God destroys those civilizations that practice child sacrifice. I believe that will happen here.
Romans 6: 1-18 gives us guidance on this:
"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
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This is a tough one. My understanding of Scripture is that the believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, indicating your salvation cannot be broken (lost). This is the new Covenant.
However, many people will counter by questioning whether a person who so cavalierly does evil was truly saved in the first place. That’s a fair, but ultimately unanswerable question. It is hard to imagine that anyone who is truly born of the Spirit of God (born again) could kill their own child.
While God will, in fact, forgive any sin where the sinner is truly repentant, will the person who presumes upon God's mercy before the sin is committed and, knowing full well that the act is sinful commits it anyway, be truly and sincerely repentant afterwards? Certainly it's possible, but how many people fool themselves that the sin is forgiven without actually repenting of that sin?
You need repentance. By going into the clinic you are obviously not repentant.
People have an infinite ability to rationalize their own misbehavior. Might I suggest a diffetent approach? One thing negotiators are taught is when you get to an impasse, put something new on the table to change the dynamic. If we really want to stop the person in question, why not pull out a stack of 20’s and start counting them out? Its amazing what behaviors will change and how quickly you can get to an agreement when cash is put on the table. And it would be a lot less cheaper than the money spent supporting ProLife, Inc.
Lots of people claim to be Christian.
Anyone who walks into an abortion clinic with that kind of attitude does not really know Christ.
It's incomprehensible that a true believer would have that kind of attitude about sin.
IOW, I don't believe for one minute they're Christian.
Repentance requires both true sorrow for what has been done and a commitment by the sinner that he/she will not commit that act again. Christ’s atonement was not an endless supply of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards for serial transgressors. Attitude counts.
This is a good post on the subject (I never knew such a phenomenon occurred actually, and apparently with regularity too) but I think it’s a bit too obtuse. It makes a good argument but takes a while getting there. I think this situation is best viewed from the “Bart Simpson method of salvation”. Because that’s really what this is, when you boil it down to the essential.
The Bart Simpson plan for salvation, for those who don’t know, goes something like this: sin all you want for your whole life but at the very last moment, right before you die, you say “sorry!” To God and ask to be forgiven. After all, Simpson reasons, God forgives all sin so why not take that cake and eat it too?
That’s essentially the reasoning here, of the poor young mother in question. Anyone can see though how comically wrong Bart Simpson is, so it isn’t any problem, really, to see how wrong such mothers to be are either. Both are wrong for the same, comical reason.
In the case for the woman contemplating abortion, it would be just as funny as it is with Bart Simpson, if it didn’t involve the real killing of a child.