What does the Bible say about abortion? Is abortion always wrong? - Podcast Episode 102, Part 1

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How should Christians view the Roe v Wade decision on abortion rights? - Podcast Episode 102, Part 2

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Welcome to God questions podcast today's episode. We're going to be covering an issue that's been in the news a lot lately, but need not just lately really for The past several decades.

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It's been an issue that Christians miss struggling with and that's the issue of abortion Today we want to cover primarily what does the

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Bible say about abortion? So joining me today is Kevin, our managing editor and Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com.

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So we're going to be trying to give a, what is a biblical perspective on the issue of what does the

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Bible say about abortion? For me, the most interesting part of this discussion is that the

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Bible nowhere explicitly mentions abortion. There's no occurrence in the

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Bible of a woman intentionally going to have the baby in her terminated without being born.

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This does not occur in the Bible. But with that said, there are a lot of principles that, for me at least, and for Jeff and Kevin as well, thoroughly convince us that God is opposed to abortion other than perhaps in the most extremely rare cases where the only way to save the life of the mother is for the baby to be removed early, essentially causing its death.

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But we'll get into that a little bit more later. But Jeff, why don't you start us off? What for you is the biblical evidence that you think that leads you to be against abortion or more accurately pro -life?

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I think where you started with there is actually a good place to start is be very clear about what we're talking about and what we're not.

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So when we talk about abortion, we're not talking about an effort to attempt to save at least one life involved.

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So a woman who has a miscarriage or a fetus who passes away or something like an ectopic pregnancy where there's an effort being made to preserve a woman's health without making any deliberate effort to kill somebody, that is not abortion.

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Abortion is when you make a deliberate choice to kill, to terminate, to end the life of the unborn child.

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So when people refer to so -called medically necessary abortions, there are nurses, there are doctors, there are

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OBGYNs who will say, strictly speaking, that's never the case. You can always do something to try to save the life of the unborn, even if you know it's probably not going to be successful.

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So everything that we're talking about today, we're really talking about those deliberate efforts, a purposeful choice to end the life of the child.

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And there are a lot of things in scripture that give us principles that we can look at. We do see the idea in the

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Bible that the unborn are human. We see the same terminology used for unborn persons as we see for born persons.

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We see concepts in the Old Testament that talk about if a woman gives birth prematurely, that's one thing.

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If there's some sort of harm because of what happens, that's a different thing. We see in scripture that all human life is equal.

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There's a consistent thread in the Bible that tells us that we are not supposed to distinguish between people in terms of their value to God, their moral value, in the terms that are often used when it comes to abortion.

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And some of those things do spill over into a secular sense. But basically what we're looking at is that the Bible's definitions give us the idea that the unborn are human, that all human beings have intrinsic rights, that they have intrinsic value, and that murder, which again, to be carefully defined, we're talking about deliberately killing somebody who is innocent, purposefully choosing to take a life, that those things are wrong.

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And there's more details that we have behind those, but that's the broad strokes of what scripture says about why the idea of abortion, even if it's not explicitly mentioned, does come with biblical concepts that we should be able to use.

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On this whole issue, sometimes the position of the Christian gets framed as, you know, we are anti this, we're anti that, we're always framed as the negative position, we're the naysayers.

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But I really like to actually say what we're for.

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We use the term pro -life, and there are many reasons why we are pro -life, why we support the life of the mother and the life of the baby that she carries.

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And I have a few reasons right here that I've listed as to why we are pro -life, and that first one is that life is a gift from God.

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Jesus taught in John 5 that the father has life in himself, and he goes on to say that the son also has life in himself.

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God is the source of life. He is the sustainer of life. When God made

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Adam, the first man, he formed that body, first of all, and then he gave that body life through a special work that only

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God could do. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being,

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Genesis 2 and verse 7. All of God's gifts should be cherished, and the gift of life is one that we should cherish.

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Christians are pro -life. Also, we are pro -life because we believe that life begins at conception.

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There are many resources available where medical science backs up this biblical idea as well.

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Also, many passages of Scripture that indicate that life begins at conception.

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One of my favorites, this is one of my go -to passages anymore when

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I'm discussing this subject, is Exodus 21. This is part of the Mosaic Law, and in this particular passage, the law uses as an illustration the early termination of a pregnancy.

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The passage goes like this. This is verses 22 and 23, where the law of Moses gives equal protection to the pregnant woman and to the child that she carries.

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I'll read this here. This is from the New Living Translation. Now, suppose two men are fighting, and in the process, they accidentally strike a pregnant woman, so she gives birth prematurely.

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If no further injury results, in other words, the baby's born alive and it's healthy, and the mother suffers no injury as well, no lasting injury, the man who struck the woman must pay the amount of compensation the woman's husband demands, and the judges approve.

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But if there is further injury, that is, to either the woman or to the fetus, the punishment shall match the injury, a life for a life.

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So, basic to this particular statute in the Mosaic Law is the idea that the baby is a person, even prior to birth, and that that particular baby has the same rights and protections under the law as an adult human being.

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So, according to this law, if somebody causes the death of an unborn child, well, that's a serious crime, and the punishment must fit the crime.

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It must be a life for a life. Now, if the consequence of the men's fighting was only that there was some type of an impermanent injury to the woman or to the baby, then the offender would pay a fine determined by the judges and the husband of the woman.

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But if a life was lost, then that person's life had to be forfeit as well.

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He would also lose his life. So, equal protection for the fetus. And so, that's the biblical principle, and I think that particular passage in Exodus 21 is just crystal clear.

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There are other reasons why we are pro -life. That is, human life bears the image of God.

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Life is a gift, and human life is unique in that God made us in His own image, and in His own likeness,

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Genesis 2 27. This gives us an inherent dignity and value in human life.

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So, as marvelous as other parts of creation are, human life just outstrips it all, outclasses all other of God's creations.

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We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Christians are pro -life because we bear the image of God.

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Also, there's a biblical principle that we find all the way through Scripture, and that is that the innocent should be protected.

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Taking up the cause of the innocent and protecting those who cannot fend for themselves, we see that all the way through Scripture.

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It's hard to imagine anyone more in need of protection, less capable of self -defense than a baby in the womb.

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So, Christians are pro -life because they've got a moral responsibility to protect the weak, to protect the innocent.

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Also, God has plans for every individual. God told the prophet Jeremiah 1 5,

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I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.

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So, God did the forming of Jeremiah, but even before that forming took place, Jeremiah was known, he was set apart, and he was appointed.

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So, Christians are pro -life because we don't believe there are any accidents or mistakes in God's plan.

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Everyone has the right to live. Another reason why Christians are pro -life, life being a gift from God means that nobody but God has that right to take that life away.

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So, life is a basic human right, probably the most basic right that people have.

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We don't want to play God, and that makes us pro -life. And also, what

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God thinks is most important. We're informed by truth, not by social pressure or by the changing political tides or human opinion, but we find truth in God's word, and what

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God says is most important of all, and that takes precedence over everything else.

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Yeah, Kevin, I really like how you frame it, and that I think Christians need to, in addition to presenting an anti -abortion message,

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I think that is crucially important. We are against abortion because we think it is wrong.

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We think it is dishonoring to God. We think it is the terminating of an innocent life.

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But to also remember that Christians are pro -life. We are anti -abortion because we are pro -life.

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And to me, the human beings being created in the image of God is the linchpin of the whole thing, that there's a reason why.

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Recently, some friends of ours had to make the choice of terminating their dog who was pregnant with puppies, to terminate the puppies because there were serious problems that were happening, and they felt really, really guilty about it.

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And I had to show them, look, there is a difference between humanity and every other creation on earth, that it's humanity that's in the image of God, and every human being, whether from the moment of conception, we believe, bears

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God's image and is therefore of inherent value and worth, and that life is worth protecting, worth saving, worth being allowed to develop and live.

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And so to me, that's the focus. But again, I totally get it, that abortion test is such a unnecessary evil that we see running so rampant in the country, that it's so easy to be so focused on being against it, that we fail to communicate why we're so much against it.

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And the points that you just outlined, we're very, very good at doing that. It is important for us to remember that Christians are not just anti -abortion in the sense that that's all we care about.

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One of the criticisms that's made is very dishonest, and that's to say that Christians don't care what happens to women or to children after birth.

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We've done a podcast in this podcast series talking about things like crisis pregnancy centers, where women can go to get resources that involve things like financial aid and education and assistance with housing and training and diapers and formula and all sorts of things.

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Adoption services and so on and so forth, are very often driven by pro -life causes. So when we hear people try to talk about this as though Christians are just anti -abortion and don't care what happens after, that's not true.

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I agree that we want to be careful not to just talk about abortion and not talk about what we want to do to support women who are struggling or children who are struggling, but we should be willing and able to push back on the attitude that Christians just are not in favor of helping people before, during, and after pregnancy.

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I'm glad you bring that up, Jeff. My wife and I have been involved in crisis pregnancy centers, and we have personally opened our home to, you know, who were at the time complete strangers who were girls who were in crisis pregnancy and had them in our home, and we gave them the shelter and the resources that they needed.

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So we are personally invested in helping the women involved in these situations, and because we love them, we love the babies, and we love

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Jesus. Jesus said, a couple different occasions, I am the life. He says that in John 11, again in John 14, and so to love

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Jesus is to love life. He is life himself, and so yes, we love people at every stage of development from from womb to tomb, as they sometimes say.

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You saying that our love for people is not dependent on development is also, I think, really important.

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One of the criticisms that we sometimes hear when we discuss this is that our stance as pro -life on abortion is purely religious, that it is entirely rooted in a religious belief, and for that reason, it needs to be left out of any sort of law or any sort of discussion in certain categories, and there again, that's not true.

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Now beyond the question of whether or not laws are based on moral principles, and they all are, there are reasons that we can give that make a lot of sense that lead a lot of secular persons, non -Christians, even atheists, to be pro -life and to oppose the concept of abortion.

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I think one of the best summaries that I've seen comes from another fellow ministry called

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Stand to Reason, and they've developed and promoted something called a SLED test,

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S -L -E -D, and I don't want to steal all of their thunder, but the idea behind that is that we should not try to define personhood, whether or not somebody has basic human rights, such as the right to live, based on those four characteristics, one of which is size.

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Toddlers, infants, unborn children are not as large as fully formed adults.

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We don't therefore say, well, they're smaller. So when you hear people say, well, it's just a tiny clump of cells, that's irrelevant to whether or not somebody is truly a person, truly human.

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There's level of development. A pre -teen child is not sexually mature.

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There are aspects of their body and their biology that are not completely formed and completely developed.

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We don't deny them personhood on that basis. There's environment. The child in the womb is vulnerable.

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It's not outside in the world, but neither is an astronaut in space. Neither is a scuba diver who's in the middle of the ocean.

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The environment that we put somebody in does not somehow remove their personhood. And then there's level of dependency.

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And dependency is the idea that just because somebody needs other persons in order to survive, once again, should not remove their personhood.

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Persons who've been in accidents, infants, again, very, very young children, are also dependent.

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So that's a good thing for people to look at and to research. The point being that things like the

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SLED test, size, level of development, environment, dependency, those things are not necessarily tied to some explicitly biblical or Christian idea.

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And the reason that's valuable is because we can point out that all truth is God's truth. The ideas that lead a person to a pro -life view are fundamental to what we as human beings think about humanity.

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This is not some long, drawn out, convoluted conclusion that only comes through theology.

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This is a very basic concept that we should be able to get to when we talk about humanity and human rights and what it means to be human.

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It is not explicitly something that has to come from the Bible, but it is very clearly something that comes from the general idea of what it means to be human.

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Excellent point, Jeff. And I too, am a fan of stained reason and their SLED analogy. I think it's very, very useful.

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So if the purpose of this episode is to talk about what does the Bible say about abortion, again, from the very outset,

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I had said the Bible does not explicitly mention abortion, but what it does mention is that God values life, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

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God is the creator of life. And regarding humanity, we're created in the image of God.

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From the moment we are conceived, we have value because we're created in the image of God.

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And that, as Kevin outlined with the Exodus passage, that God prescribes the same penalty on someone who ends the life of a baby in the womb as someone who commits murder, just showing how

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God values human beings from the moment they are conceived in. Many other scripture passages we could go to, but maybe for the conclusion of this episode, let's just talk briefly about for people who have had an abortion, what does the

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Bible say about them? Some regret it. Some deal with tremendous guilt for the rest of their lives about it.

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So maybe, Kevin, why don't you start us off? As a pastor, when someone has had an abortion, how can they find

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God's forgiveness? How can they receive God's forgiveness and not have to deal with that guilt? Because we want to point out that abortion is not an unforgivable sin.

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It is not something that a permanent scarlet letter, so to speak, on your life that you are of no value to God or that God is continually angry with you or that God will not forgive you.

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I think that's a very important point. So many women and husbands or men who have encouraged their wives or girlfriends to get an abortion feel extremely guilty.

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So what does the Bible say about that aspect of the abortion issue? I would encourage anyone who is experiencing guilt over having an abortion in the past to understand that God's grace is greater than any sin that we could ever commit.

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God's grace, we can't—I can't even describe it.

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We cannot wrap our heads around the magnitude of God's grace,

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His blessings to those who don't deserve His blessings. That's the definition of grace.

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And we have passages that we can cling to. 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins,

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He, God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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We've got passages all the way through Scripture that talk about the forgiveness of God, His abundant forgiveness,

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His free forgiveness in Christ. Christ paid the penalty, and we in Christ can find that forgiveness, find the freedom that that gives us to move forward in life, to take that next step, and just to let

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God take care of those burdens. It may take some counseling.

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It may take some working through different issues with some godly, wise counsel, but you have the

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Word of God, the promises of God, and His grace is available in Christ.

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I think that we as believers need to carefully understand that in the vast majority of all cases, women who have had abortions are victims.

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In other words, they have been fooled, tricked, deceived, mistreated by a system that is lying to them about what all of this means and what the value of life is and what their options are and what they can or cannot do.

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There is an element in the world that wants to look at post -abortive women with a level of judgment, and you can understand where some of that comes from, but that's not really the

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Christian response. As Kevin was saying, Christ's grace is sufficient for anything and everything, and that's especially important to keep in mind when we remember that so much of what comes from the pro -abortion or pro -choice movement is lies.

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It's propaganda. They're statements and concepts and ideas that don't even hold up to themselves.

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They don't make sense of morality. They don't make sense of human nature, but there's this tremendous pressure that women are put under, and they are fooled.

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They are lied to. They're deceived into doing these things, so it's important for us to remember that women who have been through this experience, we know from an objective standpoint they suffer physical, emotional, psychological after -effects from it.

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Spiritually, we have to recognize that women who have been through this are victims of what's happened, and our response as believers needs to understand that and accept that.

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We don't want a person who's been through that experience to think that the

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Christian approach is to condemn them or to look down on them or to spit on them in some way.

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It really is the opposite. My view of a woman who says this is something I have done or that I have chosen is sadness and sympathy because she has chosen to do something because of lies and because of deception and because of an unfair treatment.

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I really truly think we need to remember that women who have experienced abortion are victims.

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Clearly not in the same sense as the unborn child who's actually lost a life, but they are no less validly called victims because of what this means and what it does.

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Excellent point, Jeff. I think to me that's the key to all of this is that we are strongly pro -life.

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We are not a ministry that focuses exclusively on abortion by any stretch, but we are unashamedly pro -life and anti -abortion because we believe that's what the

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Word of God teaches in terms of the value of life, the human beings being created in the image of God.

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There are multiple reasons why we are firmly convinced that abortion is a horrendous sin, in the vast, vast majority of cases.

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But with that said, we are also a ministry that focuses on declaring the gospel that forgiveness is available through faith in Jesus Christ, that any and every sin that any of us have committed is forgivable.

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No matter where you are on this issue, whether you've had an abortion, whether you encourage someone to get an abortion, whether you perform an abortion,

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God can and will forgive you if you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Trusting His sacrifice on the cross is the full penalty for your sins.

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Your sins will be covered. They will be forgiven. You'll be cleansed and be promised an eternity in heaven.

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So we want to conclude this particular episode with a message of hope in that with the millions of people who have been a part of the abortion industry, for lack of a better word, forgiveness is available through Jesus Christ.

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And may we conclude on that point. So this has been the first episode in a brief series we're going to do on the abortion issue because it's such a hot topic.

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Part two is going to be on Roe v. Wade because there's some news in the headlines where it looks like Roe v.

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Wade might be overturned by the Supreme Court. So we're going to be discussing a little bit of the history and what it would mean if it happens and how

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Christians should respond and so forth. So stay tuned for part two of our discussion on abortion.

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So I hope this conversation has been beneficial, encouraging to you that we pray that it has been.

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Feel free to submit any questions you have about abortion to us at GotQuestions .org. Got questions?