Sermon: The Sanctity of Life and the Culture of Death -- By: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 07:2 (Summer 2003)
Article: Sermon: The Sanctity of Life and the Culture of Death
Author: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.


Sermon: The Sanctity of Life and the Culture of Death

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is President and Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and has edited and contributed to important volumes on theology and culture. Dr. Mohler’s writing is regularly featured in World magazine and Religious News Service.

Introduction

On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision we know as Roe v. Wade that effectively legalized abortion on demand throughout the United States of America. When the decision was handed down it was recognized that this was an historic occasion. The Supreme Court had now declared a right that heretofore had never been recognized within the Constitution. But even the justices who voted in the majority in that decision seemed to have had little understanding of what they had unleashed. Several of those justices were later to indicate that they thought abortion would still be rare and occasional and unusual. Little did they know that 30 years after Roe v. Wade, over 40 million pre-born human beings would have been murdered in the womb. But they bear responsibility for that decision and the logic behind that decision— a logic and legal precedent the Court has yet to reverse and disavow. That is the lamentable anniversary that brings us to “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.”

Now I try to continually remind congregations and myself as I preach across this land that the Christian calendar is an arbitrary thing. That is to say, every Christian church should have Sanctity of Human Life Day every single Sunday. And we talk about Resurrection Day on the calendar, but the very fact that we gather together on Sunday is a testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is a season in the year in which we focus on the resurrection in a particular way, but the resurrection is what summons us, and gives us hope and faith in the foundation of confidence every time we gather. Christmas is absolutely arbitrary on the calendar and yet it is not wrong that we dedicate a period of the year to focus especially on the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the incarnation is the ground of what calls us together week by week. We celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, the sinless Son of God, assuming human flesh. And it is of that Christ we bear the same testimony.

“We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). And so these particular Sundays in the church year—Sanctity of Life Day included—are not to remind us of what we don’t yet know, nor are they to concretize in our ...

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