Some women, confronted with the terrible realization that they are responsible for the death of their own child, may ask despairingly, “How could God ever forgive me for killing my baby?”
The Bible embraces them with tender words of healing grace:
God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. —Romans 5:8
No sin can eclipse the mercy of God; no person is beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love. King David, a man well acquainted with God’s amazing grace, wrote:
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies … He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. —Psalm 103:2-4, 10-12
Mercy for Sinners
God is not some stern cosmic judge, sitting in Heaven and waiting to punish those who transgress His holy standards of righteousness. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. God is our loving heavenly Father, who redeems our lives and crowns us with love and mercy. Yet Scripture does clearly assert that we are not capable of measuring up to God’s standard of perfection on our own. The Apostle John wrote, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.” The Bible contains awful, ominous news for all mankind:
There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one. —Romans 3:10–12
The Bible’s solemn bottom line: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The Epistle to the Romans bluntly warns, “The wages of sin is death.” In other words, no one is capable of standing guiltless before God based on his or her own righteousness. Everyone, from the church deacon to the mass murderer on death row, is in need of a redeemer. We are all unworthy of God’s kind affection, yet Jesus came to save us from death and to endure the full punishment for our iniquity. Jesus declared,
I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. —John 10:10-11
The Apostle Paul once hated Christians with a cruel fury that few could match. “I persecuted this Way to the death,” he candidly admitted, “binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.” Then Paul encountered Jesus Christ, and his life was forever changed, and his complete confidence in God’s absolute forgiveness gives joyous hope to all who come to Christ in faith:
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 8:38-39
Like Paul, countless post-abortive women have found healing and forgiveness beneath the Cross of Jesus.
Beauty for Ashes
At age eighteen, Tewannah Aman aborted her first child. Plagued by guilt, she later received the forgiveness of Christ. Several years later she married and became pregnant, but lost the baby after a premature delivery—caused by a complication from her abortion. Today, she has devoted her life to helping women and saving other unborn children. “I miss my children,” she admits, “but God is using what I’ve gone through to save babies and to minister to others who are hurting and who need to know that there’s hope in Christ.”
Another woman stated, “Someday I will meet my son, David, in heaven. Just as Jesus still bears the scars of the cross, my scars remain. But God has turned the pain into a thing which can bring glory to Him and lead others to forgiveness.”
The Prophet Isaiah tells us that the Lord seeks to “provide for those who grieve … to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
Norma McCorvey (the “Roe” of Roe v. Wade) faced unimaginable burdens of guilt, mourning, and despair. After all, it was her case that paved the way for an atrocity that has slaughtered tens of millions of babies. Yet after a sweet eight-year-old girl named Emily gently pleaded, “You don’t have to go to hell, Miss Norma. You can pray right now and Jesus will forgive you,” McCorvey recalls, “This childlike faith cut open my heart.”
McCorvey agreed to come to church, where she heard a sermon on John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Norma McCorvey then surrendered her life to Christ. She later wrote,
It made me feel so incredibly sorry for all my sins, especially for my role in legalizing abortion. I just kept repeating over and over, “I just want to undo all the evil I’ve done in this world. I’m so sorry, God. I’m so, so sorry....” Finally, I stopped crying and broke into the biggest smile of my life. I no longer felt the pressure of my sin pushing down on my shoulders.... [Today], I’m one hundred percent sold out to Jesus and one hundred percent pro-life.
Today, “Miss Norma” stands as a magnificent trophy of God’s amazing grace.
You, too, can be sheltered in the arms of God’s love and forgiveness. The Scriptures promise, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”84
You may think your past cannot be pardoned but if you come to Jesus you will find that He is a tender and merciful Savior. He is God in human flesh and took the punishment for our sins when He died on the cross. Now He offers you forgiveness and the wonderful promise that “. . . whoever comes to me, I will never drive away” (John 6:37 NIV).
Jesus has already shown that He loves you to death.
If you come to Him, Jesus can love you to life!
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