“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.”
This is the second time that the civil magistrate is identified as God’s servant. He is not a worker of the people, but God’s servant. The civil authority has only this derivative authority. He may be voted in by the people, but his job is “God’s servant.” How does he do this? He is, plainly put, God’s avenger. What a title.
Modern police forces often have some kind of slogan on their cars. Usually it’s some variant of “…to protect and serve…”. That’s an indirect and, consequently, misleading description of the law officer. It’s actually more accurate to say that he’s “God’s avenger” since that’s how God defines him. Can you imagine the slogan “…to punish the evildoer and serve God…”? That would be more like it.
The reference to the sword should make plain that God expects his servant to use lethal force against the evildoer in cases where it’s needed. Opposition to the death penalty is, in light of this, unbiblical. Cases of premeditated murder and/or egregious violations of law that result in death or serious injury can and should be punished with lethal force accordingly. Lesser crimes, it’s to be reasoned, should be punished by both financial restitution where applicable and physical punishment commensurate to the offense. To ignore this clear principle is to reject God’s will.
Just the same, though, the civil magistrate must never aim that sword at anything but the evildoer as God defines him. The key to doing that – defining the evildoer – is by looking at the context. A man or woman must not avenge themselves but leave it to the wrath of God. This verse shows how God intends for us to order our lives in that regard. The state is to be God’s avenger. The presence of the sword is also instructive as it tells us that vengeance must be taken in events of interpersonal crime against one’s person or property. I clearly have no moral right to defend myself against a verbal attack by shooting the attacker. Name calling can’t be answered by gunfire. I’m told to bless and not curse back. But the context is that an attack on my person – an attempted murder, for example – can be repelled with force. Or I might defend my property with force too. My goal is not lethality, but defense.
Likewise, an attempted sexual assault is obviously defensible with force.
God’s avenger, the state, gets involved when a murder, assault, rape, or theft has already taken place and wasn’t averted in the first place. In this way, the “avenger” is the delayed self-defense action in the continuum of the use of force instigated by the evildoer.
Fraud would also be included in this event if the fraud caused a loss of property to the victim. Lying would not be punishable by the state per se. The line of demarcation is that of personal injury and/or loss or damage of property. Unless one of those things happens, the state must not get involved.
The principle is that God’s avenger is charged with carrying out God’s wrath in as direct a fashion as possible. A property theft must be redressed with the restoration of the lost property to the owner by the criminal. In cases where the criminal can’t do that, he must be made to make as much restoration as possible given the circumstances. Presently, the IRS exists, and has enormous regulatory power, to tax all citizens. It would be a biblical and moral enterprise if it existed to tax criminals who couldn’t repay their victim and then, in turn, transfer the taxed money to that victim until such a point that the debt is satisfied. Instead, America uses the IRS to tax law abiding citizens, to meddle in their affairs, and to violate their privacy. Since God’s law tells us that government is His avenger, every action and funding need (that is, taxing purpose) is to be directed to that end. In this way, any apparatus or function of the state that resides outside this mandate is illegitimate.
Thieves, whether they carry out their theft directly or indirectly, must be convicted and then forced to make restitution. Rapists and murderers, in clear circumstances (we aren’t covering the legal requirements of convictions here) should be executed since there’s no way to “give back” what was taken. The principle of the magistrate must be justice. Our current approach is shot through with corruption in that thieves are rarely responsible for what they’ve taken. The state neglects its mandate and assumes (in most cases) that private insurance will cover the victims’ loss rather than the criminal. Worse, it regards itself as the injured party and uses this as a pretext to imprison the criminal. But what of the victim? Already paying taxes as well as private insurance for his/her property, the victim is then forced to pay for the jailing of the one who victimized him/her in the first place. But the state is God’s avenger and it’s a sobering (and awesome) responsibility! The police officer and judge are moral agents on earth of the most high God and must take this responsibility with the utmost gravity and urgency. Putting a thief in jail but not forcing them to make restitution for the property they stole or destroyed is an abomination to the very principle of justice.
The state is God’s, not its own. It isn’t the offended party when a private crime is committed and the confusion on this point is the clearest example of our modern idolatry that there is.
A civil magistrate who loses sight of this calling has renounced his entire purpose for existing and actually becomes an agent of evil, not good.
He, the magistrate, must punish crime – that’s the job and mandate of the state as given by God.
All actions outside of this are a sin just as surely as Ahab and Jezebel sinned by murdering Naboth for his property. Any action by the avenger to force people to be good – such as taxing income and property to pay for various things like healthcare or education – is a violation of this clear principle since there’s no crime committed by a man or woman who doesn’t want to give to charity. The Lord commands that we (Christians) give freely (2 Corinthians 9:5-15) and for His glory. This said, it’s obviously sinful for Christians to be closefisted and miserly. The principle is that since God has given to us so abundantly, we are to be like Him. Moreover, an ungiving Christian is like one who doesn’t trust the Lord to provide life’s necessities but lives in fear of deprivation. This causes them to love and trust their material things more than God.
Well, greed and covetousness are certainly sins, yes. But the Bible gives no authority to anyone outside of the church to judge private sin! Private sin is dealt with by the individual Christian confronting the sinner. If the accused will not listen, he/she is brought to the elders for an examination of the matter. This is how the church is to function. The church’s power over private sin is so great that Paul even admonishes members of the church at Corinth for having gone to the local magistrate over legal issues with other members. This should be judged from within the church, Paul states explicitly. Incidentally, this is probably the most ignored and downright despised commandment of the Lord today, excluding sexual sin. We claim to be Christians, that is disciples of Jesus Christ, but we won’t submit to His church.
What of the private sin of non-Christians? 1 Corinthians 5:12 makes plain that the church has no authority over unbelievers. An unrepentant church member who refuses church discipline, may be excommunicated, which is the most extreme form of discipline allowed in the New Testament era. Ananias and Sapphira, we recall, in Acts 5, were given the death penalty for lying to the church but, quite importantly, this sentence was given and carried out by God Himself. In the age of Christ, which is the covenant age of grace, the church doesn’t have the sword, nor even the stone. It has no power from God to use physical punishment of any kind. The sword, that is, the power of violence as a corrective measure, is left to the state alone (spanking of children notwithstanding) and that only in cases where vengeance is required. In short, it’s exactly here, on this crucial and deciding point, that the proper line of demarcation between church and state is seen clearly.
The church is to preach and teach Jesus Christ crucified for the sins of man. It must do this and may engage in many varied and blessed endeavors of mercy. A thousand charities should spring from the pews! God has ordained, in His infinite wisdom, that the gospel will bring men and women to the righteousness of faith. Yet, again in His inscrutable wisdom, He has ordained that the civil magistrate stand as a solid wall against the encroachments of crime. This is God’s wonderful doing and it provides for relative peace until that wonderful Day when Christ visits us again.
This means unequivocally that every man and woman is and must be left free to sin by the civil magistrate. The church can and should preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to them but must not ever advocate for force or coercion to be used to “make them do good.” The state is armed. It is armed by God, metaphysically speaking. It derives its existence and mandate from God and His word. In this way, Christian Libertarianism is a theocracy. No other system of politics and ethics are possible, after all, because all other ideologies are based on man’s flawed and sinful presuppositions. Only this system of politics and social order provides the foundation for, and application of, and protection of individual liberty. To the praise of God, only Christianity provides a systematic civil structure that grants full political rights to non-believers as well as Christians. Both are equal before God’s servant, the civil magistrate.
This is the basis of Christian Libertarianism. The state can only act in retaliatory vengeance and any act that doesn’t require direct vengeance, that is, any action that wouldn’t have been defensible by the individual by force, is forbidden to the state. This is God’s clear principle for law and order in the New Testament era.
The temptation to use the state for other things is forever with us. The 4th Century church succumbed to this temptation when it morphed the power of the state with the Word of the Lord. This caused the light of the gospel to be hidden under the table, so to speak, until that glorious time of the reformation when the reality of salvation through faith alone burst forth once again upon mankind. “From faith, for faith, the righteous by faith shall live…” was the line that broke the dam of tyranny. Where Christ is, there is freedom. This is the Christian message. Freedom from sin must always precede freedom from political bondage. In our day, we attempt to reverse this order to our great chagrin. If the west does indeed fall, as I strongly suspect it will, it will be because it has lost this distinction and has set on a path of self-soteriology (salvation through worldly means). But we will, indeed, perish by the sword if we try and save ourselves through it. This is the meaning of Isaiah 1:18-20.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
You shall eat the good of the land;
But if you refuse and rebel,
You shall be eaten by the sword;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
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