Holy Writ
“Choose life, that you and your offspring may live,loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days…” -Deuteronomy 30:19-20
This will make some people angry, but it’s true: Those license plates that say “choose life” to help support the pro-life position? They reference a verse that has nothing to do with saving the lives of the preborn.
While I fully support the pro-life movement, Deuteronomy 30:19 is not the verse to use. Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1, among other passages, clearly reveal God’s view of human life and its priceless value. But Deuteronomy 30:19 speaks of following the Lord. It is a spiritual commitment that God promised would result in blessed life for his people in the land of Israel.
If we could recapture the original thought of these verses, we would see God calling his people to love that results in commitment and obedience. The One who had led his people from bondage and forty years in the wilderness had offered a way for his people to dwell in the land successfully. While they would often fail in the days to come, his commitment to his people would be unfailing. He would ultimately send the Messiah as the suffering servant (Isaiah 53), with the promise of a yet future return when all would be made right, complete with his people dwelling with him in a kingdom where Messiah reigns from Jerusalem and ultimately created a new heaven, a new earth, and a new heavenly city to live with his children forever.
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Dillon Burroughs is the author and coauthor of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.
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