Lesson 03 - What is the Church’s Responsibility to Stand for Life

Lesson 03 - What is the Church’s Responsibility to Stand for Life?

Introduction

Welcome back for our third study together
I hope you have been able to think about our topic of evangelism over these past few days, and hopefully the small groups on Wednesday were helpful. This coming Wednesday we’ll be back to large-group discussion, but I think y’all will enjoy discussing our topic for this week.
We’ve talked about prayer and sharing the gospel initially so that we can really drill down together and realize that all of us walk together - many of us struggle with the same things and we can learn to walk together in those things.
As we’re walking together, we learn from each other and grow together - it’s how God designed the church to function, because we’re all connected.

But it’s also critical that our motivation to walk in spiritual disciplines is not rooted in guilt-driven motivation. God is interested in us, he’s for us - he has given us his grace and in the person of Jesus, has already earned every bit of approval from the Father that we will ever be able to have.
So our motivation in doing things isn’t to make God happy. It’s because of what he’s done for us that we do what we do, to grow in our walk with Jesus and become more like him.
So important to remember that, but so hard - that’s why we constantly need to be preaching the gospel to ourselves, never getting past the gospel, because it’s so unbelievable.

Life Issues and Challenges

So what we want to dive into this week is completely different and hopefully will help us all begin thinking through some really challenging issues the church faces today.
What we want to focus on is really digging into issues of life.

So, if I were to take a poll and ask how many of you believe life begins at conception, how many of you think that?
And if I were to ask whether life should only end when God calls you home, how many of you would agree?

Ok, so in this room we have a lot of agreement on when life begins and ends. So why is this such a controversial topic? And why do so many Christians disagree about those same issues? And why is it that we support the death penalty when we think life is sacred, or why do we have no trouble killing a spider in the house while we would have a great problem killing a person?
That’s what we want to explore this week - understanding life issues, why humans are different, and begin to think about some challenging situations involving when life begins and ends, so we can think Biblically.
So first of all, why is this such a hard topic? It seems pretty easy according to our quick poll here.

There are several reasons why - first, and I’d say the main reason, is the advance of modern medical technology has made this topic of life harder than it used to be.

Before plastic tubing was invented, for example, there was no way to feed someone if they couldn’t swallow. There was no such things as feeding tube, so someone would die if they didn’t get the care they needed.
So back in the day, the amount of medical intervention was very limited and people just died.
But now, we can keep someone alive on machines long after there is any brain activity, long after they’re not able to swallow, long after every other normal sign of death would occur.
So when life ends becomes a problem.
And using modern medical technology, we can now peer into places like a baby growing in utero that only God could see for thousands of years of history.
We can know when certain things are happening with a baby that we couldn’t now before, and we can now create an embryo in a lab through in vitro fertilization.
So we have a problem of when life begins.
And as scary as this is, we’re really only the first generation of human beings that has ever dealt with a lot of these questions in all of human history, so that’s part of the challenge.

Another reason for the challenge is the rise in awareness of these types of issues.

For most of human history, you had some “haves” and “have nots” - a ruling class and a non-ruling class. Often the lives of certain groups were worth less than the lives of other groups and so there wasn’t a lot of consideration given to “life” as a whole.

So where can we start in thinking about this? How do we know life begins at conception or when it ends?

The Image of God

Starting out, we have to establish what our Biblical understanding of this issue is before we start really looking into some of the applications today.
This all begins in the very first chapter of the Bible. Genesis 1:26-27 gives us a peek into a conversation in the Trinity and tells us this: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

So we’re told that right off the bat, God did something different with man than he did with all the rest of creation. He had made birds, animals, dogs, cows, horses, bugs and bacteria up to this point.
And in this conversation within the Trinity, we see that instead of making another kind of animal, God made man different from all the animals around him. God made man in his own image.
So what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that God has two hands, two feet, and walks upright. What it does mean is that man is a representative of God, we reflect and resemble God in many ways. When you look in a mirror, what do you see? Your image - it’s not you, but it’s a reflection of you. There’s a very old saying that you’re the spittin’ image of your father - meaning you look just like your dad. You’re a reflection of him.
So how do we reflect God?

We’re told one of the ways right there in those verses - just like God rules over the world and the spiritual realm, God created us as human beings to rule over the creative order. We have responsibility for doing that, but in that way, we resemble God.
We’re told elsewhere that God put man in the Garden of Eden to be a cultivator - like God establishes and cultivates things, man is able to establish things as well.
In addition, man is also given the power to create things - unlike most animals, man creates music, artwork, philosophy, computers. We build things - we build cities and electronics and cars. And in doing that, we’re reflecting the image of God on us - we’re showing that we are creators, creative just like God is.
When we’re doing those things, we’re reflecting God and showing that we are made in the image of God.

But the story in Genesis continues - at the establishment of the first governmental order in Genesis 9, God gives a very specific instruction as it relates to the crime of murder - killing another human being.

In Genesis 9:6, God says “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Let me read you another translation of that verse: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
God is establishing the very first governmental requirements - this is the first time that man is given permission to work out justice on another person.
And the key issue there is that if you kill someone, you should be executed by the government. And the reason why? Because an attack on an image-bearer of God is an attack on God himself.

The image of God is given as the reason for that - his blood shall be shed because God made man in his own image.
The crime of murder is one of the highest crimes in almost any system of government and in the minds of people. And the Scriptural reason is right here: you’re killing someone who bears God’s image.
Satan loves this crime because you’re corrupting and destroying the image of God - it’s the main thing Satan hates when he sees us.

Satan hates being reminded of the image of God. So what does he do? He works to undermine the image of God in us - that’s why it thrills him when we sin.

When we’re walking in selfishness, lust, pride, all those sinful things, we’re not correctly bearing the image we’re supposed to carry.

This is also why killing a human being is so different than killing a roach or killing a dog or killing a squirrel. While you may hate to see animals die, it’s not the image of God dying. When you see a person die, though, that’s the death of someone who carries the image of God.

Now, the fall obviously distorted the image of God, as we’ve alluded to. But we still carry that image. James tells us in James 3:9 that with our tongues we curse men, who are made in the similitude of God. That’s an old English word that basically means the image - we curse people who are made in God’s image.

The beautiful thing about Christians is that Jesus was the perfect image-bearer of God. There was no distortion in him because there was no sin in him.
And because we are one with Jesus as Christians, we’re promised that one day, we’re going to perfectly bear God’s image.

So Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15:49 “And as we have borne the image of the earthy [our human nature], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly [of Jesus and his perfect nature].”
John tells us in I John 3:2 that “Beloved, now are we the sons of God [present tense], and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him [we’re going to be in his image]; for we shall see him as he is.

So the promise for us as Christians is that one day, we’re going to perfectly bear the image of God again - that is part of the restoration that Jesus is going to complete of the creative order back to himself.

Image-Bearers and the Value of Life

So with that as a background, let’s talk about this issue of the value of human life.
Why should life be so important to the church? Because when we’re ensuring that life has value, we’re protecting the value of the image of God.

We’re also fighting against the Satanic view of the world that says that life doesn’t have value to God, the view that undermines the value of human life because it wants to destroy the image of God.

For this reason, Christians have been at the forefront of ensuring life has value for a long time.

Think William Wilberforce leading the charge to fight the view that Slaves had no value. He fought against the concept of slavery because of what it did to people who carry the image of God. It said they were only property and had no real value. A proper Christian worldview fights against the concept of slavery.
Think civil rights leaders in the 1960s - many of them approached life from a Christian worldview fighting racism, the view that says that some people who carry God’s image don’t have value just because of the color of their skin. A Christian worldview fights against racism, because it recognizes that everyone has value as image-bearers of God.
Think the pro-life movement that began in earnest in the 1970s, which fought the idea that an unborn child has no value. Instead, the pro-life movement has fought hard for the idea that babies that haven’t been born yet are image-bearers of God. A Christian worldview recognizes that unborn children have value as well.
Think of those who have fought to protect the rights of the disabled - everyone bears God’s image, even if they have a learning disability or Down’s Syndrome. For a long time, Christians were the only ones who would care for those who were thrown out by society. A Christian worldview recognizes that those with disabilities have value to God.

The fruit of those efforts is what by and large would lead you to affirm so readily at the outset of this lesson that life has value from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

The Beginning of Life

So let’s go to the beginning of life. Why do Christians believe that life begins at conception?

First, it’s always best to start with the Bible as the background.

In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly [womb] I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee [set you apart], and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

Clearly, God had a design and purpose before he was ever even conceived - God has a plan and design for each life.

In Psalm 139, we’re given the beautiful picture of God knitting a new person together while in utero, forming each part, and knowing that person before they were ever born.
In Luke 1, we’re told the story of Mary going to visit her cousin, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. At the moment John the Baptist, who still wasn’t born, heard Mary’s voice, he started dancing around inside. There was a clear recognition of God’s spirit being part of that process.
All through Scripture, we have the clear testimony of the fact that God is involved with babies long before they are born, clearly showing us that life begins at some point prior to the birth of the child.

Second, there’s the issues of medical science.

At the moment a sperm and egg unite, instantly the DNA of the child is set. Their hair color, eye color, athletic ability, brain power, all of those things that are controlled by DNA are determined at the very second that conception happens.
If that fertilized egg is left alone and is in ideal conditions, a child will absolutely result from that without any further effort. The fertilized egg immediately begins dividing and creating all the different cells necessary so that a human being will come from that egg.
Within 21 days after conception, the heart is beating, pumping a different blood and different blood type from the mother through the baby. At 40 days, brain waves in the unborn baby can be read by equipment.
So by the time most women know they are pregnant, their baby already has a heart beating and has begun to develop hands and feet.
The ability to see inside the uterus through an ultrasound has allowed us to see these things develop and understand that a life is there long before you get closer to the birth process.

Third, the ability to live on its own is not the proper measure of when life begins.

For a long time, many people went to the “viability” issue to determine when life begins. When a child can “live on its own” apart from the mother, that was considered to be when life really began.
But think about this - the moment a baby is born, even at full term, it can’t live on its own. It requires constant care - it can’t feed itself, it can’t control its bodily processes, it can’t even move around on its own.
Now obviously this isn’t what people mean when they say viability - they’re talking about pure ability to survive with medical assistance.
But the question remains - if one is viable, is the other not? Measuring life by when it is viable at least eliminates half of the pregnancy, but it isn’t a good measure because really it’s only a measure of medical technology - as technology improves, the ability of a child to survive outside the womb with medical assistance continues to improve.
There has to be a better measure.

Conception is the absolute best point for measuring when life begins. God is involved in the process from that early, early stage - he’s the author of life, and that’s where life has to start.
So as Christians, it’s our responsibility to work to protect life from the start.

So that’s why we’re pro-life in our view of abortion - we oppose abortion because we recognize that it is a life that we’re talking about.
That’s also why we’re against infanticide - what happens in China where girls are killed is just as evil - they’re destroying the image of God.

Life Itself

Now that’s one end of the spectrum. If we know where it starts, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Christians also believe in protecting life while it’s being lived.
So that’s why we work to help support widows and orphans, those in need.

We’re protecting the image of God that those people bear, even if they are financially destitute.
That’s why we try to eliminate human suffering - we’re trying to help people live a better and fuller life, because that’s the way God designed it.
It’s also why we share the gospel - we’re trying to help people who bear the image of God in a distorted way to bear it fully by being redeemed in their life with Jesus. Once they know Jesus, then they’ll be able to bear God’s image fully and completely when he makes all things right.

And obviously, we oppose murder, senseless killing, and things like that. Now we’ll talk in a few weeks about just war theory and how that relates to war. But when it comes to the value of life, we recognize it has a high value.
And as an aside, this is also why it’s ok to support the death penalty while being pro-life.

There are a lot of people who would say that’s no ok - a life is a life. But it’s exactly because of that principle that the death penalty is an appropriate crime.
But like God said in Genesis 9 - it is appropriate to repay the taking of a life with the taking of the life of the one who stole the other life. That’s appropriate because they were destroying the image of God, and that merits a severe penalty.
Now does that mean you kill every single person who kills someone else? Of course not, because not even Scripture supports that position.

But that’s kind of extra - no additional charge for that one.

The End of Life

So let’s fast forward to the end of life. You make it through life, you’re now 80 years old, and you’re dying. How should Christians approach end of life issues?
One initial challenge is the issue of what I’ll call heroic life-saving measures.

Heroic life-saving measures are a ventilator, a machine that is going the breathing for you, a machine that is pumping your blood for you, basically taking care of all of your basic bodily functions so that you can survive.
For someone who has been severely injured, we’ve all heard of the concept of “pulling the plug” - without the machines, the person is unable to live on their own and dies very quickly after being disconnected.
But this raises an important question - in our efforts to defend the image of God and human life, are we required to use every last bit of medical technology to ensure that a person lives for as long as possible?

There are three important elements to this question.

First, as Christians, we recognize that there is a difference between a person’s soul and a person’s body. As C.S. Lewis said, you are a soul, you have a body. Your body isn’t you - it’s just where your soul is living right now.

So when your body stops working, you don’t stop existing - your soul just leaves your body.

Second, and related, is the concept of when death happens. When my mom was going through nursing school many years ago, she was taught that death was when the soul and the body separated. Today, medical technology and legal issues define death as when brain waves stop.

So sometimes, when someone is hooked up to machines, their body is still “alive” but their soul could already be gone.
So unhooking someone from a machine in that scenario doesn’t mean they die - it means you’re letting their body stop functioning because their soul has already left.

Third, is the idea of passive versus active suicide.

Obviously, because of the image of God on us, Christians view suicide as a wrong - it’s an attack on the image of God in yourself instead of in someone else.
But there is an ethical difference between allowing someone to die and actively killing them.

So years ago Dr. Jack Kevorkian would take people who were very sick, but were not dying, and give them basically an overdose to help them “die with dignity.”
But in doing so, he was actively killing the person - no different than murdering them.

But that’s still different than someone who is dying and you allow them to die.

So if someone is hooked up to machines, you disconnect the machines, and the person’s body is allowed to shut down.
Or if someone has a type of cancer and chooses not to get any care because of the severity of their condition. In a sense, they’re choosing to die, but it’s a natural process as opposed to one where someone is actively killing them.

So always make that distinction - generally the other element of making this distinction between active and passive is that the death has to follow relatively quickly after unhooking the machines.

This is the difference with the Terri Schiavo situation from a few years back - the only “machine” keeping her alive was a feeding tube, and withdrawing that care did not result in immediate death but rather a slower death.
We’ll talk about that situation on Wednesday as part of our discussion about how to apply this.

Last thing about the concept of end of life is the issue of “death with dignity.”

There is a significant movement that says that if someone is terminally ill - they are not going to recover - then it’s ok for them to kill themselves or get help from someone else to die quickly instead of dying a slow, agonizing death.

Now, we haven’t discussed this in detail, but God is the author of life, and he is the one who controls our time of death.
When we attempt to dictate exactly when we’re going to die, we’re really trying to seize control of something that only God knows.

So if you’re diagnosed with a terminal disease, you don’t know if God is going to heal you in some amazing way.
Or if God has certain people he wants you to talk to before you die and use you in particular ways.

When you attempt to “die with dignity” you’re in essence telling God that you want to be in control of when you die so you can be fully prepared.

This issue also opens up a dangerous road that asks how do you know if someone truly is terminal in their condition?

Arguably, all of us are - we’re all humans, we’re all going to die.
But the weight of these arguments often falls on those who don’t have the ability to speak for themselves - elderly individuals who are too sick, individuals with disabilities who are viewed as “terminal” by society.
It’s dangerous, and as Christians, we need to be very careful to affirm the value of life before God and in the image of God at every opportunity we have.

Wrapping Up Thoughts

So this turned out to be a pretty morbid lesson, eh?
But it’s a very serious issue - as Christians, we have a proper understanding of the image of God on our lives and on the lives of other people.

Because of that understanding, we work to protect life - from the very beginning through the life someone lives to their natural death.
The church should be standing for these issues.

What we want to do on Wednesday night is challenge the application of this a little bit though. Although most Christians will acknowledge these basic truths, many Christians come down application-wise in different places.

So we want to discuss some situations that will challenge your view that life always begins and conception and should never be ended.
We want to discuss some situations that will challenge your view that life should always end with a natural death.

And we will discuss the views other Christians hold so that we can ensure we are responding with grace and love to our fellow believers who may disagree with us on some applications, but agree with us about doctrine.
It should be a fun time - it will be a large-group discussion and I think we can all learn from the process.
But with that, let’s close this week in prayer.