Kuyperianism and Law

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

I think it was a couple of these Sunday nights ago, Sean got to speak on Kyperianism and sex. And a lot of you guys came out to hear that. Tonight you’re going to have to settle for a sexy topic of law. But hopefully you’ll find it very beneficial as we get into it. Again, this is a continuation of our series on the centers and and circumferences, it’s called Kiperianism and the Law. For those of you that are not yet familiar with the term Kiperianism, that’s just a fancy word that we have coined to embrace a set of understandings of what it means to believe in the sovereignty of God. Of course, Kiperianism comes from Abraham Kiper, the Dutch theologian from 100 plus years ago, and he truly believed in the sovereignty of God, and then he fleshed that out in his own life in a myriad of ways.

And so we’ve just taken the term Kyperianism to mean that we believe in the sovereignty of God and we believe it matters in all kinds of spheres of life, including the law. When you hear the word law, what comes to mind? What is it? What obligates one to obey it? When is it right to disobey a law? Are there laws that are binding on all people regardless of time and geography? What’s the relationship of law to morality and ethics? Who has the authority to make laws? What is so-called natural law? Does it even exist? Where does it come from? Imagine a previously unpopulated island where all of a sudden many people have just appeared, poof, and there’s a whole bunch of people.

They need to decide how they are going to coexist with each other. There’s really only two basic options that they have. One we would call the state of nature, if you will. This is where everyone basically does that, which is right in their own eyes. There’s no set of rules everyone is expected to live by. Now this option has some obvious problems, given man’s sin nature. The state of nature is basically the law of the jungle. Possession is nine tenths of the law. Might makes right. There are no inherent rights. Life is all about survival of the fittest. It’s kind of a Lord of the Flies sort of situation.

The other option is for people to organize in such a way that the common good of all is achieved. And in order for that to work, then compromises are gonna have to be made. Agreements will have to be reached on what the common good looks like. Once those standards are defined, some system will need to be put into place to ensure everyone abides by the rules. And hence, that’s where we get the idea of some kind of a magistrate. The people appoint a magistrate and says, your job is to make sure we all abide by the rules. Your job is to reward those who do good and to punish those who do evil.

Now, this structure, when it’s implemented right, helps mitigate the problem of sin’s effects on society. And then again, some of the most common forms of this type of society that we see today are monarchies, an aristocracy, or a polity. Ancient philosophers have long debated the relative merits of these systems showing the various pros and cons that come with them. When these systems go bad, then we end up with things like tyranny, where one person is the boss of everybody, or an oligarchy where a powerful elite group controls daily life, or a true democracy where the mob rules. People mistakenly say that we have a democracy, we’re governed by a democracy, that’s not true, we’re governed by a republic.

What is critical for any of these systems to work is the population’s agreement to be bound by the set of rules or laws, which includes the magistrates who are responsible for enforcing the laws, nobody is above the law. This governing principle is called the rule of law. It’s one of the most fundamental principles required for a truly just society to even exist. The term rule of law, when you get into it, you’re reading the philosophers, that term really dates back to only about the 19th century But we do see it in action as far back as civilizations like Hammurabi, time of Hammurabi, during the first dynasty of Babylon.

We clearly see it in the life of Israel, in the Old Testament. So this rule of law concept does go back pretty far. So this all sounds great, but what does it have to do with a Kuyperian worldview? To put it simply, the rule of law, as developed and implemented by Christians in the Western civilization tradition has resulted in the greatest blessing to mankind ever in human history. Again, we’ve had rule of law out there, but as Christians have developed the idea, as we have applied it, and we’ve developed the Western civilization, it’s brought about the greatest blessings and prosperity of mankind’s ever seen. The reason this is so is because the Christian understanding of law begins at the center with God’s law, and then it expands out to the circumferences of every sphere of life there is out there.

History is full of examples where people suffered horribly because the rule of law was based solely on men and not God’s laws. Think Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Venezuela. These are just a few examples where they have rule of law, but it’s man’s law not rooted at all in God’s law. Invariably, any society whose laws are not rooted in God’s laws will find itself ping-ponging between some form of tyranny or anarchy. That’s basically what you’re gonna see going on. Without God, men will always degenerate into a state where everyone does what is right in his own eyes until some tyrant rises up to help restore order.

And so as that is my way of introduction, then I basically have just two key points tonight, I think, around your kids’ corners. The first one is I wanna talk again about the rule of law and its foundations. So what is the basis for the rule of law? What makes for a good law versus a bad one? If society wants to reward those who do good and punish those who do evil, we need to know what good and evil even mean. These questions and more have occupied the minds of philosophers for millennium. Aristotle, for example, wrote, the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, et cetera.

It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state. Note his claim that humans have the perception of good and evil, but where did that come from? How did Aristotle even make that declaration to say such a thing? We Christians have an answer to those questions because we know that God has written his law on every human heart. Romans 2, 14 through 15 says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse themselves.

So right there very clearly Paul’s saying that human beings, because of what God has done, have a law principle at work in them, even if they don’t have a written law. In addition, we know God reveals himself in his creation for what can be known about God as plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, Paul says in Romans 1, 19 through 20. And then of course we have the actual written word of God itself, as 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17, you all know that well.

It tells us that his word is profitable for all of life. So God is amply revealed to us his law, which then in turn should be influencing our law. When reading about the origin of law, you’ll come across a discussion of what’s called natural law. This natural law is not to be confused with the natural law. It’s also used in reference to the physical laws of nature like gravity. So when I’m using the term natural law today, I’m using it in a different sense. I’m using it talking about those laws of nature that inform our conscience as to what we should or should not do. Paul alludes to this natural law in Romans 1, 26 through 27, where he condemns perverted forms of human sexuality.

Listen to how often he refers to nature as part of his argument, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. We know from these and other passages that the natural law is not a product of impersonal evolution. And we’re gonna talk more about that later. But life did not emerge from some primordial goo and start developing a moral code for how we should then live. That’s not how we got there. A law, in order to be a law, must carry a moral imperative in order for it to bind one’s conscience to obey.

Otherwise, it’s just an order backed up by the power of the magistrate to enforce it. This immediately then creates a problem for any attempts to create laws without regard for God’s laws. For any law to be morally binding, it must be derived from and never opposed to God’s law. Now we’ve already seen that God’s law is learned from scripture and what he’s revealed through natural law. Even though we can get a sense of the moral law from nature, we have to remember though that we are tainted because of our sin natures. And so scripture still has to remain supreme in determining what should be lawful or not. C.S. Lewis makes this point where he wrote, quote, “‘We insist that the fall consisted in three things, “‘a darkening of the light of reason, “‘an impairment of the power of the will, “‘and a corrupting of our affections.

“’From this it follows that without spectacles,’ “‘as Calvin expressed it. “‘The book of nature can no longer be read “‘such that neither from nature “‘nor from the light of our reason Can we know whether and if so, in what way, there is any means whereby we may escape the power and the guilt of our sin? From this flows the need for a further special revelation to be added to nature, having two purposes, both to teach us to understand, again, the book of nature, and open for us the path to reconciliation with God. So we receive a word of God in two-fold form, A word of God within the creation, and a word of God with which he adds two created things.

Christians have recognized the existence of natural law for many years. For example, the writers of the Canons of Dort recognized it. Those canons, the Canons of Dort were written back at a time when there was a controversy erupting among the Dutch churches. A gentleman by the name of Jacob Arminius, where we get Arminian theology from, He had written some statements opposing John Calvin’s teaching. So a group of Christians got together and they wrote these canons called the Canons of Dort. And I’m going to just read one excerpt where again they are referring to the natural law just so you can see that this idea has been in Christian thought for a long time.

So again reading from the canons, quote, Quote, there is to be sure a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall by virtue of which he retains some notion about God, natural things and the differences between what is moral and immoral and demonstrates a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God in conversion to him. So far in fact, that man does not use it rightly even in matters of nature in society, I think today. Instead, in various ways, he completely distorts this light, whatever its precise character, and suppresses it in unrighteousness.

In doing so, he renders himself without excuse before God. So again, we see the fact that they’re referring to, again, that there is such a thing as a natural law, that men do have it, but again, because of our sin natures, we either suppress it, or we’re just blind to the obvious truth that it’s speaking out. Those who deny God have a problem. And it’s what sets Kiparian understanding of law apart from every other understanding. If you do not believe in God, then you can’t accept the premises that a just law must find its germ in the law of God. Martin Luther again, quote, a just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law of the law of God.

And unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in an eternal and natural law. Now not only must valid laws be rooted in transcendent laws of God, when manmade laws go contrary to these, you end up with all manner of confusion and sin. Witness abortion, same sex mirage, gender fluidity, calls for reparations based on race. All of these things are a result of trying to come up with manmade laws apart from the law of God. The cultural chaos that ensues from unfounded laws was made also by the 18th century preacher by the name of Samuel West. In 1776, the then governor of Massachusetts, 1776, the governor of Massachusetts invited Reverend West to deliver a sermon on election day. Now, what do you think would be a good thing to talk about on election day when the governor has has just invited you to give a sermon to the people.

Well, Mr. West decided to speak on on the right to rebel against governors. I kind of wonder what the governor was thinking at that point. Well, in his sermon, West said, perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, He introduces confusion and disorder into society. Thus, where licentiousness begins, liberty ends. And of course, he’s inferring there that that natural law is derived from God’s law. So when we go against these laws of nature, we’re gonna get all kinds of crazy and chaos in our society.

Now contrast West’s statement with someone like John Dewey, who’s often called the father of modern American education. He said, there is no God and there is no soul. Hence there’s no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes. Pretty crazy stuff, huh? Father of modern education might give you a clue to where modern public education’s gone to write. By the way, one of Dewey’s close associates, Charles Potter, had said, what can theistic Sunday school meeting for an hour once a week do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching? Basically, it was a throwdown. It was like, yeah, bring your little week Sunday school. We’ll wipe, we’ll brainwash your kids. That’s not gonna hold up. Another person in the Dewey Camp, the 19th century French writer known as Stendhal proclaimed, quote, there is no such thing as natural law.

This expression is nothing but old nonsense. Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short need, is where everything comes from. So why does it matter to fuss about the nature of law? Isn’t it enough today just to say that, hey, we got laws and people should obey them?

It matters because law cannot exist outside a moral framework. All laws address the question of what one should or should not do. Every law, every law says something you should or should not do. That’s a moral question. This is the reason why it’s silly and it drives me nuts when I hear people say You can’t legislate morality. Every stinkin’ law out there legislates morality.

Every law makes a moral statement because it declares what you should or should not do. Even mundane laws like do not litter seek to enforce a moral concept that serves the common good. The problem of decoupling laws from morals should be pretty obvious. If a law is not based on a moral obligation, then it is not a law that binds your conscience. It’s merely another person or group’s preference. The only motivation to obey it is if you agree with it, or else if the consequence of not obeying it is great enough. You know, if the magistrate’s got a big enough stick to beat you with, well then, there’s a lot of laws he can make you obey.

In either case, conscience is not a factor. Good laws stem from good morals. Bad laws usually stem from bad morals. Now I say usually because you can try to codify a good moral in a bad way. For example, a good moral is to love your neighbor, but a bad loss stemming from that would require to pay your neighbor’s electric bill every month. Now, some equate being moral with being lawful, i.e. if I’m being lawful, I am moral. They think of themselves as a good person because they obey the laws. Based on that logic, a slave owner in the American South could have considered themselves to be a good moral person because slave ownership was legal at the time.

Any discussion of good, bad, or moral becomes problematic when you take God out of the equation. Many atheists claim that morality exists without God and can be derived through pure reason. But is that true? Can atheists make moral statements that are binding on everybody? atheist, neuroscientist, and author Abhijit Nascar wrote this, morality exists in the neurons as a natural sensation. Religion only tried to codify it. Now he literally went and grabbed that idea out of the air because there’s nothing to back that up. Christopher Pepper Hitchens claimed, morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.

Immanuel Kant believed that the death of dogma is the birth of morality. He argued that religious people, he argued that religious people should do their children a favor and not teach them about God until their moral foundation was established through the proper application of human reason. Did you get that? He said, whatever you think about God, do not tell your kids about God until you have established their moral framework through the proper thinking, reason, and then if you need to, then you can go back and try and tie it back to God. But again, the belief that somehow morality is something we can derive apart from God.

Well, there’s some problems with this kind of thinking. Atheists believe in materialism only. They deny divinity or the supernatural. To them, the human mind is simply a biological machine that has evolved over time. Every thought that the mind generates is just a result of chemical and electrical processes. It’s not something that you actually applied intelligence to, it’s just random firing going on up there. And I’ll pop the thought. It’s not based on anything other than materialistic processes. As an aside, I actually almost finished, I actually just finished reading Life After Google by George Gilder.

And he’s exploring what’s going to happen after Google’s the big thing, what technology, where’s it going. But he interviews a lot of the people behind the technology that drives Google and other large tech companies. And he delves into what drives them and their vision for the future. What I found was very interesting is that as he was talking to these guys, many of them really believe that they’re gonna get artificial intelligence to the point where it will in essence become God. It will replace the God we have today because we won’t need the old God anymore because we’ll have this God we’ve created ourselves.

As I’m listening to that, I’m just thinking, Tower of Babel 2.0, here we go. If every human thought, if every human thought is merely a result of neurons firing in random patterns, how have billions of brains over countless years coalesced around fairly common definitions of good and bad moral and moral behavior? You can go anywhere in the world and people are gonna say stealing somebody else’s stuff is a bad idea. How did billions of brains all coalesce on that idea if it’s just a materialistic process of just neurons firing randomly, and all of a sudden everybody agrees and stealing’s a bad idea? How can one brain come up with what good means and expect the next brain to agree?

Assertions about truth, goodness, or morality are meaningless outside of the individual. They can define it for themselves, but they have no authority to voice that on anybody else. Secularists who wish to explain man’s common understanding of morality apart from God really struggle to do it. They are trying to find a way to explain it, this common denominator we see, but they just have problems. Sociologist James Wilson writes in his book, the moral sense. What researchers find to be, now as I’m reading this, he’s a sociologist, he’s not a believer, I believe he’s an atheist, but listen to what he says, what researchers find to be binding everywhere are those rules governing the fundamental conflicts of everyday intimate life, keeping promises, respecting property, acting fairly, and avoiding unprovoked assaults. Isn’t that interesting that without God researchers are finding that as they go across all kinds of people groups that they’re all tending to agree with these basic principles.

He uses the word binding everywhere. He said, how can that be if materialists are correct? Why are they binding? It really sounds like he’s trying to make a case for the law of of God written on human hearts while trying to avoid that. Wilson in his book denies the existence of a transcendent moral law, but then claims there are rules for life that are binding on everyone. It wants you to make it, ask him, who died and made you God? Now of course, men can create laws, but what makes them morally binding on anyone, let alone all groups of people everywhere? Laws that are not morally binding are just rules, and it’s only the promise of reward or the fear of punishment that motivates anybody to obey them.

There is no moral imperative backing them up. There can’t be, no matter how much the anti-God crowd claims otherwise. John Huxley, a well-known humanist who died in 1975, would disagree with what I’m saying. He wrote an essay titled The New Divinity, and in there he wrote, quote, “‘Assertions that this abandonment of the God hypothesis “‘means the abandonment of all religion “‘and all moral sanctions is simply not true. “‘But it does mean once our relief at jettisoning “‘an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, “‘then we must construct something to take its place.‘” Did you catch that? Once we’re done celebrating, abandoning the God hypothesis, we got a problem.

We have a void. We now need to invent something to take its place. He’s admitting that we need the equivalent of a God in order to build a moral society. But what fundamentally compels men to submit to this new divinity other than carrots and sticks? As soon as these manmade laws fall out of favor, people will begin to disregard them because of sin. At some point, the magistrate will lack the ability to constrain the people and make them obey. And when that happens, then we begin to see anarchy, or we see Portland, Oregon. Founding Father John Adams made this point when he said, our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Consider what is going on in our nation today. As we increasingly decouple God’s law from our law, what has been the fruit of that? Is progressivism moving us to a better society? You can easily see what a mess you get when the question of morality is left to man to determine. A Kuyperian understanding of law is superior because it claims that only a transcending God who is sovereign overall can declare what is morally binding on all men at all times. Again, atheists can make laws, but they can’t authoritative assign any kind of morality to them that binds men’s conscience. And and the rule of law becomes nothing more than might makes right, where there’s a never-ending battle to change the law and one’s favor.

Consider the battle that wages today every time we seat a new member of the Supreme Court. As our nation rejects God’s word and natural law, the various factions brawl with each other, hoping to place a judge who will rule according to their wishes. Just this past week, the House Democrats submitted a bill to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. Why? It’s because they don’t like the fact that the current majority doesn’t view the Constitution as a living document. The Constitution represents the highest expression of law in our land. When it was created, it relied heavily on the law of nature as revealed by God.

Today, the Supreme Court is becoming a supreme legislative body and our constitution, which is the law of the land, is respected less and less when making decisions. That was a classic example of that was on the decision a few years ago to allow gay marriage. Go back and read the argumentation that as a justice is deliberated. They weren’t even considering the Constitution in their debate. Kennedy, who was the swing vote, he actually, and you can see in his, in the writings, he was sitting there scratching his chin saying, do you think it’s right for us to overturn what thousands and thousands of generations before us have said is what the definition of marriage is?

Now he wasn’t looking at the Constitution when he asked that question. He’s just warning us out loud. Ginsburg’s response was, well, I used to think slavery was okay too. But can you just hear that the debate, where is the discussion of show me the ink, show me the Constitution. It got down to man’s law, what feels good. What do we wanna do today? The point I’m trying to illustrate is that when law becomes detached from God’s laws, they lack any moral authority and they only work at the magistrate is powerful enough to enforce them. Because of sin, this creates a very unstable society, if it survives, and it can expect to live in an endless cycle of anarchy and tyranny.

Another advantage of a Kyperian application of the law produces, ironically, fewer laws. If we truly had, if we were doing it the right way, we would have much less laws than we have today. This stands to reason because when men obey God’s moral law, there’s no need to codify it into a civil law. Civil laws are only necessary where sin exists or in some cases where there’s some common good practices that we need to have like traffic laws. It’s a good idea that we have laws that say we all stay in the right lane or you know, drive in the right direction or stop at a red light. Those are good laws. Wherever God’s law is not acknowledged, more man-made laws are gonna be needed because of the countless ways man sins against others.

And so if we truly had a Kuyperian understanding of law in our land, we would start to be, our lawmakers would be getting rid of laws because we wouldn’t need them. That’s one of my favorite questions, this is one that a politician knocks on my front door. I said, quick, name two laws you’re gonna get rid of if I vote for you. All right, second point then, I wanna cover the time remaining. What are the limits of law? When is it right, or is it ever right to rebel?

This is a hot topic among Christians today. COVID-19 and governments imposition of so-called laws to deal with it has generated a lot of heat and occasionally a little bit of light. Among the different views on this matter, there is some common ground though, and I’m referring now to Christians. So among Christians who differ on this, there is some common ground. Virtually all would agree that it is right to disobey a law if obeying it means disobeying God’s law. I haven’t found any Christians yet that have a problem with that.

Peter and the other apostles refusal to obey the Jewish consuls ordered to stop preaching as we see in Acts five is a classic example of obeying God rather than man. Now besides this fundamental requirement to obey God first, I believe there are several other criteria to consider? Is it a just law? Does the law promote the common good? Does the law have the consent of the people? All of these criteria must be met in order for a law to be binding on a citizen. If we are not all equal under the law, then it’s not just. If citizens are required to obey the law but rulers are not, it’s not just. If a law tramples on natural rights elaborated by John Locke and others, it’s not a just law.

If a law does more harm than good, it is not for the common good. If a law promotes or protects what God calls evil, it’s not for the common good. If a law is not impartial, it’s not for the common good. If a law is imposed through the will of the magistrate, it’s not by the consent of the people. In America’s case, the consent of the people, of course, is given via the elected representation we have. So what do we do if a law does not meet these criteria? I’d argue that such a law is a law in form only and not in essence. It is the fruit of a tyrannical act, however small, and should therefore be resisted where possible.

Now some will object to what I’m saying and they’ll be quick to point to Romans 13 or 1 Peter chapter two. I mean they’ll say, hey, look Jim, Look at Romans 13, one, it plainly says, 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.

Well, whatever that verse means, it can’t be a blanket statement that covers every occasion. We’ve already established that we should disobey man rather than God, so we already have an exception to the claim that this is a blanket authority to always submit. First Peter 2.13 says in part, be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him. Now, I am sure you guys have heard this argument when talking about Romans 13 in particular and people start saying, well, yeah, But our governor, our president’s really bad. And they’ll say, well, do you know that Paul wrote Romans during the reign of Nero?

And he was burning people. And he was, you know, we think our president’s bad. He was nothing like Nero. So there, slam dunk, case over, debates won. Not so quick. If Paul, again, the argument, Paul said to submit to a murderous tyrant like Nero, and surely he expects us to submit to our tyrants, right? But I want to just go ahead and poke a big hole in that argument.

Nero reigned for 14 years, and try to track the timeline here, okay, it’s not too complicated. Nero reigned for 14 years from 54 AD to 68 AD. He started in 54. During his reign, he was not always the person we typically think of, the one using human torches to light his dinner parties. One article I found about him said this, in his first five years as emperor, Nero gained a reputation for political generosity, promoting power sharing with the Senate and ending closed door political trials. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? It appears, from what we can see in the historical record, that his rage against Christians did not start until 10 years after he began to reign.

64 AD, a massive fire broke out around the Circus Maximus that ultimately destroyed or severely damaged 10 of the 14 Roman districts. The same article I was reading went on to say, several classical sources placed Nero on the roof of his palace during the fire, dressed in stage garb and singing from the Greek epic, the Sac of Ilium. Rumors quickly circulated that the emperor had started the fire to clear land for an expanded palace complex on the Palantine Hill.

As you can imagine, the emperor went from Nero to Zero and nothing flat. The political fallout was so great that he blamed the fire on the Christians and made them his scapegoat. It was from this point on that he began to persecute the Christians in earnest. Again, this was in 64 AD, 10 years after he began to reign.

When did Paul write Romans? When did he write Romans 13.1? Most scholars say he wrote it in 57 AD, which was seven years before Nero began his tyrannical reign, at least beyond the persecution of the Christians. It appears the Nero argument doesn’t lend any insight on how to apply Romans 13. So what are we to make of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2? Do those passages require complete obedience, except in cases where obedience to the magistrate requires disobedience to God? I believe the answer is no. Earlier, I quoted from a sermon by Samuel West. If you’re interested in that sermon, I recommend it. It’s actually been made into a 45-page book now that you can find on Amazon.

It’s titled by the same sermon title. It’s called On the Right to Rebel Against Governors. It’s part of what they call the lost treasures of the revolution, book three. I believe he strikes the right tone between submitting with honor to good magistrates and resisting those who are tyrannical.

One of his arguments for resisting is when a magistrate fails to fulfill God’s ordained role, he can no longer rightly be called the minister of God Paul refers to him. Did you catch that? If he is functioning as a tyrant, he is no longer functioning as a minister of God. We are called to submit ourselves to the minister of God, is what he’s arguing for. West writes, I proceed in the next place to show that the same principles that oblige us to submit to civil government do also equally oblige us where we have power and ability to resist and oppose tyranny, and that where tyranny begins, government ends. For if magistrates have no authority but what they derive from the people, if they are properly of human creation, if the whole end and design of their institution is to promote the general good and to secure to men their just rights, it will follow that that when they act contrary to the end and design of their creation, they cease being magistrates. And the people which gave them their authority have the right to take it

back again.” End of quote. The key thoughts in that section were, where tyranny begins, government ends, and when they act contrary to their creation, they cease to be magistrates. As an aside, I find that the further I go back in time and read up on this topic, the more I find Christian writers actually side with West in that kind of thinking. It seems to be only as we get into more, you know, our era, our time frame is when Christians start to get squeamish when you talk about how to deal with unruly magistrates. It seemed like it was much clearer to them back then. West’s premise is simple. A magistrate is owed submission with honor only insofar as he’s fulfilling his God-given duty to reward those who do good and punish those who are evil.

If you were to just kind of do a quick survey, sort of scan and try to outline Romans 13, it’ll read like this. Submit to the governing authorities for what reason? For there’s no authority except from God and whoever resists authority has resisted what God has appointed. Why were the authorities appointed? For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad, and he is the servant of God. As you work your way through this passage, it’s clear that the reason to submit to the magistrate is, or the requirement to submit, is predicated on the magistrate functioning as the servant of God. The magistrate’s authority begins when he serves God, and it ends when he acts like a tyrant.

Now I’m sure that makes a lot of people nervous, but as we’ve already seen, the magistrate’s authority is not absolute. We can all agree it can’t be absolute because we have to obey God rather than man. Some will still want a verse that they can use before they’ll rebel against a magistrate, and I would say, well how about Romans 13.4? For he is God’s servant for your good. Being a magistrate is equated with being God’s servant. When the dude with the crown is not acting like God’s servant, for your good, he’s no longer functioning as a magistrate.

Now to those that don’t like this line of reasoning, Wes says, whoever pretends to deny this proposition must give up all pretense of being master of that common sense and reasoning by which the deity has distinguished us from the brutal herd. So he just kind of just poached it right in the eye if you don’t agree with him. Now I realize I’m quoting a lot of people, I’m not taking to a lot of scripture here right now, because again, the scripture doesn’t give us a lot of clear verses, but I do think it’s okay for us to at least carefully consider and possibly stand on the shoulders of fellow saints that have gone before us who’ve wrestled with the same question of when to rebel.

So I wouldn’t dismiss this out of hand, just because some preacher from 1776 said it. I would just put it out there for you to consider and think through. The West’s second argument flows from the first.

He writes further, if magistrates are no farther ministers of God, then they promote the good of the community, that’s the limit of what they’re called to do, then obedience to them neither is nor can be unlimited, or it would imply a gross absurdity to assert that when magistrates are ordained by the people solely for the purpose of being beneficial to the state, they must be obeyed when they are seeking to ruin and destroy it.” That’s, yeah, it’s a lot of old wording, but the magistrate was appointed for a reason, and that’s for the good of the state. And when he deviates from that, he’s just saying it’s ludicrous to think that we’re supposed to also now submit to him to the destruction of the state, when that’s fundamentally not what his job is. This would imply that men were bound to act against the great law of self-preservation and to contribute their assistance to their own ruin and destruction in order that they may please and gratify the greatest monsters in nature who are violating the laws of God

and destroying the rights of mankind. Unlimited submission and obedience is due to none but God alone. And again, if you’re following all of that reasoning, once the king shows himself to be on a path to bring about our destruction, you’re not obligated to submit to somebody who’s telling you to destroy yourself. There’s a higher law, there’s a law of nature, there’s a law of God to the right to self-preservation.

To summarize this point, we can say that a proper magistrate can never order those under him to assist in their own ruin and destruction. A silly example will suffice to demonstrate the point. What would you do if our governor imposed a 50% tax to pay for a bridge to Hawaii.

Would you submit to that or would you resist? Now, no fair saying that you would move to Idaho. Such a tax would certainly be ruinous, but there isn’t any Bible verse against it. And the people who say you always submit to the governing authority as long as God doesn’t give you a verse against it would have to start paying a 50% tax and just submit to it, to their own ruin and destruction. I’ll mention one more argument from West for when resistance is warranted and then wrap up. Before he gets into his third argument, he briefly asks the question, in what sense can the magistracy be called God’s ordinance or minister?

And then he identifies three possible understandings. When we say that the magistrate is God’s minister, in what sense can that be understood? One sense is where we find God specifying a particular lineage to serve as ruler as we see in the case of the household of God and the Davidic line is one example where God appoints a lineage to be his Magistrate a second sense is where God calls individuals out by name to serve as a ruler Saul is an example So, West then identifies a third sense as he makes his next point for when resistance is proper. So continuing on, he writes, thirdly, magistracy may be called the ordinance of God and rulers may be called the ministers of God because the nature and reason of things, which is the law of God requires such an institution for the preservation and safety of civil society.

We need magistrates because of sin. At this point in his sermon, he rules out the first two senses of what he’s talking about of what God’s minister means because God no longer appoints family dynasties. God did not appoint, I mean, God didn’t send something down from heaven and say Biden is it. So we no longer see God calling out a dynasty or individuals. I mean, we know in sovereignty he does, but in turn by calling him out by name, he doesn’t do that. He continues on, the third sense then is the only sense in which the apostle can be supposed to affirm that the magistrate is the minister of God. And that magistracy is the ordinance of God, namely that the nature and reason of things require such an institution for the preservation and safety of mankind.

Now, if this be the only sense in which the Apostle affirms that magistrates are ordained of God as his ministers, resistance must be criminal only so far forth as they are ministers of God, i.e. while they’re acting to the end of their institution, and resistance ceases being criminal when they cease being the ministers of God, i.e. when they act contrary to the general good and seek to destroy the liberties of the people. Magistrates are given for a very specific purpose, to serve as God’s ministers, to promote and reward those who do good, to punish those who do evil. The minute they stop doing that and go over to the tyrant side, they are out of their lane.

You can no longer call them a just magistrate. Doesn’t matter if they’ve been elected, they still hold office. They are no longer a magistrate. They’re no longer God’s ordinance in that capacity. So sum it up. It’s unfortunate that we even need to talk about resistance to magistrates. All of us would much rather live peaceful and quiet lives as 1 Timothy 2.2 calls us to. The reality, however, is that sin affects magistrates who are supposed to be God’s ministers here on earth for our good. When their sin shows up in the form of a tyrant, We no longer have an obligation to submit. Now one word of caution I need to offer here.

A magistrate is not a tyrant because he makes decisions you don’t like. That’s bound to happen. Make sure when you are throwing around words like tyrant that in fact it’s not your own sinful rebellion against things you don’t like that’s happening. You need to be able to demonstrate where he is violating the laws of nature as traceable back to God. If you’re interested in this topic of natural law, it’s something I find fascinating. Here’s a couple books I’d recommend for you to possibly read. One is called C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law. It’s not actually written by Lewis, but the guy that wrote it tried to trace through Lewis’ writings what he thought about politics and natural law.

So again, that’s C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law by Dyer and Watson. And then the other one is written on the heart, the case for natural law by Bud Zizewski. History is full of examples where evil men abdicated their role as magistrate and brought about tremendous human suffering. Could those tragedies have been prevented if people had resisted sooner? Have you ever wondered that yourself? You go back, you just, you look at history and you think, wow, there were pivotal moments where if enough people had stood up and said, No, it ain’t gonna happen. What could have been nipped in the bud? And again, we know God’s sovereignty, and obviously he works to allow evil to reign for a season.

Sometimes resistance is not possible, but where it is, we need courageous people who are more concerned with preserving God’s law than they are with preserving their own comfort. That does not mean becoming disrespectful of the law. We need to always maintain the right attitude. But according to Martin Luther, a proper understanding of the law will lead to this, again I quote him in conclusion. He said, an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells them is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

If we really treasure the rule of law, we need to speak up and resist when the tyrants are trampling on it. Let’s pray. Well, Father, as we’ve briefly covered this topic, first and foremost, we do thank you that you saw fit to create this position we call the magistrate, because you knew of our own sin nature that we all like sheep would be running around doing our own thing, we would quickly come to a place where everybody’s doing much right in their own eyes. And so we need these leaders, these authorities in our lives, and so we thank you for them. We pray for them, as your word tells us to. The Father we do recognize that they too are human and they sometimes sin, sometimes they slip into being a tyrant.

And so would you give us, Father, the wisdom we need and the courage, if necessary, to know when to stand up to that leader that’s gone amok, that we would always be submissive first and foremost to your law, your word, of course, and when we see anybody violating it, no matter what title they have, that we would be willing to stick our necks out and to speak up.

May you, Father, do a work in our nation as we are very concerned, as we see the true rule of law is quickly being tossed out, and it’s quickly becoming more of a law of the jungle. And I just ask that you would intervene, that you would have mercy upon us, cause first and foremost your church, Father, to repent of its own sin, to get its act together, and that we then might be able to speak with authority into our culture. And if there still be time for us as a nation, pray that you would do these things, Father, soon. I pray this now in your Son, in Jesus’ name, amen.