While the pro-life position is widely associated with Bible-believing Christians, there are actually professing Christians who identify as pro-choice. In fact, one of my pro-life colleagues was speaking at a church in Michigan when, to his shock, he learned that the pastor had recently taken up an offering to help one of the young ladies in the church get an abortion. How can this be?

A pro-life colleague in Charlotte, North Carolina told me that he knew an abortion doctor in the city who gave a tenth of her earnings to her local church. In her mind, she was doing God’s work.

In that same spirit, Breitbart reports that, “Several left-wing, pro-abortion activist groups led by so-called ‘clergy’ are ramping up their efforts to make sure women can abort their unborn children, including transporting them to states where abortionists are still operating.”

In the words of Katie Zeh, a pastor and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, “It’s so central to our faith to care for people, so it’s no surprise that clergy [prior to Roe v. Wade] were part of the group helping people get abortion care.”

When we look to the Scriptures, it is clear that the Bible describes the humanity of the baby in the womb. This is a child with potential life and destiny ahead, not a clump of cells. So, the pro-life position is easily deduced from the pages of the Bible.

But when we look to writings of the early Church leaders, their condemnation is even more direct and forceful. And remember: this was without the visual evidence of ultrasounds and without today’s massive improvements in fetal viability. Still, they recognized abortion for the evil that it is.

One of the earliest Church writings from outside the New Testament is the Didache, also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve,” as if going back directly to the twelve apostles.

It states, “The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2).

Both abortion and infanticide were prohibited, regardless of what the rest of the culture practiced. Such was the counter-culture mentality of the Church, being transformed by the Word rather than conformed to the world (see Romans 12:1-2).

Another important source from the early Church is the Letter of Barnabas. It mirrors the Didache, stating, “Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (Letter of Barnabas 19). It’s a baby inside the womb and a baby outside the womb.

Writing towards the end of the second century, Tertullian said, “In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” (Apology 9:8).

Skipping ahead 200 more years, to the end of the fourth century, Jerome wrote, “Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder” (Letters 22:13).

And this is just a sampling of the statements of these Church leaders, for whom abortion was a deeply sinful practice. In the words of John Chrysostom, also in the late fourth century, abortion is “murder before the birth.”

In fact, David Bercot, in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, listed more than 20 relevant quotes under the heading of Abortion/Infanticide, indicating how these Church leaders saw abortion and infanticide as two sides of the same coin. (Note that infanticide was widely practiced in the ancient world, with parents leaving unwanted infants outdoors to be killed by animals or nature.)

The amount of citations gathered by Bercot also points to the importance of the topic for these Christian leaders, the earliest of whom were the disciples of the apostles.

For those of you reading this article who have had abortions or participated in an abortion, it is understandable that these quotations sting deeply. At the same time, there is mercy and forgiveness and healing and restoration at the cross. And if you confess your sin to God and cry out for mercy and grace, the blood of Jesus will cleanse you – thoroughly, completely, and eternally. And this includes the sin of abortion.

And to every Christian leader who claims to find biblical support for your abortion-supporting position, I leave you with the words of Jesus: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

When those babies in the womb – the ultimate “little ones” – are being destroyed, their angels are looking right into the face of the heavenly Father. You will answer to Him on that final Day.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

For the first seventy or so years of Christianity’s existence, the Greco-Roman world paid it relatively little attention. There were persecutions here and there (like the one that claimed the lives of Peter and Paul). But, for the most part, it wasn’t until the second century that their pagan neighbors began to focus their attention on just how different Christians were.

As Michael J. Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary wrote at The Gospel Coalition, one major difference was that “Christians would not pay homage to the other ‘gods’ ” of the Roman world. Since paying homage to these “gods” was a civic as well as a religious duty, this refusal caused Christians to be viewed with suspicion. Incredibly, some pagans even accused Christians of atheism!

As Kruger notes, there was another area in which Christians stood out like the proverbial sore thumb: and that was sex. As Kruger writes, “While it was not unusual for Roman citizens to have multiple sexual partners, homosexual encounters, and engagement with temple prostitutes, Christians stood out precisely because they refused to engage in these practices.”

Thus Tertullian, the second-century apologist who has been called the “Father of Western Theology,” wrote that Christians “do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us except our wives.”

The author of the second century “Epistle to Diognetus” wrote that Christians speak and dress like their neighbors and added “[Christians] share their meals, but not their sexual partners.”

Obviously, Christians regarded sexual ethics as a mark of what it meant to be what Peter called “a peculiar people.”

But that still leaves us with the question “why?” Were they and the God they worshipped “killjoys” who were opposed to pleasure? That’s how they and we have often been depicted, that is, when they (and we) weren’t being accused of trying to subjugate and oppress women.

To understand why all of this is, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, “nonsense on stilts,” you need to understand the world into which Christianity was born and how revolutionary the Christian message concerning sex really was.

That’s one of the subjects of “Paul Among The People” by classicist Sarah Ruden.

The “Paul” being referred to was of course the apostle Paul, whom many moderns at best regard as “grumpy” when it came to women and sex.

As Ruden says, “Paul was not a 20th-century feminist . . . but [modern women are] the beneficiaries of a very long list of reforms. [And] Paul, I think, got all that started.”

To understand why that’s the case, it helps to remember that much of the sexual activity Michael Kruger refers to was far from-consensual. It was little more than “institutionalized violence,” which included “the rape of slaves, prostitution, and violence against wives and children.”

Paul’s denunciation of the sexual mores of his time was a part of his larger message “of all people being sacred children of God” and an expression of outrage at how they were being treated.

In other words, it was a message of true freedom.

Thus, when Christians refused to share their wives, it was a gift to their wives, who, in pagan society, had no say in the matter. When they honored women pledged to perpetual virginity, they were setting young women free from being treated as assets by their father in cementing alliances with other families.

Christians weren’t anti-sex, they were pro-human dignity. So much so that their sexual morality and vision for marriage shaped and transformed the culture around them. Not the other way around.

And that’s something modern Christians would do very well to remember.

This article was originally posted at the ChristianPost.com website.