“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” 1 Peter 2:16-17 ESV
There’s nothing more important than living according to the principles of Scripture. God’s law/word is a divine set of principles that we’re called to apply, through faith, to our particular set of circumstances. Each person’s life is different from their neighbor and yet the same principles apply to both. The rising chaos we see around us is because the principles of God’s law/word have been abandoned utterly by the secular world and, increasingly, to our shame, by the church itself. This latter fact is due in many cases to biblical ignorance.
Well, to that end, in our upcoming series we’ll take pressing contemporary issues that divide our land and cause much acrimony and confusion, and show how only in God’s word can we find peace.
There are presently tens of thousands of people ready to cross America’s southern border. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty about the Title 42 issue. Instead, we want to broaden our perspective so that we understand the theological implications (everything is theological, after all) of immigration and property.
To start, we believe that President Biden’s wide-open border policy is wrong. A nation without a border is like a house without a door. We live in a world made by God and yet assaulted by sin. Our sin. Yours and mine. The immigrants who want to cross the border are sinners and the people who want a secure border are sinners. That’s not the question. What concerns us is the larger question: what is law?
To say something is law is to say that it’s right. If we’re to speak of legality we’re speaking of morality. There’s no way around that. To say that something “ought to be a law” is to say that absolute morality exists. And to say that morality exists means that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let’s unpack that quickly.
In a world that’s purely physical – that is, materialistic – moral law is impossible. Rocks and planets and oceans aren’t moral. For morality to exist there must be not only a God, but an absolute God who’s not just absolute but personal too. A sort-of god is no god at all so this invalidates all forms of polytheism (multiple gods) and syncretism (mixing aspects of different religions, which was a common sin of ancient Israel). For morality to exist it must be absolute. If right-and-wrong are sometimes authoritative and other times not, there is no right and wrong.
And for right-and-wrong to exist (the essence of law) the ultimate force in the universe must be personal. An impersonal law has no authority over persons. A godless universe is an impersonal one, which makes the concept of law logically impossible. This is reconciled only in Jesus Christ (John 14:6). He’s the personal and the ultimate (Way). If the way is impersonal then persons – you and me – can ignore it. A cosmic suggestion isn’t moral law. This means that worldviews like Taoism are ultimately self-defeating.
Once again: we know that Christ is the way, the truth and the life not just experientially, but also because the contrary is utterly impossible. The world doesn’t make sense without Him!
Jesus Christ is the ultimate Person; He’s both truth and personality. If He didn’t exist there would be no individuation and personality would be meaningless. And if He didn’t exist there would be no truth. Because He exists, we know both truth and meaning and the two are reconciled in Him. This is why truth matters; this is why justice hits us where we live…in the heart, and injustice causes such rage. Made in God’s image, as moral beings, not as accidents of the universe, truth and law are written on our hearts.
Thus, morality applies to people. It isn’t an abstraction; morality is the essence of life and we all know that. A godless universe is, therefore, ruled out as soon as we say that right and wrong exist. An atheist, relativist, pluralist, or polytheist, cannot ever say that it’s absolutely wrong to do something because that violates the core tenets of their belief.
To start any chain of reasoning outside of Christ and His law/word leads to absurdity and to conclusions not supported by the premises.
“Where is the wise man (philosopher)? Where is the scribe (scholar)? Where is the debater (logician, orator) of this age? Has God not exposed the foolishness of this world’s wisdom?” 1 Corinthians 1:20 AMP
This said, Christians must not commit the sin of attempting to think about the world – including politics, business, family, friendships, hobbies, leisure, and anything else – without presupposing God at the bottom of it. This is the sin that’s caused the West to fall into such disrepair and teeter closer and closer to full judgment. The church conformed to the world in its philosophy of living is no church at all! We must repent of living according to our own principles instead of the Lord’s.
“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [dedicating all of yourselves, set apart] as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship. And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].” Romans 12:1-2 AMP
Only the principles explained in God’s law/word make sense of right and wrong exist and why they matter. Because God is both ultimate and personal, truth and justice are supreme. Not only that but He (Jesus Christ) died for our sin and the path forward, that is, to peace, is through the preaching of the gospel, not government regulation or utopian schemes. Mankind and his politics cannot fix the world’s problems, only Christ can. (I told you we’d move through this massive subject quickly). No force can be used to convert people (as in Islam). Christianity doesn’t support its own form of Sharia law; it is the law of faith. No man may have his conscience bound. The gospel is preached freely and speaks to the heart. Outward conduct is transformed through the love of Christ and a heart that’s renewed.
So, here we get back to the issue of law. To say that law exists on earth is to admit that right and wrong exist. This exposes the great lie of our time. Ardent atheists are always busy accusing others of sin while denying the existence of the God who makes sense of right and wrong in the first place. The moral law and the impossibility to think without it is the Achilles heel of all anti-Christian philosophy. Why does morality exist? Why does it apply universally to individuals? Why is truth personal and absolute?
These critical life questions, which we all presume every time we open our mouths, are only settled logically in the person and law/word of Jesus Christ. All other worldviews and beliefs collapse under their own weight. A law of “the people” – that is, pure democracy – is no law at all. It’s the rule of the mob. If law isn’t transcendent, if it doesn’t come down to us from the Ultimate Person, that means it’s malleable, which means it’s no law at all.
A system of law coming down from men rather than God will, by logical necessity, swing to and fro between those dreadful extremes. Anarchy for me; tyranny for thee.
The border issue is an example.
The President’s supporters support an open border. But it’s not just that…they accuse critics of being racist and other such things. There’s no logical case to be made for how a country can have no border and still be a country but, sadly, many Christians don’t understand the biblical law and how it applies here. The God who says “thou shall not steal” is the God who proclaims that property is sacred. All property ultimately belongs to God, yes, but He obviously bestows blessings upon us so that we have talents and property. The basis of free markets and property law are that no man is a god, nor may any man play god over his neighbor. Free markets and property rights are based on the sound doctrine of Genesis 1:1 and are, consequently, the only basis for freedom and peace among men and nations.
To this end God has ordained the civil magistrate to exact vengeance upon anyone who violates this clear principle of morality. Hands off other people and their stuff! A government that doesn’t enforce this violates God’s commandment (Romans 13).
A college that lets anyone saunter in for classes isn’t a college anymore. A homeowner who might wake up to find a dozen people sleeping in his bed with him is the same, right? The idea of a secure border is the logical outworking of the fact that property exists. Incidentally, Jerusalem had walls, so the accusation that it’s unbiblical to expect a secure border is patently irrational. It’s stupid, in fact, and not made in good faith.
The argument for an open border is never made because there’s no rational case to be made for it. Instead we see the argumentation of scoundrels, which is to say that open-border advocates attack the character of their opponent instead of making a case to persuade them. That’s called slander. Oh, and slander is a sin. A bad one.
“You shall not go around as a gossip among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor [with slander or false testimony]; I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:16 AMP
Now that goes both ways, of course. As a Christian I can’t slander the President. I’m merely empowered to speak to him about the reality of his duty before God to enforce the law in service to his country. In today’s verse we see that Peter commands us to honor the emperor who was, in Peter’s time, Nero. Seriously. No matter what we believe about President Biden and his drug-addled son, Hunter, no matter the Biden family corruption, he’s no Nero. Of course, he’s not the emperor either. This is America, not Rome. And our constitutional republic demands that the President enforce the laws. But it’s clear that President Biden has no intention of securing the border and for this, whatever his motive, he should resign. A chief executive who doesn’t enforce so elemental a law as border security is like a police department that doesn’t respond to calls about trespassing.
President Biden is encouraging anarchy.
But there’s more to it than that. If there’s no true border than there’s no true law in America and any law that is enforced is done so arbitrarily.
Law can’t exist as a category in life just because…or because it’s expedient. No one talks about it that way anyway. We all know that law, real law, is binding upon all men and women because it’s an extension on earth of God’s moral character. He’s holy and we’re made in His image, so law is written on our hearts.
If immigrants can cross the border illegally simply because they want to then why can’t other people disobey laws they don’t like? If one person’s desire or need is enough to invalidate the power of law why not another person’s? Why file taxes? Why pay your mortgage? If the federal government has no intention of enforcing the law for one group of people but enforces it against others, that’s a classic example of tyranny. That’s exactly what tyranny is.
Again: God’s law demands that the civil magistrate punish those who do evil (Romans 13). There can be no true law unless God is God; in a godless universe there is no moral law and, therefore, all that matters is brute force. But in our current time of idolatry where the state is god, sin is political, not personal. Sinners insist on deciding what crime is. If man rejects God’s law, he won’t punish true evil – murder, rape, trespassing, theft, and fraud. When man sets himself up as law giver he sees crime as that which is against the power of the state. Crime isn’t a moral issue to secular man and morality becomes a crime because that which is moral is of God and the state can’t have the competition (Romans 1:32).
Thus, the anarchy at the border is the logical consequence of humanism. It’s why President Biden will insist that January 6th was an acute threat to America but the open border is not. Crime, in humanism, is defined simply as who disagrees with me. Crime, in Christianity, is who is immoral against his neighbor. As always, God is not mocked and the alternatives are Christ or chaos.
In Christ, by the power of His word/law, we call on the President to secure the border or resign.
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