You Are Greatly Loved

In Daniel 9, we have perhaps the best example in all of Scripture of a humble, faithful and painfully specific confession of sin. In this prayer, the prophet Daniel makes much of Israel’s guilt and much of his own, trusting, as St. Paul would later remind God’s children that “where sin increases, [God’s] grace abounds all the more” (Rom. 5:20). And even before Daniel had finished uttering his heartfelt pleas for mercy, the angel Gabriel was dispatched from heaven to tell Daniel that he was “greatly loved” by God, and to help Daniel better understand God’s redemptive purpose and plan.

In the spirit of Daniel’s brutally honest confession of sin, Matt Walsh writes this regarding the sin of abortion in his newly published book, The Unholy Trinity:

"If you find yourself teetering close to the edge of almost believing there might be some faint glimmer of truth or reason left in liberalism, just remember abortion. If ever you're feeling generous enough to assume that liberalism, while morally bankrupt, really means well in the end, simply recall abortion.

Think of abortion whenever that polite part of your brain tells the gullible part of your brain to tell the reasonable part of your brain that liberalism isn't really so bad after all. Abortion—a cancer in the bloodstream of American society; a depraved, nefarious, shameful practice; a travesty of historic proportions, and one that should be garnering an enormous amount of your attention and anger. 

There is no more important national "issue" than this. Abortion unravels the fabric of society, subverts the sacred institution of the family, and turns parents into something like alligators eating their young. Many civilizations have made victims of some vast group or another, but ours is the first to turn the propagated into the prey of their propagators. It takes a depraved culture to simply kill its children, but it takes an especially sadistic one to hand the gun to the mother and say, 'Here, you do it.'"

As in Daniel’s day, there is plenty of personal and corporate guilt to go around. Daniel used the pronouns, “we, us and our” when confessing sin. Matt Walsh rightly observes that our “civilization” and our “culture”, not just individuals, are guilty of the ghastly sin of abortion. But thankfully, God is “the same yesterday, today and forever.” And as Daniel experienced, the LORD is ever-ready to declare His love to those who make much of their sin, trusting that where sin abounds, divine grace super-abounds.

May God hasten the day when we, individually and corporately, can humbly acknowledge the horrific nature of abortion, seek God’s mercy and hear the divine “you are greatly loved” for Jesus’ sake.

GH