“Many seek the face of a ruler, but it is from the Lord that a man gets justice.” Proverbs 29:26
God is the ultimate authority and there are no authorities or authority structures without Him (Romans 11:36; 13:1). The modern American, we should be clear, accepts as his religion the premises of secular humanism, which is to say that all matters of right/wrong are settled, he thinks, by his own mind. That’s the moral/intellectual motive behind, for example, the new sexual revolution. Since man is his own standard of moral authority, each person is morally free to do whatever they want. This philosophical position of absolute autonomy (self-rule) extended to politics leads to our modern position of the state being higher than God. Since man is his own highest good, and he alone is the judge of right and wrong, modern democracy is a never ending struggle of voting to determine morality and exert power. There are no fixed principles of morality, they say, except for what people decide. This leads to the fallacy that it’s the will of the people that reigns over objective morality. And this is precisely why sinners would want a raw democracy rather than a republic…and why that democracy always ends in dictatorship.
In our verse under consideration today, the issue of many seeking the face of a ruler is that of unbelieving man trying to remake the moral order in his own image. Scripture tells us here, and rather plainly at that, that we can only get justice from the Lord. What this means is that man, in sin, in the attempt to rule himself and the world, and avoid God’s authority, tries to use the civil magistrate to legislate his will. But no order of government, nor ruling, nor any man’s law can be true justice if it isn’t righteous and it can’t be righteous if it’s contrary to God’s law. In all, justice without righteousness is impossible.
For instance, the first authority structure in life that God ordains is that of the family. Parents have authority over the children (5th commandment). But if a father is abusive, the authority he wields isn’t legitimate. This is the thing to understand about rulers and government too. They may have power in God’s righteously ordained authority structures, which are meant to provide for tranquility and general peace by restraining sin, but this power is illegitimate when used unrighteously (outside God’s law/word). In the Bible, there is no separation between the concepts of justice and righteousness and it’s a mark of our fallenness that we think today of justice as merely a mechanization of law rather than an outworking of the will of God. That’s the gist of this verse. When we use politicians and lawyers to get our way, it’s not true justice we want, but legal protection for our sins.
A poor person who games the welfare system violates the Lord’s commandment to work. And he benefits from the labor of others without their consent, which is theft. But this is nothing compared to the corporations and politicians who game the legal system for subsidies, helpful regulations that bind their competition, and protections of all sorts. Apple, for example, one of the richest companies in the world, preaches “social justice” here in America while it builds its products in China. Why does it do that? Because in China it can circumvent America’s expensive labor laws, unionization issues, and so forth. Does it matter that China is an oppressive regime that enslaves millions of its Muslim citizens? Apple doesn’t care so long as it can use China’s cheap labor. And it’s all perfectly legal.
Because sinful man rejects God’s moral sovereignty over him, he must accept some form of moral/law order or else he lives in absolute anarchy. A man can say that there are no moral absolutes all he wants but he doesn’t dare live in a Mad Max world. He knows he wouldn’t survive in it for one day. He wants sexual anarchy, sure. He wants his porn and his hook-ups but not the violent tyranny of other men stronger than he. So, what does he do? He turns to the state to repress the principle of anarchy. This is why politics in a sinful land are so acrimonious. The stakes are high because everyone is trying to impose tyranny on others so they can enjoy anarchy for themselves. You know when this reaches a fever pitch when people talk about what’s legal rather than what’s righteous. To speak of legality absent righteousness is to speak of power and not love because only what is righteous is loving. A people, therefore, who desire legality without God are a people who will turn politics into religion because that’s the only place self-worshippers can go to protect themselves from the consequences of their principles. The autonomous man of strength relies on his guns; the autonomous weakling craves his politicians and lawyers. In both cases, the motive is the same: self-law.
Indeed, the Deceiver offers absolute freedom for you through the guise of your personal ability to judge right and wrong (Genesis 3:5). But if you take the bait, you must go the way of Cain and slay Abel. If you can’t kill Abel, you must regulate him somehow. Either way, you’ll need protection from the very principle of self-rule you’ve embraced. The sinner goes to the polls or the magistrate the same way Cain pleaded with God in Genesis 4 when he said, “I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” The answer to such lawlessness (sin) is the grace of God in Jesus Christ and a civil magistrate that acts as His minister by punishing interpersonal evil. The evidence of our refusal to go to Calvary for the forgiveness of sin is our insistence on manipulating the law through politics and legal sophistry. It’s evidence that we don’t want righteousness – we don’t want God. We still want our sin but don’t want the consequences of it.
All of this is, therefore, evidence that we know that God’s righteous rules are written on our hearts and into the fabric of society. It’s also evidence that there will be a Day of righteous judgment too and on that Day no one will escape unless they’ve believed on Him and repented of their sin. It’s one of the great ironies of sin that sinners always end up embracing some form of legalism in the end. Refusing to live by God’s righteous rules, they end up erecting bizarre and contradictory Towers of Babel in order to live in a society with other God deniers. They who would eschew and reject the Ten Commandments will live by the overwhelming weight of the IRS, city codes, county codes, building codes, zoning laws, local ordinances, HOA rules, and on and on. Godless men and women say they’re free from religion but social media is awash in campaigns of conformity to the latest ethical fad. The man or woman who says no to God can’t truly love his neighbor since he must now seek to control him through a million little tyrannies. He may smile a lot and pretend to be what he’s not, which is a false god. But he shows his true colors by going to the local rulers and trying to gain this favor and that, this advantage or that.
Real Christian living is a life of fulfilling the royal commandments (to love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself) out of love for God. A true Christian fulfills the law without trying to do it because the motive is always love, always truth. He who has the imputed righteousness of Christ through faith alone is scared only of his own sin, not that of his neighbor. He doesn’t seek to control his neighbor’s sin through the state but by the preaching of the gospel because he knows there is no justice without righteousness. And there is no righteousness except from God. He who rejects the Lord will try and control his neighbor’s sin through the false messiah of the state or some other form or regulation. Note clearly how the more ardent someone is in their atheism, the greater their love of government and regulation. This is why American politics are literally messianic! We will worship. The question is whether we will worship the true and living God or an idol like the state. Sinners who won’t turn to Christ (and false believers too!) can’t see that sin is dealt with only by grace, so they’re forever busy regulating their neighbors.
Recent Comments