The Gospel For Murderers
If I had an abortion, Am I a murderer?
Abortion Is Murder. And yes, if you committed an abortion, you are a murderer.
You may deny this by arguing that the child inside the womb is not a human being, but deep down, you know that the life you took was the life of your son or daughter.
You may try to justify the murder of your child by telling yourself that committing abortion was an act of kindness, because you think your child would have grown up in poverty or perhaps in an abusive or otherwise bad situation. So you abused your own child to death through abortion to spare her from the hardship of this life.
You may deflect your guilt of murdering your son or daughter by convincing yourself that you were pressured to have an abortion. But were you? Were you forced, tied hand and foot, and dragged into an abortion clinic? Were you held at gunpoint to take the pill that snuffed out the little life within your womb? One or more people are guilty before God, culpable for this murder, and God sees your heart, and He judges perfectly.
What does the Bible say about you? The Bible says that you stand condemned before God. The Bible says that murderers will be damned by God to hell forever. There you will experience eternal conscious torment without respite and without rest. “As for murderers… their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur [forever].” – Revelation 21:8
But you might say, “But God is love. Surely, He is not a God that would send someone to hell.” Indeed, God is love, but the object of God’s love is Himself. Not only have you spent your life in hatred towards this God, but you have also murdered that which is made in God’s image, your child.
But you might say, “But God is righteous. Surely, a righteous judge will not torment me in hell forever, for that would be unrighteous.” Indeed, you are right to say that God is righteous, but his righteous judgment demands that his wrath be poured out on you forever.
But you might say, “But God is good. Surely, his goodness is greater than his wrath.” Indeed, you are right to say that God is good, but you are not good. He is perfect in his goodness. Therefore, He will not let anything that is not good go unpunished.
As you may see, there is no escaping this all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-present God.
Thus, as a sinner, no, as a murderer, you cannot approach God on your own terms. You must approach Him on His own terms. And what are the terms that He has for you to be able to be acceptable in His sight? Absolute perfection. You must be absolutely perfect to be able to stand before Him as acceptable in His sight. As a sinner, who was conceived in sin, born in sin, lives in sin, and is dead in sin, you cannot represent yourself to God. You need an advocate who can represent you before this holy God. You need someone else to be sinless in your stead. You need someone else to be righteous on your behalf. You need someone else to stand in your place before God, someone who is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.”
And who is this Redeemer? It is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, though being God, took on a second nature, a human nature. He is truly God and truly man in one person forever.
He lived a life that you and I could not live, fulfilling the righteous law of God in all its legal demands, thereby meriting eternal life for Himself and the people He represents which can only be achieved through exact, perfect, and perpetual obedience to God, as it is written, “one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” And again, “by the one man’s obedience [Jesus Christ’s] the many will be made righteous.” Not only that, He also died a death that you and I deserve by dying on the cross, bearing the infinite wrath of God on behalf of those who would believe in Him, being crushed under the righteous judgement of God, as it is written “it was the will of the LORD to crush Him.”
He died, was buried, and three days later, He rose from the dead, thereby proving that He had borne the wrath of God in its totality on behalf of His people, and that He had obeyed perfectly the righteous requirement of the law. He has ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God.
He now offers and commands you, dear reader, to come to Him. He promises that He will be the substitute performer of righteousness and substitute sacrifice of sin on behalf of those who would entrust themselves to Him so that those who believe in Him will not be counted as sinners in the sight of God, but as righteous, not on the basis of their own righteousness, but on the basis of the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of God.
And how does one obtain this justification (being counted righteous in Christ)? It is by faith alone. Faith is the sole instrument of being declared righteous before God on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice and righteousness. Faith is the act of receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness alone for salvation. It is a childlike trust in Jesus.
And so, if you repent and put your trust in Jesus, you will be counted righteous in the sight of God. Not because you are righteous in and of yourself, but because Jesus is righteous, and now you are in Him. You will no longer have to bear the wrath of God for eternity, for that wrath has already been borne by Jesus on the cross. You will no longer have to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law of God, because Jesus Himself will be your righteousness.
Not only that, you will enjoy eternal life with God, being in communion with the Father and the Son for all eternity. You will enjoy God and his new created order because Jesus has merited eternal life for you.
But if you reject Jesus Christ. If you do not put your faith in Christ, He will not save you from the wrath of God, or represent you before God. If you do not believe in Jesus, you remain dead in your sins, and the wrath of God abides in you. If you die in this condition, God will send you to hell to be drowned in the lake of fire forever. Or as the Bible puts it, “Whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Today, He beckons you to come to Him, saying,
“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.”
And again He says,
