The Moral Compass of Law in Light of Divine Commands

Discover the divine blueprint for government authority and unravel the scriptural wisdom within Romans 13:1-4 as we examine the delicate balance between church and state powers. In this critical election year, Gospel Grit brings you a thought-provoking journey through the intersection of politics and spirituality. We're not shying away from the tough questions: How does God's sovereignty inform our understanding of political authority? Where do the church's responsibilities end and government's begin, especially in light of potentially oppressive regimes? This discussion is vital for anyone seeking to navigate the murky waters where faith and civic duty converge.

Then, we shift gears to address the foundation of our legal system and its roots in God's moral law. Can the Ten Commandments serve as a modern legal framework? And more importantly, does our allegiance lie with divine ordinances or man-made laws when the two are at odds? As we explore the enforcement of morality and our ultimate accountability, this episode promises to challenge your perspective and deepen your understanding of how these principles apply in society today. It's a conversation that reverently applies the Word to our lives for His glory, and one that you won't want to miss.

If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe, follow, share the episode, like, or check us out in YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvAv52Ldvfjf4CgYhYTZig

As always, thank you for watching Gospel Grit, where we seek to apply the Word of God, to the people of God, to the glory of God.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome everyone to Gospel Grit. As always, the channel where we seek to apply the Word of God to the people of God for the glory of God, as is never changing, I am Taylor Windham, your host for the show, so tonight is going to be a very special one. I know I say that a lot, and this one should be shorter because it's going to be a two-parter, and when I say a two-parter it's not really a series. I just thought it was best to break up these episodes in two distinct segments or portions, and hopefully that becomes clear here in a second. So one of the things that I decided I wanted to talk about was the church and the state. This is an election year. We've got all kinds of reasons to believe that the government is doing all kinds of nefarious things behind the scenes stuff that we know about, that is certainly underhanded, and stuff that we don't. If you look at politics now, we are just beginning the crazy cycle of what will be the presidential election of 2024, held in November. So not that I'm averse to being political on this channel, but we want to apply the word of God to the people of God, right? So I don't want to exegete the culture too much here. You guys have eyes, you have ears, you know what's going on around you.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Okay, so if you would turn in your copy of the scriptures with me as we look at these, what is it? Four verses, and start to unpack exactly how we go about thinking about the church and our role with it. So, Romans 13,. That's the logical place to go. Romans 13, starting at verse 1. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment, For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval, For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. And again, that's Romans 13, 1 through 4.

Speaker 1: 2:42

So I want to address a few things to set us up for part two. Part two is going to be the conclusion of this, where we really stop and look at where we draw the lines. But first I want to really ask us some pointed questions and help frame this. So the first thing to look at in this text, as I'm sure many of you Christians have been asking this question where does the church's authority start and where does the state's authority stop, and vice versa? At what point do church and state have an overlap, if they ever do, and in what ways do they seem to fight and struggle for power? Is there a separation of church and state? Is that biblical? Is it not biblical? Is it something that we shouldn't push for? We're going to try to tackle some of these.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So, number one the government is appointed you saw that in verse one Like everything else, by God and for God and to God. But it's for our good Notice in verse number 1, when we talk about governments, and again governments that are set up, ordained by God, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. So this brings us to an obvious question If everything has been instituted by God and it has everything that occurs is instituted and foreordained and planned by God. I 100% believe that. I hope that's clear on this channel by now. Then what about the bad governments? We see what's going on in Haiti right now. In present day, there's the fall of the government in Haiti, and it's been a failed state in so many ways for a very long time. But now we're seeing cannibal gangs right, those are the reports coming out of Haiti that there are cannibal gangs, for example, run by a guy named Barbecue that's his nickname, right and that he is burning people alive in the streets and in some odd cases, he is cannibalizing them after they've been burned to death. So what about governments like that? What about street gangs? What about fascist governments? What about atheistic communist governments? Right? The bloodshed from atheistic governments in the 20th century has killed more than the previous 19 centuries put together. We know that statistically, it's not really up for debate.

Speaker 1: 5:15

So, is everything appointed by God, or is it just the good governments? Is it kings, Is it queens? Is it parliaments? Is it senates? Is it house of representatives? Is it presidents? Does God only care about bureaucracies? Does he only care about monarchies and oligarchies and democracies, or does he care about people who are in oppression right now, For example, the 2 billion people who are in the Chinese Communist Party's clutch right now in the country of China. Are those people that God cares about as he instituted that government? The answer is yes, he has instituted that government.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Romans 13.1 makes very clear that all governments are appointed by God, not some all. Just like all things good, bad and ugly are appointed by God. Well, governments are no different. So then we have to ask ourselves so Calvin said, for example, that if God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers. So if he gives them wicked rulers, then that could in some sense be God's judgment. He appoints those wicked rulers because that's what the nation seeks, Right?

Speaker 1: 6:26

We see in Israel, in the Old Testament, that God was not going to give them a king. That was not His intention at all. He wanted to be their king, and they demanded a king, and they wanted Saul. They wanted the people that they picked, right, they wanted someone, and God's point was no, I am your king, I'm your ruler, I'm your God, I can serve all of those purposes, and they didn't want that right.

Speaker 1: 6:53

So the government is instituted by God. It's the physical instrument that God uses to restrain evil in this world. So notice in verse let's see look four, three, let's go to three, For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but they're a terror to bad conduct. Would you have no fear of the one who is an authority? Of course not. That's rhetorical Paul's writing. Then do what is good and you will receive his approval. Verse four for he is God's servant. The civil magistrate, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

Speaker 1: 7:41

So the last part is very important for what we're discussing at this moment, and that is that the civil magistrate, the government, is God's bullwhip of sorts. It's God's measure to control and restrain wickedness from a societal and governmental level. Right? So we have laws. You can't have a society, you can't have civilization without laws. And because we have laws, those laws are meant to physically bridle and restrain some of the human wickedness that is obviously pervasive.

Speaker 1: 8:19

We see in Romans 3, as I've been referencing a lot lately, there is no one righteous, no, not one. There is no one who seeks God. They have altogether become worthless. The poison of vipers is on their lips and their feet are swift to shed blood. We see that in Romans 3 and many other passages. The point is, if man was totally pure, if man was totally sanctified, if man was totally obedient to God's law and we'll get to that then there would be no need for the human implementation of government, for civil magistrates, to restrain people's evil. But because people still sin and because most people never stop sinning, right, we all sin to our last day. What I mean is most people never come to Christ. Matthew 7 makes that clear. And so because most people never come to Christ, then the restraining power of the Holy Spirit within someone is not present, at least not in the way that it fully is within the Christian, sanctifying us and changing us, conforming us to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the government is the instrument that God uses to physically restrain evil in the world. The government is the human implementation of God's law.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Now here's where we get into a really interesting discussion and a really interesting topic. So the question naturally arises do we believe that the law of God is to be implemented by human governments or magistrates? To put it a different way, when we discuss laws, we need to ask ourselves the question, and this is one I want you to really think hard about. Don't just have a knee-jerk reaction to this. Think hard biblically. I hope you have a copy of the Scriptures, Open them up, Look at them. Look at Romans 13. Look at other passages.

Speaker 1: 10:21

If we are going to have human laws that govern human society, and we certainly do then why ought our laws not be Christian? So to say this in a more clear manner if we are going to have laws and I just argued that every society has to have laws every society has to have a moral reference point, not only a moral reference point, but a legal reference point that implements a set of morality and excludes another set of morality. So my argument and this is certainly not original to me, but it's also sort of common sense if you really just think on this for a second If we're going to have laws, why are they not Christian laws? Every single set of laws is meant to implement a worldview, right? So a set of laws is meant to structure someone's worldview around a system of behavior, right? The whole idea of a law is that this ought to be done and this ought not to be done. Right.

Speaker 1: 11:35

The speed limit sign says 40 miles per hour. That's a state law. I am not to go over the speed limit, but I am welcome to go under the speed limit. I can't go faster than 40 miles per hour, but I can go slower. It encourages me Nay, it commands me to go slower than 40 miles per hour. Right, there are laws against murder. We have all kinds of murder charges here in America, as we ought to.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Any civilization that does not protect life both the unborn, the preborn and those who are out of the womb and living independently If they cannot protect that, like we see in Haiti, then they are a failed civilization. We all understand the fundamental right that a human has to have their life protected, right, so we have to think hard about. If we have laws, they're going to be governed by a set of morality, and I may need to stop the video here and just go into the next one and really unpack this. If we're going to have laws, they are going to, of necessity, be touting a moral compass. They're going to be based upon a worldview. They're going to be in honor of serving a God. They're going to be in honor of serving a God. They're going to be dedicated to a way that someone or a group of people, a society, ought to behave and, by stark, the world.

Speaker 1: 13:10

If we're going to have laws, should those laws not be intrinsically, extrinsically and overtly Christian?

Speaker 1: 13:21

If God has given us a law, if he's given us moral law at the very least say the Ten Commandments then the question that I pose to you is if that's the case and we're going to have to serve a God with laws that we have, and it's going to be operating on a worldview and it's going to be for human flourishing with an ultimate goal, then why should our laws not be based upon what God has said in God's word that he has revealed to us? Most of our laws in our Judeo-Christian American sort of societal fabric, whatever's left most of our laws are, for sure, laws that are based upon Judeo-Christian principles, and particularly the Ten Commandments. So we have to ask the question who do we serve and where does government factor in with how we play the game that we play when it comes to morality and how we impose morality on other people? So we'll get more into the two kingdom versus one kingdom approach in the next video.

Speaker 1: 14:29

This may end up being a three-part one, but I'm trying to keep them short. So thank you guys for joining us on this episode of Gospel Grit. As we have briefly discussed how government plays a role in restraining human evil, Now we have to turn our attention to, now that human evil is restrained, what will that mean for how we go about implementing that restraint here and now? Thank you guys for joining us on Gospel Grit, where our goal, hopefully, like always, is to apply the Word of God to the people of God for the glory of God. I'll see you guys on the next episode.