Thou shalt not kill.
[Exodus 20:13]
What would you do to protect your child? As a parent, are there any limits to how far you would go if you knew your child was in danger? Isn’t it interesting that no one had to teach us to take the extreme measures we know we’d all take in protecting our children? It seems to almost come naturally.
We look into the face of one of our children and we proclaim, “You have your mother’s eyes.” We hear the never-ending jokes exuding with corniness from our pre-pubescent son and we exclaim, “You have your father’s sense of humor.” For better or for worse, we see ourselves in our own children. They have our DNA. They have our genes. They have what the Bible would call, “our image.” And we naturally and instinctively protect those who bear that likeness—even if it’s only one, solitary person.
One soul.
One life.
From the very beginning, God gifts His image. And, yet He waits until day six of the creation week to do so. He didn’t impart His image to those walking on all fours. He didn’t place it upon those swimming in the seas or majestically taking flight above them. He didn’t engrain it into a plant or tree of any kind either. His image was reserved for something else. He fashioned it into us.
So God created man in His [own] image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
[Genesis 1:27]
When we consider the command not to kill, we must do so in consideration of God’s image formed into all of man and nothing else. As the story of the world progressed, the image of God continued throughout mankind as well. God punished Adam’s son, Cain, for murdering his brother, Abel, before this commandment was ever etched into stone on Sinai (cf. Genesis 4:10-12). Why? Because, for the very first time, the life of an image-bearer was taken.
After the Fall in Eden and beyond the Great Flood, animal sacrifice and meat consumption were ordained of God freely, but the taking of a man’s life in murder was never to be condoned. All because it was man that still bore the image of His Creator.
Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.
[Genesis 9:6]
God has always been pro-life. To be sure, the question must be asked, “What about all of those wars He allowed the Israelite army to embark upon in His name?” Certainly, He allowed and even commanded Israel to take part in these and, yet the examples of Rahab in Jericho (cf. Joshua 6:22-25) and Nineveh in the book of Jonah (see below) show us that God offered an escape to those on the receiving end of Israel’s soon-to-be conquest. Notice these words of God Himself in condemnation of Jonah’s pity for a plant not made in the image of God but kept from the people of Nineveh, God’s image-bearers:
But the LORD said, "You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons…?"
[Jonah 4:10-11]
Overall, it would seem throughout Scripture God gave the same level of importance to one image-bearer as He gave to a crowd of them. God is pro-life but most of the time, if we’re honest, we are not.
Unlike God, we tend to be “pro-lives” instead. Why? Because we have been taught to value numbers, masses, and crowds instead of an individual, a soul, an image-bearer. In a world of viral videos, mega-churches, and mass shootings, what’s the value of one? One soul. One person made in the image of God yet residing in a world of 8 billion people.
Being pro-life is not the same as being pro-lives. The former recognizes the value of a single person, the latter can easily become more about the mission than the person itself.
In seeking importance in life, we have forgotten the importance of a life. In seeking to amass an audience we have forgotten the individuals unless those individuals help us amass that audience. In seeking fame and notoriety, we have forgotten the individual souls who desire to know us the most.
Unfortunately, churches are guilty of this as well. Churches have equated a crowd attracted with the blessings of God. With this mindset, the opposite must also be true by implication—a crowd absent equals the absence of God’s blessing.
It is not completely inaccurate to say that God is “pro-lives” for He does love the world that He willingly gave His only Son (cf. John 3:16). But He did this never in disregard for the individual life and soul made in His likeness.
What would God look like if He was strictly pro-lives? Would He have chased Jonah down to be used in His service after his initial disobedience (cf. Jonah 1)? Would He have sent Phillip to the Ethiopian eunuch in the desert (cf. Acts 8:26-39)? Would Jesus have had time for Nicodemus who came to Him by night (cf. John 3:1-21)? Would He have had a “need” to go through Samaria to speak to the one woman at the well (cf. John 4:1-26)? And would He have even cared to convict the hearts of us who didn’t receive salvation in a mass revival or evangelistic service but in the quietness of our own home…alone?
In a society that focuses on reaching the masses may we, as Christians, be the ones concerned for the individual. Based upon the willingness of some these days to put their lives in danger, take the life of someone else, or even that of their own, it would seem when there is no thought for eternity, life itself becomes less valuable as a result. May we be the ones to remind them that it is on behalf of an individual’s redemption that all the Kingdom of Heaven still erupts with joy (cf. Luke 15:10)!
May that be true of our hearts as well—that we would be pro-life in more than just one facet of our beliefs. For when we do so we not only get to the heart of the sixth commandment but to the Very One who gave it as well.
"Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
[Luke 15:10]
“I just want to encourage you to remember that the world is full of multitudes of dying people who can only be reached one at a time.”
Calvin Miller
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