An ancient letter dating back to the first century BC was found written by a man named Hilarion who tells his wife: “I beg and entreat you, take care of the little one, and as soon as we receive our pay I will send it up to you.” He then tells her: “If by chance you bear a child, if it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, cast it out.”1 Craig Keener notes that in New Testament times “The father had the right to refuse to rear a newborn, even against the mother’s objections.”2 Infanticide was a widespread practice in those days, which came in the form of exposing newborns to the elements to die.

Widows were also subject to exploitation. One of the reasons Jesus condemned Jewish scribes is they “devour widows houses” (Mk.12:40; cf. Lk. 20:47).3 They were either requiring them to pay “extensive tithes” or being merciless in “legal decisions” against widows,4 whatever the case widowhood left many women destitute.

I believe the abovementioned social dynamics were in mind when James wrote, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas. 1:27). Religion is the devotion people have to the worship of deities through the carrying on of rituals. The apostle believes authentic religion is expressed through compassion for one another. What is meant by “pure and undefiled religion” is Christian piety. It is a piety that calls for compassion and consecration.

Pure and undefiled religion has a genuine concerned for the welfare of others. James’ teaching on the caring of orphans and widows is a reiteration of what God has already revealed to His people. For example, the prophet Isaiah said, “Learn to do good; | seek justice, | correct oppression; | bring justice to the fatherless, |plead the widow’s cause” (Isa. 1:17). David likewise tells us that the “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows | is God in his holy habitation” (Psa. 68:5). The worshipers of God the Father share same fatherly kind of love towards the least, lost and lowly of the world.

Genesis speaks of humans being created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). The life of those created in the image of God was sacred and the image of God is desecrated with the shedding of blood (Gen. 9:6). Each divine image bearer has intrinsic worth whatever their status in life.

Jesus even taught about the enthroned Son of Man identifying with the least, lost, and lowly of the world. Acts of compassion extended the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned is likewise an act of compassion extended to the Lord. Worship of the Lord is interwoven with compassion for the downtrodden. On Judgement Day, the Son of Man will say to the righteous, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,” but to the unrighteous, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25:40, 45).

This concern for the needs of others is an integral part of the very social architecture of first century Christianity.

Pure and undefiled religion additionally means “to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas. 1:27b). This activity is summed up in the word consecration. Consecration “the act of setting apart, or dedicating, something or someone for God’s use.” It is refusing to follow after the corruptive influence of a sinful and fallen world. Rather, the Christian community is to influence the world for the better. Christ calls the Christian to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, which shines brightly so that the world may see their good works and glorify God (Matt. 5:13-14). Caring for widows and orphans served as a way the Christian could influence the world for the better.

Care for widows and orphans is practically a self-evident truth. Ancients in general understood compassion shown to one’s kin in need was the right thing to do.6 The troubles came with the failing to do the right thing. Believers were not to be conformed to the world and its culture of corruption; rather, they were to be ambassadors of Christ, and citizens of a kingdom not of this world.

Christians responded to the needs of their community. The very first deacons were appointed to the task of insuring none of the widows in the body of Christ, whether more Jewish or Hellenistic in ways, received the support meant for them (Acts 6:1-7). The practice of rescuing orphans was also practiced, and even passed on to subsequent generations of Christians. For example, Justin Martyr (c. 100/110-165) told his generation: “But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God” (Apology 27).7 Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215)8 and Lactantius (c. 260-c.330)9 likewise condemned exposing infants.

The biblical ethic for respecting the sanctity of infant life is of supreme significant today that can never go unmentioned.10 Some might be skeptical about the practice of infanticide ever happening in the twenty-first century United States of America, but there are influential modern thinkers who are fine with its resurgence. Biologist Jerry Coyne back in 2017 blogged, “If you are allowed to abort a fetus that has a severe genetic defect, microcephaly, spina bifida, or so on, then why aren’t you able to euthanize that same fetus just after it’s born? I see no substantive difference that would make the former act moral and the latter immoral.” Coyne further adds, “A child falling in any of the classes above should be considered as a subject for euthanasia, and it should be legal if the doctors and parents concur.”11 Coyne is not alone. In 1993, bioethicist Pete Singer suggested that no newborn should be considered a person until 30 days after birth and that an attending physician should be able to kill disabled babies on the spot. He reasoned that infants were not persons because they lacked self-awareness.12 Along the same line, psychologist Steven Pinker asserted in 1998 that laws prohibiting infanticide are difficult to defend but a species preserving evolutionary adaptation likely drives the impulse of some to discard newborns.13

The common denominator with the abovementioned weak attempts to justify infanticide is a failure to recognize a child has personhood from conception. The developing child inside the womb is not just a potential life; rather, it is an actual life. Clinton Wilcox with Life Training Institute explains: “To say that a human embryo is a potential person is misguided because it fails to take into account the fact that the reason the embryo eventually will become an adult is because she is a human being with a human nature, and it is this nature that directs her development as a human being. As she has a rational, volitional nature, she will develop all of the present capacities to perform personal activities. Human embryos are not potential persons; they are actual persons with potential.”14

The sanctity of life that moved Christians to rescue infants exposed to the elements applies to the preservation to the life developing inside womb. Abortion involves an unnatural and intentional termination of the pregnancy. Hank Hanegraaff puts it this way: “Abortion is the painful killing of an innocent human being.”15 Reduction of the numbers of abortions in the United States is a good thing, but as it stands that there have been over 62 million terminations since 1973 with close to 9 million performed by Planned Parenthood. Moreover, within the United States, over 700,000 abortions happened in 2020.16 There are still lives to be rescued. Personhood begins at conception, the developing human inside the womb is a person, and continues to be a person outside the womb from infancy to adulthood. Children need to be defended from those who intend their extermination. Their lives matter.

Pure and undefiled religion shows compassion to widows and orphans. The least, lost, and lowly of the world are never forgotten. Christians do profess the truth passed on to them from Christ, but they also live according to the example set by Christ. They live in a sinful and fallen world, but the sinful and fallen must never become the source of their corruption.

— WGN

  1. C.K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (New York: HarperSanfrancisco, 1956, 1987), 40
  2. Craig S. Keener, “Family and Household,” Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 359.
  3. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
  4. Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), Mk 12:40.
  5. Ronald F. Youngblood, F. F. Bruce, and R. K. Harrison, Thomas Nelson Publishers, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1995).
  6. Craig Keener notes, ”In Judaism, charity distributors made sure that widows and orphans were cared for if they had no relatives to help them; such charity is also part of the visiting envisioned here. Greek society did look out for freeborn orphans, but not other ones. Jewish people visited the bereaved especially during the first week of their bereavement but also afterward, and they likewise visited the sick. Many Greco-Roman writers also valued visiting the sick and bereaved” (Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, Jas 1:27).
  7. Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 172.
  8. Condemning certain women who had become so self-absorbed in sating their own carnal desires they lost their sense of compassion, Clement writes, “And though maintaining parrots and curlews, they do not receive the orphan child; but they expose children that are born at home, and take up the young of birds, and prefer irrational to rational creatures; although they ought to undertake the maintenance of old people with a character for sobriety, who are fairer in my mind than apes, and capable of uttering something better than nightingales; and to set before them that saying, ‘He that pitieth the poor lendeth to the Lord;’ and this, ‘inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it to Me’ ”(The Instructor 3.4). Cited from Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885).
  9. [1]Lactantius writes, “What are they whom a false piety compels to expose their children? Can they be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as a prey to dogs, and as far as it depends upon themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than if they had strangled them? Who can doubt that he is impious who gives occasion for the pity of others? For, although that which he has wished should befall the child—namely, that it should be brought up—he has certainly consigned his own offspring either to servitude or to the brothel?” (Divine Institutes 6.20). Cited from Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. William Fletcher, vol. 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886).
  10. This is never to the exclusion of caring for widows or the destitute. Compassion must be extended to them too. But, there are matters pertaining to infant life that must be addressed here.
  11. Jerry Coye, “Should one be allowed to euthanize severely deformed or doomed newborns?” Why Evolution is True? https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/07/13/should-one-be-allowed-to-euthanize-severely-deformed-or-doomed-newborns/Listen to the response from Hank Hanegraaff at https://www.equip.org/broadcast/abortion-infanticide-qa/
  12. Cf. Scott Klusendorf, “Peter Singer’s Bold Defense of Infanticide,” Christian Research Journal, 23, 3 [2001]: https://www.equip.org/article/peter-singers-bold-defense-of-infanticide/
  13. Robert L. Morrison, “Nice Girls Do: Steven Pinker’s Evolutionary ‘Explanation’ of Infanticide,” Christian Research Journal 20, 4 [1998]: https://www.equip.org/article/steven-pinkers-evolutionary-explanation-of-infanticide/
  14. Clinton Wilcox, “The Human Embryo: Potential Person or Person with Great Potential?” Christian Research Journal, 40, 3 [2017]: https://www.equip.org/article/the-human-embryo-potential-person-or-person-with-great-potential/
  15. Hank Hanegraaff, The Complete Bible Answer Book: Collector’s Edition Revised and Updated (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2016), 439.
  16. “Number of Abortions — Abortion Counters,” November 1, 2020, http://www.numberofabortions.com/

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Published by Warren Nozaki

Hello, my name is Warren Nozaki. I typically blog on topics related to Christian apologetics. Check out what is posted, leave a comment if you like. I work at the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. I also create sonic landscapes on the electric guitar.

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