Countless Answered Prayers: Thanking God for the End of Roe

The Constitution of the United States “does not confer a right to abortion.”

So reads the majority opinion in the Supreme Court decision (Dobbs v. Jackson) handed down on Friday. It continues, “Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

As Americans, we have reason to rejoice. The overturning of an unjust law, and “one of the most significant acts of justice in modern history” (Joe Carter), is reason to rejoice. According to the Court document, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” It was an “abuse of judicial authority.”

But far more important, as Christians, and as a church, we have reason to rejoice. Mere Americans might “thank [their] lucky stars,” but as Christians, we thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On the one hand, we thank him for every good that comes to us as creatures. It is good for a temporal nation to have an egregious wrong struck down, and good for us as humans to have the Roe decision, and all it came to represent, challenged and overturned. And the act of thanking God is not insignificant for Christians. We dare not rush past this.

One of the most basic problems with our race, says Romans 1, is that “although [we] knew God, [we] did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” Or to say it positively, to thank God is to honor God and so fulfill the very reason we exist. God made us, in one sense, to thank him: thank him for life, for food, for drink, for beautiful days, for shelter, for friends and family, and most of all for Jesus and redemption of sinners in him.

But we not only thank God generally for surprising turns of providence. We also thank him specifically for answered prayers. Many in this room, and countless millions in the last half century, have prayed for this very day. We have prayed that God overturn Roe.

Oh, we have prayed other prayers too. This is not the end of the cause for life, but it does mark a significant new season. And significant prayers have been answered. Prayers that many of us didn’t know if we’d live to see answered. Prayers that many who went before us didn’t see answered. Countless Christians, among others, have prayed that God would do what seemed at times like the unthinkable. They prayed, they gave, they marched, and they died before seeing today. We honor them.

But far and away, we honor God. We thank God.

So, the exhortation this morning is this: Thank God, full stop, that Roe and Casey have been overturned.

Time will come to say more. Next Sunday, on the eve of July 4th, Pastor Joe will say more.

But today we thank God. We celebrate God. We don’t rush off to the next to-do without pausing to say, “Thank you, God, for answering, in a moment, more prayers than any of us can count.”

Let us pray.

Father in heaven, thank you. As your people, redeemed by the blood of your Son, conscious that you have made us and we are yours, we rejoice at the striking down of a 50-year-old egregious wrong that wreaked inestimable horror. Father, we put our hands on our mouths. How can we even fathom the loss of a thousand lives, then a thousand thousands, and then 63 million? We are undone to even begin pondering it.

And we do so, standing before you, and your perfect holiness, not as self-righteous but as sinners. Forbid that this topic of abortion, and this ray of hope that is the overturning of Roe, make us pompous or proud. Father, all of us in this room stand before you as rebels in need of mercy, as sinners desperate for your grace. And so we own before you now our failings in the quiet of this moment.

Father in heaven, we have no other argument. We have no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me. Father, for those in this room who have sinned related to abortion, we claim mercy of Christ. For our apathy. For our many distractions. For our idleness. For our selfishness. For our unrighteous anger. For our lust. For greed. For our pride. Father, we claim the blood of your Son, his perfect life, and his sufficient help to move us forward by his Spirit. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.