Seth Udinski, FISM News

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On November 15, 2022, humanity exceeded a historic milestone, as the global population officially hit 8 billion for the first time in world history.

The number of living people has increased exponentially as of late, having tripled since 1950 and increasing by 1 billion within the last generation alone.

According to statistics from the Tribune India, the last 200 years have seen the largest growth of the global population in world history. As recently as the year 1800, the global population was under 1 billion and at the start of the 20th century, the number sat at around 2 billion.

The rapid advancements in health care have been a large factor in the rapid population growth as infant mortality rates and life expectancy have gone in opposite directions, dramatically decreasing and increasing respectively over the past 100 years.

The United Nations Population Fund celebrated the news, saying on Twitter,

8 billion hopes. 8 billion dreams. 8 billion possibilities. Our planet is now home to 8 billion people … Together we can build a world that allows 8 billion of us to thrive.

Additional reports indicate that the population of India, which currently sits at 1.41 billion, is slated to exceed China next year. China currently holds the global lead at 1.43 billion.

Experts predict that the world’s population will continue to grow until the latter part of this century, believing it will cap at just over 10 billion around 2080. Experts are concerned that eventual population decline could have potentially devastating effects on humanity as the workforce will not be able to support an aging population.

It should be noted that the massive growth of the population in the last 70 years has been severely stunted by the rise of legalized abortion in the western world.

Certain estimates indicate that over 1 billion babies have been aborted worldwide in the last 50 years alone. Even with a conservative calculation, those lives lost would have made the global humanity count far greater now than it is. It is likely that humanity would have met the 8 billion mark decades ago had so many babies not been killed in the womb.

Author’s Biblical Analysis

The abortion connection to this article highlights a grave and vital piece of wisdom for Christians as we consider the rapid growth of humanity in the course of its history. Certainly, there are other words of biblical wisdom, such as the connection to God’s command to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” as well as an encouraging word about humanity as the crowning glory of God’s creation.

But I want us to consider this with humility and sobriety. The word of biblical wisdom from this report is as follows — Humans are great sinners, and we are greatly in need of a Savior.

The reality of this report is that as humankind grows and expands, sin expands with it. We would do well to consider the words of Genesis 6:5:

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

These words described the condition of the world between the Fall of Man and the catastrophic flood. The Bible tells that there were 1,056 years between the creation of Adam and the birth of Noah. Noah was 600 when the flood came. This speaks volumes about the utter depravity of man. Mankind had become so degenerate in such a short time period that God decided to wipe them all away, save one righteous man and his family.

Friends, if Noah’s world was that bad, how much worse has this world become?

We see it all around us. We see an utter disgust and disregard for human life (the millions of babies murdered in the womb each year prove that) as well as a complete attack on the created order of gender and sexuality. Additionally, we see murders and gossip and slander and war, and all other sorts of sins.

The plight of Genesis 6:5 applies to our world, perhaps even more than it did before the flood.

So this brings us to the sobering truth of it all — we desperately need a Savior.

We have — all of us — woefully missed the mark of God’s standard of righteousness. We are, in ourselves, guilty before God. We need a Savior. We are “great” sinners, in terms of magnitude. We are massive sinners, and we are horribly good at it.

Thanks be to God, who has provided us with such a great Savior in the Lord Jesus Christ!

In Christ, we have a mediator, one who stands in the people’s place before God, but we also have a substitutionary sacrifice. In other words, it should have been you and me on the cross, paying the full penalty for our sins. Sin requires death (Romans 6:23), God would have been perfectly within His rights to turn His back on all of us. Instead, He did so on His Son.

The beauty of the gospel is what theologians call “double imputation.” On the cross, our sin was imputed, or placed, on Jesus Christ, and simultaneously His righteousness was imputed on us. God treated His perfect Son as we deserve, and because of Jesus, God has now treated us as His sons and daughters.

Believer, as you ponder how humanity has expanded to the unfathomable number of 8 billion and with it so has come the expansion of sin and hurt be encouraged with the gospel.

Remember you have a Savior who stood in your place and died on the cross, providing the answer to the problem of sin in the world. And remember this Savior, though He truly died, did not stay dead. He rose from the grave, conquering sin and death and giving His people, who have been made righteous in the sight of the Father, complete victory.

What great news for the 8 billion people of the world that desperately need to hear it!

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.  – 2 Corinthians 5:21