In the course of using the law of God to call people to repent of sin and place their trust in Jesus the Messiah for full pardon of that sin, the gift of eternal life, and a new, transformed heart that desires to do good instead of evil, an abolitionist can encounter several biblical objections over and over. They are to be expected.
One is Matthew 7's "Judge not lest you be judged", which we will deal with in due course.
Another is John 7:53-8:11, the pericope of the woman caught in adultery, to whose accusers Jesus famously says "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
As we have spent time recently discussing whether abortive women are murderers, yesterday I was asked about this, so I'll take the space here to reply.
The objection began thusly:
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"... Yeah, who said that? Oh yes, the One who could've called the adulterous woman all kinds of things in order to reveal the truth to her. Instead, he simply called her "woman". What a concept.Let us note several things about this John 7:53-8:11 passage.
1) The question of whether it was ever in the original text of John is questionable. There are good reasons to believe it is a later interpolation in the text, which is why it appears between brackets and has a footnote indicating such in the margin of most Bibles.
2) Jesus in other places upheld the Mosaic Law as valid, good, and binding. So He wasn't against executing the adulterous woman, in principle. But...
3) He can read people's hearts and knew that the Jewish leaders had dragged this woman to Him to trap Him and try to discredit Him. Their motives were wholly evil and self-righteously hypocritical. Why didn't they take her to court?
4) They didn't take her to court because the Mosaic Law commands that such women and the other partner in the adulterous affair be brought forth for judgment. They didn't bring out the man. No telling where he was, but the point is that they were not seeking righteous judgment of sin; they were seeking to entrap God in human flesh and bring Him down to a sinful level. Thus the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" statement - Jesus is pointing out that they are acting sinfully in even bringing her to Him. It's not as if He had any civil or legal authority.
5) The woman's guilt was not in question. She was caught red-handed, and so the way Jesus releases her from the punishment for the crime she incurred is basically the same as a modern policeman violating a perpetrator's Miranda Rights (viz., the 5th Amendment) and then using that against him in court. The judge would have no choice but to release the accused in that case because the prosecution failed to do its job right. Same thing here - the prosecution was wrong on many levels, and so Jesus takes advantage of that to...
6) ...offer her forgiveness of sin.
He, God in human flesh, knew her heart just as much as He knew the hearts of the leaders who brought her to Jesus. Clearly He could see in her heart that she was repentant and broken over her sin. She had been caught in a crime and now the full consequences are obvious to her. She thought she would be executed. This is the 1st use of the law. Since she was already broken by the law, Jesus preaches the Gospel to her: "Neither do I condemn you" - your sins are forgiven; "Go and sin no more" - recognition and gentle reminder that she had indeed sinned, and that now since Jesus had transformed her heart (which is an inference from numerous other New Testament texts) she has the power to say no to sin from now on. He sends her on her way as a repentant adulterer.
The objection continued:
AHA admins have claimed that they would not call a repentant post-abortive woman a murderer.I wonder if that is a direct quote.
I think we'd need to work on making that a little more precise. There wouldn't be any reason to call a repentant abortive woman a murderer because she would already know she is one and she would be fine with it because Jesus has saved and forgiven her. But if she and I were talking to another person and sharing the Gospel or something, I might say "Jesus has saved me from a mountain of sins. I am a lustful dirty-mouth greedy adulterer. My friend here is a murderer, since she aborted her child. Yet Jesus is so generous and kind to forgive us. You can have that forgiveness and new life too."
Something like that. Call that woman a murderer and she'll be like "Yeah, that's true, and I am thankful God saves even murderers. What about you? Have you repented?" etc. She won't really care. It won't really bother her. And the law of God has already brought her to repent and believe the Gospel, so it would be anti-Christian to keep dwelling on her sin that Jesus has washed her from. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 - such were some of you, but you were washed...
Finally:
Does this mean that you and all of the others would wait to call any post-abortive woman that term until after you've established that she's repentant?We share the law of God with everyone who is unrepentant.
If she shows obstinacy and it becomes known that she had an abortion, we press her with the seriousness of that offense before God. We want her to be saved! We want her to stop clinging to self-righteousness! In this we follow Jesus' example to proclaim that people are lost, and even to say it when it makes things uncomfortable.
That is not to say we walk around or want to walk around screaming "MURDERER!!" indiscriminately. But take the situation of engaging with people and intervening in front of an abortuary. Women need to know that it is a place of serial murder and death; if they are going in we warn them that following through will make them a murderer. If they are coming out we call out to them and plead to come talk to us because they are guilty of murder and need Jesus' forgiveness and supernatural transformation in their lives. There is a time and a place, and when we call an unrepentant abortive woman a murderer, it is with the purpose of pricking her conscience so that she will be convicted of the sin she has committed so that she will fall at Jesus' feet in repentance and ask Him to forgive and save her. Which He delights in doing.
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