Innocent Blood

John Ensor:

Abortion, like lynching, is the shedding of innocent blood, is it not? Have you made peace with it? Have you navigated around it? Can you lift up your hands and say, “I did not shed this blood, nor did I see it happening”? … Have you understood with moral clarity the need to rescue the weak and the innocent? Have you asked God for the moral courage to do so? When I asked myself these questions a while back, I came up short. I was Pilate. My silence had left my own congregation with bloodguilt. This is all the more tragic because in the unfolding glory of the redemption, God has gone so much farther than to offer the blood of a heifer. I decided to repent. (pp. 57-58)

To think of abortion as a secondary issue—or worse, a merely political issue—is to fundamentally misunderstand the defining experience of our times. It also means we fundamentally fail to see the central truth that the cross alone can cleanse the conscience from the debilitating effects of bloodguilt.  Our capacity to simply ignore the influence of abortion is crippling the effectiveness of the gospel. Abortion’s role in the consciences of hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone is a boil that festers just under the surface of all Christian endeavors, and it needs lancing. It needs to be called out by name, confessed by name, and brought under a gospel that declares that there is no forgiveness for the shedding of innocent blood except by the shedding of innocent blood, that is, by the blood of Christ. (p. 68)

Aaron Armstrong reviews this book here.