Mr. President - You May Not Appoint A Pro-Choice Judge

As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I am appreciative and I join Douglas Wilson's warning to President Obama regarding the appointment of a pro-choice judge to the Supreme Court:

You may not do this thing. And if by the time this message is preached, you have already placed the name of such a person in nomination, you are commanded in the name of the Lord Jesus to repent, and withdraw that name from consideration. The one to whom you ultimately answer is the Lord Jesus Christ, and not the American people. And this Jesus, who is the Lord of all presidents and parliaments, kings and congresses, forbids what you are in the midst of doing. And so I say it again. You may not.

You said in the campaign that you did not have "a litmus test" for your nominees, but it is important for you to know and recognize that the Lord Jesus does have a litmus test for judges. He requires them to hate injustice and to judge righteously (Dt. 1:16), to defend the fatherless (Is. 1:23; Jer. 5:28), and to keep the land from being soaked with the blood of innocents (Hos. 6:6-8; Ps. 10:18). Judges must adjudicate with godly wisdom (Prov. 8:16). Judges must recognize that there is a Judge above them, one to whom they answer. The Lord is our judge, lawgiver and king (Is. 33:22). And judges who refuse to acknowledge the wisdom of heaven are judges that the Lord will bring down to nothing. He makes the judges of the earth as vanity (Is. 40:23).

...You have no mandate to allow for the summary executions of anyone. You have no authority to make whether or not a baby is allowed to take a breath of air a matter of somebody else’s political "choice." That is not yours to give. You have no right to deprive anyone of life without due process. And to address the crowning hypocrisy in all of this, you have no authority to invert the meanings of empathy and cruelty. You have stated that one of the characteristics of your nominee would be "empathy." But the treatment that unborn children receive in this calloused and cruel nation of ours is a photo negative of true empathy. We dismember little children, we kill them with saline injections, we suck out their brains with high powered equipment, and you want a nominee who will keep this ghastly business going, and you want one who will call what he is doing empathy. But the prophet Isaiah has declared an authoritative word—"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" (Is 5:20-21). Woe, in other words, to those who do exactly what you are doing.

Furthermore, the one who is the resurrection and the life, the one who is the source of all our life, is the Lord Jesus. The Lord gives, and so the Lord is the only one with the authority to take away. You did not give life, and so unless you have direct warrant from the one who did give life, you have no authority whatever to take it away. This is why the magistrate can execute a murderer after a fair trial; God has given that kind of authority to the magistrate (Rom. 13:4). But without authorization from heaven, the capacity to kill does not confer the right to kill. Murder on a large scale, or conducted in a highly organized fashion, does not mysteriously turn into something else.

On Monday, President Obama selected Sonia Sotomayor to be the next Supreme Court Justice.
Where will she stand on this issue?

Download and listen to Douglas Wilson's sermon.

For the manuscript see here.

For the outline see here.