There are times when Christian love requires tenderness toward the wounded, and there are also times when Christian love requires direct confrontation of teaching that misrepresents God. Scripture permits neither cruelty in the name of truth nor silence in the name of compassion. Christians are commanded to speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), and that combination becomes especially important when Christian language is used to give divine sanction to practices that require serious moral examination. Love without truth becomes moral sentimentality, while truth without love can become harshness. Biblical correction requires both.
The controversy surrounding the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Todd Peters is one such case. Peters is not merely an anonymous social-media personality whose words have been distorted by a hostile meme. She is Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a feminist social ethicist, and a scholar whose work explicitly focuses on reproductive justice. Her Elon University profile also identifies service connected with Planned Parenthood organizations among her professional activities (Elon University, n.d.). Before rebuking her theology, however, Christians have an obligation to establish what she actually said. Truth does not need exaggeration, and Christian apologetics is weakened rather than strengthened whenever we repeat claims carelessly simply because they support a conclusion we already believe.
The Evidence Is Real, but the Viral Post Compresses Different Events
The central claim circulating on Facebook is substantially authentic. On Peters’ own website, under a sermon she calls “A New Beatitude,” she explains that she seeks to interpret the Sermon on the Mount alongside her abortion research. She says that women who terminate pregnancies may be acting from hesed, which she renders as loving-kindness, and then proposes that Jesus might say today, “Blessed are those who end pregnancies, for they will be known for their loving kindness.” This wording comes from Peters’ own website, not from a hostile paraphrase or merely from an opponent describing what she supposedly believes (Peters, n.d.).
There is nevertheless an important factual distinction that responsible Christian commentary should preserve. Peters’ website associates an appearance titled “A New Beatitude” with First Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina, on February 26, 2023. The widely reported sermon at the Community Church of Chapel Hill, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, occurred on July 9, 2023, under the title “Beyond the Abortion Imaginary.” Reporting from Religion News Service documented that Peters told the Chapel Hill congregation that abortion could be understood as a moral good, an act of love, an act of grace, and ultimately “a blessing” (Shimron, 2023). The viral post therefore appears to combine related statements from Peters’ broader preaching ministry rather than reproduce one continuous transcript from a single sermon. That correction does not weaken the theological concern. It strengthens Christian credibility by ensuring that we condemn what was actually taught rather than what social media reconstructed.
The widely circulated statement portraying Jesus as an abortion-clinic escort or “abortion doula” has likewise appeared in video excerpts and subsequent reporting. Peters’ own history makes the clinic-escort language especially contextual. In a 2021 interview, she explained that she began volunteering as an abortion-clinic escort while working in the Presbyterian Church’s Justice for Women office in Louisville during the early 1990s (Scanlon, 2021). More importantly, this theology is not an abandoned position from years ago. In July 2026, Peters and former Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones jointly argued that they regarded abortion as “a moral good” and challenged the claim that Christianity requires abortion to be understood as sinful (Peters & Jones, 2026). We are therefore not dealing merely with an unfortunate phrase uttered in one sermon. We are dealing with a developed theological position that has been articulated repeatedly and deserves a serious theological response.
The Deeper Crisis Is Not Abortion Alone. It Is the Reconstruction of Jesus
The most disturbing issue is not simply that a Christian ethicist supports abortion rights. Christians have disagreed about difficult ethical questions throughout Church history. The more profound problem begins when we move from saying, “This is my ethical conclusion,” to declaring, in effect, “Jesus would bless this.” Those are not equivalent statements. The first acknowledges that a theologian is advancing an interpretation that must itself be judged. The second invokes the moral authority of Christ to sanctify that interpretation.
Jesus Christ is not an empty symbol onto whom each generation may project its preferred moral vision. Christianity does not give us permission to construct an imaginary Christ who conveniently endorses whatever contemporary society has already decided is compassionate, liberating, inclusive or progressive. The Jesus of Christianity is the Jesus who has revealed Himself, and He is not ours to redesign according to the moral sensibilities of the age.
John declares that the Word existed before creation and that everything came into existence through Him (John 1:1–3). Paul says of Christ that “all things have been created through him and for him” and that “he is before all things” (Colossians 1:15–17). The theological consequence is profound: Jesus does not learn morality from the twenty-first century but judges the twenty-first century. He does not wait for modern political movements to explain justice to Him because He is the standard by which our definitions of justice must themselves be tested.
That distinction matters enormously because one of the characteristic temptations of contemporary Christianity is to preserve Christian vocabulary while replacing Christian authority. We retain the language of Jesus, love, justice, dignity, compassion and even Scripture itself, but gradually the meanings of those words become detached from divine revelation and reconstructed according to the reigning moral assumptions of the culture. Eventually, we encounter a Jesus who almost never contradicts contemporary Western moral preferences. Such a development should concern Christians deeply because the Jesus of Scripture regularly contradicts human beings. He commands repentance (Mark 1:14–15), requires self-denial (Luke 9:23), warns that merely calling Him “Lord” while refusing obedience is spiritually meaningless (Luke 6:46), and explicitly connects love for Him with obedience to His commandments (John 14:15). A Jesus who constantly confirms us but never corrects us may be less the Christ of Scripture than a reflection of ourselves.
“Jesus Never Mentioned Abortion” Is Not a Sufficient Christian Argument
A recurring argument in abortion-affirming Christian theology is that the Bible never directly addresses abortion. Peters and Jones made essentially this argument again in 2026 (Peters & Jones, 2026). There is a limited factual truth here. The canonical Gospels do not record Jesus delivering a discourse specifically devoted to elective abortion. The conclusion often drawn from that observation, however, does not follow.
Jesus never preached a recorded sermon specifically addressing internet pornography, ransomware, artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, commercial surrogacy, genetic engineering, fentanyl trafficking or human cloning. Christians nevertheless believe that Scripture provides moral principles by which new practices can be evaluated. Biblical ethics has never operated according to the rule that whatever Jesus did not explicitly name is morally undefined. If that hermeneutical principle were applied consistently, enormous areas of modern ethics would become inaccessible to Christian moral judgment merely because the technologies or social systems involved did not exist in first-century Palestine.
More fundamentally, attempting to separate the words of Jesus from the rest of Scripture misunderstands Jesus’ own view of revelation. Christ did not approach the Old Testament as an interesting human religious archive. He treated Scripture as authoritative, declaring that He had not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets (Matthew 5:17–19). When discussing resurrection, He introduced words from Exodus as something “spoken to you by God” (Matthew 22:31–32). Paul likewise teaches that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Peter explains that the prophets spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20–21) and strikingly describes “the Spirit of Christ” as operating in the Old Testament prophets (1 Peter 1:10–11). Christians therefore cannot pit “what Jesus said” against “what Scripture says.” The whole canonical witness matters.
“You Shall Not Murder” Is True, but Christians Must Make the Full Argument
Pro-life Christians sometimes respond simply by quoting, “Do not murder” (Exodus 20:13). The commandment is certainly relevant, but intellectually responsible Christian apologetics should make the intervening argument explicit. Exodus 20:13 prohibits wrongful human killing. The abortion question therefore requires us to ask whether prenatal human life possesses the kind of moral dignity that makes intentionally destroying it a grave moral act. The biblical evidence should be considered cumulatively rather than resting the entire case on one isolated verse.
Human value begins with the doctrine of creation. Humanity bears the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), which means that human dignity does not derive from intelligence, independence, economic usefulness, physical strength, wantedness or one’s ability to articulate preferences. That principle has profound consequences because, if dependency removes human dignity, the newborn becomes vulnerable to the same logic. So does the profoundly disabled person, the unconscious patient, and the elderly person with advanced dementia. Christian anthropology cannot make independence the criterion of personhood because Christianity understands human dignity as received from God rather than achieved through capability.
The God Who Knits Life in the Womb
Psalm 139 is therefore enormously significant. David declares, “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). He continues by saying that God’s eyes saw him when he was still formless and that the days prepared for him were written in God’s book (Psalm 139:14–16). Christians should interpret the passage responsibly. Psalm 139 is poetry rather than an embryology textbook, but poetry communicates theology, and the theology could hardly be clearer: prenatal human existence falls within God’s intimate creative knowledge and providential activity.
The striking verbs of the passage are divine verbs. God creates, God knits, and God’s eyes see. The theological center of the text is therefore God’s creative action rather than autonomous human will. This is why one may appropriately say, with theological rather than merely rhetorical force, that Christians should tremble before casually destroying what Scripture depicts God as knitting together.
Peters seeks instead to reclaim Psalm 139 within a reproductive-justice framework (Peters, n.d.). Yet the controlling subject of Psalm 139 is not autonomous human choice. It is the sovereign God who knows, searches, creates and ordains. The woman matters profoundly and is herself fearfully and wonderfully made, but she is not the only human reality that matters within pregnancy. The developing child also exists beneath the Creator’s gaze. A Christian ethic therefore should resist framing the mother and child as moral competitors whose dignity requires the negation of one another. The biblical vision calls us to honor both.
Jeremiah 1:5 Should Be Used Carefully, but It Still Matters
God tells Jeremiah, “I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born” (Jeremiah 1:5). Christians sometimes use this verse as though it were a direct scientific definition of when human personhood begins. That goes beyond what the passage intends because Jeremiah 1 concerns God’s particular prophetic calling of Jeremiah. Responsible interpretation should acknowledge that context rather than turn every relevant biblical verse into a slogan.
Correcting misuse, however, does not make the text irrelevant. The passage demonstrates that God’s personal purposes toward Jeremiah transcend birth and extend into prenatal existence. Scripture does not speak of the unborn Jeremiah as morally meaningless biological material awaiting the conferral of significance by human choice. The God of Scripture knows, forms, calls and purposes human life before birth, and that theological reality contributes to the broader biblical witness concerning prenatal dignity.
Luke’s Gospel Makes the Continuity Even More Striking
The meeting between Mary and Elizabeth deserves much greater attention in Christian reflection on prenatal life. When the pregnant Mary enters Elizabeth’s home, John responds within Elizabeth’s womb (Luke 1:39–44). Luke refers to the unborn John using the Greek word brephos. The same term is subsequently used for the newborn Jesus lying in the manger (Luke 2:12).
One should not build an entire doctrine of personhood upon a vocabulary observation alone, but the narrative continuity is nevertheless remarkable. Luke does not present one morally irrelevant object before birth and a human subject afterward. The biblical narrative recognizes continuity across the boundary of birth. That continuity coheres with the wider scriptural depiction of God as Creator and Knower of human beings in the womb and strengthens the cumulative biblical case for treating prenatal life with profound moral seriousness.
The Beatitudes Are Not a Blank Canvas
This brings us to the theological gravity of proposing a new abortion beatitude. Jesus’ Beatitudes are not generic affirmations onto which every generation may attach its preferred social cause. They belong to a particular proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the humble, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted because of righteousness (Matthew 5:3–12).
Christians may certainly apply these teachings to contemporary circumstances, but there is an enormous difference between applying Christ’s teaching and inventing a teaching for Christ. When we place a disputed moral proposition into Jesus’ mouth and formulate it in the cadence of revealed Scripture, we cross a dangerous hermeneutical boundary. The question is no longer merely whether abortion is morally permissible. It becomes a question of authority: by what authority have we declared that Christ blesses it? That question must be answered from revelation, not imagination, because Christians confess Jesus not merely as a useful moral symbol but as Lord.
The Ancient Temptation Behind a Very Modern Theology
The pattern underlying this dispute is older than modern reproductive politics. The serpent’s first recorded challenge was hermeneutical: “Did God really say...?” (Genesis 3:1). The temptation then proceeded through reinterpretation. God’s prohibition was presented as restrictive, transgression was reframed as liberation, and human beings were encouraged to seize moral autonomy and determine good and evil for themselves (Genesis 3:4–6).
That pattern remains remarkably contemporary. The vocabulary may change, but the underlying questions recur: Did God really say? Perhaps the Church misunderstood Him. Perhaps the prohibition is oppressive rather than protective. Perhaps autonomy should be interpreted as holiness, transgression as liberation, and what Christians once called sin as justice. Perhaps what Scripture treats as morally serious should instead be celebrated as grace, and perhaps Jesus Himself can be reconstructed to agree with the new moral consensus. The terminology changes from generation to generation, but the temptation to become the final interpreter of good and evil does not.
When Autonomy Becomes Sacred
Much contemporary Western moral reasoning begins from personal autonomy. The individual is presumed to possess decisive authority over identity, sexuality, reproduction and bodily life, and interference with autonomous choice can therefore become one of the highest moral offenses. Peters’ published argument fits recognizably within that moral framework. Her work emphasizes trusting women as moral agents and rejects the assumption that continuing pregnancy constitutes the default moral good (Peters, 2018).
Christianity begins somewhere different. Paul writes, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). That statement is offensive to the religion of absolute autonomy precisely because it places every human being under divine lordship. Yet its application must be universal rather than selectively imposed on women. A Christian husband cannot invoke “my body, my choice” to justify adultery, and a Christian man cannot invoke personal autonomy to legitimize pornography, exploitation, drunkenness, violence or abandonment of his children. A Christian pastor likewise cannot appeal to personal freedom to excuse sexual misconduct or abuse of power.
Neither can a woman, government, physician, corporation or church claim ultimate sovereignty over human life. Christianity does not replace female autonomy with male domination, nor does biblical opposition to abortion authorize patriarchal control, coercion or indifference to women’s suffering. Christianity replaces human sovereignty, whether male or female, individual or institutional, with divine sovereignty. God is Lord, and every human claim to bodily authority must ultimately be evaluated under His authority. That is the Christian revolution.
From Permitting Abortion to Sacralizing Abortion
Another development deserves careful attention. The cultural discussion is no longer confined to whether abortion should sometimes be legally tolerated. Some religious arguments increasingly move from tolerance to affirmation and from affirmation toward sacralization. Religion News Service reported Peters telling a congregation in 2023 that abortion could be described as moral good, love, grace and blessing (Shimron, 2023).
That represents a significant theological shift because there is an enormous moral distance between saying, “This tragic circumstance may require difficult discernment,” and saying, “This is blessed.” The first acknowledges moral tragedy and the complexity of human suffering. The second transforms the act into positive theological good. Christians should recognize what is happening when the vocabulary of holiness is applied to something whose moral legitimacy has not first been demonstrated from Scripture.
Calling something “justice,” “love,” “grace,” “dignity” or “blessing” does not make it so. Biblical words cannot sanctify unbiblical propositions merely by being attached to them. Indeed, the more sacred the vocabulary, the more carefully Christians should test the claim because religious language can either illuminate moral truth or conceal moral inversion.
Denominational Normalization Matters
Peters’ theology also exists within a broader ecclesiastical environment. The official Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) reproductive-rights page says that its 2022 General Assembly affirmed women and pregnant people as moral agents and supported their capacity to decide whether to continue or end a pregnancy. The same official page traces denominational support for legal abortion to earlier General Assembly actions (Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], n.d.).
This does not mean every PC(USA) congregation, pastor or member embraces Peters’ theology, nor would it be fair to pretend that the denomination’s official position is identical to every statement Peters makes. Institutional context nevertheless matters because ideas become culturally powerful when they move from private opinion into seminaries, pulpits, curricula, denominational policy and ecclesiastical respectability. The question facing Christians is therefore larger than Rebecca Todd Peters. It concerns what happens when churches gradually acquire their ethical imagination from the surrounding culture and then reread Scripture through that imagination. At that point, the debate is no longer only about one moral issue but about the direction of theological authority itself.
The Statistical Context Shows Why This Debate Will Intensify
The theological dispute is occurring during a significant cultural realignment. A January 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 63% of White non-evangelical Protestants and 68% of Black Protestants believed abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Among White evangelical Protestants, by contrast, 74% said it should be illegal in all or most cases (Pew Research Center, 2026).
Legal opinion is not identical to theological conviction. A person may believe that something is immoral without believing every instance should be criminalized, so these statistics should not be carelessly converted into doctrinal conclusions about every respondent. Nevertheless, the data reveal a profound fracture within American Christianity. We are no longer living in a context where a broad Christian moral consensus on abortion can simply be assumed. The conflict is simultaneously theological, anthropological and hermeneutical because it concerns what a human being is, what freedom means, who possesses authority over the body, whether Scripture judges culture or culture judges Scripture, and ultimately who gets to define Jesus.
Technology Is Also Changing the Moral Landscape
The abortion debate is also being transformed by technology. Guttmacher Institute researchers estimated approximately 1.126 million clinician-provided abortions in the United States during 2025, compared with approximately 1.124 million in 2024. Their report also estimated that telehealth provision to people living in states with total abortion bans increased from about 74,000 in 2024 to approximately 91,000 in 2025 (Maddow-Zimet & Forouzan, 2026).
This development matters beyond American politics because technology increasingly moves morally consequential decisions from visible institutions into private digital spaces. The clinic can enter the smartphone, medical consultation can cross state boundaries, pharmaceutical distribution can become geographically detached from the physical provider, and social media can simultaneously normalize, stigmatize, celebrate or condemn abortion. The twenty-first-century Church therefore cannot imagine that abortion ethics concerns only picket lines outside physical clinics.
The issue now intersects with telemedicine, digital privacy, pharmaceutical networks, algorithmic information environments, political polarization and competing theological narratives distributed instantly across social media. This changing environment makes rigorous Christian formation more necessary, not less. Christians who are unable to reason from Scripture, distinguish evidence from propaganda, evaluate competing moral frameworks and respond pastorally to difficult circumstances will be increasingly vulnerable to whichever narrative is most emotionally compelling or technologically amplified.
The Early Church Did Not Need Twentieth-Century American Politics to Oppose Abortion
The claim that Christian opposition to abortion is merely a recent political invention also encounters substantial historical difficulties. The Didache, among the earliest surviving noncanonical Christian texts, explicitly prohibits procuring abortion alongside other serious moral offenses (Didache, n.d., 2.2). The Epistle of Barnabas contains a remarkably similar prohibition (Epistle of Barnabas, n.d., 19).
Neither document is Scripture, and neither should be treated as infallible. Sola Scriptura means precisely that the Church Fathers and early Christian documents remain subordinate to canonical revelation. Nevertheless, these texts are historically important because they demonstrate that explicit Christian opposition to abortion existed many centuries before Roe v. Wade, modern evangelical politics, the Republican Party, the Moral Majority or contemporary American culture wars. One may debate aspects of Christian history honestly, including historical arguments about ensoulment, medical knowledge and legal penalties, but one may not erase the existence of early Christian opposition to abortion simply because that history complicates a modern political narrative.
Christians Must Also Correct Their Own Rhetoric
At this point, those who identify as pro-life should resist the temptation merely to congratulate themselves. Truth demands self-examination, including examination of our own slogans. The statement “You cannot be a Christian and support abortion,” if left entirely unqualified, risks pronouncing a final judgment about someone’s salvation that Scripture has not authorized us personally to make.
Christians can fall into grave error. Peter behaved so seriously contrary to the Gospel that Paul publicly opposed him (Galatians 2:11–14). The Corinthian church tolerated severe sexual immorality and required forceful correction (1 Corinthians 5:1–13). Several churches addressed by Christ in Revelation contained profound doctrinal and moral corruption, yet Christ’s repeated command was to repent (Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:16; Revelation 3:19).
The better formulation is therefore that supporting elective abortion as a positive moral good is profoundly incompatible with the biblical vision of human life, divine sovereignty and Christian moral responsibility. A professing Christian who embraces such teaching should be confronted with Scripture and called to repentance, but final judgment concerning that person’s salvation belongs to Christ. That distinction is not compromise. It is biblical precision because Christians may and must judge teaching against Scripture without pretending to possess God’s exhaustive knowledge of another person’s heart or final destiny.
Not Every Medical Crisis Should Be Collapsed Into a Slogan
Christians should also avoid discussing every pregnancy termination as though every medical circumstance were morally identical. Ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage management, fatal fetal pathology, catastrophic maternal complications and elective abortion for nonmedical reasons involve different medical and ethical questions. Recognizing those distinctions does not weaken the sanctity-of-life position. It strengthens it by demonstrating that Christian ethics can reason carefully rather than rely on slogans.
Christian moral theology should be capable of distinguishing an intentional attack upon innocent human life from a medical intervention aimed at preserving life where death has become unavoidable. Difficult cases deserve careful theological, medical and pastoral reasoning rather than rhetorical simplification. The existence of tragic cases, however, does not establish the moral goodness of elective abortion generally. Exceptional tragedy cannot simply be converted into universal moral permission, and compassion for difficult circumstances must not relieve Christians of the responsibility to distinguish morally relevant intentions, actions and outcomes.
The Church Must Repent of Being Anti-Abortion Without Being Pro-Woman
There is another rebuke Christians urgently need to hear. It is possible to oppose abortion correctly while loving women poorly. Christians may post photographs of unborn children while ignoring pregnant women in crisis, denounce an abortion provider and then disappear when a frightened mother needs rent, childcare, medical care, protection from an abusive partner or assistance raising a disabled child. Such contradiction damages Christian witness because it suggests that concern for life ends at birth or that moral proclamation costs the Church nothing.
James asks what good it accomplishes to pronounce blessings upon needy people while refusing to provide what their bodies actually require (James 2:15–17). John is equally uncompromising, teaching that Christian love must exist not merely in speech but “in action and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18). A genuinely pro-life Church must therefore be more than anti-abortion. It must become radically hospitable to mothers, fathers and children in circumstances where obedience is costly.
Churches should become places where an unmarried pregnant woman does not fear humiliation, where fathers are held accountable rather than permitted to disappear, where adoption and foster care are practiced rather than merely praised, where pregnancy centers receive genuine support, where poor families find practical assistance, where disabled children are welcomed, and where women recovering from abortion are not treated as spiritual lepers. Truth and mercy must meet in Christian community. We cannot credibly say, “Choose life,” and then communicate, through neglect or indifference, “After you choose it, you are on your own.”
To the Woman Who Has Had an Abortion: The Gospel Is Better Than Redefining Sin
This is where Christian proclamation must sound radically different from mere political activism. If you have had an abortion, the biblical message is not that you are beyond redemption. If you pressured someone into an abortion, paid for one, performed one, encouraged one, concealed one or spent years defending one, Christ is not unable to save you. Scripture does not require us to minimize sin in order to maximize grace.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Scripture promises that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), and for those who belong to Christ, “there is now no condemnation” (Romans 8:1).
Christianity therefore does not need to declare sin holy in order to remove shame. The Gospel offers something infinitely greater: forgiveness through the crucified and risen Christ. We do not heal the conscience by teaching that nothing morally serious occurred. We heal the conscience by pointing to a Savior whose blood is sufficient even when something terribly serious occurred. Grace does not require moral denial; grace requires a cross. The Church should therefore become a place where repentance is possible precisely because forgiveness is real.
A Word of Rebuke to Christian Teachers
The warning becomes especially solemn for those who teach Christianity publicly. James writes, “Not many should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we will receive a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). Academic credentials, ordination, professorships, denominational approval, ecclesiastical office, compassion, sincerity and political popularity do not exempt theology from biblical judgment. Every Christian teacher remains beneath the Word of God and therefore possesses no authority to correct Scripture according to personal moral preference.
For that reason, Dr. Peters, where your teaching attempts to attribute to Jesus moral approval that cannot be established from His revealed Word, Christians are right to resist it. Where abortion is presented not merely as something reluctantly tolerated in tragic circumstances but positively described as love, grace, blessing or moral good, Christians are right to ask whether biblical categories have been reversed. Where a hypothetical Jesus is constructed to bless contemporary reproductive ideology, Christians must insist upon returning to the actual Jesus of Scripture.
This is not hatred. Indeed, if Christians genuinely believe false doctrine harms souls, silence would not necessarily be loving. Paul teaches that the Lord’s servant must correct opponents with gentleness, hoping that God may grant repentance leading to knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 2:24–26). Christian correction should therefore call teachers and churches back to Scripture, back to the Christ who actually revealed Himself, back to a theology in which God defines good rather than human autonomy, and back to a compassion large enough to embrace both frightened mothers and their unborn children. It calls us back to the cross, where neither truth nor grace must be sacrificed.
The Final Warning Is for All of Us
Before conservative Christians finish applauding that rebuke, Christ turns the mirror toward us because the temptation to reconstruct Jesus is not confined to progressive Christianity. A political conservative can manufacture a Jesus who blesses nationalism, materialism, cruelty toward immigrants, indifference to poverty or the worship of political power. A progressive can manufacture a Jesus who blesses abortion, sexual autonomy or whatever contemporary liberation demands. A prosperity preacher can manufacture a Jesus obsessed with wealth, a nationalist can manufacture a tribal Jesus, and therapeutic culture can manufacture a Jesus whose highest purpose is making people feel permanently affirmed. The idols differ, but the underlying temptation remains the same: we want a Christ who agrees with us.
Discipleship begins when we permit Christ to contradict us. The Christian question is therefore not, “Can I find a version of Jesus who supports my position?” The Christian question is what God has revealed and whether we are willing to submit to that revelation even when it confronts us, our political tribe, our academic assumptions, our personal desires or our preferred moral causes.
Jesus asked His disciples, “But you... who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Every generation must answer that question. Our generation faces a particularly subtle temptation because apostasy does not always arrive shouting that Christianity is false. Sometimes it keeps Christian vocabulary, speaks of Jesus, quotes Scripture, preaches sermons, wears clerical clothing, talks constantly about love, invokes justice, appeals to compassion and continues calling itself Christian. Yet the decisive test remains whether Jesus is being allowed to speak or whether we are speaking through Him. There is an eternal difference between the two.
We therefore do not have permission to rewrite the Beatitudes, nor do we possess authority to baptize the spirit of the age. We do not need a Jesus reconstructed according to twenty-first-century moral preferences. We need the Jesus who actually is: the Jesus who receives sinners but commands repentance, who displays immeasurable compassion without redefining holiness, through whom all human life was created, who speaks truth even when crowds walk away, who died for the guilty, who rose from the dead, and who will judge the living and the dead.
The Church’s calling in an age of moral confusion therefore remains exactly what it has always been. We must not reinvent Christ, attempt to improve Him or place our words into His mouth. We must hear Him, obey Him and proclaim Him. Where we have conformed Christ to ourselves rather than ourselves to Christ, the proper Christian response is repentance. Only when the Church again submits its moral imagination to the revealed Christ can it confront the world without merely reproducing another version of the world’s struggle for power.