At Lifeline, we believe that all life is valuable. The Creator has determined the value of His creation, and He has placed His image in each person He creates, thus bestowing incredible value on each one. It is through this belief that we are compelled to love, serve, and defend life, especially those whose lives are vulnerable. They are image bearers.
From the beginning, the case for life was made. Man possessed the Imago Dei. As an image bearer, man was to preserve, protect, and defend life because life is sacred. The whole biblical narrative in fact, is a case for the sanctity of life. Even though all men fell and still fall short of the glory of God, God pursued and still pursues our hearts and our lives.
The greatest evidence of the sanctity of life found in the Bible is that God sent forth His Son, born of a woman and made in the image of God, to live, suffer, and die so that through His resurrection, He might redeem broken image bearers back to God. Beloved, life itself is sacred because we have a Father who paid the ultimate price to sanctify it.
Lest we forget, on this side of the cross and resurrection that the same enemy of Genesis 3, Satan, is alive and well, deceiving men, twisting God’s truth, and tempting men’s hearts. Satan is our active enemy who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” We must resist the Devil with every fiber of our being and every resource from the Spirit so that he will flee from us (James 4:7).
Looking ahead, most of the issues addressed in the rest of this book exist because, as a Church and as a people, believers have not resisted the Devil and clung to Christ. Rather, as believers, we have allowed the enemy’s deception to woo us into complacency. We’ve allowed him to deceive our hearts and to frustrate our souls all while ignoring the great truth of the Imago Dei and the God ordained sanctity of life.
As the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have been given the mission to reclaim the broken in the name of our Savior. This mission we have received is costly and dangerous. We will raise questions and make truth claims that sinful men do not want to hear. Nevertheless, we must persevere.
This blog was adapted from chapter one of Image Bearers: Shifting from Pro-birth to Pro-life by Herbie Newell, the President/Executive Director of Lifeline. You can purchase a full copy here.