Why Knowing Scripture Matters in the Debate for Life (and in Life)

As Christians, we know the only offensive and effective weapon God gives us is "the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God" (Ephesians 6:17). Almost everything else God gives us is meant to protect us: salvation protects our mind, right living protects our heart, faith prevents whatever the enemy throws at us from harming us, and everything is held together at our core with truth. We also prepare our feet with the good news of the gospel of peace for wherever we go. (Ephesians 6:10-19)

After listening to prolife debaters falter when Scripture was quoted out of context and they did not know the Scriptures well enough to confront the error, I wrote a previous blog entitled, "What does Scripture say about abortion?" It is precisely because Scripture is misquoted and misused that we need to personally know and be able to correct the error with the truth.  

It is important in all areas of argument that we do not repeat the error but rather speak the truth. Error is not worth repeating and does not need us to disseminate it further. Whereas, if we do not speak the truth, many will not hear it. Without repeating error, we can address error by speaking the truth which counters it. As I've often said, we need to plant the word-seeds we intend to grow and harvest. It is less important to know the many variations of falsehoods than it is to know the trustworthy standard of truth by which any falsehood may be measured.

As an example, when I worked in a bank, we paid no attention to studying the counterfeits and made every effort to study the legal tender so we could recognize immediately any counterfeit. We handled real currency all the time, so our fingers felt the fake and our eyes caught the inconsistency. As each of us spends time in God's Word daily, we are handling the Word of truth on a daily basis which keeps our senses sharp to recognize a counterfeit.

The entire chapter of Exodus 21 is explaining the consequences when someone is killed or harmed, and it includes the preborn child, which is significant. It is a clear condemnation of causing a woman to abort her child in Scripture, and the penalty is severe even if accidental. 

This Scripture shows clearly the humanity of the child and how God values the preborn child no less than He values a full-grown working man. In fact, the penalty is more severe for accidentally causing the death of a preborn child than accidentally causing the death of a full-grown man, as prescribed earlier in the chapter. (If someone accidentally kills a full-grown man, he may run to a place of refuge, but if he causes a child to be born early by accidentally striking the woman and the child dies, that man gets the death penalty. If he only harms the child, however the child is harmed is how he is to be harmed as punishment "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etc.". 

We all know that when a woman is pregnant she is most vulnerable for partner violence and homicide; I would dare say that when this law was in place, that would not have been the case. And with these severe penalties for only accidentally causing a woman to have an early delivery, intentionally causing a woman to go into preterm labor for the purpose of killing the child would have been out of the question.

While there are many philosophical, biological, ethical, and legal arguments for applying the same right to life that protects each of us to the youngest and most vulnerable among us, the Word of God is a powerful sword that we must not leave at home when going into battle. 

For more Scriptures: Scriptures | Colorado Initiative

Sermon by Dr. Sean Cole: Let the Children Come