Sermon snippet – Human Life Is Valuable – Part I
INTRODUCTION – Christians should have a position on the subject of abortion, and, of course, it should be a Biblical viewpoint. The even larger issue is the value of each life itself. Genesis 1:26-28 provides the highest possible valuation of life, for each individual is created in the image of God. Many do not care what the Bible says, of course, but we do.
- HUMAN LIFE IS VALUABLE BECAUSE IT IS SPIRITUAL
God is a Person; that is, He possesses personality. Our personhood is dependent on God being a Person. God is not a Person because we are persons; no, we are persons because God is a Person. Sadly, many modern theologians increasingly reject the word Person to describe God. For example, one calls the Trinity “distinct manners of subsisting” – that really warms the heart, doesn’t it? Imagine singing, “God in three distinct manners of subsisting, Blessed Trinity”! Even worse are the theological implications. If God is not a Person and we are not created in His image, we are blobs of biochemistry at the mercy of the next chemical reaction in our bodies. Jesus, God the Son, said in John 4:24 that “God [the Father] is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit [the Holy Spirit] and in Truth [Jesus – John 14:6]” This explicit Trinitarianism teaches that One God is in Three Persons. Since God is Spirit and we are created in His image, then there is more to us than a creature controlled by chemistry; there is spirit, what Paul calls “the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16).
- HUMAN LIFE IS VALUABLE BECAUSE IT IS ETERNAL
In Exodus 3:14, God said, “I AM THAT I AM.” Here, God is proclaiming His eternal self-existence. Remember, we are created in God’s image: thus, we are made for eternity. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus speaks of unbelievers first and then believers: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” The King James Version uses “everlasting” and “eternal” as synonyms of the same original Greek word; to avoid any confusion, it would be more accurate to translate this same Greek word both times as “eternal” as we find in newer translations such as the New American Standard Version and the New International Version. Many non-Christians (including atheists, postmodernists, and Marxists) do not value human life because they believe that it is, on average, only 70 or 80 years long; instead, they emphasize classes or groups of people because they continue on for centuries and even millennia. Based on the Bible, Christians are certain that each person lives eternally. May each of us be certain of eternal life in heaven through a personal faith in Jesus Christ, Who died on the Cross for our eternal punishment and then rose victorious from death to life – the life that He now offers each of us.
CONCLUSION – Because we are self-limiting our time together, we will end here. Next week, we will consider two further points and make direct application to the painful subject of abortion. For now, let us be assured that we are valuable to God. Yes, you have spiritual and eternal value – and so does the person sitting next to you.