Adultery and Bloodshed: Abortion and our Culture’s Favorite Idol
And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them?…therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy.
-Ezekiel 16:20-21,37-38, ESV
Throughout the Old Testament, idolatry is portrayed as adultery against God, most grotesquely seen in child sacrifice. But it is easy to forget that a worse form of idolatry that mixes adultery and violence is celebrated in our culture: the slaughter of children in the womb. I have alluded to it here, here, and here, but it deserves much more attention. It is no exaggeration to liken abortion to the child sacrifice of the Old Testament, so we must heed the warnings of God against those who practice or tolerate human sacrifice.
Thou Shalt Not Murder
The Sixth Commandment is clear, and as part of the moral law is just as binding on us today as it was at Sinai: thou shalt not murder (Exodus 20:13, Matthew 5:21, 15:19, 19:18, Mark 7:21, 10:19, Luke 18:20, Romans 1:29, Revelation 21:8). Murder is intentionally killing any person for any reason not expressly authorized by Scripture. The Law gives only three exceptions: execution of a rightly-convicted criminal (Exodus 21:12-14, Leviticus 24:17-18, Numbers 35:30-31), non-premeditated killing in self-defense (Exodus 22:2-3), and killing enemy combatants in war. Even when God commanded Israel to wipe out nations, He the perfect Judge had already passed sentence on them, so that falls under the first case. Killing anyone under any other circumstances is murder according to Scripture. When renewing the Cultural Mandate in the Noahic covenant, God adds this: “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:5-6). To slay an image bearer of God is not only to end the life of a person but also defile His image.
But when does one become a person? The only way for abortion to be anything other than murder would be if personhood begins at birth. Scripture teaches that a person consists of a physical body and a spiritual soul, which are both present in the womb (Ecclesiastes 11:5, Luke 1:15,41,44).[1] God forms babies in the womb and knows them as individual people (Psalm 139:13-16, Isaiah 44:2-4, 46:3, 49:1-5, Jeremiah 1:5). We have no way of knowing when the body and soul are united in the womb, so the only logically consistent and morally safe option is to assume that it happens at conception. Therefore, a baby in the womb is a person made in the image of God from the moment of conception. And since babies in the womb do not meet any of the criteria to be lawfully killed, to kill them is murder. Therefore, the only view consistent with Scripture is that abortion is murder under any and all circumstances. We cannot support abortion from Scripture unless we bring our own interpretations to the text or ignore certain passages entirely. The only passage that has any chance of supporting abortion is the test for adultery (Numbers 5:11-31), but that refers to a curse of barrenness rather than killing a child in the womb. Therefore, we cannot claim to believe in the supreme authority of Scripture while supporting abortion. And we cannot obey Scripture unless we acknowledge its supreme authority over our beliefs and our lives, so it is sinful to support abortion just as it is sinful to perform it or seek it out.
Unfathomable Evil
In that way abortion is just like child sacrifice in the Old Testament: “You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 18:21). This comes amidst laws against adultery (Leviticus 18:20), homosexuality (Leviticus 18:23), and bestiality (Leviticus 18:23). The Canaanites committed these abominations, which is why God commanded the Israelites to wipe them out (Leviticus 18:24-30). Since “abomination” and “I am the LORD” are prevalent in the passage, all of these are part of the moral law. Molech was an Ammonite god whose worship involved burning babies alive, so it is fitting that this is the only sin described as unthinkable to God: “And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” (Jeremiah 7:31 cf. 19:5). That valley became synonymous with evil so it’s name became the term for hell (Gehenna), which is fitting considering that child sacrifice could have originated nowhere else. It is so contrary to God’s nature that it is absurd to think that God would ever dream of commanding it. Instead, a false god—really a demon (Psalm 106:37)—deceived people into offering what was most valuable to them: their children. It would be preposterous to think that such a thing would please the One True God because it destroys what He holds dear.
Scripture places a high value on children. We have previously looked at the corporate and multigenerational nature of the covenants and how that is foundational to baptism as well as the nature and recipients of communion. God builds His Kingdom through families, so destroying children is gross rebellion against Him by breaking His first commandment to mankind: the Cultural Mandate. Plus, in our short-sighted individualism, we often forget that to kill anyone is to destroy any descendants who might have come from him or her as well. And since we have previously established that a child in the womb is a person, to murder that child is to destroy many people. The ancients understood this, so they often placed a much higher value on children than we do today. They could think of nothing more valuable than their children, but demons exploited this by inciting them to sacrifice those children. Demons understand and fight hard against the Cultural Mandate, with great success today. Our society considers children basically worthless, seen most vividly in abortion but also in the prioritization of pleasure, freedom, careers, and basically everything else above children. Rampant divorce, homosexuality, and gender confusion reflect this mis-prioritization. All of these devalue children, but only one murders them. By refusing to recognize children in the womb as people with dignity and rights, many justify discarding them when they are unwanted. While there have always been cultures that committed infanticide—marking themselves as God’s enemies (Acts 7:19)—the fact that it is so celebrated today is unprecedented.
The Convergence of Adultery and Violence
What is not unprecedented is how abortion like child sacrifice combines sexual perversion and violence. It is remarkable how often in Scripture those two coincide, even being adjacent in the Ten Commandments. The most notable example is David committing adultery and then murder to cover it up. And as we saw earlier, the law against child sacrifice comes amidst laws against sexual perversion. The worship of Baal and other false gods was about fertility of people, livestock, and land, essentially worshipping sex and prosperity: they committed literal adultery amidst figurative adultery. In Ezekiel 16, God personifies them as a woman He found in a pitiful condition. Then after He had exalted and cared for her as His Bride, she betrayed Him with incessant adultery and sacrificed her (His) children. Ezekiel repeats this later with a very similar metaphor of Israel and Judah:
For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house.
-Ezekiel 23:37-39, ESV
Not only did they sacrifice their children in blatant disregard of God’s commands, but they had the audacity to worship God on the same day. This too resembles adultery: “This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”” (Proverbs 30:20). In our day, this would be like going to church on Sunday and then going to an abortion appointment on Monday. Many people in our churches would have no qualms with that because they too worship sex and pleasure but then try to worship God as well. It is that worship of sex and pleasure that is the primary cause of abortion contrary to the pro-abortion narrative that emphasizes extreme caseslike assault. Our society will stop at nothing—not even murder—in order to indulge in limitless sex. Jesus made clear that all sexual immorality is adultery (Matthew 5:28), so we mingle adultery and violence just like the Israelites did—and nowhere is that convergence clearer than when fornicators copulate for their own pleasure, then have the unwanted child conceived by their selfish act literally ripped apart in the womb. Innocent blood cries out from the ground—and God will answer as He always has. He ignored Israel’s prayers and rejected their “worship” before bringing them to a violent end:
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Will you defile yourselves after the manner of your fathers and go whoring after their detestable things? When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you.
-Ezekiel 20:30-31, ESV, cf. Hosea 4:12-14
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.
-Jeremiah 7:31-32, ESV cf. Jeremiah 19:6
Perhaps this begins to explain why in so many American churches God seems so distant; why so many American Christians feel like their prayers bounce off the ceiling. As long as the American Church tolerates abortion, we should not expect to have rich fellowship with God, for He cannot tolerate murderers and adulterers in His midst—or anyone who tolerates them. He will not tolerate them today because He did not tolerate them in Israel:
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives 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, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.
-Leviticus 20:1-5, ESV
God is condemning not only the perpetrators but the entire families of those who knew about it and did nothing. God threatened to set His face against them all and cut them off from His people, essentially declaring them to be unbelievers. Since we have already established that abortion is a very similar form of spiritual—and often physical—adultery, those who participate in abortion and the congregations who tolerate them are equally idolatrous. As with all idolatry in Scripture, God clearly has a “zero tolerance policy”. Applied to abortion, this means no circumstances or criteria can ever make any form of abortion anything other than murderous idolatry—not crime in conception, not a certain gestational period or stage of development, not disease or disability, not contraceptives that kill a fertilized egg, nothing! Therefore, the Church can biblically accept no compromise on this issue. It is inconsistent with Scripture for a Christian to support any aim regarding abortion except for its ultimate abolition.
At this point, some may argue that a complete abolition of abortion is impractical, favoring a more incremental approach like the abolition of slavery. Requiring over a century of sacrifice, the abolition of slavery on a global scale was perhaps the greatest human rights achievement ever. But that incremental approach was more radical than many “pro-life” policies. The abolitionists did not advocate for a return to the highly regulated form of slavery found in the Law, after all. Furthermore, the only logically consistent pro-life view is total abolition. You cannot argue that a child in the womb is a person if you support any exceptions to that. This means that an incremental approach cannot survive past the first increment. The only effective strategy is to double down on total abolition, but it can be incremental in a geographic sense. The abolition of slavery went from the slave trade in Britain to slavery itself there and elsewhere. Federal legislation is likely a long way off, but by awakening people to the horrors of abortion, we can work to abolish it in our cities and states first. The abolition of slavery was a grassroots movement driven by men and women impacted with the Gospel, so we should expect abortion to fall in the same way.
Guilt and Redemption
We must not tolerate those who participate in abortion in our congregations. The staff who perform the procedure are murderers, and so are the women who come in for the procedure and the men—I use that term loosely—who encourage or coerce them into it. They all deserve to be cut off from the people of God. How then should we treat them? Two stories are very informative here. First, Rehoboam’s mother came from Molech-worshipping Ammon (1 Kings 14:21) and brought her religion with her. It is unsurprising then that Rehoboam was wicked, as was his son Abijah. But Abijah’s son Asa was righteous, so God can work redemption, even three generations later. The story of Manasseh is even more powerful. Judah’s vilest king, he filled Jerusalem with idolatry and violence, even sacrificing his son (2 Kings 21:6). But later in life he repented (2 Chronicles 33:10-16). This should be incredibly encouraging to us. If God redeemed Manasseh, He can certainly redeem anyone stained by the blood of abortion. Therefore, while we should despise the sin of abortion, we should have compassion on those who have been deceived into accepting it. After all, if we hate them Jesus is clear that we are equally guilty of murder (Matthew 5:21-22). We are to imitate our Savior, who welcomed all manner of repentant sinners even while condemning their sin. Repentant sinners—who recognized their sin and acknowledged their guilt—were drawn to Jesus while self-righteous sinners who did not acknowledge their sin despised Him. Our churches should have the same effect on people. The abortion clinic employee, the woman who has sought out abortion, the man—again I use that term loosely—who has pressured his girlfriend to get an abortion, and the one who chants “my body, my choice” should all feel a profound and deep sense of guilt. They should also feel an equally intense urge to run to the church for refuge, and we should welcome them and point them to Christ. As the modern practitioners and proponents of child sacrifice, they deserve for God to turn His face away from them and cut them off from His people. But the Father turned His face away from Jesus Christ on the cross instead, so that all who place their trust in Him would be brought into His family.
But it is important that they see the church as a refuge, which requires us first and foremost to preach the true Gospel. Then, we need to make the church the first place a woman thinks to come during and after an unplanned pregnancy. Abortion opponents often incorrectly argue that we only care about the child in the womb and not the mother or the children already born. We should strive to make our care for these women and their children—both inside and outside the womb—so obvious and widespread that any sane person would find that argument preposterous.
As the Gospel takes root, this will ultimately undermine abortion and one day bring about its abolition. It will be a long and hard fight with the weapons that God provides rather than the weapons of this world, but it is worth fighting for. As the Gospel transforms our society, abortion will ultimately become unthinkable. One day we will look back on it with even more disdain than how we view slavery today, wondering how anyone—especially Christians—could have ever supported it. So let us pray that God would be gracious and merciful to us by bringing about the abolition of abortion, and let us strive toward that end.
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
-Micah 6:7-8, ESV
