Known, Called, Named Before Birth

In Galatians 1:15-16, Paul described how God called him to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. “God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.” Note that Paul was called to ministry prior to his birth. He was called while he was still within his mother’s womb.

By making this assertion, Paul identifies himself with other men in the Bible who also were called by God prior to their birth.

God told the prophet Jeremiah that, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you were born, I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). Jeremiah was known, blessed and appointed to be a prophet, before he took his first breath.

The prophet Isaiah shares a similar experience. He states that God “called Me from the womb; from the body of My mother He named Me” (Isaiah 49:1). Isaiah means “God is salvation.” His name attested to the reason God made him, “[God] formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him,” (Isaiah 49:5).

Isaiah preached the salvation that was coming through the Messiah who would be the means of salvation for Israel and all nations “So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

King David offers one of the most important insights. God knew him before he was a completely formed baby. He knew him from the moment of conception. “You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb…Your eyes have seen my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:13,16). Human development begins with a single cell that divides repeatedly. Early in the process, this mass of cells, this “unformed substance” was seen by the eyes of God as the baby they were becoming.

Life does not begin at birth or at the point of viability, it begins at conception. God knows each individual from the moment of conception. He knows them and is involved in their development. “Everyone who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made” (Isaiah 43:7).

God’s love (which began when we were in our mother’s womb) carries on after our birth, throughout all our years “You who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you!” (Isaiah 46:3-4)

God’s interactions with the unborn reach a new height in John the Baptist who was “filled with the Holy Spirit” even before he was born. The Holy Spirit enabled John to leap for joy in his mother’s womb when Mary, while she was pregnant with Jesus, came to visit John’s mother (Luke 1:15,41).

From conception, God knows and loves us.