Life and Law

On September 11^th, 2001 over 3500 lives were destroyed when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. This was a great calamity and we mourned for our loss. Yet the very next day, and every single day afterwards, 4000 innocent babies were tortured and murdered legally in America and by America, and we did nothing. 4000 babies every day - 28,000 every week - 112,000 every month and 1,460,000 every year. This makes a total of 4 million dead babies since the Supreme Court handed down their infamous decision in Roe v. Wade making abortion on demand a legal reality, and yet America still remains proud of her country and ignores the blood on her hands.

Why is America not repentant of her sin? Why have we not turned from our wicked ways and bowed before God? Why is the pro-life movement not making enough progress? Doug Wilson said- “The pro-life movement has been often driven by the sorrow of sentimentalism rather than a zeal for biblical righteousness…” This is our problem and I wish to address it, and then show you what needs to be done to change it.

The battle cry for the pro-life movement has always been the sanctity of life. We base our opposition to abortion upon the fact that all life is sacred. Our testimony against the evil has been mixed. Christians have wanted to think biblically about opposing abortion, but we have been using secular and humanist absolutes. Humanist absolutes like: “all life is sacred period”. For example, if we were consistent with the non-qualified sanctity of human life theory we would have to be against capital punishment. Instead of getting to the heart of the matter we have just stuck to the surface. We have been going about this whole “pro-life” thing with the wrong foundation.

Then how, you ask, are we to stop abortion if we don’t tell people they are killing something that is sacred? What is the right answer to abortion? This leads me to my second point, what we need to do to stop it all.

We all know that man is made in the image of God, and that image is a shield against all lawless bloodshed. The real issue, is not the sanctity of life, it is the sanctity of God's law and the consequential dignity of human life. Doug Wilson explains it like this, “…while having great dignity, human life is not sacred. When we speak as though it is, we leave the distinct impression that the foundation of our humanity is the source of our law, and thus the source of our protest. This is how much of our pro-life involvement has become humanistic instead of biblical. Human life has become a god instead of a gift, an idol instead of a valuable creature.”

Sanctity of life is not to be our foundation. The reason why we ought to oppose abortion is because taking an innocent human life violates the moral law of God. The law gets to the root of everything not just the surface. There’s more to life, then just life. We have to get to the bottom of all evil, and that is the violation of God’s law. We have removed and broken God’s laws, and our country will only repent once it has been broken and shown the true fault of her sin. “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” Gal. 3:24. The law of God leads us to Christ and in order to bring our country back to Him, we must first bring back His laws!

Our country already holds life as sacred, as we saw when 9/11 hit. What we don’t seem to recognize is that taking a baby’s life is against God’s moral Law. We have a duty to raise the standard of God’s Law so that our nation will see the true nature of abortion. We pro-lifers need to stop focusing only on the sanctity of life and rediscover the sanctity of God’s law; this is the first step in turning our country back to God.

Thank You