Abortion is not first a political disagreement or a matter of personal autonomy. It is a moral crime. More precisely, it is a violation of the sixth commandment: “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13). Whatever alleged complexity surrounds modern debates about abortion, the moral question at the heart of the matter is stark and unavoidable. Has innocent human life been unjustly taken? The answer is yes, and therefore abortion is not merely regrettable or tragic; it is both a sin and a crime.
For much of the last half-century, Christians have rightly insisted that human life is sacred and that the unborn child bears the image of God. Yet too often this conviction has been expressed in language detached from law, justice, and moral accountability. Abortion is regularly treated as a unique moral category governed by its own rules and exemptions, rather than what it plainly is: the intentional murder of an innocent human being. In mainstream evangelical rhetoric, the sixth commandment is effectively suspended at the precise point where it is most needed.
One of the greatest tragedies of modern evangelicalism has been the quiet jettisoning of God’s moral law from the church’s public theology, often under the guise of “gospel centricity.” Out of a rightful zeal to exalt grace and guard the doctrine of justification, much of the contemporary church has reduced the law of God to, at best, two functions: showing sinners their need for Christ and guiding believers in personal holiness. What has largely been abandoned is the moral law’s civil function as a means by which God restrains evil in a society composed of believers and unbelievers alike.
John Calvin described this use of the law as a forced righteousness imposed upon those who hate God but nonetheless refrain from doing all of the evil they desire out of fear, shame, or guilt. Calvin wrote of this use of the law, “[Unbelievers] are restrained, not because their inner mind is stirred or affected, but because, being bridled, so to speak, they keep their hands from outward activity, and hold inside the depravity that otherwise they would wantonly have indulged.”[1]
1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 & 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 358.
Martin Luther likewise wrote that this use of the law is like ropes and chains that restrain wild and untamed beasts.[2] Both Luther and Calvin saw this use of the law as the means by which God preserves societal harmony. This use of the law is in no way salvific; rather, it is an act of common grace by which God providentially shows kindness to all mankind by preventing total depravity from resulting in the terror of complete moral anarchy.
2. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 344.
This essay argues that abortion must be understood and opposed within this moral framework. The sixth commandment establishes an enduring obligation for individuals and societies alike to protect human life and punish those who destroy it. To find moral clarity on abortion, the church must recover the public meaning of the sixth commandment and insist that it applies fully and equally to the unborn. Anything less falls short of obedience to God and love for neighbor.
The sixth commandment is deceptively simple: “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13). But its moral weight is profound. It establishes the sanctity of human life by declaring that man may not take into his own hands the right to destroy what God has made in His image. The commandment forbids unjust killing, whether by malice, vengeance, negligence, or indifference. It protects not only life itself but the principle that life is sacred—given by God and accountable to Him.
This command is grounded in the doctrine of the imago Dei—that every human being is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27). To murder another person is not merely to commit an act of violence; it is to assault God’s own likeness in the world. Genesis 9:6 makes this explicit: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” The dignity of human life is not derived from age, utility, or intelligence. It is bestowed by God at creation.
Historically, Christians have regarded the sixth commandment as the moral foundation for laws protecting life and punishing violence. The Second London Baptist Confession recognizes this implicitly, affirming that God “has ordained civil authorities to be under Him, and over the people … to defend and encourage those who do good and to punish evildoers.” (Section 24.1). Among the evils to be restrained, none is more basic than the taking of innocent life.
The sixth commandment, then, is not only a rule against murder—it is a declaration of the preciousness of life. It confronts a world bent toward destruction with the unchanging truth that every life matters, every death is accountable, and every human being bears the image of the living God.
Why Some Christians Have Stopped Publicly Advocating for the Sixth Commandment
Though the sixth commandment is among the most universally affirmed in theory, it is increasingly neglected in practice—especially in the public witness of the church. Many evangelicals affirm the sanctity of life in principle but hesitate to speak with clarity or conviction when that principle is most contested. This retreat is often unintentional. Yet the effect is the same: the moral force of the commandment is blunted, and evil goes unchallenged. Three cultural dynamics, in particular, have contributed to this silence: the politicization of life issues, sentimental distortions of compassion, and the redefinition of personhood.
Politicization of Life Issues
The sanctity of life has been swept into the vortex of partisan politics. Issues like abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide have been aggressively framed not as moral or theological concerns but as political talking points. As a result, Christians who speak clearly about the sixth commandment are often dismissed—not only by the world but by other Christians—as “culture warriors” or “single-issue voters.” This framing has had a chilling effect.
Pastors, in particular, face immense pressure to “remain above the political fray.” Sermons about grace are welcomed, but few pulpits address abortion with the gravity it deserves. Leaders fear backlash, division, or accusations of politicizing the gospel. Rather than risk alienating congregants, they retreat into vagueness—affirming that life matters but refusing to name the laws and ideologies that destroy it. This approach may preserve temporary peace within the church, but it undermines the church’s prophetic voice in the culture.
Over time, many believers begin to view the sixth commandment not as a public standard of justice but as a private religious conviction. They may vote their conscience or support pro-life ministries quietly, but they feel embarrassed or uncertain about making public claims rooted in God’s law. This is a tragic abdication. The commandment “You shall not murder” is not a political slogan—it is divine speech. To treat it as a partisan position is to subordinate God’s authority to man’s categories. And when Christians refuse to speak God’s law into the public realm, the lawless will gladly fill the silence.
Sentimental Distortions of Compassion
The church’s moral clarity has also been clouded by a sentimental redefinition of compassion. Many believers, claiming to be imitating Christ’s gentleness, now equate love with softness and moral conviction with harshness. This distortion is especially evident in debates over abortion in cases of hardship. Rather than evaluating these actions through the lens of justice, many now approach them through the lens of emotional sympathy alone.
Consider how abortion is often justified: to spare a child from poverty, to rescue a woman from trauma, to show “compassion” in complex circumstances. These appeals to emotion can be powerful—and tragically effective. But they are deeply unbiblical. They sever compassion from truth, as if the two were in tension rather than harmony.
Christians influenced by this sentimentality begin to question whether the law should speak so clearly. Is it loving to call abortion murder? This question reveals a subtle but deadly shift: feelings begin to replace God’s Word as the standard for moral judgment. And because feelings fluctuate, moral clarity vanishes. The result is a soft cruelty: injustice cloaked in untethered empathy.
True compassion does not whisper when lives are at stake. It does not retreat in the face of cultural approval. The church must recover a vision of love that is fierce, principled, and unafraid to offend when truth demands it. The sixth commandment was given to protect the innocent, not to accommodate the guilty. When Christians redefine compassion to mean silence in the face of killing, they become complicit in the very evils the commandment was meant to restrain.
Redefinition of Personhood
The modern abandonment of the sixth commandment is rooted in a deeper philosophical lie: that not all human beings are persons. This is the moral bedrock of the culture of death. The unborn are human, but not persons. Likewise, the elderly with dementia are human, but no longer persons. The severely disabled, the unconscious, the unwanted—all may be biologically human, but they are deemed unworthy of legal protection because they allegedly lack the full moral status of “personhood.”
This lie is what makes mass killing socially acceptable. It allows mothers to murder their unborn children with cold detachment. It frees lawmakers to permit medical suicide without remorse. It enables courts to treat the vulnerable not as neighbors but as problems to be managed. It is the same dehumanizing logic that has justified every genocide, every eugenics campaign, every utilitarian atrocity in history.
And yet, many Christians have failed to confront this redefinition head-on. Some have adopted its terms uncritically. Others, lacking confidence in natural law or fearing sounding too philosophical, have simply ceded the argument. As a result, the most fundamental moral truth—that all human beings are made in the image of God and are therefore inviolable—goes largely unspoken in public discourse. The sixth commandment becomes a relic of a bygone era rather than a living standard of justice.
If the church cannot declare that a child in the womb is fully human and fully a person—deserving of legal protection—then we have nothing meaningful to say about justice at all. And if we cannot say that loudly and clearly in the public square, then we have abandoned the moral legacy of Moses, the prophets, and the apostles. The commandment “You shall not murder” is not a suggestion. It is the dividing line between civilization and barbarism.
The Consequences of Abdication
When Christians retreat from defending the sixth commandment in public life, the cost is measured not merely in abstract cultural decline but in blood. The abandonment of moral clarity on the sanctity of life has led directly to the normalization of death as a solution to suffering, inconvenience, and perceived unworthiness. This is not merely a shift in social opinion; it is a civilizational unraveling. The fruits of silence are plain to see.
The most glaring consequence is the mass killing of the unborn. In the United States alone, at least 60 million children have been legally murdered in the womb since 1973.[3] Around the world, abortion remains one of the leading causes of death annually—surpassing war, disease, or famine.[4] These killings are sanitized by euphemism—“choice,” “reproductive healthcare,” “bodily autonomy”—but they are no less brutal for their linguistic camouflage. The image of God is desecrated in every dismembered child, and the law of God is publicly mocked with every court ruling that declares murder to be a right.
3. Carole Novielli, “Unfathomable Number of Preborn Children Killed by Abortion since Roe v. Wade,” Live Action, January 24, 2024, updated March 20, 2024.
4. Steven Ertelt, “Abortion Was the Leading Cause of Death Worldwide in 2024, Killing 73 Million People,” LifeNews, January 2, 2025.
This scale of death has desensitized entire cultures to violence. The elderly and disabled are now increasingly viewed through the same utilitarian lens. In countries like Canada, euthanasia and assisted suicide are not only legal, they are actively promoted by the state. Terminal illness is no longer the threshold; now depression, poverty, and inconvenience are grounds for ending a life. The logic is simple: if life is not sacred, then death can be mercy. But this logic, once accepted, knows no limit. It does not stop with the suffering—it comes for the burdensome, the expensive, the inconvenient.
Family structures, too, are eroded by this culture of death. Children are born (or not) into a society that treats life as conditional, not inviolable—as something to be evaluated, not protected. When the sixth commandment is treated as optional, every relationship built upon the dignity of life begins to fray.
Justice itself becomes incoherent. The legal system, detached from the moral law of God, is left to draw arbitrary lines: When does life begin? When does it end? What qualifies a person for protection? Lacking fixed standards, courts rule by whim and legislatures by pragmatism. The result is a patchwork of contradictions: murdering a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide in one context, while aborting her child is protected in another. Such incoherence is not merely unjust—it is unsustainable.
The witness of the church suffers as well. A silent church is a complicit church. When Christians refuse to speak clearly about the most basic moral truths, they lose credibility in every other area. The world does not need vague calls for human dignity. It needs the thunder of divine command: You shall not murder. A church that whispers where God has spoken cannot serve as a light in the darkness. And when the church is silent, the culture dies in the dark.
Tragically, the conscience is seared. In time, what once shocked becomes accepted, and what was once unthinkable becomes policy. A people who forget how to blush are a people ripe for judgment. As Paul warns in Romans 1, a society that not only tolerates evil but gives approval to those who practice it is already under the wrath of God. The abandonment of the sixth commandment is not just a mistake. It is an invitation for divine punishment.
Recovering the Public Meaning of the Sixth Commandment
The sixth commandment is not a relic of a harsher age, nor a mere spiritual guideline. It is a moral anchor for human society—a boundary set by God Himself to protect His image and restrain the evil that flows from the heart of man. To recover its public meaning, the church must once again speak plainly: life is sacred, and the unjust taking of life is a crime against both man and God. In an age that dresses up murder in the language of rights and compassion, clarity is not cruelty; it is the first act of mercy.
To begin this recovery, Christians must affirm without hesitation that the command “You shall not murder” applies to all human beings, regardless of age, ability, visibility, or social status. That includes the unborn. A society that denies the personhood of the child in the womb violates not only the sixth commandment but the very principle of equal justice. The proper response is not to regulate abortion but to abolish it. Anything less falls short of the commandment’s moral demand. If the unborn are human beings, then they are neighbors—and to love our neighbor is to protect his life.
This is why Christians must advocate not only for cultural persuasion but for legal equal protection under the law, which means that the little girl in her mother’s womb has legal protection to live just as much as her mother has. The civil use of the sixth commandment requires more than moral outrage. It requires just statutes. We must labor for laws that treat all murder as murder and all image-bearers as equally worthy of protection. That does not mean abandoning grace or the gospel. It means applying God’s law with integrity, insisting that the weakest among us be given the same legal shield as the strongest. It should be illegal for everyone to murder anyone.
Churches must rediscover the courage to preach the sixth commandment with urgency and conviction. Pastors cannot afford to equivocate. Elders must disciple their congregations in what it means to bear witness to life in a culture of death. Christian parents must train their children not only to value life but to defend it. And Christian citizens must carry the moral clarity of this command into the voting booth, the courtroom, the medical field, and the public square. The law of God was not given to be whispered within the walls of the church. It was given to restrain evil in all of creation.
Recovering the public meaning of the sixth commandment also requires rejecting the lies that have eclipsed it. Christians must challenge the redefinition of personhood and expose the utilitarian calculus that makes some lives seem less worthy of protection. We must unmask the sentimentalism that cloaks killing in the language of care and confront the political cowardice that avoids speaking hard truths for fear of controversy. In every case, the response must be the same: “Thus says the Lord: You shall not murder.”
True compassion speaks when it would be easier to remain silent. True justice protects the innocent even when the culture demands their blood. The sixth commandment is not only a prohibition, it is a proclamation: that life is a gift, that man is made in God’s image, and that every drop of innocent blood cries out to heaven.
This is not a call to replace the gospel with the law. It is a call to restore the law to its proper place under the lordship of Christ. The same God who justifies sinners by grace alone has also commanded, without qualification, “You shall not murder.” The church must once again speak where God has spoken.
[Editor’s note: this article was adapted from a chapter from The Law for the Lawless: How to Restore Order in the Home, the Church, and the Nation (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2025). It is used here with kind permission.]
