I want to begin this article by saying first, that I am pro-life, and second, that my purpose is not to pick a side or state a firm belief about many of the issues discussed below, though I believe there are times in which Christians should pick a side and take a strong doctrinal stand. Rather, my purpose is to put forward some thoughts to encourage Christians to think deeper and wider about what they mean when they say they are “pro-life” and the scope in which Scripture places value on human life. 

Even when we don’t agree on the ramifications of such a belief, all Christians generally agree that human life is sacred and valuable. Life is a gift from God (Acts 17:25). Human life reflects the image of God (Gen 1:26–27). There was a preacher who, when asked what he had done on a particular day, said that he had spent time with God. Everyone thought he meant he had spent the day praying, reading his Bible, fasting, or practicing another spiritual discipline. However, he said that he had spent the day on the subway, and that when he looked around at all the people, he saw the image of God. 

Due to this conviction, many Christians today have aligned themselves with the pro-life movement. In doing so, they stand against elective abortion, the unnecessary taking of unborn, innocent human life. If human life is sacred and valuable, then this value extends to unborn life. High value placed on human life is nothing new. In the time of Jesus, we also see value placed on the preservation of human life. 

In Mark 3:1–6, we get the following story. 

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ² They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” ⁴ Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. 

While in the local synagogue for Sabbath worship, Jesus, knowing that the eyes of the Jewish religious leaders were upon him, calls forward a man with a withered hand with the intent of healing him. Mark implies that such a healing is not approved by the religious leaders, seemingly because they would classify it as work, which was prohibited on the Sabbath. 

Jesus responds by asking if it is lawful “to save life or to kill” on the Sabbath. Jesus’s reasoning seems to be that anyone, including the Jewish leaders, would agree that it is acceptable to break Sabbath to save a person’s life. Human life is more sacred and valuable than the laws of Sabbath observance. 

However, the problem is that this man’s life is not at risk. He’s not going to die in the next 24 hours if he is not healed. Jesus could easily wait to heal him until sunset, when the Sabbath ends. Jesus’s comparison seems to be invalid. 

Jesus is refusing to distinguish between saving life in the narrowest sense (i.e., keeping a person breathing) and saving life in the fullest sense (i.e., helping a person into life as God designed it). By healing this man’s hand, allowing him to work again, to no longer be considered unclean, and to enter again into Jewish life, Jesus saves his life. For the religious leaders to stand opposed to such actions is for them to kill the man, perhaps not in the narrowest sense of preventing his breath, but in the fullest sense of preventing him from entering life as God designed it. For this reason, Jesus became angry because their hearts had become so hard. 

In essence, what Jesus is doing in this story is expanding the definition of pro-life. He is saying that being pro-life does not merely mean to keep people breathing, but to aid them into the fullness of life as God designed it. For Christians today, it means that being pro-life does not simply mean to make sure unborn life is able to take its first breath, but our definition must be expanded.

How does our stance on abortion impact the lives of expectant mothers? 

What is our stance on war, the death penalty, and self-defense? 

How do we provide for the poor and needy? 

What is our stance towards providing health care and nutritional support to lower-income families? 

What is our attitude towards immigrants? 

How are we engaged in the mental health crisis? 

How do we support the care and protection of the elderly? 

How we answer these questions determines whether or not our hearts, like those of the religious leaders, have been hardened towards the lives of others. To be pro-life, in the fullest, biblical, Jesus-defined sense of the term is not to care whether the unborn get to take their first breath and then consider our job done, it is to seek for all people in all situations to the best of our ability to aid them into the fullness of life as God designed. 

By: Spencer Shaw

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