“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” - Acts 3:19
As Satan carries on his wicked work of alluring people to sin, he always does two things: 1) minimizes the gravity of sin beforehand, and 2) maximizes the gravity of sin afterwards. He does this to keep the machinery of sin moving along to the ruin and damnation of souls. While tempting a poor sinner, he whispers “This is no big deal, you can always seek forgiveness, God is merciful, everybody’s doing it, don’t worry about it…” After the sinner has caved in and sinned, Satan turns prosecuting attorney and accuses the sinner of committing the unforgivable sin: “Your wickedness is so great there is no hope of forgiveness; you might as well give up and stop trying to live a good life.” In both of these actions, Satan minimizes the work of Christ at the cross. If sin were a light thing, why did it receive such a dreadful punishment at the cross? For there, the Son of God was crushed under the wrath of God for our sins, suffering hell on the cross in our place. How then could sin ever be considered a light thing? So also, the after-the-fact accusation of Satan minimizes the grace and mercy of God shown in Christ’s blood, for Satan is saying that there is a sin so grievous that no cleansing however great exists for it. And this is a grave insult to the infinitude of the work of Christ on the cross.
Rather than listening to the “Father of Lies,” it is far better to listen to the Truth as it is in Jesus. All sins are heinous in the sight of God, and should be hated with immeasurable loathing. Therefore, we must put sin to death by the power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:13-14). However, there is no sin so great that it cannot be covered by the blood of Christ. If there were, would it not be the actions of Jesus’ enemies in orchestrating His death. For here was the only perfect man that ever lived, who had done them no harm but only blessing, and that wicked generation put Him to death! But these are the very ones to whom Christ sent His apostle, Peter, in Acts 3, to proclaim that, through repentance and turning to God, sins would be wiped away and times of refreshment would come from the Lord. How great is the mercy of God, and how infinite His grace to sinners such as we are!
The sin of abortion is a sin that defiles us all. Some are defiled by sins of commission: either having an abortion, or advocating abortion in the life of a friend or family member, or providing abortion services, or voting for a political candidate who supports abortion, etc. Some are defiled by sins of omission: failing to pray regularly for an end to abortion, failure to act in the political arena or in the public square advocating the pro-life cause, failure to speak up in private conversations with friends or relatives who were advocating abortion, failure to give money the Lord intended given in support of prolife causes, failure to care and grieve sufficiently over the sins of our land.
"The way for us all to deal with the defilement of abortion in America is to follow Peter’s prescription in Acts 3:19: repent and turn to God."
Lamentations 3:23 tells us that God’s mercies are new every morning, and Romans 5:21 says that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The way for us all to deal with the defilement of abortion in America is to follow Peter’s prescription in Acts 3:19: repent and turn to God. The result of that is that cleansing of sins will flow in Christ’s name, and that times of refreshment may come from the Lord.
