by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 5:16-17

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” 15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

For the sake of full disclosure let me tell you one of my main aims in this message: In the name of Jesus Christ and rooted in the gospel of his death and resurrection for sinners (including abortionists and pastors), my aim is to stigmatize abortion by associating it with racism. I would like you to link abortion and race the same way you link lynching and race.

Abortion and Racism

My aim is that those who abhor racism will abhor abortion—“Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). My aim is that abortion would be as culturally taboo as racism is. My aim is to hasten the day when being publicly pro-choice will be as reprehensible as being publicly racist. My aim is to hasten the day when declaring yourself pro-choice would be like declaring yourself a white supremacist.

My aim is that just as once even though the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1857 held that Black slaves were property without rights as free persons, yet today we view that as unthinkable; so also even though the Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade case of 1973 did not give the unborn the rights of free persons, nevertheless the day may come when that too is viewed as unthinkable. Racism might—and often did—result in the killing of innocent humans; in our history, it often did. But abortion always results in the killing of innocent humans. Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Black people were lynched in America. Today more Black babies are killed by white abortionists every three days than all who were lynched in those years (Life Education and Resource Network).

But I am getting ahead of myself. I simply want you to know where I am going, so that no one will say I made this association between abortion and racism in a sly or subtle way. It is not subtle. It is open and intentional and, I hope to show, justified. May God make the support of abortion in America and around the world as unthinkable as support for racism.

I don’t expect to escape misunderstanding or criticism for this message. But a few attacks might be avoided by quoting Randy Alcorn whose view I share:

I do not believe that most people who support abortion rights are racists, any more than I believe there are no racists among pro-lifers. I am simply suggesting that regardless of motives, a closer look at both the history and present strategies of the pro-choice movement suggests that “abortion for the minorities” may not serve the cause of equality as much as the cause of supremacy for the healthy, wealthy and white. (Eternal Perspectives, Sept.-Oct. 1993, p. 9)

Again my aim is to associate abortion and racism, not to equate them. Whether the association is justified, you will decide. It’s not a biblical declaration; it’s a cultural observation. But we must look at the Bible to see why I would venture to makes such an observation in a Christian sermon.

What Abortion Is

First, a word about what abortion is, and then a look at our text. I got an email last week from one of our apprentices who told me of a conversation he had with a junior high student: “He . . . had never heard of abortion, nor did he know what it was. That fact alone shocked me.” So if you don’t think you know enough to be an educator, think again. If you simply know what it is, you know enough to educate. And education really matters. There is mass ignorance. Merriam Webster defines abortion as “The termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.” Defining abortion as the “termination of pregnancy” is like defining the death of your aged father as the “termination of hospice care.” Abortion is the intentional killing of unborn babies. It happens by inserting instruments into the mother’s womb pulling the babies into pieces and removing them. There are special clinics where it happens. There used to be over two thousand. Today there are about 740. They have killed forty-six million babies since abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973. Each year 1.2 million abortions happen in the U. S. You can watch an actual abortion online at The Center for Bioethical Reform [Editor's note: the video begins immediately and is very graphic.] One of the fullest and best sites for education on abortion is Abort73.com.

Abortion and the Gospel

Before we go further into abortion and race, let’s look at our text and put this issue in the context of the Christian gospel. In Ephesians 5:6, Paul writes, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” “These things” refers back to verse 5: “You may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” So the really great issue of the universe is described: People may enter the kingdom of Christ, or people may endure the wrath of God. The great issue of life is: How shall I escape the wrath of God and enter into the eternal life of Christ’s kingdom?

The answer has been fully presented in the first three chapters of Ephesians, and a summary is right here in Ephesians 4:32-5:2. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. [1] Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. [2] And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” So put 5:2 together with verse 4:32. Verse 2: “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” In other words, Christ died for sinners—people who need forgiveness. Women in this room who have had abortions. Boyfriends, husbands, fathers, mothers, grandmothers who condoned or even demanded it. Doctors who urged it or performed it. And all the rest of us sinners in this room who will perish under the wrath of God (v. 6) if we reject God’s substitute for us, Jesus Christ.

Christ died for sinners—that’s what the phrase “gave himself up for us” means in verse 2. And then in 4:32, he says, “God in Christ forgave you.” The aim of his giving himself up for us was to forgive us. If we receive Christ as our only hope and guide and treasure, if we are “in him” by faith, then God’s forgiveness is ours. “God in Christ forgave you.” That means that we may escape the wrath that is coming and enter into the kingdom of Christ. O that every sinner in this room would hear this and believe this and feel this. Only in Jesus Christ is there salvation from the guilt of sin and the wrath of God. And that salvation is available for every abortionist and everyone involved in abortion at every level. There is nothing too hard for God.

In Jesus Christ, God Forgives Sinners

And lest anyone think that you are simply too sinful—that there have been too many sins for too long—listen to the way the great sinner, the apostle Paul, speaks to you—directly to you. This is 1 Timothy 1:15-16: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” In other words, if God can save me, the foremost (he was a murdering Christian-hater), then he can save anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

Now with that spectacular good news in place, Paul calls us to walk in the light and expose the works of darkness: Ephesians 5:8-11, “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” When a person is forgiven for all his sins, and escapes from God’s wrath, and enters the kingdom of Christ, he has a calling—to be light! To shine with the light of Christ in the world. To display the beauty of Christ and to expose the fruitlessness—the moral emptiness and deadly effects—of the works of darkness. We sang as children, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” But have you ever sung, “Shine all over Planned Parenthood, I’m gonna let it shine . . .”?

Paul carries the image on through in a very hopeful way. His hope is not that the light of goodness and righteousness and truth simply expose and damn. His hope is that it expose and that the exposed will become light. That the spiritually dead will be quickened from the dead and call upon Jesus and join the forces of light. Ephesians 5:13-14, “But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”

Out of Darkness, Into Light

Paul’s aim—and our aim with him—is not damnation. Our aim is salvation. “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.” That is possible for pastors and abortionists and all who have been involved in abortion. And there is a very particular application here for the words, “When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.” Some of the strongest witnesses to the light of life are women who have had abortions and come out of the darkness into the light of forgiveness and light. They have become light. They are shining with the truth. Let’s turn to one of them who had two abortions and listen.

Dr. Alveda C. King is the daughter of Rev. A. D. King, Martin Luther King’s brother. She is the founder of King for America. Her uncle had a dream that she loves. Here is her own dream:

We have been fueled by the fire of “women’s rights,” so long that we have become deaf to the outcry of the real victims whose rights are being trampled upon, the babies and the mothers. . . . What about the rights of each baby who is artificially breached before coming to term in his or her mother’s womb, only to have her skull punctured, and feel, yes agonizingly “feel” the life run out of her before she takes her first breath of freedom. What about of the rights of these women who have been called to pioneer the new frontiers of the new millennium only to have their lives snuffed out before the calendar even turns?

Oh, God, what would Martin Luther King, Jr., who dreamed of having his children judged by the content of their characters do if he’d lived to see the contents of thousands of children’s skulls emptied into the bottomless caverns of the abortionists pits?

It is time for America, perhaps the most blessed nation on earth to lead the world in repentance, and in restoration of life! . . . Abortion is at the forefront of our destruction. Partial Birth Abortion is perhaps the most heinous form of this legal genocide. . . . The only healing and redemption is in the blood of Jesus, blood willingly shed so that we could stand today and cry out for the blood of the unborn that is drenching the land of our children.

. . . [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] once said, “The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety.” How can the “Dream” survive if we murder the children? Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. . . . If the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to live, our babies must live. Our mothers must choose life. If we refuse to answer the cry of mercy from the unborn, and ignore the suffering of the mothers, then we are signing our own death warrants.

I too, like Martin Luther King, Jr., have a dream. I have a dream that the men and women, the boys and girls of America will come to our senses, and humble ourselves before God Almighty and pray for mercy, and receive His healing grace. I pray that this is the day, the hour of our deliverance. May God have mercy on us all.

Black Genocide

Ms. King refers to abortion as genocide. Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr. goes further and refers to black genocide. In 2002, he birthed a website by and for African Americans called Blackgenocide.org. The lament at that website reads like this (referring to statistics in 2002):

[The] incidence of abortion has resulted in a tremendous loss of life. It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had about 10 million abortions [probably up to 13 million now]. Michael Novak . . . calculated, “Since the number of current living Blacks (in the U.S.) is 31 million, the missing 10 million represents an enormous loss, for without abortion, America’s Black community would now number 41 million persons. It would be 35 percent larger than it is. Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member.”

A Vision to Do Something

Perhaps the best way I can put this is to let John Ensor describe the situation racially, not in the abstract, but in the context of his vision to do something about it. John founded five crisis pregnancy centers in Boston called A Woman’s Concern. That remarkable achievement is part of something amazing nationally. In the last thirty-five years, the Christian community has founded 2,300 pregnancy help centers. This means Christians ready to help women before, during, and after pregnancy, while saving the children.

But here’s the catch. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. They were founded by Margaret Sanger whose “Negro Project” in the 1930s was designed to reduce the births of black children (Randy Alcorn, “Planned Parenthood: a Closer Look At Its Founder and Philosophy, Eternal Perspectives, Sept.-Oct., 1993, pp. 8-9; see also George Grant, Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Founder, Margaret Sanger [Franklin, Tennessee: Ars Vitai Press, 2001). Today 78% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority communities. John Ensor takes this as the crucial challenge of the pro-life, crisis pregnancy center movement: Go to the urban centers. Here is what he says:

To date, the pregnancy center movement has grown mostly in rural and suburban areas. The great challenge now facing us is to respond to the abortion industry’s dominant business strategy of abandoning rural and suburban abortion facilities and targeting urban neighborhoods. For example, Planned Parenthood closed 17 abortion facilities in 2004. But they sold 20% more abortions. How did they do this? By targeting minority neighborhoods in major cites. Currently, 94% of America’s abortion facilities are in cities. And African-American women, who make up 13% of the female population account for 36% of all abortions.¹ Latino-American women makeup another 13% of the female population, but account for another 20% of all abortions. (See Susan Enouen, “Planned Parenthood Abortion Facilities Target African American Communities.”)

In other words, the de facto effect (I don’t call it the main cause, but net effect) of putting abortion clinics in the urban centers is that the abortion of Hispanic and Black babies is more than double their percentage of the population. Every day 1,300 black babies are killed in America. Seven hundred Hispanic babies die every day from abortion. Call this what you will—when the slaughter has an ethnic face and the percentages are double that of the white community and the killers are almost all white, something is going on here that ought to make the lovers of racial equality and racial harmony wake up.

John and his wife Kristin just moved temporarily from Boston to Miami to take up the challenge. Forty percent of all the abortions in Florida are done in Miami. There are forty abortion-selling centers in that city, but only one ultrasound equipped pregnancy center. John and Kristen hope to turn that around, not only there, but with CareNet and Focus on the Family, across the country.

Here is his closing dream: “The abolition of abortion is in sight, and will be looked back on by future generations the way we currently look back on slavery, when the pregnancy center movement is established in our cities and led by the Black, Latino and White Christian community.” I know that I am talking mainly to a white audience. But not only. Word spreads. One person could make all the difference.

O that the murderous effect of abortion in the Black and Latino communities, destroying tens of thousands at the hands of white abortionists, would explode with the same reprehensible reputation as lynching. May the Lord raise up from the African-American churches and the Hispanic-American churches a passion to seize the moral high ground against the slaughter of the little ones. Such leadership would sweep the field, and the white pro-choice establishment would fall before it. May it happen in the name of Christ and for his glory and for the good of all people until the Lord of glory comes. Amen.

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Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

by John Piper – Listen

Ephesians 5:11

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness,
but instead expose them.

I begin this morning by making sure that we understand the difference between a Christian call to pro-life action and a non-Christian call to pro-life action. I am glad that non-Christians are calling for an end to abortion. I am glad that there are “atheists for life.” One of the things that makes America work is that what Christians see as right behavior because of Christ non-Christians see as right for other reasons.

This is not surprising. Some of the truth that is rooted in Jesus as the Son of God is also revealed partially in creation. The law written on the heart of all men and women (Romans 2:14), no matter how marred by sin, is still God’s law. So there is always hope that in the gracious providence of God believers and non-believers in a pluralistic society might come to agree that certain behaviors are right and certain behaviors are wrong.

But I am a Christian pastor, not a politician. My main job is not to unite believers and unbelievers behind worthwhile causes. Somebody should do this. But that is not my job. Some of you ought to be doing that with a deep sense of Christian calling. My job is to glorify Jesus Christ by calling his people to be distinctively Christian in the way they live their lives.

Therefore I begin by showing you from Scripture (not from natural law, as crucial as that is for social survival) what is distinctively Christian in my call to pro-life action.

A Call to Be What You Are in Christ: Four Examples

A Christian call to pro-life action is a call to the children of light to be what you are in Christ. This is utterly crucial to grasp if you want to act as a Christian. Let me give you four instances of what I mean from this text.

1. Let’s start in the verse just before our text—the last verse of Ephesians 4 (v. 32), “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” A Christian call to forgive does not say: forgive in order to earn the forgiveness of God. It says forgive because you have been forgiven by God. Look at the last half of verse 32: “Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you.” Christian living moves from what God has freely done for us in Christ to what we should freely do for others. It is not the other way around.
2. A second example is in verse 1 of chapter 5: “Be imitators of God as beloved children.” It does not say, “Be imitators of God in order to get adopted.” It begins with your standing in Christ as “loved children.” “To as many as received Christ to them God gave authority to be children of God” (John 1:12). So the Christian call to imitate God in the world is not a call to earn a standing with him, but a call to be what you are—chips off the old block, loved children of God. Loved children love to be like their father.
3. A third example is verse 2: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” It does not say, “Walk in love so that Christ will start loving us and give himself up for us.” It says Christ loved us and gave himself for us, therefore walk in love. Be what he has died to make you, and secured for you.
4. A fourth example is in verse 8: “Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the light.” It does not say, “Be the light of the world so that you can become children of the light.” It says, “You ARE light in the Lord. You ARE no longer darkness. You are children of the light. Walk as what you are.”

This is the difference between a Christian call to pro-life action and a non-Christian call. The call to forgive, the call to imitate God, the call to walk in love, the call to walk as children of the light—these are calls rooted in something that God in Christ has done for us. They are rooted in what God has already made us in Christ. They are calls to be what we are because of God’s forgiveness, God’s adoption, Christ’s sacrificial love, and God’s putting his light within us.

First a Call to Conversion, Then to Light-Shining

All of that happens to you when you become a Christian by putting your trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. The rest of the story is: become what you are! Forgive—out of your forgivenness. Love—out of your being loved. Shine—with the light that Christ is in you. So the call to Christian pro-life action is first a call to conversion—to new birth—to repentance and faith in Jesus. Then it is a call to let your light shine in the darkness—to walk as children of the light.

This is why in verse 9 Paul says, “For the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Paul calls goodness and justice and truth the FRUIT of light because it grows naturally out of light. Fruit comes out of a tree because of what the tree is. That is the Christian life: becoming what you are—bearing fruit.

The opposite of the “fruit of light” is “the works of darkness.” Look at verse 11: “Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness.” The opposite of “light” is “darkness” and the opposite of “fruit” is “works.” This is just like Galatians 5 where Paul contrasts the “fruit of the Spirit” and the “works of the flesh.” And the point is the same: true Christian living is essentially fruit-bearing, not essentially working. It is essentially letting the fruit show what the tree is like. It is not working to become a tree.

We become a tree and stay a sound tree by trusting in the free mercy of God and all that he is for us in Jesus. The Christian life—with all its pro-life action and everything else that is good—is being what we are, God-forgiven, God-adopted, Christ-loved, fruit-bearing trees.

A Distinctively Christian Call to Pro-Life Action

Now on that basis consider the distinctively Christian call to pro-life action. Verse 8b says, “Walk as children of the light.” Verse 11 gives a negative and a positive way to do that. Negatively: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather [this is the positive part:] expose them.” Walking in the light means not doing works of darkness and it means exposing the works of darkness that others do.

Therefore we learn from this text that Christians who walk in the light should be involved in exposing the dark and fruitless work of abortion. It is a dark and barren work, and we are called to expose it.

The word “expose” is used again in verse 13 where you get a clear idea of what’s involved: “When anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible.” The idea is that when we “walk as children of the light,” we will shine into places of darkness and cause the darkness to become visible, or to become light. Or to use the words of Jesus, when we let our light shine before men, the dark works of men become shown for what they really are: fruitless and shameful. That’s part of our calling.

In John 3:20 we see this word again. Jesus says, “Every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” So the point behind this word is that Christians are called to shine the light of truth and justice and love into the darkness and bring evil to light for what it really is.

A Call to Be the Conscience of the Culture

Another way to say this is that God calls his people to be the conscience of the culture. Our individual conscience probes into our behavior and either approves or disapproves what we do. So the children of light are to probe into the life of their culture and approve or disapprove what it does.

I hope you hear the force of this. It is radically different from the passivity and moral withdrawal of many Christians. Many believers have a passive avoidance ethic and that is all. In other words they think: if I avoid the works of darkness, and don’t do them myself, then I am doing my Christian duty. I’m clean. I’m in the light. But that is not what verse 11 says. It says you are only doing half your duty. “Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness”—that’s an avoidance ethic. That’s half your duty. But it goes on, and in fact puts stress on the next phrase because it is easily overlooked and because it can be very costly: “Rather even expose them!” Don’t just avoid the works of darkness, EXPOSE them. This is not avoidance. This is action.

Expose the Dark and Fruitless Work of Abortion

Do you hear a call to action in this verse? Do you hear a call to do something in 1992 to expose the darkness and the fruitlessness (the barrenness!) of abortion? God is calling us in this verse—he is calling all Christians—to expose the dark and fruitless work of abortion . . .

1. To expose the fact that there are 1.5 million abortions in America every year—27 million since the Supreme Court overturned the public conscience of 48 states 19 years ago.
2. To expose the fact that 30% of all babies conceived in America are killed by abortion.
3. To expose the fact that medically women are told not to have abortions before the seventh week of pregnancy (see the Yes/Neon booklet), and yet by the eighth week the heart of the baby has been beating for a month, there are measurable brain waves, there is response to touch, there’s thumb-sucking, grasping with the hands, swimming with the arms in the amniotic fluid, distinct arms and legs and sexual organs. This much must—not may, must—be present before most abortion centers will cut the baby to pieces with a suction machine 4,000 times a day.
4. To expose the fact that 9,000 babies were killed after the 21st week of pregnancy in 1987, fully formed and on the brink of being able to breathe for themselves—killed, legally!
5. To expose the fact that in Minnesota we have a fetal homicide law that makes it “murder to kill an embryo or fetus intentionally, except in cases of abortion”—in other words, it’s unlawful to kill the unborn child unless the mother chooses to have it killed. And that is a strange and dark criterion for lawful killing.
6. To expose the fact that “There is inescapable schizophrenia in aborting a perfectly normal 22 week fetus while at the same hospital, performing intra-uterine surgery on its cousin” (Steve Calvin).
7. To expose the fact that viability outside the womb is not a criterion of personhood and right to life, because we ourselves don’t want to give up our personhood and our right to life if we must be sustained on a respirator or dialysis machine the way a baby has to be sustained by a placenta.
8. To expose the fact that the size and reasoning power of a tiny person is irrelevant to human personhood because if it were, we might allow tiny and unthinking newborns to be killed.
9. To expose the fact that genetically human embryos and fetuses are utterly different from all other animal life; if they are just left alone, with nothing added but nourishment, they will grow up.
10. To expose the fact that if it is unlawful to crush the egg of a bald eagle, it is not excessively restrictive to make it unlawful to crush the egg of a human.
11. To expose the fact that when two legitimate rights conflict—the right not to be pregnant and the right not to be killed—justice demands that we give place to the greater right, the right that does the least harm—the one that does not willfully kill.
12. To expose the fact that there are thousands of crisis pregnancy centers in this country ready to help, and almost all of them are free—unlike the abortion mills that charge plenty of money—and the older the baby, the more they charge.
13. To expose the fact that there are no unwanted babies in Minnesota. Mary Ann Kuharsky (President of ProLife Minnesota) said in the Tribune she would take any baby whose life depended on it, and there are hundreds like her.
14. To expose the fact that it is hypocritical to speak as though choice were the untouchable absolute in this matter and then turn around and oppose choice in matters of gun-control and welfare support and affirmative action and minimum wage and dozens of other issues where so-called pro-choice people join the demand that people’s choices be limited to protect others. It’s a sham argument. All choices are limited by life.
15. To expose the fact that trespassing to save life is not a crime and that it does not undermine our legal system, but on the contrary endorses the one foundation stone without which that legal system in this land will fall, namely, the inalienable right to life. There will be no law but the law of individual choice (=anarchy) if the foundation stone of life’s value is destroyed. And abortion is destroying it.

God is calling passive, inactive Christians today to engage our minds and hearts and hands in exposing the barren works of darkness. To be the conscience of our culture. To be the light of the world. To live in the great reality of being loved by God and adopted by God and forgiven by Christ (yes—for all the abortions that dozens of you have had), and be to made children of the light. I call you this morning to walk as children of light.

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Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org