In an earlier article and two-part podcast, I responded to a Facebook post regarding the application of God’s law in the NT, including laws found in what is described as the “law of Moses.” The Mosaic Law is God’s Law that was revealed to Moses. Moses did not initiate it.
The FB poster went on to write: “[Gary DeMar] also believes [God’s laws] should be legislated in secular government.”
There is no neutrality. If God’s laws should not be legislated, whose laws should? Someone’s laws are going to be legislated. It appears that this person prefers any law to those found in the Bible, and that will include Islamic law if the Islamists gain control of the government of the United States. That is their intention. The Bible has prohibitions against murder, theft, unjust weights and measures, perjury, man stealing, and property rights, to name just some laws that come directly from the Bible and have been written into our nation’s laws.
In a list of those who do evil, the book of Job includes those who “remove the landmarks” and thereby “seize and devour flocks” (24:2). In 1 Kings 21, Elijah reproved Ahab and Jezebel for the murder of Naboth and the theft of his vineyard. These property laws protect every homeowner in the United States. The New Testament codifies the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not steal” (Rom. 13:9). This commandment applies not only to individuals but also to civil governments. If the civil magistrate is a “minister of God,” as Paul wrote, how does the magistrate determine what is “good” or “evil” (v. 4)?
Additionally, there has been legislation against polygamy (two Supreme Court cases in the 19th century), homosexuality (until Lawrence v. Texas in 2003), incest, and abortion (first approved in 1973, then disapproved in the Dobbs opinion of 2022). Now that our nation is officially atheistic, we have laws protecting every type of evil. Should Christians sit back and let the atheists legislate away? Dr. Gary North asks a fundamental question that applies to the claim that biblical law has no business being applied to civil law:
There is a school of Biblical interpretation that says that unless an Old Testament law is repeated in the New Testament as legally binding, it is no longer legally binding. Such a doctrine is not explicitly taught in the New Testament; it is a generally unstated presupposition that commentators bring with them when they begin to study the Bible. They assume what they ought first to prove.[1] There is no mention in the New Testament of bestiality. This raises a significant problem of interpretation for those who argue that the Old Testament law system was annulled by Christ. On what basis is the civil government to prosecute bestiality? Natural law? But nature is hardly a guide in sexual matters…. Animals do all sorts of things sexually that the Old Testament regards as an abomination. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get the term sadism, was a great defender of natural law theory that is based self-consciously on nature, for nature is filled with murder and destruction. But if natural law theory is an unreliable foundation, then the question remains: What is the civil government to do about bestiality (or any other crime)? On what moral or legal basis?[2]
That’s the question. All laws are the legislation of someone’s view of morality. I cover this topic in the chapter “You Cannot Legislate Morality” in my book Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths.
Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths
Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).
Buy NowIn addressing the Texas legislature, Chuck Colson told them that “the only answer to the crime problem is to take nonviolent criminals out of our prisons and make them pay back their victims with restitution. This is how we can solve the prison crowding problem.” Several legislators came up to Colson “one after another and said things like, ‘That’s a tremendous idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?’ I had the privilege of saying to them, ‘Read Exodus 22. It is only what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai thousands of years ago.’”[3] These laws apply to wrongdoing. But how does the civil magistrate know?
The goal of Christian involvement is to restrain the authority and power of civil government so that it stays within its jurisdictional boundaries. Ignoring the civil sphere only empowers it and those who have used it in a Mafia-like manner for their own gain at the citizenry’s expense. “The Saturday Evening Post once ran a cartoon showing Moses on the mount, holding the tablet of the Ten Commandments in his hands. He looks up to heaven and says, ‘Maybe there’s only ten of them now, but just wait till the bureaucrats get to work.’”[4] In the absence of objective standards, the State manufactures laws and regulations, thereby empowering itself.
Most people who have only seen the 1956 film The Ten Commandments on television have likely not seen Cecil B. DeMille’s opening monologue. DeMille had something more in mind than just making a film about Moses. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God:
The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.
You can watch it here.
The elaborate film Souvenir Book that was made available in theaters includes a preface with the title “The Law by Which Men Live”:
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are not laws. They are THE LAW. Man has made 32,000,000 laws since they were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai more than three thousand years ago, but he has never improved on God’s law.[5]
The FB poster goes on to comment:
I think he [Gary DeMar] needs to revisit the Sermon on the Mount, especially the part where Christ warned the Jews not to cast their pearls before swine. In the modern vernacular, we refer to “turn and tears to pieces” as “blowback” which I believe we are today experiencing from the Christian Fundamentalists’ practices in government in the 20th century.
There is always blowback when preaching and applying God’s Word. Consider the following from Mark’s Gospel:
[Jesus] entered a synagogue again; and a man was there whose hand was withered. And they were watching Him closely to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might put Him to death.
“Blowback” for healing a man with a withered hand! There was “blowback” from nearly everything Jesus said or did. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the multitudes, and He was still hunted down, persecuted, defamed, prosecuted, and put to death. Maybe Jesus did it all wrong. Too much “blowback.” But we know better: “It is enough for the disciple that he becomes like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!” (Matt. 10:25).
The book of Acts is filled with examples of the disciples being attacked for preaching God’s Word. Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned (Acts 16:22-40). They were driven out of Thessalonica when “some wicked men from the marketplace formed a mob and set the city in an uproar,” looking for Paul and Silas. When the mob could not find them, their friend Jason was dragged out of his home and taken to the civil magistrate, where Paul and Silas were accused of an insurrection against Rome: “they all acted contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there that there is another king, Jesus” (17:1-8). Without God’s law, you get Caesar’s laws.
If the opposition is made up of “swine” who can “tear us to pieces,” then it seems that there needs to be some legal restraints on these destroyers. The FB poster added the following:
The law has not only failed to maintain civility among people, but it has also failed to produce anyone righteous. On the contrary, significant evils are often committed under the guise of the law, even the law of God, as demonstrated by the Pharisees.
The law was never designed to make people righteous. It was designed to identify when a person was being unrighteous (1 Tim. 1:9). God’s law serves as a restraint. The law curtails the manifestation of unrighteousness in external acts. This is why Paul states that the civil magistrate “does not bear the sword for nothing” (Rom. 13:4). We’re seeing the breakdown of “civility among people” because we live in a secularized society where many people believe they can do what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). They do not believe in God’s law because they do not believe in God.
By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today
God's Law is Christianity's tool of dominion. This is where any discussion of God's law ultimately arrives: the issue of dominion. Ask yourself: Who is to rule on earth, Christ or Satan? Whose followers have the ethically acceptable tool of dominion, Christ's or Satan's? What is this tool of dominion, the Biblically revealed law of God, or the law of self-proclaimed autonomous man? Whose word is sovereign, God's or man's?
Buy NowWhat does this FB poster think will happen if our nation continues down this path? What’s his solution? He’ll say it’s “God’s law written on our hearts and minds.” We’re back to law again. It can’t be escaped. Does he want the “swine” to legislate in terms of Animal Farm? “All men are equal, but some men are more equal than others.” What made the United States attractive to the world? Equality under the law. I suggest he read the chapter “Morality” in Vishal Mangalwadi’s book The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. “In 1738, two centuries after the Reformation, Bishop [George] Berkeley declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed ‘to a degree that was never before known in any country.’”[6] Several factors contributed to the precipitous decline, but the Gospel, linked to fixed moral standards, catalyzed a new moral revolution. What’s particularly instructive is the impact that John Wesley and others had in transforming England, which led to William Wilberforce’s work to abolish the slave trade without sparking a bloody civil war. Also see the chapter “The Bible and the Law” in What if the Bible Had Never Been Written?
The FB poster ends with the following:
What involvement did Christ and the early Christians have with law and government? Weren’t they opposed for nearly 200-some-odd years until the compromise with Constantine?
These early Christians were under the boot of Rome. Paul was an exception, being a Roman citizen. The Bible, “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), laid the foundation for the transformation of law and government that had nothing to do with Constantine (c. 272-337).[7] Compromise did not start with Constantine. It can be found throughout the Bible. In the period of the Judges, the people worshipped “Baal-berith” (Judges 9:4), a god compromised by combining the covenant (berith) God made with Israel with Baalism.
If you can actually show me a true Christian human government in history that operated under the law, I will show you a government whose fruits are worldly and devilish.
Of course, governments have rotten elements just like individuals because civil governments are made up of people, but if Christians let the “swine” take over the farm, everything will be eaten. The goal is to restrain the swine. To claim that all nations are morally equal is a drastic misreading of history. Mangalwadi writes, “The [Global Corruption Perceptions Index] confirms what I saw in Holland—that the Bible is the only force known in history that has freed entire nations from corruptions while simultaneously giving them political freedom. The most secular nations—that is, ex-communist, atheistic nations, which teach that no man or machine is watching you, then no one is watching you—are among the most corrupt nations, not too different from Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim nations.”[8] While the Netherlands was a global pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights, including legalizing same-sex marriage in 2001, current data suggests a decline in social acceptance rather than moral progress. What is the foundation of that decline?
[1] Gary North, 75 Bible Questions Your Instructors Prays You Won’t Ask (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press,[1984]1987), Part II.
[2] Editor’s Introduction to Ray Sutton’s book Second Chance: Biblical Blueprints for Divorce and Remarriage (Ft. Worth, TX” Dominion Press, 1988), ix.
[3] Charles Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” Transforming Our World: A Call to Action, ed. James M. Boice (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988), 154-155.
[4] D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, What If the Bible Had Never Been Written (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 43.
[5] The Ten Commandments Souvenir Book, Paramount Pictures Corporation (1956, 1957), was published by The Greenstone Company, New York, N.Y.
[6] Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 259.
[7] See Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2010).
[8] Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World, 255.