The Sanctity of Life
God commands us to honor the sanctity of life – it’s part of loving God and others and a recognition of the uniqueness and value of humans in God’s eyes. Man is unique because God created him in his own image. That alone is enough to impart value, but God has also shown he values man in other ways. he gave him dominion over all earthly creatures (Gen. 1:26) and sent his own Son to die for our sins, so those who believe in him may inherit eternal life.
Our lives are neither our own nor anyone else’s–they belong to God. God’s moral law addresses situations in which he allows the taking of human life. To wrongly take human life, apart from such authorization, is a usurpation of his authority and violation of his moral law. God’s law addresses the taking of human life in two areas, war and murder.
Examining the first, war, and what constitutes a “just” war is complex and beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that in certain conditions the taking of human life through war is concurrent with God’s moral law. We know this because the Old Testament speaks of wars God directly initiated and the New Testament of coming battles with God as the righteous defender of his own glory and people.
God’s moral law regarding murder is plain and clearcut. Murder, the unlawful premeditated killing of a human being is a violation of God’s moral law. The first murder was soon after the creation of man, when Cain killed his brother Abel (Gen. 4:8-15). God punished Cain for his sin: he told him his farming would no longer be productive and condemned him to a life of vagrancy and wandering. Cain said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13). He feared he wouldn’t last long as an outcast, that someone would kill him. God spared Cain from death by giving him a sign that he was under God’s protection and declaring that anyone who killed him would be severely punished.
Many centuries later, following the Great Flood, God made a covenant with Noah, promising to never again destroy life on earth by a universal flood, and giving the rainbow as a sign of the covenant. He blessed Noah and his sons and gave them the same charge he gave Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiple. He also gave them permission to eat animals, something he hadn’t given Adam and Eve. Lastly, as evidence of the sanctity of human life he explicitly authorized the death penalty for murder:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6)
This authorization of the death penalty is rightly understood as a function of government, not individuals. The principle is that life is so precious in the eyes of God that any who murder will forfeit their own lives. Government acts as God’s agent in carrying out that punishment.
Why then, did God spare Cain’s life and prohibit anyone from killing him? We can’t know why he showed mercy to Cain; he gives or withholds mercy according to his perfect will. Regarding prohibiting anyone from killing Cain, it was probably for at least two reasons. First, it would be a violation of his will, which was to spare Cain. Second, it would be murder, the unlawful premeditated taking of human life. At that time, no taking of human life was lawful. God still retained sole authority regarding the death penalty, without exception.
After another several hundred years God established his chosen people, the Israelites, through the pagan Abram, whose name he changed to Abraham. About 300 years after Abraham, God delivered the Mosaic Law to the Israelites through the prophet Moses. The sixth commandment, part of the Mosaic Law, was “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13; Deut. 5:17). The penalty for violating the sixth commandment was death (Exod. 21:12, 14; Lev. 24:17, 21; Num. 35:16-19, 30).
Though the Mosaic Law is no longer in effect, the commandment against murder remains part of God’s timeless moral law. It was in effect before the Mosaic Law–Cain knew killing Able was wrong (Gen. 4:9). It remains in effect today, after the Mosaic Law– all know murder is wrong. The Bible says it’s wrong and our consciences agree.
Likewise, the death penalty remains a legitimate punishment for murder. God established it through Noah and never rescinded it. I call it a legitimate punishment because God doesn’t likely consider it a necessary punishment for all murder. Though his command to Noah was straight forward, he showed mercy to Cain. Likewise, as he authorized government to carry out the sentence, we may expect him to allow government to show mercy, depending on the circumstances.
With that as the background, that murder is a violation of God’s moral law, and the death penalty a legitimate punishment for murder, let’s look at false moral laws regarding murder prevalent in America today.
The reversal of God’s prohibition against murder is “You shall murder.” As yet, even the lost, apart from radical islamists and a few others, are generally unwilling make that blanket statement. It would lead to anarchy and put their own lives at risk. Instead, they disguise their reversal of the commandment for some forms of murder and promote leniency for other types of murder.
They disguise their reversal of the commandment for abortion. In reality, the world says, “You shall abort (murder the unborn).” You shall abort if you are too young, you are too poor, you are career minded, you don’t want to have a baby, the baby may not be perfect, and lately, if the baby’s sex isn’t to your liking.
Though Satan and the lost are good with “You shall abort,” they aren’t good with abortion being linked with murder, for they desire to appear righteous. They try to appear righteous in two ways. First, they use the standard definition of murder, “the unlawful premeditated killing of a human being,” but redefine the terms used in the definition. They change “Unlawful” from something contrary to God’s law to something contrary to man’s law, and “Human being” from including all humans, to including only those deemed valuable and worthy in a culture under Satan’s rule.
Second, they feign righteousness by claiming the moral imperative to champion a woman’s sovereignty over her own body, placing her as her own god, the ultimate desire of Satan and the lost.
This redefinition of terms and rejection of God’s sovereignty is how abortion becomes righteous under the false moral law “You shall murder.” First, what is unlawful in God’s eyes is deemed lawful in man’s eyes, sanctioned by the highest court in the land–in America, the Supreme Court has declared murder by abortion legal. Second, unborn human baby girls and boys are deemed non-human. Using deceptive semantics related to stages of human life, their humanity is walked back to nothingness. Adults, children and infants are afforded humanity but fetuses (unborn babies), even if fully mature and able to survive outside the womb, are deemed non-human.
With the stigma and penalty of murder removed the evil of abortion can be called good. Those on the side of abortion can claim to be fighting for a just cause. They can say abortion preserves the right of a woman to rule over her own body, prevents children from suffering by being born unwanted or in poverty, relieves over-population, and so forth. Murder is disguised as good.
In the same way, they can call good evil. They can demonize those who hold to the true moral law that abortion, an unlawful taking of a human life, is evil. They can say those who condemn abortion are hateful ignorant fundamentalist bigots, followers of an imaginary paternalist god, who hate women and want to control them and their wombs.
Fellow Christian, if you ever question the lost’s spiritual deadness and hatred of God, you need look no further than their promotion of abortion. Abortion is a horrific form of murder that is both contrary to God’s law and to even the lost’s natural instincts.
God begins us in our mother’s womb, under protection of her strong maternal instinct. We’re to grow protected in that sanctuary, within one who loves us and would die for us. Little compares to the both tender and ferociously protective bond of a mother with her child, born or as yet unborn. Even nature mirrors the maternal bond. The bear will die for the cub. The doe and dove draw attention to themselves to distract a threat away from the fawn or nest.
It requires a powerful motivation to reject both God’s law and the maternal instinct. Those who defend the indefensible, the murder of innocents, aren’t doing it for any of their supposedly high-sounding reasons, which themselves pale in comparison to the crime. Rather they are doing it out of spiritual deadness. Nothing less could make them promoters of such a horrific practice, able to look at a picture of aborted fetal body parts and say not only that right was served but also any who disagree are evil.
Though I’ve used abortion as an example, the same dynamic is at work in the advocation of legal euthanasia and assisted suicide. Generally those who support one type of murder will support the others. Euthanasia, like abortion, changes the definition of both “lawful” and “human being.” Man decides that a human being who is too old, too sick, or too incapacitated is no longer human and may be lawfully killed. Legal assisted suicide leaves the definition of human being intact but declares that man owns his own life and therefore it is lawful for him to arrange his own death.
Like “You shall love yourself,” abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide all violate the second greatest commandment, an obligation to love others. Like all murder, they are a particularly perverse sins against God, the killing of one created in his image, one with a God-breathed eternal soul.
That’s why the lost so devalue human life. It’s a way to reject and rebel against God. To abort a baby is to say, “Your love for those created in your image isn’t important. We may destroy them at will. We are in charge, not you.”
Legalizing and promoting the murder of innocents is one way the lost shake their fists at God regarding his valuing of human life. Since they can’t legitimize all forms of murder, knowing that their own lives would be at risk, they decrease the value of human life in another way. They promote leniency for those who murder in ways other than abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.
The radical lost are often at the forefront of opposition to the death penalty. They call it murder by the state, societies’ evil revenge against a person who may have unlawfully taken another’s life, but who in fact is often as much a victim as the one he killed. To them, the death penalty is a bloodthirsty anachronism, a throwback to days when society was less evolved. The murderer should be rehabilitated, not punished.
Though well-meaning people may advocate for mercy over the death penalty, the loudest voices on the left aren’t fighting the death penalty because they value life. Their compassion for the murderer is feigned, a ruse. The majority are also pro-abortion and value the murder’s life no more than that of the unborn baby. Rather, it is simply another way to defy God and his declaration of the sanctity of life.
Satan’s servants commonly attack Christianity by calling Christians who are both pro-life and in favor of the death penalty hypocrites. They say that if the life of a fetus, who isn’t even human, is sacrosanct, then so should be the life of a murderer, who is human. They are wrong–supporting the death penalty is a pro-life position. God instituted the death penalty precisely because he greatly valued human life, not in spite of it.
In a perverse way those who are pro-abortion but against the death penalty are also morally consistent. They are saying that murder isn’t such a big deal, whether of the unborn or anyone else. Certainly it isn’t worthy of death.
Notice the consistency with which the radical lost rigidly base their moral codes on God’s law, simply reversing his commands, calling good evil and evil good. They pursue evil and call themselves righteous. Their rebellion regarding murder is transparent. It’s just as transparent in our next example, laws regarding manhood and womanhood.