The story of Jesus' birth, complete with angels, shepherds and kings with camels, centered around a baby in a manger is well known and depicted, retold and replayed thousands of times each year, but underlying all those trappings is the answer to the key question in the debate on abortion.
Because this is a Bible Study and it deals with abortion, a major cultural/moral issue, this post appears in an audio version on these two podcasts:
At this time of year, it’s customary to look back and ponder what events and issues were the most important of 2024. There are so many to choose from, aren’t there?
The US elections come to mind, of course, and who knows what their consequences will be in the short, medium, and long term? But they were just a reflection of the core issues: the economy, abortion, immigration, crime, wars in Europe and the Middle East, and the Biden presidency and its role in each of those areas. It would seem that the debate on abortion got pushed to the back burner, due to the magnitude of the other problems, but there is a case for seeing the abortion question as perhaps the deepest-rooted issue in society.
This debate is carried out in shades of gray. It’s rare to hear someone who’s at one extreme or the other of the black-or-white, unconditionally right-or-wrong spectrum of abortion. On the one extreme, there is the liberal view that abortion is fine, any time, any place, and practically in any manner for any reason. On the opposite side, there is the position that abortion is never right, under any circumstances. In reality, while it’s more likely we’ll find a liberal who supports the first view, the chances of coming across someone who is totally opposed to abortion under any circumstances are pretty remote. The debate doesn’t actually revolve around the question of whether abortion is right or wrong, but, “At what point in time does ending a pregnancy go from being acceptable to being wrong?”
At what point does the fertilized egg become a person?
The question then becomes, “At what point does the fertilized egg become a person and from that point on, ending its development is morally wrong?” Here is where the range of positions enters the debate. Is abortion OK up until the actual birth, as long as the baby has not left its mother’s body? That is too extreme, so we start moving the line in the sand. No abortion in the last trimester, or after 15 weeks of gestation. Some would be OK with setting the border at 6 weeks. It all becomes arbitrary. Why don’t we make an audible heartbeat the sign of personhood, after which abortion takes on the nature of murder?
Who has the right to tell us the answer?
That leads us to this question, then: “Who has the right to set the point along this road of morality that divides between a mere medical procedure that removes an unwanted growth of tissue and a deliberate act that ends a person’s life?
Public opinion is useless. There are already too many cooks in the kitchen on this point. And because the government assumes its position based on what the public says, that’s not going to work, either.
That leaves us with medical science. “Trust the science”, we were told, but the COVID debacle only further proved what should have already been evident: science and scientists have never been a reliable source of absolute truth. Science is carried out by scientists, who are just as fallible as any other human being.
Medical science is not a source of absolute truth
Just when they think they have found the outermost limit of the universe, their new technology forces scientists to say, like the voice on the GPS system in the car, “Recalculating, recalculating.” The goalposts are continually moving, depending on the team that is currently setting them.
.And so it is with the beginning of personhood and life. Science is always developing new tools and processes, but no lab procedure will ever be able to weigh the soul or measure the spirit. It’s true that new technologies can examine an unborn fetus and make some very precise predictions about its future physical and mental development, but there is no technology that will ever be able to assess the spiritual development and personal character of that piece of physical matter they put under the microscope.
There is an instrument, however, that can do that.
12For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart. 13No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.
The Word of God is how spiritual questions are dealt with and what does it say about this “when-does-life-begin” question? David wrote in Psalm 139:13-16
13For it was You (the Lord) who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful,and I know this very well.
15My bones were not hidden from Youwhen I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
before a single one of them began.
And lest someone should say, “But that was just David’s opinion, and he couldn’t have seen all that himself. He was just being philosophical or poetic,” we read what God Himself said to Jeremiah, in chapter 1, verses 4-5:
But now at this season of the year, when everyone talks about Christmas, we’re dealing with the most important evidence in the Bible on this subject, in John 1:1-4, 14. Talking about Jesus, it says
3All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.
I know that’s not the usual reading at Christmas services…it doesn’t have any angels, shepherds, wise men, or donkeys. There’s nothing to hang lights from, but it does settle the question of whether a fetus is living and has a personality. From the very moment of His conception, Jesus not only was living, He was life itself. The very Person who gives life to everyone never at any second ceased to exist, and then had to reassume His personhood again, even though He did pass through the whole nine months of developing a physical body, starting from one cell to being born as bouncing baby boy. True, His conception by the Holy Spirit was miraculous and unique, but in every other way He was a man like us. He developed like we all develop. Would science say that Jesus only became a person after a certain point in His mother’s pregnancy?
Could the second Person of the Godhead cease to exist for any length of time?
Did Jesus become divine at some point during His boyhood and youth?
And there is the corroboration of the personality of Jesus in the womb in Luke’s account in chapter 2. When Mary was informed that the Son of God was conceived in her, she went immediately to share the news with her cousin Elizabeth, who was in her sixth month of pregnancy. Her baby would be named John and be called John the Baptizer. “When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped inside her,” Luke 1:41a John was not even born and he was already rejoicing in the presence of the Messiah, who Himself was 6 months behind him in the development of His physical body. Our personhood is independent of our material bodies, as evidenced at the other end of our earthly lives. Just because our bodies die, we do not cease being individuals, whether in heavenly comfort or torment in Hades, awaiting the final judgment.
But there we are again. If we don’t take God’s Word as the truth for what life is about and the fact we are a person from the very inception of the fertilized egg in the womb, then the debate will rage on interminably. Those who do not believe in the Bible, don’t believe God even exists, and therefore nothing He is purported to have said has any meaning anyway.
The real battle is waged in those of us who say we believe in God and believe in His Word. The decision on what should be done, especially when the science of medicine predicts dire consequences for the baby or the mother, will be a difficult one. But we walk by faith and when is walking by faith ever going to be an easy path? Our decision at each step in life depends on a personal relationship with God. For that, there is no scientific method or formula. “Without faith, it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6.
For most people, the peace and good will so widely spoken about at this time of year is the expression of a human wish at best and doesn’t come from an actual belief in the Bible, which has a clear answer for the abortion debate on when life begins. For most people, Christmas is not about the Bible, but the birth of Jesus is at the heart of the Bible message.
We are already persons whose entire being can be put on a slide under a microscope.
“Immanuel” (God with us) is more than just a name or title given to Jesus. The details of Jesus’ birth demonstrate how we are to see the development of our very nature as individuals, responsible before our Creator, even before we have a name, but we are already persons whose entire being can be put on a slide under a microscope.
May that truth shape our thoughts and the decisions we make throughout the year. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Let’s not waste what God has given us, or recklessly destroy what He has given to others, no matter how insignificant they seem to us.
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