaches. This creates a Jesus in their own image, one that conforms to their personal feelings rather than divine revelation.
The Peril of Subjective “Special Revelation”
One common way this subjective approach manifests is through claims of “special word from the Lord”. Progressive preachers often justify their positions by stating God has put a particular message on their heart, frequently received in a sudden, subjective moment of supposed enlightenment. I cringe every time I hear a preacher say, “I have a special word from God that he put on my heart at 11:00 last night”. And here’s why: without exception, it’s going to be a crummy sermon.
Genuine, impactful sermons and sound theology don’t come from fleeting, subjective insights. They come from the “studied word of God,” where a preacher has taken the time to objectively understand and convey Scripture’s meaning. 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, quite frankly. People who attempt to sidestep the real debate by baptizing their subjective opinions with phrases like, “Oh, well, the Lord told me this. I have a special word from God,” are often trying to manipulate the discussion. They use the invocation of God to lend authority to their personal views, avoiding the hard work of theological reasoning.
When someone invokes “special revelation” to justify their position, it’s almost always a sign of one of three deeply troubling things: one, they’re a spiritual nut job; two, they’re trying to deceive you by invoking God rather than doing the hard work of arguing; or three, they are up to something very sinister in wanting to deceive people wholesale. Whatever the motivation, it’s bad news, and you shouldn’t fall for it.
Progressive Tactics: Distractions from Objective Truth
Beyond the “Jesus vs. Bible” dichotomy, progressives employ a range of intellectually lazy tactics designed to distract from the core pro-life argument. You need to be aware of what you’re going to face.
Muddying the Waters: “All Sin is Sin”
A common progressive argument is to claim that “all sin is sin” and therefore, singling out abortion is wrong, as we shouldn’t “segregate some acts as being worse than others”. While it’s true that all humans share a sin nature and are equally in rebellion against God, making us equal in our need for a savior, this does not mean all sinful acts are morally equivalent. The Bible clearly differentiates between the severity of sins. There’s a profound difference, for example, between “stealing a pencil and shooting somebody in the head”. The shedding of innocent blood, which abortion entails, is highlighted in Scripture as “particularly egregious to God” and “not just one wrong among many”. To equate it with lesser offenses reveals a deeply flawed “moral compass”.
Attacking Motives, Not Arguments
Another prevalent tactic is to immediately attack the motives of pro-life advocates rather than dealing with their actual arguments. A common (and frankly, “ludicrous” and “stupid”) claim is that the conservative pro-life movement only emerged in 1980 because Southern Baptists wanted to preserve segregation, forming a coalition to maintain a “racist agenda”. This is factually wrong. Christians have been pro-life long before 1980; early Christian literature, like the Didache, clearly aligns abortion with the “way of death,” and early Christians maintained the Jewish belief that human beings bear the image of God and that abortion was wrong.
But here’s the more crucial point: even if our motives were totally dishonorable, it would not refute the argument itself. The core pro-life argument—that it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, and abortion does this, therefore abortion is wrong—stands or falls on its own merits. Questioning our motives is intellectual laziness; it’s a distraction from the hard work of refuting the argument itself. Always ask: “How does this objection refute my case?”.
Appealing to Precedent
Progressives also frequently appeal to legal precedent, arguing that overturning past Supreme Court decisions, like Roe v. Wade, constitutes “regressing” rather than “progressing”. They might claim that all prior decisions favored abortion and that challenging this is wrong. This argument is deeply inconsistent. If it’s always wrong to challenge past laws, then decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson), would also be deemed wrong. Moreover, Roe v. Wade itself overturned the established historical laws of all 50 states on abortion, many of which had laws proscribing or prohibiting it. So, if we can’t attack legal precedents, Roe v. Wade should have never become the law of the land. This appeal to precedent is just another distraction, designed to silence Christians rather than engaging with reasoned arguments.
The Bible is Not Silent on Abortion
Perhaps the most common progressive claim is that “the Bible is silent on abortion”. This is a critical misconception. While the Bible doesn’t use the specific word “abortion,” it teaches principles that unequivocally condemn it.
Let me lay it out clearly. Here’s what Scripture teaches:
- All humans bear the image of God and thus have intrinsic value. This foundational truth is taught in Genesis 1 (Old Covenant) and James 3 (New Covenant), and it permeates Scripture.
- Because humans bear the image of God, Scripture forbids the shedding of innocent blood. This refers to the intentional killing of innocent human beings. Scriptures like Isaiah 1:15-16 clearly show that the shedding of innocent blood is “particularly egregious to God” and “not just one wrong among many”. It’s not equivalent to stealing a pencil; it is deeply evil and problematic in God’s eyes.
These two biblical premises lead to one crucial question: Are the unborn image-bearers?. This question is not complex at all. The science of embryology provides a clear, undeniable answer: “from the earliest stages of development, each of us was a distinct, living, and whole human being”. We were not mere parts of other human beings, but “whole living members of the human family”. Every embryology textbook in the world teaches this.
Given this scientific fact, the biblical conclusion is straightforward: if the Bible teaches that all humans have value as image-bearers and strictly forbids the shedding of innocent blood, and if the unborn are undeniably human, then the same commands against shedding innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do everybody else.
Any attempt by progressives to argue that abortion is a “complex issue” is simply an evasion tactic. When a critic says abortion is complex, with many factors and individual circumstances, you should agree completely with the premise if the unborn are not human. But then you must challenge them: “I need you to argue for that, not merely assume it”. Once you frame the debate this way, all the “phoniness about it being a complex debate” and the claims about not judging, or needing “special revelation from God,” simply fall apart. The real issue here is what is the unborn. I will warn you: progressives will “do everything in the book to avoid addressing that issue”. Don’t let them get away with it.
Cultural Shifts and the Need for Grounded Christians
The cultural tide is turning. We’re seeing a significant pushback against many progressive ideologies. Concepts like “wokeness” and critical race theory are becoming “a cuss word culturally”. People are tired of being told they’re inherently racist, or oppressors, or that they have no right to care about national security, secure borders, or reduced crime. They’re fed up with being told they’re evil for not accepting that a man can be a woman. Culturally, people are starting to realize that “the left is at war with reality,” and “common sense is beginning to carry the day”. They recognize that “your wanting to be something doesn’t make you that”.
However, the Left also understands that there are “a lot of Christians out there who are not grounded theologically and not grounded biblically”. These Christians are vulnerable to “phony arguments” like the claim that the Bible is silent on abortion, or that the pro-life movement is racist, or that all moral acts are the same. What’s happening is a dishonest intellectual attempt to make the Bible a supporter of abortion.
Even Pro-Life Christians Can Fall for Subjective Revelation
It’s not just progressives who fall into the trap of subjective revelation. Even well-meaning, conservative pro-life Christians sometimes invoke God giving them “personal revelation” to make decisions or approach moral issues. I’ve had people tell me they don’t have “a peace” about outlawing abortion, believing God is “more compassionate” than simply banning a bad behavior. Or they might say, “I’m really learning how to hear the voice of the Lord speak to me,” and when asked what scriptures they are reading, they clarify it’s insights God is “speaking things to my heart”.
Let me be clear: the Lord does not give you the meaning of a text subjectively. The text has an objective meaning of its own. Our job is to “get at that meaning and mine it for all it’s worth”. The Holy Spirit does not teach you what a text “means to you”; that’s not biblical interpretation. I’ve done pro-life work because I was driven to it, not because I got personal revelation from God; I didn’t even pray about it in the subjective way some describe. I recognize God’s sovereign hand in my life, but I don’t believe believers should expect or develop a talent for hearing from God subjectively outside the printed Word of Scripture.
People often misinterpret verses like John 6, “My sheep hear my voice,” taking it out of context to mean personal revelation. That verse refers to the effectual call of God to salvation, not private revelation. Similarly, the story of Samuel hearing the Lord speak is misused; the text explicitly states Samuel “did not yet know God” at that time, so it’s not a model for how believers should hear God’s voice.
When it comes to discussing morally and theologically weighty things, let’s lose the language of, “Well, the Lord told me. God told me. God led me to do this”. It’s cringeworthy and it’s not biblical. It leads to trouble, because if we claim God told us one thing, then someone like the progressive pastor who claimed “an anointed word from God about why abortion ought to remain legal” can do the same. If we’re offended when he does it, we should be offended when we do it on our side.
A Call to Objective Truth and Sound Argumentation
Instead of subjective feelings or claims of private messages from God, let’s be Christians who are “Bereans” – of sound mind, who examine the scriptures objectively for what they say. We must do the hard work of getting at the meaning of a text, not punting to a subjective, “I feel the Lord is telling me that this text means to me…”. The text has an objective meaning for all of us universally, not just for you personally. As biblically grounded pro-lifers, we must be committed to the truth of Scripture objectively.
To truly make a case for life, you need to be equipped. Our “Prolife 101” course can teach you how to make a formal case, defend it with science and philosophy (even with non-Christians), and handle objections effectively. You’ll learn to recognize the “five bad ways people argue about abortion” and how they bring up things that are beside the point. This will help you keep the main thing the main thing, so you’re in charge of the conversation, not stuck in the hot seat.
Let’s be grounded Christians, committed to the objective truth of God’s Word. That’s the most important thing.