The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
The Sin of Abortion
Hard truths can heal or harm depending on how we carry them. We take a clear-eyed look at abortion as sin while refusing to flatten people into labels, and we explore how Christians can hold conviction and compassion in the same hand without compromising either. With Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson joining Christa Potratz, we ground the value of unborn life in Scripture, unpack why “abortion is murder” oversimplifies real circumstances, and consider degrees of culpability—from abortion providers and advocates to coerced decisions, misinformation, and fear.
Across the conversation, we trace the web of related sins often wrapped around abortion: idolatry that elevates career or convenience, pride and rebellion against God’s authority, despair and unbelief that forget God’s provision, and sexual sin that ignores His design. We also confront our own omissions as a community when we fail to defend the vulnerable or to offer practical support. Speaking truth matters, but truth delivered without love becomes noise. We talk about the difference between being technically right and relationally faithful, using the biblical call to “speak the truth in love” as a guide for tone, timing, and patience.
Then we get practical. What does mercy look like on the ground so that abortion becomes the least desired choice? We outline tangible steps: listening before lecturing, pairing law with gospel, building networks for housing, child care, counseling, and financial help, and being a church that walks the extra mile. Humility leads the way—none of us stands on higher ground, and all of us live by grace. If you’re ready to move beyond slogans toward a witness that changes minds and carries burdens, this conversation is for you.
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The ministry of Christian Life Resources promotes the sanctity of life and reaches hearts with the Gospel. We invite you to learn more about the work we're doing: https://christianliferesources.com/
Today's episode.
SPEAKER_02:When you look at all of the directives that describe the way God's people are supposed to work, turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, when you are to uh act in such a way that it makes people want to ask you the reason for the hope that you have, you quickly discover just shaking a condemning finger in their face and say, you should not kill, you should not steal, you should not disobey. None of that works. None of that opens the door, none of it makes us look hopeful.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast with Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, and welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson. And today we're going to talk about the sin of abortion. It's an interesting episode idea to talk about abortion being a sin. And Jeff, I know you had uh had kind of brought this to our attention here. What was maybe the premise, or what were you thinking when um thinking about this topic of the sin of abortion?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think what what really prompted this, uh, my my further thinking on this is just that there are so many people on the pro-life side who take a very simplistic view of this, and they just say, okay, I know exactly what abortion is, you know, and it that's all I need to know, and so that's the way I'm gonna talk about it. And there's a need for a lot more understanding, and uh well, I'll say nuance that may make some people nervous, but we'll explain that uh you know further on. And on the other side, I think there are a lot of people who just really resist the whole idea, even professed Christians who are just really uncomfortable with the idea of calling uh abortion a sin. And so I just think it's something that's uh worth worth laying out and and discussing in a bit more detail.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and when Jeff uh came up with this uh topic, I actually thought it was it was long overdue, and I thought it was a good idea simply because I've said often or I've written often that we tend to think more ideologically than theologically. So when Jeff says the simplistic approach, that's the ideological approach. That's the idea abortion is a sin, and then we just kind of leave it on that uh and move on. Well, plus two, we live in a therapeutic society now where we're trying to explain away every every wrongdoing as having maybe an underlying reason, and we need to be more understanding, we need to be more patient. And so I think this is uh this is a a topic people who are only looking for low-hanging fruit, this one's gonna frustrate them. But I think uh for people who who are trying to kind of uh get a handle on looking at it from both sides, um, this is gonna be helpful.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I mean I don't want to be a person that is just um into the low-hanging fruit, but I think there is a part of me where it's like, oh yeah, it's a sin. The yeah, let's call it a sin and move on type of thing. But what is the resistance or problem with calling just easily calling abortion a sin without really thinking about it?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the the the problem is when Christian prolifers try to engage with non-Christians uh and unreligious people, and they use spiritual arguments when trying to persuade those people of the pro-life position. And it's in a legal or or a secular context. There absolutely is a place for using God's law to convict other people of their sin. But too often Christians have tried to use uh, you know, what the Bible says uh to try to settle arguments that uh with people who really don't care what the Bible says, or in a context where where that just really doesn't doesn't make the difference. But uh on the flip side, there are there are Christians and and religious people, and especially the those people out there who call themselves spiritual but not religious, and they really resist resist calling abortion a sin. To be frank, those are generally the same people who resist calling a lot of things that scripture condemns sin, like sex outside of marriage. So it's not surprising that they do that with abortion, but but particularly I think with abortion, they don't like the judgment aspect of it. Um uh maybe because it convicts them of their own sin in connection with abortion in some way, maybe because they don't think it's it's fair to characterize the people involved with abortion as sinners. I I will say it's pretty much never that they resist because they have any kind of serious biblical arguments for why abortion shouldn't be called a sin. It's usually much more on an emotional level.
SPEAKER_02:It is unfortunate that or scripture is real clear how society is trying to alter that. You know, we're told in the Old Testament that people will say good is bad and bad is good. And uh, I think we're we're living it, we're seeing it now a lot. People will wear t-shirts that I'm proud of my abortion. And when I've spoken to pastors' conferences, I've said we always have to be careful when we're dealing with fellow Christians or people who call themselves Christians who are engaged with active sinning to not give them too much credit for what they know. The example, and I just I just had to use this, oh, I was I last week I was at the seminary all week, and I I used it there in the in the class I was teaching. When we have a uh couple that's cohabitating, for example, there's kind of a knee-jerk reaction. We immediately want to invoke Matthew 18 and to sin, and I've told you it's a sin, I've brought somebody with me and told you it's a sin. We'll tell it to the church, and and then excommunication. And of course, people do what they would do to manage a sinful lifestyle, and that is I'll just quit if I want to still be religious, I'll just find a church that will tell me what my itching ears want to hear, and I'll join that church before they even get around to excommunicating me. And we miss an opportunity to show people, um, first of all, let's let's just talk about what is a sin. A sin is where God has established a standard of what is pleasing in his sight, and we literally, and that's the translation of the word, we literally miss the mark. We maybe think by our lifestyle or thoughtlessly, in other words, we're not thinking about it, we think we're just fine doing what we're doing. And then we we need to point out, we need to speak the truth, and the truth is it's sin. And why do we call abortion sin? It's because it is against the will of God to take life without God's express command or permission.
SPEAKER_00:And if we call it a sin too, then it does almost open up maybe a can of worms into what kind of a sin it is, or what type of a sin it is, or exactly what we mean by sin. How would we maybe define some of that in talking about exactly what kind of sin it would be?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the the easier answer to that that question is the one you'll often hear in pro-life circles, and I I've heard it in response when I've done Bible classes and and things like this on the topic. You know, people just say abortion is murder. Okay, that's it. And I can't say that's wrong per se, but it it as is mentioned, it lacks that that nuance, leaves out a whole range of other types of sin. So, part one answer. If we can borrow some language from uh our secular legal system, we can talk about homicide, which is basically just a Latinate term for killing a human being. If you've ever watched police or legal dramas, you'll know that there are different degrees or or classifications of homicide, and most extreme is premeditated murder. Then it goes down the scale from there, and there are questions that are asked, you know, was it was it a crime of passion? Was there an intent to kill? Was it simply indifference to a person's life? Was it the result of negligence? Was that the perpetrator somehow not in control of his or her actions at the time the thing happened, and so on. There's even something that's called justifiable homicide, which is when it's clear that one person has killed another, but the legal system recognizes that there was strong and morally acceptable reason for having done so and that therefore it shouldn't be punished. Scripture is clear, and Bob was alluding to this earlier, that what is growing in a woman's womb is a real human being. Every bit is alive and every bit as human as any of us, and that therefore that child's life has the same value and deserves the same protections as every other life. The Bible is also quite clear in telling us that God is the only one with the authority to give or take human life. Very familiar with the commandment, you shall not commit murder. Deuteronomy 32, the Lord speaking through Moses says, Now see that I only I am he, and there is not a God comparable to me, I put to death, and I make alive. And uh in Hannah in 1 Samuel and her songs is the Lord puts to death and he makes alive. And there are numerous other passages we we could look at. So he expressly forbids us to take it upon ourselves to usurp his authority and take another person's life. So one is clearly sinning against God's gift and authority over life when one chooses to kill a baby in the womb through abortion. However, is it accurate to consider everyone involved to be guilty of murder in the way that we normally think of murder? I prefer when I answer this question to say, well, it's in the same category as murder, or to use that term I was talking about earlier called a homicide. Because though the basic fact that a human being is unjustly killed, and you know, that's the same in every instance, uh there are nuances that should be considered in the interest of fairness, in the interest of accuracy, and in the interest of not looking like insensitive and unloving jerks to people that we're trying to present love and truth to. As with homicide in that legal sense, there there are differences. Okay, there's the abortionist, the one you know doing this procedure, who knows full well what he or she is doing, but does it anyway and is glad to be paid for. There's the advocate or the clinic executive who wants to arrange as many abortions as possible. There's the boyfriend who slips an abortifacient drug into his pregnant girlfriend's orange juice to eliminate a child that she wants, but he doesn't. There's the pregnant actress who says, I don't care if it's a child or not, but this is really inconvenient for my career, so let's kill it now before it gets in the way even more. But there's also the poorly educated pregnant teen who believes it when she is told, Oh, that's what's inside you right now, it's nothing but a clump of cells. She's choosing abortion, but she doesn't understand that she's killing someone. And then there's the woman who understands that there is something wrong with abortion, and and maybe she doesn't even really want one, but she feels that she has no other choice because she has no money or she doesn't have a s safe home to bring a child into. So you know, just kind of summing my part one up, if we just talk about the sin of abortion as though the woman in that last category is just as intent on evil, just as much thumbing her nose at God as the the abortionist in that first category, even many people who are sympathetic to the pro-life argument are gonna see that as as unfair. And they're not gonna listen to anything more we have to say. You know, if we're actually talking to that woman in that last category, she's not gonna hear anything more we say after we say, well, hey, you're a murderer.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the um what Jeff's really described is you know, a lot of times what people look at as what we sometimes refer to as a compound sin. You know, in other words, my familiar mantra is I sure miss miss kindergarten because life was real simple. There's right, there's wrong, there's good, there's bad, there's left, there's right. All of that was simple. And then all of a sudden people start looking at their lives and it gets messy. You know, they I would never think of an abortion except I'm in this situation or I'm in this predicament, or this opportunity is a once-in-a-lifetime. And really, you know, if I if I look at the full scheme of things, we sometimes you gotta do bad things in order to get ahead or to stay ahead or for a greater good. And that's oftentimes that we do. Of course, what we have done is we have swapped out the rules of the of Scripture, the rules of God's way for the rules of the world. And they may be absolutely correct. The one thing that we I think we easily forget is the abortion advocates actually have a good argument if all we're doing is living for life in this world. I'm not sure it's a compelling argument, but when you are creating a construct that says, I'm creating heaven on earth, I'm living for this world, this is really all that matters, then with that construct, uh you do come to the conclusion that sometimes people get in the way, and sometimes they need to die. And you can tell by the dehumanizing language they use. It's a clump of cells, it's it's a living being, but it's not a person. You know, they they try to qualify it by giving it dehumanizing terminology so that you can, in a very utilitarian way, determine that some life is expendable. And we see that that's the world mentality about life that applies on both spectrums of life, at the beginning and at the end. At some point, uh regardless of any quantifiable or absolute value to or intrinsic value to human life, we determine that it is subject to a a subjective worldly standard. And with abortion in particular, even above all other issues, with abortion in particular, it is ultimately subject to the subjective standard of the woman who's uh been given the privilege to carry the pregnancy. And it's her judgment that determines who lives and who dies. And it's an incredible responsibility to carry.
SPEAKER_00:So would we say, like, just maybe for clarification purposes, that abortion is a sin, but that as Christians we need to just be careful in how or when or if we articulate that. Is that kind of what we're saying here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think that's true. Um that that that is an accurate summary, yes. I mean, I I think we want it more more than just for how we articulate it, but even just how we think about it or for for ourselves, so that we have the the the compassion and and the understanding and such that we're bringing to the the situation. Doesn't change anything about uh uh the politics of it, you know, what what we want you know from the law or anything like that. But I guess this brings me into what was my part two. There's another problem with being too quick to identify abortion specifically and exclusively with the sin of murder, because there's almost always more than just that sin involved with abortion. There's the sin of idolatry. This is kind of what what Bob was alluding to there. You know, when a choosing a a woman chooses abortion because she places her career ahead of her child's life in God's will uh for it and for her. That's that's uh putting someone in the else in the place of God. Uh there's a sin of rebellion when anyone in essence tells God, I don't care what you say, I'm gonna do what I want. There's this related to the sin of pride. Someone arrogantly insists that he or she knows better than God or knows better than anyone else, therefore can't be anything wrong with providing her obtaining abortion. There's a sin of despair. When a woman gets an abortion because she's given up on God related to that, there's the sin of unbelief or a lack of faith. When a woman who should know better simply doesn't trust that God can work things out if she has her baby, and so she kills it or said. And of course, abortion is very, very much connected to sexual sin. It's also then a sin against God's will and design for marriage and family, and even just for the for the rest of us. We have been told by God to uh support life to defend the vulnerable, and if we sit idly by while defensive people are unjustly killed, well then there is another sin there. It it's it's kind of analogous in a way. You know, the expression we we have about faith and works is like faith alone saves, but faith is never alone. The works are always there. Yes, abortion is a sin, but that sin is never alone. There's always something else that's gonna come along with it.
SPEAKER_02:I often like to emphasize that it is our nature to want to simplify everything. Yeah, and so oftentimes with regard to the abortion issue, but with many issues, we tend to just want to simplify it and we we justify it by saying, but we are called upon to speak the truth. We are to speak the truth, and that becomes the mantra, uh the ideological mantra to move ahead. To be honest, the Bible doesn't say speak the truth, it says speak the truth in love. There's a little bit of a nuance to it. Why? Because the mission of the Christian is to glorify God in all things, and to do that by showing incredible love for God and incredible love for others. And so speaking the truth, just leaving it at that, all that does is make you right in a very wrong world, but it it does nothing to build a bridge, it does nothing to open up an avenue for conversation. If all we're going to do is just tell everybody you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, then uh just be don't be surprised if nobody wants to talk to you. You know, and that's the real problem. Because abortion is a sin. But if that's where we're going to begin, we need to know that as a truth statement, but it's the love component of expressing the truth statement that presents the provides the nuance for the way that you address it. If you're going to address it just to prove yourself right and them wrong, you have failed miserably in your mission, which is to glorify God and to um reach out to others.
SPEAKER_00:I think I have often heard just from the Christian conservative community that just speaking the truth is love. And that I am saying all these things, you know, and whatever it is, abortion is a sin, or men are men, women are women, and I'm saying this, and I'm saying it out of. And so that gives me the license to just say whatever I want, basically, because it's true. And I I have love behind me. And I think I just I feel like that that is where a lot of this comes from in our society, or what a lot of people say. And I think it does really miss what that verse was really intended for, as Bob outlined.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And I'll say another thing that's often involved there, you know, on our side, is something Bob has recently written about. Um impatience. You just don't want to uh take the time that's necessary to be loving in the way you address something. You just want to say, okay, I know what the you know the truth is, this is what you need to believe, so bam, there it is, without recognizing not not just what that verse actually says, but recognizing how how Jesus did it, how Paul did it, how the prophets even did it. God is patient with us. Why do we think we need to be impatient with other people? Something else to remember there.
SPEAKER_02:You know, Krista, when when you were talking about people thinking that, well, that's loving is to speak the truth. And it brought to mind uh I've been doing a lot of reading on grieving and grief and so forth. And a woman whose son had died of a drug overdose wrote a book and that I read, and in the book she wrote that grieving is love with no place to go. And uh I I've often thought that that was wonderfully insightful because love has got a point to it. When you read 1 Corinthians 13, you know, there's a there's a point to that. You go through that everything that that Paul wrote in that thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, there's all sorts of right things, but it it again it becomes, and I hate to overuse the word, but it becomes nuanced by a practice or a goal-oriented love. And speaking the truth, being love, is a misstatement of what love is, because it it turns itself around. It's in other words, I'm speaking to the truth for the sake of truth and I'm calling it love. But it doesn't go anywhere. Where where are you going with it? You know, well, I'm trying to establish the benchmark of what's right and what's wrong, which could be an argument, but if you're establishing the benchmark of what's right and wrong, but in the process, destroying the connection that you create or would have created with somebody, then the benchmark is useless. But you're just a uh a banging gong. You're just you're making noise, but you're accomplishing nothing.
SPEAKER_01:The opposite of the statement is is correct. To not tell the truth is not loving. And perhaps sometimes people just kind of look at that and say, well, if it's not loving to not tell them the truth, well then it must be loving to always just just tell the truth without regard for the other things. And yeah, that's it's it's a both and, it's not an either or. And that's uh that's really important to remember.
SPEAKER_02:There is an organization out there that's been always looking to try to find common ground on controversial issues like abortion and so forth. And um and I've uh talked with them a number of times. They've tried to get me to attend some of their meetings and to be involved. But what I've often liked to point out to them is that ideologically it's very simple to declare abortion a sin, or even abortion is wrong, and to declare the truth statement. But the problem is that we already have God's word clearly spelling out what's right or wrong. We are just echoes of that. But what we are specifically charged with is we are to be the lights shining in a sin darkened world. And lights not that drive people away, but that attract people to us. When you look at all of the directives that describe the way God's people are supposed to work, turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, when you are to uh act in such a way that it makes people want to ask you the reason for the hope that you have, you quickly discover just shaking a condemning finger in their face and say, you should not kill, you should not steal, you should not disobey, none of that works. None of that opens the door, none of it makes us look hopeful. All it makes us look for is a like like another moral code by which to hold in front of people and to make them feel miserable. But there's so much more to that. How else do God's children find God's law to be a good thing if we don't know what it means to speak the truth in love? There's that missing component that is that is lost, that component is lost when we are ideologically committed to the pro-life position, but not spiritually committed to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I I too have really been on this whole thing of just this the personal connection we have to Jesus and that personal connection there is there, and how we're not gonna help somebody's personal relationship with Jesus by just calling out sin all the time or just, you know, hammering the law. I mean, you need the gospel too, like it's it's kind of a both type of situation. And I I hear a lot of that in what you're saying too, Bob, of just when we're trying to get personal with people and really point them to the gospel message.
SPEAKER_02:To make it personal for me, when my dad died in uh April of this year, or of 2025 now, I guess. Uh when my dad died, you know, and I I brought my bet mom back from the hospital, uh, dropped her off, got home, just sat in my office for a little bit and cried. I cried not because of all the times that he told me, Robert, don't do that. Robert, don't do that, Robert, don't do that. And yet I needed to hear those times, but it was for all the other times, when he hugged, when he embraced, when he when he began to when when he forged a relationship with me as his child, to understand why I don't do that and why I don't do this. And much in the way that he built that relationship, and much in the way we as parents strive to build that relationship with our children, that is also the relationship that we have with God. And that is why, again, just to come down hard on the law, break the relationship so that there is no embrace, so there is no further communication, is a gross error and uh and is and is actually, I I would go as far as to say doing it that way is a sin.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus talks about his followers as being salt and light in the world. Well, salt is good, it's a preservative and it's a seasoning. So okay, the truth is good for you know yeah, that's that that's a positive thing. Well, if you uh your approach to the salt is to toss it in somebody's eyes or feed them spoonfuls of of salt and forcing it down their throat, yeah, that's that's that's not gonna be doing what salt is supposed to do. You're not doing that. Same as with with the light of the gospel. Okay, well, we want to be shining that light, but if if if we take a search light and we put it straight into somebody's eyes, well, they're not gonna see anything that we want them to see, because we've just blinded them with it. So, you know, even with those positives, and the truth is a positive. The standards of the law are tremendous positive, but um we we we need to apply them in an appropriate way.
SPEAKER_00:So then kind of bringing it all together here, we've talked a lot about maybe what we shouldn't do as Christians. How exactly do we then respond to the sin of abortion? How do we talk to people um in in that way?
SPEAKER_01:I I guess we we take it seriously as a sin. Uh we don't downplay its evil, we don't explain it away, we don't pretend it doesn't exist, we don't treat it though as though it's just exactly the same as every other sin, but we also don't treat it as though it's the only sin, or as though you are s you know you are somehow superior because you have never committed that particular sin. But you also take the sinner seriously. Pair the gospel with the law, you know, grace with sin. Uh listen and learn so that you respond to the sin that was actually committed and not the one that's in your head. Recognize that this message can really rock some people's worlds, and it might require, as we mentioned before, patience and and and a whole lot of care.
SPEAKER_02:You know, when I was um young and I thought like a child and acted like a child, I found that I oftentimes would look very self-righteously at a lot of the woes of the world. Like the homeless people will talk about living the consequences of making bad choices. The people who drifted into a homosexual lifestyle and you know contracted AIDS. Well, this is what happens when you, you know, you make bad choices. And you know, pretty soon you f you find yourself able to pretty much explain away every act of charity that Scripture calls upon us to show. Like if you had taken better care of yourself, you wouldn't be getting sick, if you had not taken up smoking, you wouldn't have developed lung cancer if you had not. You know, we find all sorts of explanations. I find it interesting that that Jesus didn't get into any of that. You know, you just continually show compassion, you continually turn the cheek, you continually walk the extra mile. And when we take the abortion issue and we get off of our high horse of uh just condemning everybody, kind of like what Jeff says, you know, because it's not my sin, it's not one I would commit, we're at that point of righteous indignation, we're just offended by other people who do this, all of a sudden you recognize that if we break one law, it's as if we've broken all of it. There is nobody who is righteous, not even one. If all of those things are true and they are true, because they the same scripture that points out that abortion is a sin is the same scripture that teaches those things, then the reality is that we have no higher ground to stand on other than that we know what it means to be forgiven. And we know we know how the first one to turn the cheek and walk the extra mile was not only Jesus, but was Jesus doing it for me, not just for everybody else, but for me. All the countless times I go to church and we go through that very familiar repetition about I'm a sinner, we commit ourselves to not sin anymore, and we're lucky to get out of the worship service without sinning, in thought or in deed. We realize we do this all the time, and we look for patience from God. So for what we do, I think it's first of all requires some introspection. Get off of our high horse and and to be as loving towards others as we count on God being towards us in Christ. Secondly, I've always made it my mission and the work we do at CLR to someday make abortion the least desirable of all options, no matter what you can do wrong in life. I want to have so many other loving options that you just don't want to you just don't want to have an abortion. Well, it help you take care of your child, we'll help you get through the but see, we're in a punitive society. And one of the marks of conservatism is you live with the consequences of your bad choices. Based on that, it's going to be hard to provide loving alternatives.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you both for the discussion today. And we uh we thank all of our listeners too. If you have any questions on this topic at all, you can reach us at lifechallenges.us. And we'll see you back next time. Bye.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast of Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us to podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianlifeResources.com. A guide gives you wisdom, love, strength, and peace of Christ for every life challenge.
