Host Kim Ketola shares how many pro-life advocates stress God’s love over the value of repentance after abortion. But she says, “Repentance is a golden key that every Christian needs to have at our disposal to open the door to peace with God, ourselves and others.”
The key passage is 2 Corinthians 7:10-11, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.”
Repentance which flows from godly sorrow is a change of heart that renews our minds and lives; worldly sorrow is centered on self and thus leads to self-reproach, self-condemnation, self-loathing and even the very extreme self-destruction of death by our own hands.
In Luke 13, Jesus took on self-righteous believers who overlooked their own need to repent. This message can go a long way to repair a church body divided by the sin of abortion. He said, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Applied to the problem of abortion, we can all repent the complicity of having accepted abortion as inevitable and doing nothing to rescue those being led to slaughter.
The Bible says repentance is a gift: Acts 11:18; Acts 17:30; 2 Timothy 2:25; Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9. And we are to seek it: Revelations 3:9.
In his first recorded sermon in Matthew 4:17, Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” We need not fear sharing the message of repentance with those who feel far from God due to their participation in abortion. Repenting fits us for the near and coming kingdom.
In Luke 5:32 Jesus stressed his target: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
As church leaders, you are in a unique position to promote repentance as a pathway to peace after abortion. Let us pray you find the way.
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