COLLEEN TINKER
Once again the correspondence we received during the past couple of weeks has yielded a subject that is so important we felt it deserved to be shared with everyone. That subject is this: how can we trust God to be loving when He allows people to sin against helpless victims?
In order to understand how this subject came to our attention, I will begin by sharing some excerpts from a sequence of letters we received from a person struggling in the aftermath of a dreadful sin perpetrated against her.
To Colleen and Nikki…
Congratulations on leaving an abomination, but please be careful you do not jump from one falsehood to another. Maybe belonging to no earthly church would be better, as each is incorrect. What do you believe regarding Genesis 2:7? Do you accept God’s word? Or do you decide with your emotions that each breathing soul has been given free will by God Himself, including the right to decide whether or not to incubate a body for God to breathe a soul into?
Do you believe a woman does not have the same free will as a man? When rapes occur, as they do, and women are impregnated, do you believe that now the woman has no freedom? Her body must now gestate a receptacle for a soul?
Is it God’s will she was raped? You act as if God’s will happened to me when I was raped by my pastor.
When a bomber blows up a man’s legs, should he remain immobilized for life because it was God’s will? When cancer comes to your family, do you let them die because it’s Gods will?
God’s will is relinquished here on earth, my dears; nothing is over a humans’ will, and God knows the heart.
You judge women. That is wrong…
Surely you realize an infant knows no one in its current state. Unless you have seen a stillborn fetus, you probably can’t understand how breath IS God’s animation of the body.
How do you explain a dead body? Is that also in God’s image?
Maybe you have a little too much Ellen G. still influencing your mind. Why did Jesus never mention abortion? Stop judging others with your religion; that’s what they do.
Revenge Will Kill Us
I want to say first of all that I am incredibly sorry for what happened to you. What that pastor did was evil, and God has made it clear that vengeance is His, and He will repay.
If there is an over-arching, hopeful word I could give you, it is this: Jesus’ death for our sins was for the purpose not only of forgiving the sins we commit when we repent before Him, but it also redeems the effects of the sins done to us. Jesus’ suffering reveals to us that God is just. He does not allow anyone to “get away” with sin. Either our sins are on Christ through our trusting Him and His finished atonement, or they are on us.
When we suffer because of the sins of others, we can turn to Him for that as well.
When we suffer because of the sins of others, we can turn to Him for that as well. The way the people treated Jesus when they scourged and mocked and crucified Him, accusing Him of dreadful things He did not do—that experience reveals to us that He sees and He knows what we suffer. He saw you as He hung on that cross, and His death was for you. He will not waste your suffering. It is in our suffering that He meets us in unique ways and shows us His compassion and redemption. I believe that we know Him even better as we face our suffering and trust Him for healing our hearts than if we had not suffered.
Furthermore, when we honestly face our own thoughts and feelings, we see that even our self-protective decisions are not “innocent”. Often as we rationalize our behaviors, we hurt others who do not deserve to be hurt. We often unintentionally transgress against those close to us as we try to protect ourselves.
We are all born dead in sin, unable to “be good”, as Ephesians 1:1–3 explains. The Lord Jesus, though, asks us to trust His love that literally took our anger, our rage, our helpless resentment into Himself and paid the price for our own sins that we commit as a reaction to the sins done to us. We cannot escape the devastating effects of abuse and victimization when they happen to us. They mark us and change the course of our lives.
Yet Jesus asks us to come and trust Him. He didn’t die just to “guilt” us or to mock us. He literally died to take God’s wrath instead of us, because as sinners by nature, we are naturally children of wrath (Eph. 2:3), and under condemnation (Jn. 3:18). But when we trust that Jesus paid the price fully for every dark and helpless impulse of our hearts, we realize that we need Him to take the load of anger and revenge that we long to execute. That load is too big for us, and it will ultimately destroy us. Jesus WILL carry that load and set us free. He redeems even the effects of the sins committed against us.
Even more, He teaches us to lean on Him and to trust Him before defending ourselves at the cost of hurting another. He is big enough to protect and defend us while also dealing with the other people in our lives. He teaches us to repent of the sins we commit against others as the result of the sins committed against us.
Unborn Witness
Yes, we do believe Genesis 2:7: God breathed His life into Adam after He fashioned him, and he became a living soul. Yet we can’t understand this verse without also understanding Genesis 1:27 which tells us that God created man “in His own image”—something He did for no animal. God is spirit, Jesus said in John 4:24, and our being in the image of God was not about our physical shape. Our being in the image of God is our immaterial reality: our spirits that are our essential identity.
The unborn are fully human, created in God’s image, just as all humans are regardless of age. People do not receive their identities when they are born; God does not “breathe a soul” into babies when they are born. The only biblical reference to God breathing LIFE (not a soul) into a human was Adam, and when He gave him LIFE, he became a living soul.
The unborn, unlike Adam before God breathed life into him, are PHYSICALLY ALIVE.
The unborn, unlike Adam before God breathed life into him, are PHYSICALLY ALIVE. They have their identities and bodies fully determined the moment of conception. Psalm 139 tells us that God sees us and knits us together in our mothers’ wombs and knows all our days before one of them comes to be.
Luke 1 tells us that the unborn John the Baptist was “filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb” (v. 15), and when he was six months in gestation, he leaped when the pregnant Mary entered Elizabeth’s house. The unborn John was fully human, alive, filled with the Holy Spirit, and he was one of the first witnesses of the Lord Jesus’ identity before either of them was born.
God used an unborn baby to testify to the identity of the unborn Savior. Both of those babies were fully alive, fully human, and possessed of their immaterial spirits. Their births only changed their places of residence, so to speak. Breathing with their lungs replaced breathing by means of gas exchange through the unbiblical cord and the baby’s heart. Those unborn babies were living humans with identities and the ability to know what was going on. A baby’s first breath after birth is NOT analogous to God’s breathing life into the formed but lifeless Adam.
All to say, we do believe that abortion is killing other humans.
Redeeming the Pain
When you were formed in your mother’s womb as God says you were—formed and known by Him (Ps 139), you were not a lifeless body waiting for a soul. You were the miniature version of who you are today. You were not dead and lifeless; you were alive, nourished by your mother’s own life as your body developed—but your identity was already there. You knew your mother’s voice; you knew the voices of the others in the family as well. You were not without memories and perception. You were not a lifeless body as was Adam before God breathed into Him.
You were fully human from conception, just as John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus were. You were not a stillborn, a baby who died in the womb. You were living, and God knew you. You weren’t waiting to house a soul; you already were a soul with a living, unique identity. You were created by God, and He chose the time and place of your life. He knew all your days before you were born.
God does not stop all dreadful things, but He wastes nothing we submit to Him.
God does not stop all dreadful things, but He wastes nothing we submit to Him. He will redeem this dreadful violation of your person if you can trust Him to do so. And if you have had an abortion, that is also something He will redeem. He died and bore ALL our sins in His body—even the ones we commit when we feel trapped or unaware that we are sinning. He took God’s judgment against us, and when we trust Him, we are made completely new. He restores us and heals our hearts and forgives us!
You are not a random chance, and the Lord Jesus sees and knows what you feel. I am so, so sorry for your suffering. The Lord can redeem it, and there is nothing He will not forgive. His substitutionary death literally included His taking God’s wrath for all the sins we commit if we trust Him.
God will deal with that pastor. You can trust Him to do so. His sins against you will not be unpunished, one way or another. And the Lord will give you new hope and new life if you can trust Him with all the helplessness, all the pain, all the rage and anger that life has dealt you. He sees and knows, and He literally came to redeem us from the otherwise hopeless events of our short lives.
I am praying that you will know the Lord’s love and forgiveness and peace. Here is a link that might be helpful to you:
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024
- We Got Mail - April 25, 2024
- April 20–26, 2024 - April 18, 2024
I was an SDA for 25 years, a good one, Deacon and also Lay Pastor, I went to PUC for two years. I just want to re enforced what Colleen said. God be with you what ever your circumstances are. I was in Nam for 4 years, not as US military members, but by default because my ship when I worked to deliver supply to the base got blown up. I have to live with the marine who rescued me for 4 years, fight with them KILL people. In the span of the time maybe I killed more then 100 peoples, they hunted me, nightmare things like that; feel guilty, sin and more. What I do is back to HIM asked for forgiveness and at the end accept what HE HAS FOR ME and I am in peace and by the WILL OF GOD you BE ABLE TOO.
I pray to God this will help; Have a Blessed Day.
Bimo Sunupoernomo