God's View of the Unborn

Dennis Marvel

God's View of the Unborn

Dennis Marvel

The question often arises, "How can Christians say that the Bible condemns abortion when there is no mention of this act in Scripture?" Although the words "embryo," "fetus," and "abortion" do not appear in the text of the Bible, God makes very plain His view of the unborn child. The question of whether a "fetus" is or is not a human being is clearly answered in Scripture.

From narrations, assertions and prophecies distributed amply throughout the Bible, we are able to identify at least four elements in God's view of unborn children and of children in general. These include (1) a sense of divine mystery, commanding a reverent respect on our part, that surrounds the development of a child in the womb; (2) an overwhelming connotation of blessing associated with the advent of every child; (3) an emphatic assertion of sanctification attaching to every first-born; (4) a projection of destiny, radiating from the original act of Creation, onto every life prior to conception.

The Mystery of the Womb

Let us explore the Scriptural evidence for each of these elements. First, the mystery of conception and development. In Ecclesiastes 11:5, we read,

5As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

I would suggest that even with the advances in biological science that have occurred since the reign of Solomon, the development of a child in the womb remains a mystery. In our time we debate even the existence of the spirit; much less are we able to explain when and how the spirit couples to the body. The sense of awe inspired by the unfolding drama within the womb is expressed even more graphically by the Psalmist:

13For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. 14I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. 15My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. -- Ps. 139

This passage also touches on the sense of destiny, the suggestion of existence and identity predating the moment of conception, that deepens the mystery and takes it outside the narrow context of physical development. And the line of praise, "thou hast covered me in my mother's womb," tells us that God attends on the unborn as closely as he follows the lives of those who walk the earth. Surely our attempts to obstruct His plans and arrangements can only place us in great peril of judgment.

Children as a Blessing

The second element in God's view of the unborn is the identification of children as a blessing. In Psalm 127, we read

3Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

Notice that the writer does not speak of children already born without mentioning their proximate origin in the womb. Thus, a child does not suddenly become a blessing when he is parted from his mother. The bearing of "fruit" can only be the end result of growth under the Lord's care and nurture; as He provides the sun and the rain necessary to the fruitfulness of the orchard, so he provides the environment of growth necessary to the unborn child. Terminating a blessing in progress pours contempt on God's reward. And the word "heritage" implies pre-existence. One cannot inherit from the Lord that which does not already belong to Him.

In Deuteronomy Chapter 7 the "fruit of the womb" ranks first in a comprehensive list of blessings promised to an entire nation:

12Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers: 13And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. 14Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.

Notice that the list begins and also ends with the promise of fertility: "he will also bless the fruit of thy womb ... there shall not be male or female barren among you." Enclosed between these bracketing assurances is an entire litany of prosperity. Evidently, the Lord associates the total well-being of a nation with the fecundity of its people. The practice of abortion throws not one but all of these promises back in the Lord's face; no nation that reject's God's primary blessing can hope to gain the others.

Sanctification of the First-Born

Next, we consider the sanctification of the first-born. In Numbers, Chapter 8, the Lord tells Moses,

17For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself.

The New Testament bears witness to God's continuing interest in the first-born; in Luke, Chapter 2, we read

23(As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;)

To those who would limit God's concern to the first-born of Israel, we might offer the words of Paul in the 8th chapter of Romans:

29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Here we begin to suspect the true reason for God's insistence upon the consecration of the first-born: Like so many aspects of the Levitical worship, it prefigured some aspect of Christ's relationship to the future Church -- in this case, His brotherhood with the believer. ["To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." -- John 1:12] His primacy as "firstborn among many brethren" takes on special significance in light of His identity as the "firstfruits" of the resurrection [1 Corinthians 20-23].

What are we to say, then? Did God's sanctification of the first-born lose its literal application with the advent of the New Convenant? To answer that question, let us consider another relationship sanctified by God that prefigured an aspect of Christ's relationship to the Church. We speak here of the institution of marriage as a figure of the Church's position as the Bride of Christ. Did the sanctity of marriage end when the understanding of its higher symbolism became known? On the contrary, Paul draws upon that very extension to derive the practical counsel that he offers to husbands and wives [Ephesians 6:22-33]. The full understanding of the mystery of marriage can only increase our reverence for that institution, and so it should be with the sanctity of the first-born. Any earthly thing that the Lord chooses to elevate as a prefigure of Christ ought to be regarded with awe and trembling. Knowing all this, could we possibly dare to terminate an unborn first child? The issue of murder aside, would we not be committing the worst sort of blasphemy?

Divine Destiny

The final element in God's view of the unborn is the sense of destiny. To God, the life of the unborn child is spread out before Him like a timeless canvas. In Judges 13 we read

5For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

The child, of course, was Samson, and the words were addressed to his mother. Those who undertook the Nazarite vow distinguished themselves by many forms of abstinence, the most notable of which was to refrain from cutting the hair. In Samson's case, the Lord marked him for this service even before he was conceived. The rituals associated with this predestined office would mark Samson as a great leader of his people, in whom their hope of liberation would rest.

An even mightier destiny was foretold for the children of Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. Genesis Chapter 25 contains the words

23And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. 24And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

In the Psalms, we are told that those who are destined to walk with God are under His care even before birth:

9But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. 10I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly. -- Ps. 22

Psalm 71 echoes the same thought:

5For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. 6By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee.

If it is God Who removes children from the womb and sets them on a path that only He foresees, who are we to usurp His prerogative and sentence the unborn to death? Sadly enough, the Scriptures also seem to tell us that certain people are bound to walk a different path; Psalm 58 says that

3The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

Apparently, God knows each of us in the womb and sees our future course as if it were present. Those whose hearts will turn to Him, he nurtures from conception; those who will become His enemies, He nevertheless leaves free to walk their path of choice. Since no one but God can discern the potential for salvation in each soul, the termination of an unborn life by human decision is an act of supreme arrogance.

That an individual birth can be tied up with the destiny of entire nations is made clear in the following passage from the 44th chapter of Isaiah:

1Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen: 2Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen. 3For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: 4And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses. 5One shall say, I am the LORD'S; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the LORD, and surname himself by the name of Israel.

A few verses later, the I AM, speaking through the prophet, goes on to seal the promise with a declaration of His identity, in which He juxtaposes the act of forming the child in the womb with the creation of the entire universe:

24Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

In the mind of the LORD, the two acts of creation are on equal footing. Note that this statement, which places the divine seal upon the preceding words by identifying the Giver of the promise, uses not merely God's title (Lord, adonai), but His very sacred Name (LORD, Yahweh, I AM), which the Jews uttered only infrequently and then with extreme reverence.

It is noteworthy that throughout the Old Testament, the use of the individual name Jacob to identify the entire nation that we call Israel shows how closely linked were the concepts of personal and ethnic destiny. The Lord Himself sees the genesis of an entire people as beginning in the womb of the woman who bore their progenitor. And when He speaks to the future of that people, He validates His words with the supreme seal of His identity as Creator of the universe.

In a sense, every child is the father or mother of an entire people, even if the children to come may not be distinguished in the same way as the descendants of Jacob. No individual is without his place in history, and no one must be denied the opportunity to play out the personal destiny that the Lord has woven into the fabric of Creation.

Examples abound in the Bible of God's declaration of a special destiny for certain individuals while they were yet unborn. Of the prophet Jeremiah He says

5Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. -- Jer. 1

Hosea Chapter 12 recounts the story of Jacob in the following words:

3He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God:

In Luke Chapter 1 we read the following prophecy concerning John the Baptist:

13But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. 14And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 15For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 16And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 17And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. [Italics added]

The promise made to Mary the mother of Jesus was even more dramatic:

30And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. 32He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

That there is sensibility in the womb is made clear several verses later, as Luke recounts the meeting of Mary with Elisabeth:

39And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; 40And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. 41And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: 42And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

So real is the person of an unborn child to God, that even before conception a name is sometimes given:

21And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. -- Lk. 2

The Apostle Paul likewise admits that his calling predated his birth, even though his Christian ministry did not begin until mid-life and the story of his earlier career bore no hint of the epiphany that would overtake him on the road to Damascus. In Galatians Chapter 1 he says of himself

15But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, 16To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

Finally, we learn in Ephesians Chapter 1 that all who belong to Christ were chosen from the beginning of time:

4According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

The idea that an individual's history begins at birth is simply not supported by the Bible, no matter what our views on predestination and free will. A position of compromise on the subject of abortion alienates us from the authority of Scripture, whether we like it or not.