Do You Love Your Preborn Neighbor As Yourself?

If there was a genocide in your nation, your state, or your city, what would you do?

What if it was happening quietly even in your neighborhood, little innocent ones down your street being taken away to death?

Much is made in our culture of The Golden Rule: Love your neighbor as yourself.

But there is one demographic more dehumanized, tortured, murdered, and ignored than any other in our society: our preborn neighbors. They are made in the image of God, with their own, unique DNA, just as worthy of our care and equal protection under the law as those of different development, dependence, and circumstance. Yet every day in our word and deed, we pass by their plight.

It’s time to ask ourselves if we truly love our preborn neighbors as ourselves, or if we are like the hypocrites passing by the man in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Do our lives, laws, and ministries reflect all that God says regarding this injustice, or are we just doing what seems right in our own eyes?

Right Principles Concerning Abortion

If we are ever going to end this injustice, we must allow our lives, laws, and ministries to be completely transformed by God’s Word. We believe what God has to say on abortion can be summed up in 12 Principles. So let us, testing against Scripture, set our priorities in order.

1. God’s Glory First
2. The Gospel is Our Best Tool
3. Abortion is Murder
4. Not Ecumenical, but Church Driven
5. Not Compromising, but Principled
6. Not Prejudicial, but Equal Justice
7. Not Vigilante, but Biblical Punishment
8. Not Judicial Supremacy, but Lawfulness
9. Not Weak, but Proportionate
10. Not Delayed, but Immediate Repentance
11. Not Passive, but Urgent
12. Not Burdens, but Blessings

1. God’s Glory First

All we do must be for God’s glory, or it is in vain. Nothing can compromise this first principle because Christ is the first Principle and the last (Revelation 1:17). Without Christ, no one has any standing to address abortion or any other matter (1 Corinthians 2:14).

The good message (“gospel”) from God is essentially this:

The Christian God and Creator of all has revealed Himself perfectly in His Son Jesus (Hebrews 1:3) who was killed and rose again for the salvation of any who repent and follow Him in faith (1 John 2:2). The Word of God that communicates this knowledge was written by prophets and apostles  as carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), transmitted through the ages without error or loss (Matthew 5:18, 24:35) to be sufficient to make every man of God thoroughly complete and wise to salvation (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Because God therefore is the source of all knowledge, life, and truth (John 14:6), He is the beginning of all work that claims to be for good (James 1:17). Without Him, all is in vain and none of the principles that come next make sense (Proverbs 9:10). But with Him, our every breath is for his glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), and we should therefore do nothing that does not first glorify God, compromising this foremost Principle.

2. The Gospel is Our Best Tool

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” —Romans 1:16a

The Gospel is the best tool we have to address the sin of abortion. It convicts the hearer, condemns the hard-hearted, forgives the soft-hearted, and is contagious from every man it has freed. When we do not make the gospel first, we throw away the best weapon we have against the enemy, against sin, and for any we hope to turn. And what good is a child saved for this temporary life if both child and parent are left ignorant of eternal life due to our silence? True repentance from abortion past or present only comes from being made a new creation in Christ. We cannot give water only when they need the spiritual water by which they will never thirst again (John 4:14), and yet many ministry efforts wait to share the gospel second, last, or not at all with parents considering murder.

This cannot be.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” —Matthew 6:33

3. Abortion is Murder

“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out… if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” —Exodus 21:22-25

Induced abortion is the taking of an innocent life and is therefore unjust. Simply put, it is murder, punishable according to God with the same treatment as murder of other kinds. Everywhere in Scripture, preborn people are afforded the same treatment and protection given to others with the image of God:

➸God sees and intimately knows humans before they are in the womb, along with every one of their days (Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:4-5).
➸God physically forms humans from the womb (Job 31:15, Isaiah 44:2, 24).
➸God calls and names humans in the body of their mothers (Isaiah 49:1).
➸God sets some of them apart from the womb (Galatians 1:15, Psalm 22:10-11, 71:6).
➸God punishes those who murder preborn humans (Amos 1:13, Exodus 21:22-25, Leviticus 20:1-5; Hosea 13:6 with cf. 2 Kings 15:16).

It’s clear that God sees abortion as murder.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I [God] will not forget you.” —Isaiah 49:15

4. Not Ecumenical, but Church Driven

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?” —2 Corinthians 6:14-16

If our best tool is the gospel, how can we yoke ourselves together with those who refuse it? Who themselves need it? When we yoke ourselves in any formal way with those who are still under the dominion of darkness, dead in their sins, or messengers of a false gospel, we have taken up arms with those we cannot ultimately be one with. We have divided our ministerial focus between those in front of us and those beside us, since the ones working with us need the gospel to be saved in eternity just as desperately. There will be incidental, informal, or unintentional ways in which our purposes with Roman Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists and other such groups align, but when we choose to be formally unequally yoked with them, then we have made an error. God’s true church is the institutional locus of cultural and legal reform and repentance. We strive to have all ministries and individuals in this work submitted to elders in a church local to them, that it may no longer be said that abortion in America continues by permission of the church.

“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me [Jesus], that they may be one, even as we are one.” —John 17:11b

5. Not Compromising, but Principled

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” —Matthew 6:24

“But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.” —Romans 3:7-8

Christians do not think first pragmatically. We think and act principially and providentially, trusting God that if we are faithful first to what He has called us to do, He will bring about the righteous end we seek (Matthew 6:33). Ultimately we recognize that our sovereign God is the only one in control of whether and when abortion will be abolished, a baby will be rescued, or a soul will repent and believe. That makes us unwilling to do any “means” that are justified only by the “ends”; the means themselves must be justified and God-glorifying.

Reject pragmatism that has you only voting for bills you think other men will vote for (Exodus 23:2-3); reject utilitarianism that tells you to support the lesser of two evils (1 Thessalonians 5:22); stop making deals with the devil (Exodus 10:25); make no bargains with others’ lives on the line (1 Samuel 11). All sin against God is sin against God. We are not desperate to do anything we can to save lives, because saving lives isn’t the highest principle. If we are willing to save lives (or achieve any other good end) by any means necessary, including sinning, then we have made an idol of that good thing. Honoring God is more important than saving lives. And yet, the good news is that God promises that when we are faithful, He will bless us with fruit. It is no surprise then that in 50 years of great compromise on this issue, we have seen very little fruit. Sin doesn’t keep its promises; standing unwaveringly on God’s Word will never return void.

“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—the LORD detests them both.” —Proverbs 17:25

6. Not Prejudicial, but Equal Justice

“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” —James 2:8-9

God has a great deal to say about favoritism, prejudice, and partiality (Colossians 3:25, Acts 10:34, Proverbs 20:10&23, 24:23, etc.). Unfortunately, we have normalized favoritist, prejudicial, and partial laws which apply unequally in ways God has not approved. One common example is treating murder of preborn humans who were conceived in rape as an allowable exception. Even those who agree abortion in that case is still murder often find themselves advocating for laws that literally say killing rape-conceived children is legal. It is also popular to support laws that continue to legally protect murder of babies without a heartbeat or babies younger than an arbitrary age-threshold, so long as some others may (theoretically) be protected. Worse still is the advocacy for bills that merely regulate the means of murder: dismemberment bills, laws regulating the hallway size and cleanliness of Planned Parenthood buildings, etc. Such laws concerning murder do not please God because they do not meet His standard of justice. Any law, ministry, or person that says some image bearers may be murdered due to age, circumstance, or method of murder is in sin. It is sin even if the end eventually desired is abolition, because the means are themselves are unjust. All laws, ministries, and people should seek nothing less than equal justice according to God; then they all may stand with a clear conscience before Him, confident that they did all they could to be right in God’s eyes, even where men did not agree.

“Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!” —Isaiah 10:1-2

7. Not Vigilante, but Biblical Punishment

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” —Romans 12:19

It is not for us to take upon ourselves the responsibility of avenging justice (2 Samuel 3:26-39, 1 Kings 2:5). Vengeance is God’s. A few verses after the one quoted above, God makes plain one way He delegates vengeance to human authority: the civil government (Romans 13:1-5). The government is God’s sword-bearing servant and “avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Therefore taking things into our own hands without God’s warrant is not right, just as laws like Texas’ SB-8, which put enforcement on private citizens who are willing to sue, are a failure of duty. The civil government has a duty to judge and punish abortion. The individual cases and their punishments will be adjudicated in court; due process and proper evidencing must be given to each person, with proper acknowledgement of true compulsion, age and disability considerations, etc. (Luke 12:48). Nonetheless, the Lord is clear in hundreds of verses, and most foundationally Genesis 9:5-6, that justice for those who are truly guilty of murder is the death penalty. Equal justice for our preborn neighbors means advocating for equal punishment as well. Parents who kill their children are guilty of a most heinous crime deserving no less punishment than other murders. Seeking not to civilly punish murderers and their accomplices not only leaves justice unaddressed and further motivates evil (see Principle 9), it also brings judgment on us.

“Any one of the people of Israel… who sacrifices any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death… And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he sacrifices one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people.” —Leviticus 20:1-5

8. Not Judicial Supremacy, but Lawfulness

“They made kings, but not through me.
They set up princes, but I knew it not.
With their silver and gold they made idols
for their own destruction.” —Hosea 8:4

God does not call us to unconditionally submit to anyone except Him. Yet, He does put over each of us real, earthly authorities to which we are to submit. One of those is the civil government. The civil law and civil authorities, as shown in Principle 7, are given for a specific purpose: to punish evil and praise good (1 Peter 2:13-14). That means in our case that any civil authority that rules in such a way that murder is legal is acting outside of his, her, or its God-given authority. No man, law, or ruling can rightly say that murder is allowed when God says it is disallowed. Consider also that the highest Laws of our Nation and State protect the right to life (U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2; KS Const. bor., § 1) and forbid legislation from judicial authorities (U.S. Const. art. I, § 1). Therefore, when the Supreme Court in 1973 ruled that abortion could not be criminalized, we are forced to ask: will we “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)? The Christian response must be to ignore any court ruling that says we cannot legislate that abortion is murder. This is a kind of “nullification.” For example, the marijuana lobby demands individual states ignore (or “nullify”) the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich upholding federal prohibitions on marijuana. Thus, many states have legalized marijuana. Why has this not happened for abortion? Because there is no call from pro-life constituents and lobbies to nullify or ignore Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In fact, there are continual calls from pro-life groups to continue obeying these decisions; most pro-life laws and amendments explicitly contain a clause that says, “to the extent permitted by the U.S. Constitution” to preempt accusations that they will ignore Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution. So it is time for us to be truly lawful. No civil authority has the right to protect preborn murder, least of all our courts; it would be against God’s Law and ours. If we cherish the rule of law, our words, advocacy and ministry must encourage protection of the lives of our preborn neighbors and resistance to unlawfulness.

“They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness… They are full of… murder… Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” —Romans 1:29-32

9. Not Weak, but Proportionate

“Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.” —Ecclesiastes 8:11

Small, substitute victories that placate the public conscience toward full abolition poison the less convicted among us, excuse the less motivated, and catechize the unbelieving as to what the true aim and moral ground is for the faithful response to abortion. Most importantly, when our response to evil is not proportionate (according to God), we have added injustice to injustice. With lax efforts and laws, we motivate evil to continue unabated. What we demand should be what we truly seek, instead of demanding half measures and then moving the goalposts, weakening future demands for the end we actually wanted. God doesn’t need us to demand weak measures in order to get to the final, proportionate one. This prevents wasted, God-given time and energy spent on merely defunding efforts or other regulation campaigns. Of course, abortion must be defunded, for example. Wanting defunding is the proper Christian response to your tax money being used against your will to fund murder. But defunding is not the proportionate response to someone being murdered. Our legal and ministerial efforts are best spent proportionately responding to the heinous crime itself: that preborn murder is allowed in every legal quarter of this nation. If you were being murdered, would you want someone to say in protest, “Not with my money!”? When we abolish abortion, the other good ends will come with it. So let our advocacy be directly to abolition, as bold as lions.

“Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed.” —Jeremiah 48:10

“Whoever says to the guilty, “You are innocent,” will be cursed by peoples and denounced by nations. But it will go well with those who convict the guilty… blessing will come on them.” —Proverbs 24:24-25

10. Not Delayed, but Immediate Repentance

“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” —Matthew 5:30

True repentance does not delay so it can get “just one more” sin in, because true repentance is the sincere desire to see the sin gone. In the same way, when we intentionally delay passing a law abolishing all abortion,  or when we do not treat a mother considering abortion with urgency because “she can ask forgiveness afterward,” we have not understood what is truly wrong with abortion. God “commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). This may seem obvious to you, but bills of abolition have been voted down by pro-life people (claiming to want abolition) because they say it’s too much at once, there are partial bills they want to pass first, or they do not actually desire full and equal justice in this matter. It also happens that legislators will delay even partial or weak anti-abortion legislation a year or two so that the vote is in an election year. In that case, the priority is neither to honor God nor to save lives. Forgiveness still awaits even those who murdered their children or those who intentionally delayed abolition if they repent and trust in Christ, but it was not true repentance before if it justified sin by hoping for future forgiveness. Presuming upon God’s grace, even just for a time, is a sin, and Jesus warns us in His parables to be ready in every hour because He comes like a thief in the night. And with abortion, lives are on the line. There is no time for delay. In fact, we have delayed long enough. That is why we advocate for nothing less than immediate and full repentance in this matter.

“While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” —1 Thessalonians 5:3

11. Not Passive, but Urgent

“Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” —Proverbs 24:11

Every Christian, according to God, has an obligation to do justice. We are called to do things like save the innocent from the hand of the wicked (Psalm 82:4), snatch people walking into the fire (Jude 1:23), and visit orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27). It’s time for every Christian to look at the holocaust-like circumstances we’re living in and tell God, “Here I am. Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8). When you truly see the need as urgent, it will no longer be a matter of whether, but how you fight against abortion.

Considering the unknown abortion deaths, upwards of 100 million Americans have been legally killed in 50+ years. Will you join us at the places they are murdered to pray, offer help, and call out? Will you meet us at the Capitol to tirelessly talk with legislators about abolition? Will you evangelize your town, your grocery stores selling Plan B, and your physicians doing “emergency” abortions? Will you share images of your ignored neighbors who have become murder victims? Will you minister medically and financially to parents who decide against murdering their baby? Or will your answer be, when giving account for what you did during the preborn genocide of your day, that you had other things to do? Passivity is not a Christian virtue, so it is worth considering if you truly see the murder surrounding you as it is: urgent.

“Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys.” —Proverbs 18:9

“If I [God] say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning… in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness… he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.” —Ezekiel 3:18-19

12. Not Burdens, but Blessings

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” —Psalm 127:3-5

Our words, advocacy, and life choices should always reflect the full truth about children. A woman is not cursed when she finds out she is pregnant, and her preborn child should never be referred to as “a problem,” or other dehumanizing language. Though things may not always be easy, God says she is blessed to have the child (Psalm 113:9, 128:3-4) even amongst trying circumstances. In the case of women who are victims of rape, they have truly had a horrible injustice done to them, and civil justice must be sought. It is important to remember that God gives life and takes it (1 Samuel 1:6,20); it is not a cosmic mistake if she has become pregnant from such an injustice, and her child has not made her a victim, even though the wicked rapist has. Even such children, conceived in evil (Psalm 51:1), are made in God’s image and worthy of the chance every child should have at life. Therefore, no matter the reason a woman is considering abortion, she is not in that instance the victim; her preborn child is. It should always be encouraged of the mother to not murder her child, but to love, nurture, and cherish him or her as God commands, to see what a blessing he or she will be. After all, how many people conceived in poverty, in rape, or with disabilities are happily living today in our towns and neighborhoods? And this Principle must also transform our attitude regarding conceiving and contraception. Those methods that have a chance of killing conceived humans (“The Pill,” Plan B, IUD’s, IVF, etc.) should be unthinkable. Consider whether our lives, laws, and counsel promote or work against even these evil modes of baby murder. Because when we view children as God sees them, blessing will beget blessing (Proverbs 17:6).

“Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them and went away.'” —Matthew 19:13-15

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” —Matthew 22:37-39