One of the great doctrines of the Christian faith and one of the more enjoyable doctrines of the Christian faith, in my opinion, is the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. That doctrine basically says that in the Bible we have all of the words of God we need in order to know Him, to find salvation in Him, to walk with Him perfectly and to obey Him perfectly. Doesn’t mean we will do that, but we don’t need to look for other words of God anywhere to find further instruction beyond the Bible to know what God wants and expects from us to be in relationship with Him.

I find that a very comforting thing because I don’t have to flip through thousands of pages of manuscripts from Vedic monasteries like they do in Buddhism to find an exhaustive list of things that God has said about any particular subject. We have one source to know all that we need to know of the words of God pertaining to life and godliness to the knowledge of him who called us. That’s from 1 Peter. So that again it is very comforting. I don’t have to wait on an additional word. I don’t have to wonder if somewhere out there God has spoken or written or said something that I must know in order to know him or to obey him perfectly.

For instance, if I were to say, “What does God want me to know about sexual purity or any other subject?” I have one place that I need to go to and that is the Bible. I can go to the Bible and I can find out everything that God wants me to know about sexual purity in a way that I will be able to walk with Him perfectly and obey Him perfectly. If I obey these things that are in the Bible, I will have done well. Obviously, not everyone will obey all those things, but again, it’s a great comfort. However, the doctrine of sufficiency does not tell us everything there is to know about God. Is there more to know about God? Yes, of course there is.

I think it was the gospel writer John who said if all the things that were written about what Jesus did were written down in a book I suppose the whole world wouldn’t have enough room to hold the books that would be written about all these wonderful deeds. Meaning, there is more that we can know about God than what is in the scripture. But we have in the scriptures all the words of God that are sufficient for knowing Him, for obeying Him perfectly and for trusting him perfectly.

The word abortion does not appear in the Bible. That is often used as evidence by some people that God really does not have a strong opinion on the topic of abortion, or he will allow us as free agents and people of our own free will to decide how we feel about abortion. And He really isn’t going to hold anybody to any opinion because he has not told us explicitly how he feels about abortion in Scripture. I’m often challenged by critics who say, “Show me, in the Bible, where God says abortion is wrong.” I start by answering that question with this knowledge: the word abortion is not in the Bible. However, that does not mean that we can’t find out from the Bible how God feels about abortion.

The word genocide is not in the Bible but we know from the words of the Bible how God feels about genocide. We know to reject lynching as a society based on its moral evil. We know this based on the Bible and from our collective sense of morality as a culture even though the Bible doesn’t tell us how God feels about lynching. God does not tell us how he feels about school shootings or about concert venue shootings. You will not find anywhere in the Bible where God addresses that. However, we know how God feels about these things, and we know exactly how God feels about abortion.

Here’s how we know. We know that God detests murder, and he prohibits it. “You shall not murder” – Exodus 20:13. That’s also repeated in Deuteronomy 5:17, “You shall not murder.” What is murder? Murder is the intentional taking of an innocent human life. Does abortion qualify as murder by that definition? Yes, of course it does. In previous installments of this series, we have acknowledged the fact that the Bible and science are universally agreed that human life begins at conception and that what is conceived is now human. If killing something intentionally that is human and innocent is wrong, then abortion is definitely wrong by biblical standards.

Does God really see abortion as the killing or the murder of innocent children? The answer unequivocally is yes. Of course he does see abortion as the murder of innocent children and therefore it is always wrong. To learn more about this and other topics, we encourage you to go to the passionlife.org website where you will find a host of resources, all of them free, on various topics. Some of them pertaining specifically to abortion and others pertaining to other subjects as well. There’s just a host of free information that you can learn from and educate yourself from and get you thinking biblically about some of these particular issues so that you will know what to do and what to say when it matters most.