Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Wednesday, a rare Wednesday episode, with Pastor John and myself together. No sermon clip today. We’re both in the studio with an update. This is John Piper’s year-in-review — I guess we could call it that, Pastor John — as we look back at God’s kindness in 2022. It was a busy year for you. We have a lot of ground to cover today. So let’s start with the personal life of John Piper. Don’t go into the books or conferences or ministry memories just yet. Start by giving us highlights from your life. What stands out to you personally?

That’s a trick question in a sense because personal pleasure and pleasure from ministry are really hard to distinguish. So it seems to me like you’re asking the impossible, but I think I get what you’re asking: the joys of the personal dimension of my life, apart from the work I do for Desiring God and Bethlehem College & Seminary. Let me mention maybe two or three things.

Probably the least important thing to mention, but amazingly ever-present in our home life, is that we got a new dog, a goldendoodle. Now, we had a goldendoodle for fourteen years. This dog, however, is more doodle than golden. We’re trying to come to terms with that and having a little bit of a hard time. That’s the least important thing to mention, and yet there she is all the time in the kitchen as part of our lives now.

Far more important was a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip with all four of my sons and two grandsons at a wilderness lake in Canada where you have to fly in, land on the water, and fish for walleye and northern pike. And these fish were so hungry — they were so hungry! — we were catching them with hooks and pieces of orange duct tape. That’s not an exaggeration. My boys were having a blast experimenting. “What will they bite?” These were big fish — big edible fish. I love the sounds of my sons laughing, and when you get four quick-witted, fast-tongued Piper brothers together in one place, you better be prepared to be knocked over by the verbal rough-and-tumble and laughter. It was a really precious high point, which I pray God will use in their lives for good.

Let me just mention one more. I know it’s cheating because it mingles ministry pleasure and personal, but I can’t help but mention that I get a tremendous personal pleasure from teaching the preaching course at Bethlehem College & Seminary, where I serve as chancellor. The give-and-take with these fourteen guys this fall, for example, in the class about the glories of preaching God’s word is simply too satisfying for me personally to leave out.

Ask Pastor John

I think probably most of us feel the same way you do about ministry joys being some of the best personal joys. But let’s move into your ministry joys or ministry highlights from 2022. The fact that you and I are talking right now, of course, means that in 2022 God enabled us to record another 150 episodes of this podcast, Ask Pastor John. We’re closing in now on 1,900 total episodes as we finish up ten years together on this podcast.

Absolutely amazing. I won’t get to say very often, Tony (in public, at least, though I might say it to you more often), that I am so profoundly thankful for your partnership particularly. I know a lot of people make things happen at Desiring God. But the amount of planning, praying, curating, editing, and hosting that you do for this podcast to make it possible is mostly invisible but absolutely essential to the life of this ministry. I am so thankful.

Wow. That’s very meaningful to me, Pastor John. Thank you. As I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, Ask Pastor John is the honor of a lifetime for me. This will be — I am very sure of it — the most impactful ministry I will ever be a part of. You tell me I cannot know that.

Right, you cannot know that.

But I’m saying I know that. And I thank God for APJ, and I thank God for you and your very hard work that is really the engine behind it all. I love building this podcast with you. I enjoy every single week of this work because I know one day our building of it will end. And I do not look forward to that day.

Look at the Book

But APJ is not the only podcast you spent time on this year. Maybe we shouldn’t even classify it as a podcast. You spent a lot of time creating these almost-unique visual online teaching videos called Look at the Book. I think we have almost a thousand of those episodes available now at Desiring God. Anything unusual about this past year on the Look at the Book front?

Well, there is, but let me step back and give the bigger picture, because what’s special won’t make as much sense without that. Several years ago, God, I believe, put it in my heart to try to create a Look at the Book episode — these are about ten-to-fourteen minutes long — on all thirteen of Paul’s letters. The team at Desiring God thought that was an amazing thing and a good idea and got behind it and began to structure my life to that end, weaving Look at the Book creation into my weekly routine.

But we discovered that, at the pace we were going, that probably was not going to happen in my lifetime because that’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes, given all of Paul’s letters and how long some of them are. So we decided to experiment last summer — so just a few months ago — with what we call a “lab blitz.” Desiring God sends me away for about seven weeks where that’s all I do. And bless their hearts, 9Marks and Capitol Hill Baptist Church provided Noël and me with a nice secluded place to stay, and the guys from Desiring God set up a studio in a bedroom. And so, for nine hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks, all I did was Look at the Book creation. We did about 150 episodes in that time and did all of 1 and 2 Timothy.

If we now take that model of these blitzes and do that for the next two or three years, the goal actually looks doable. It looks doable. We could drop dead any time, no matter how old we are. But if I stay healthy, if my mind stays clear for the next two or three years, then it actually looks doable. I love doing it this way. I am so thankful. Staying really focused day in and day out is so much more efficient than fitting in those efforts at Look at the Book to a day here and there during my other responsibilities. We’ll probably be doing both, and I’m excited that it looks like, if God gives me life, I could do Look at the Book on all of Paul’s letters.

‘Come, Lord Jesus’

Wonderful. Any special takeaways from seven weeks of your attention being riveted on Paul’s letters?

Yes, but we don’t have time to talk about them. They’re so good, so deep, so many. You can’t look at God’s book as long as I have looked at it and not be amazed — at least I can’t. My prayer every time I start one of those days of focusing all day long on looking at God’s book is, “Lord, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things out of your word,” like the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18.

But maybe what would be most interesting for folks is to see the connection between doing Look at the Book on 2 Timothy and a new book that will be out in a few weeks — namely, a book on the second coming of Christ, which we’re calling Come, Lord Jesus and that Crossway is publishing.

I’ve wanted to write a book on Christ’s coming for many years. Well, here I was focused. Now this wasn’t last summer, this was earlier, as I was pondering 2 Timothy in preparation. I was focused on 2 Timothy, and I got to the end. This was probably Paul’s last letter, and these are among the last verses that he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7–8:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

All who have loved his appearing. That was it. That’s what it took to get me over the edge to say, “Now I know how I want to write this book on the second coming.” So I wrote a book focused mainly on helping myself, and I hope others, love — not just hope for or understand or think about, but love — the appearing of the Lord Jesus. I finished the editing earlier this year, and it’s scheduled to be out I believe in January sometime.

Learning, Technology, Eldership

Yes, and it’s a great read. And I guess that answers one of my other questions: whether this new Look at the Book blitz that you just mentioned earlier will replace your other writing priorities.

Well, it might. I’m not sure yet about what it will look like over the summers for the next two or three years. In fact, it’s not going to replace writing in the foreseeable future because we’ve set aside some time, just a few weeks from now in January, to team up with Joe Rigney, the president of Bethlehem College & Seminary, to write a short book on how to be a lifelong learner. I know that book is in the planning stages, and the blitzes aren’t going to preempt that one, but I am, as you know, not the only writer of books or articles at DG.

When I look back over this year, what an amazing stream of substantial, insightful, Bible-saturated articles flow out daily at Desiring God. Not to mention in this past year the new books that you and David Mathis published. I mean, Tony, your book God, Technology, and the Christian Life is still, in my mind, in a class by itself. I don’t know anything like it with the combination of rich biblical reflection, a high view of providence, and a fascinating grasp of the present lay of the land of technology. I’ve got juicy favorite quotes. You’re a good writer, and you rise to some sweet levels of quotability. Here’s two of them: “Angels don’t bend down in awe of Silicon Valley. Angels kneel in awe to study the glories and agonies of Jesus Christ” (278). That’s gold. Or, “Obviously, we can escape from God’s providence like a fish can escape water for a life in outer space” (269). That’s great. Your book is worthy of people’s getting just to poke around and find those nuggets like that.

As if that were not enough for a great year at Desiring God, Mathis — David Mathis, our executive editor — published a book for church leaders. It’s called Workers for Your Joy. I think it’s one-of-a-kind because there are a lot of books on eldership, a lot of books on pastoring — goodness, there are hundreds of them — but there are not a lot built on 2 Corinthians 1:24, with the point that we are workers with our people for their joy. That’s the note of the book. This is Christian Hedonism pressed into the corners of the leader’s life.

It was a great year of publishing, I think.

‘What Is Saving Faith?’

You have not mentioned yet your book: What Is Saving Faith? That was also published in 2022. In fact, just a few weeks ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Denver, a whole three-hour block was devoted to your book. Why was that? That’s never happened before, has it, that one of your books would be part of a debate at ETS.

“True saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ.”

No, that was a first, I think, and I was really glad for it. I feel privileged that that happened. The book has stirred up some discussion because not everyone agrees with my main point — namely, that true saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ. Saving faith is a receiving of Christ as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord. Without that treasuring aspect, I think we may be just using Christ as competent, but not trusting him as an all-satisfying Savior. So I was really glad for the ETS event to try to bring some clarity to the pushback we’ve received, and I hope people will read it for themselves rather than just what others are saying. I think there are not many issues more important than whether we really have true saving faith.

Global Expansion

Yes. Well, we need to wrap this up. Any other encouraging things you see at Desiring God, more broadly, that you think our listeners might be interested in?

“It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God.”

I think what is most exciting and most worthy of thanksgiving to God and to our financial supporters is the incredible expansion of the ministry globally. We now have something like thirty partners worldwide translating Ask Pastor John, books, articles. It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God and for publishing — and who are amazingly savvy on the Internet — for everywhere in the world. This is invisible to most people. This growth, this exciting dimension of our ministry, is mostly invisible for people, and yet it may be the most important thing we are doing right now at Desiring God — namely, partnering with these brothers and sisters as an increasing part of our annual plan and our annual budget. I think this is a great place to end the year, thanking God for what he’s doing outside of our little sphere called America through this ministry.

Amen. Speaking of God’s work outside America, this year included my first international trip, preaching in Brazil in June, to launch my technology book in Portuguese. It launched there this summer. I got to hold the translation in hand. I met and spent time with the translator there and had lunch with our publishing partner in Brazil. So all this international work you just mentioned became very tangible for me in 2022. Because I think, if all you know of Desiring God is the English website and English resources that we create, there’s a whole other world of labor happening right now that we want to introduce you to. And we are going to introduce you to that work, beginning next time. We have thirty international partners, as you said, Pastor John. And we’re going to hear from seven of them in the next seven APJ episodes — brief updates from leaders reaching the world through the languages of French, Portuguese, Farsi, Dutch, German, Arabic, and Albanian. Each of these seven updates inspires me. And it is my joy to share them with you in these final weeks of the year.

And if you’re hearing all these updates and you want in, you can join us today. We’re looking for new ministry partners like you to come alongside us to support us as we continue to make new resources in English — including our books and articles and Look at the Book videos and this podcast — and as we get these resources translated and distributed across the globe in dozens of languages. We can only do all this with your help. So consider becoming a monthly ministry partner with us today. Much of our financial support comes from friends of ours who give, on average, $30 a month to support all of this work, everything we mentioned today (and more). To set up monthly giving, go to give.desiringGod.org. Very much appreciated.

Pastor John and I are back next time. We’ll see you Friday.

Occasionally, as I lie down to sleep, a restlessness bends over my bed. A vague uneasiness. A nagging sense of some tension unresolved. Some door in the soul swinging on its hinges. The stirring of an unquiet conscience.

As I relive the day, I see why. Prayers hurried or skipped. An evangelistic opportunity avoided. Grievances nourished. Self-promoting words snuck into conversations. The “prayer request” that was probably gossip. Precious time squandered. Encouragements unthought and unspoken. As the old prayer book says, “I have left undone those things which I ought to have done; and I have done those things which I ought not to have done.”

Was this a fitting response to your God? I ask myself. Was this “walking in a manner worthy” of him? Sometimes I drift off with such questions unresolved, fitful and self-reproaching yet tired enough to succumb to sleep.

But not always. Some years ago, I found unexpected help in the poem of a long-dead pastor, who asked the same questions, felt the same guilt, yet found in Jesus a rest far sweeter than sleep.

‘Even-Song’

George Herbert’s (1593–1633) “Even-Song” closes a series of three poems in his collection The Temple, beginning with “Mattens” and continuing with “Sinne (II).” The titles “Mattens” and “Even-Song” refer to morning and evening prayers in the Anglican church. And “Sinne” — well, that captures what often happens between those morning and evening prayers.

“Even-Song” is not a prayer for every evening. Herbert does not assume we only ever end the day self-reproachful, with sin having wrecked the day’s resolves. But he does assume we sometimes do — and that, often, even the most faithful Christians kneel beside their beds deeply wishing they had walked in a manner more worthy of their God.

What do we say at the end of such days, when we feel the gulf between God’s kindness and our unworthy response? More than once, “Even-Song” has met me at my bedside, speaking clarity and comfort to my troubled conscience. It has become a faithful nighttime friend.

As Night Draws Near

    Blest be the God of love,Who gave us eyes, and light, and power this day,  Both to be busie, and to play.  But much more blest be God above,

    Who gave me sight alone,  Which to himself he did denie:  For when he sees my waies, I dy:But I have got his sonne, and he hath none.

As night draws near, Herbert looks back, remembering God’s morning gifts of “eyes, and light, and power this day, / Both to be busie and to play.” Our Father, “God of love” that he is, opens the storehouses of his heart from the day’s first moment. As Herbert celebrates in “Mattens,” “I cannot ope mine eyes, / But thou art ready to catch / My morning-soul and sacrifice.” “Yours is the day” (Psalm 74:16), the psalmist says. And Herbert, surrounded by God’s gifts, feels it.

For sinners like us, though, one gift rises above the rest. The God who gives us “eyes, and light” for daytime labors also gives us another kind of sight, “Which to himself he did denie: / For when he sees my waies, I dy.” Alluding to Psalm 130:3, Herbert remembers that God, in Christ, does not “mark” our iniquities, even when we do; in a sense, he does not see the sins we see.

And why? Because “I have got his sonne, and he hath none.” God gave up his Son at the cross — and at the same time, he gave up the sun that would otherwise shine upon our guilt. Jesus buried our sins in darkness on Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday, they did not rise with him. And so, in the glory of the gospel, God no longer “remembers” the sins of his people (Hebrews 8:12); he no longer sees them. They are buried, hidden, unseen, kept forever in darkness.

But they do not always feel buried, hidden, unseen. And so, Herbert takes us back to his “troubled minde.”

Troubled Mind

    What have I brought thee homeFor this thy love? have I discharg’d the debt,  Which this dayes favour did beget?  I ranne; but all I brought, was fome.

    Thy diet, care, and cost  Do end in bubbles, balls of winde;  Of winde to thee whom I have crost,But balls of wilde-fire to my troubled minde.

Like a good father, God meets us with favor morning by morning; his “diet, care, and cost” send us into the day strengthened and renewed. But all too often, as we approach home in the evening, we dig in our pockets, wondering how we could have taken so much and brought back so little. “What have I brought thee home?” Herbert asks. “I ranne; but all I brought, was fome” — or, a few lines later, “bubbles, balls of winde.” Insubstantial nothings.

Approaching God with fists full of wind may not trouble the spiritually nominal, who care little whether they please God or not. But for those who have tasted the kindness of God, and have seen the cross as its cost, such wind can become “balls of wilde-fire to my troubled minde.” The sun has set on the day’s regrets, with no time now to remedy them, leaving us with a thorn-pricked soul. A pillow of self-reproach. A smoldering conscience.

On nights like these, some simply try to sleep their guilt away. Others search for some rationalization. Still others pray, but not in a way that douses the fire in their minds. What does Herbert do?

Closing Our Weary Eyes

    Yet still thou goest on,And now with darknesse closest wearie eyes,  Saying to man, It doth suffice:  Henceforth repose; your work is done.

    Thus in thy ebony box  Thou dost inclose us, till the day  Put our amendment in our way,And give new wheels to our disorder’d clocks.

Herbert, with wild fire burning his troubled mind, turns to God and says, “Yet still thou goest on.” The “God of love” has yet more love stored up, more favor to offer. He began the day by giving us “eyes,” and now, as night overtakes our burdened souls, he “with darknesse closest wearie eyes.” And not just with sleep: God, in mercy, closes our eyes to our sins, just as he, in Christ, has already “closed” his.

“In response to our weary, day-end regrets, God gives not more work, but rest.”

As God closes the soul’s eyelids, bidding them be blind to the day’s confessed sins, Herbert imagines him “saying to man, It doth suffice: / Henceforth repose; your work is done.” In response to our weary, day-end regrets, God gives not more work, but rest. Our work, however pitiful, can be done at day’s end because God’s perfect work of redemption is done (John 19:30; Hebrews 10:12–14). And we, by faith, “have got his sonne.”

Thus God “incloses” us in “thy ebony box” — surely a reference to a coffin. The biblical writers saw sleep as an image of Christian death (John 11:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:14), and Herbert, tapping into the theme, treats nighttime as a daily rehearsal for the moment when our ebony box will be made of wood and not of night. On that last twilight, some of God’s true children, like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, will look back and ask, pained, “What have I brought thee home / For this thy love?” Our troubled nights teach us how to answer that question, readying us to lie peacefully upon our final bed as we wait for God to close our eyes, put us to sleep, and keep us for the resurrection day, which will “put our amendment in our way” — which will raise us sinless and whole, children of the everlasting morning.

Until then, we live like old timepieces, “disorder’d clocks” whose hour and minute hands begin the day aligned with God yet often slowly get off track. And every morning, God rewinds us, no matter how disordered from yesterday, and once again strengthens us to run.

Rest Deeper Than Sleep

    I muse, which shows more love,The day or night: that is the gale, this th’ harbour;  That is the walk, and this the arbour;  Or that the garden, this the grove.

    My God, thou art all love.  Not one poore minute scapes thy breast,  But brings a favour from above;And in this love, more then in bed, I rest.

As God carries us from morning to evening, we move from favor to favor, mercy to mercy, kindness to kindness. By poem’s end, Herbert muses which of the two, day or night, “shows more love”: The gale that sends us through day’s waters, or the harbor that holds us at night’s shore? The walk that takes us through day’s labors, or the arbor that receives us into night’s rest? The garden of daytime strength, or the grove of nighttime forgiveness?

“In Jesus, we find a rest beneath our rest, a pillow under our pillow.”

The question cannot be answered. In Christ, God gives us power to work for him, and he gives us pardon to rest in him. Both have their peculiar favor; God’s children prize them both. And so, “not one poore minute scapes thy breast, / But brings a favor from above.” Not one minute of the day is unadorned by the love of God — whether daytime love or nighttime love, strengthening love or forgiving love.

Herbert closes, “And in this love, more then in bed, I rest.” In Jesus, we find a rest beneath our rest, a pillow under our pillow, comfort of soul surrounding the comfort of sleep. Such rest and comfort depend, ultimately, not on what we give to God (though we long to give him much and more), but on what he has given to us: “his sonne.” And so, even the frustration and futility we feel toward day’s end can become a mercy, delivering us into a deeper rest than sleep can give.

Audio Transcript

Many questions in our inbox are questions that I could never anticipate — like this one today, sent to us by a listener named Jessica. Here’s what she writes: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. I was recently confronted by an abortion advocate about a chapter in the Bible. I was then, and remain now, quite perplexed about its meaning.

“We read that suspicion of infidelity in the Old Testament triggered a potentially dangerous ritual in which a woman was put on trial, made to drink a potion of sorts, and, if she was found guilty, the verdict was rendered in physical consequences. The verses are Numbers 5:22 and 27, texts that say the adulterous woman’s ‘thigh shall fall away’ (the ESV translation), which doesn’t make any sense to me. Other translations say the consequence is ‘miscarriage and untimely birth’ (according to the NEB and REB translations). Basically, a guilty verdict was rendered by an induced abortion.

“In fact, that’s the interpretation I found in Old Testament scholar Norman Henry Snaith’s commentary, Leviticus and Numbers. On linguistic grounds, he said, ‘cause an abortion’ is a possible interpretation here. I was surprised. How would you respond?”

My response is first to ask, Was this abortion advocate seriously willing to follow where the Scriptures lead? Or was this simply a superficial cheap shot because a text might picture God as aborting a child? Now, I don’t know the answer to that question, but it would make a difference personally in how I spoke to that person directly.

My second response is to say that I don’t think we can have any confidence that this text describes an abortion or a God-caused miscarriage. In fact, I think a good case can be made that this is not what’s happening. And I’ll come back to that.

And my third response is that even if God were pictured here as bringing about the miscarriage as part of the punishment for adultery, that would not give us any right at all to take the life of the unborn. All of life is in God’s hands. He owns it. He gives it and he takes it according to his own infinite wisdom. It’s his. And therefore, he gives it where we can’t, and he takes it where we shouldn’t, because we are not God. So, let me say a word about each of those three responses.

Discerning Sincerity

If a person comes to us with a biblical objection to our pro-life position, it may be that the most helpful and hopeful thing we could do is sincerely offer them to sit down and do a serious study together with them of what the whole Bible has to say about the unborn and the rights we have or don’t have to intrude upon God’s person-forming work in the womb (as it says in Psalm 139).

That might be the test of the sincerity of their objection.

Does God Cause Miscarriage?

Second, let’s look at what the text actually says in Numbers 5. The situation is that a husband has accused his wife of committing adultery against him, but he has no proof. He brings her to the priest, who sets up a test to determine her guilt or innocence. He mixes holy water with dust from the tabernacle floor and has her drink it.

Significantly, the test is designed so that her innocence is assumed and what has to be proved is her guilt, not her innocence. The ordeal is favorable for the defendant — namely, the woman. In other words, it’s not as though, if nothing happens, she’s guilty. No. Something extraordinary has to happen to prove her guilt — indeed, something supernatural. The assumption is that God will decide this case.

If she’s guilty, Numbers 5:22 describes what will happen. Here’s the wording: “May this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your womb swell and your thigh fall away.” If that does not happen, she’s innocent. Now, Jessica points out that some interpreters take this “falling away of the thigh” as a miscarriage or an induced abortion from God.

This is a pure guess. Nobody knows for sure what those words “falling away of the thigh” mean. That wording is not a common idiom. It’s not as though the writer used an idiom here that we all know from elsewhere means “miscarriage.” We don’t. We only have this context to go on.

More Likely Meaning

I think the text, the context here, points in a different direction. First of all, the Hebrew word for thigh can mean hip, as it does when Jacob’s hip is put out of joint (Genesis 32:25); or it can mean loins, including the sexual organs, as when Abraham’s servants swears by putting his hand in that sacred place of reproduction (Genesis 24:2–3).

“The focus of the punishment is not on miscarriage, but on the fact that the innocent will go on to have children.”

The falling of the woman’s loins would be a very odd way to describe a miscarriage, but it would not be an odd way to describe a vaginal prolapse. A prolapse, which my grandmother had to have surgery for while she was living with Noël and me — that’s why I know about this — is what happens when the pelvis muscles and tissues can no longer support the female sexual organs because the muscles and tissues are weak or damaged, which causes one or more of the pelvic organs to drop or press into or out of the vagina. Now, that’s an easily treatable situation today with surgery. In those days, that must have been horrible.

And then notice that Numbers 5:28 shows us what this punishment involves by contrasting it with the woman who proves innocent. Here’s what it says in verse 28: “But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.” In other words, the focus of the punishment is not on miscarriage, but on the fact that the innocent will go on to have children, and the guilty woman won’t, because that’s the effect of the falling of the loins, I’m suggesting.

All Souls Are God’s

Now, suppose my interpretation is wrong, which it could be because none of us knows for sure what the “falling away of the thigh [or the loins]” means. And suppose this text really does say that God, the just judge, decreed that the child in the woman, supposing there was one (it doesn’t say), was aborted. Suppose that. What does that tell us about the life of the unborn and our right to take it or not? And the answer is nothing, because we are not God.

“God’s decision to take the life of an unborn child does not give us any permission to do the same.”

God says in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” In other words, to be God is to have rights over life and death that others don’t have. Hannah speaks for God in the same way in 1 Samuel 2:6, when she says, “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.” And Job, when he lost all ten of his children, said — and the verse following says he didn’t sin when he said this — “The Lord gave, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

In other words, one of the things it means to be God is to have absolute rights over human life. God made all life. All life belongs to him. Only God can say Ezekiel 18:4 in truth: “Behold, all souls are mine.” Therefore, God’s decision to take the life of an unborn child does not give us any permission to do the same, any more than God’s giving us his own Son in crucifixion gives us the right to kill Jesus. God ordains the death of his own Son, not to legitimate murder, but to make it possible for murderers to be saved, including those who take the life of the unborn.