Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians states:
"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God."
I Corinthians 4:3-5.
When was the last time you heard this statement in the media regarding a secular event? "The reminder by the prosecutor that the witness would face God in the final judgment seemed to cause the witness to change his story." This future event - the final judgment before God - was one of the reasons that the oath required of a witness in court included the requirement that the witness swear that he believes in a future afterlife of reward and punishment. This belief helps keep people honest. Biblically, the principle is termed the fear of God.
The belief in a world in the next life where good is rewarded and evil is punished has a significant effect upon the mind of the one testifying. First, truth as a fundamental good is a given. Second, the witness must use his imagination and place himself in front of God on His throne explaining what he's about to do. Third, this thought process can get complicated. Consider the testimony of a witness about their brother on trial for murder and facing the death penalty. You are the only witness who can corroborate his alibi. You're his blood. If you cannot honestly testify that his alibi is true, you must weigh your loyalty, affection, and the after-effect of basically telling a court of law that your brother is a liar, whether he committed the underlying crime or not. Even so, the lie by your brother could call into question his innocence as to the underlying crime; therefore, the effect of your testimony that he's lying could be the "final straw" that results in his conviction.
Standing before the God of the universe in your imagination, you realize that there's no place to hide and that no rationalization of a lie can be justified. You must use the law of this God to accurately judge how you will respond to a question about this testimony and to determine what would be the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. You remember that one of the ten commandments is "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Fundamentally, it means that you shall not lie as a witness in court. Your lie would indicate not just a violation of a commandment but a greater loyalty to your brother than to God because he's a blood relative and you love him. You would be violating the greatest commandment if you lie for your brother: "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." Matthew 22:37-8. You ask yourself the question: "Do I risk it? Maybe God will forgive me, and my brother won't have to face punishment for his crime, at least, not in this life. Besides what if his punishment is severe? What if it's death?"
What about the witness who does not believe in an afterlife or a final judgment? What holds him to the truth in the same circumstance? You could lie and save your brother's life. Or you could tell the truth and essentially doom him to death. Which do you do? It's possible the law of perjury would subject you to several months or a year in jail. But you may not get caught. Even if you were caught, what's a few months in jail compared with your brother's life? Weighed in the balance of this life and this life only, your lie could appear to be a greater good to you than telling the truth. What would be the incentive to tell the truth? Some principled commitment to an orderly society that punishes criminals, even if they're my blood relative? Is that all? What else would there be to outweigh the love, loyalty, and commitment to my brother? What about other relatives who would hold me responsible for his death because I didn't lie? What about the loss of a companion, a human being who may have been my soul-mate, someone I could talk to and laugh and cry with? What could possibly be weighty enough to cause me to tell the truth? A commitment to individual conscience? I allowed my brother to be executed so I could keep a clear conscience, then die one day myself? Sounds practically narcissistic in the world of the atheist. What about living with a bad conscience? As an atheist, seeing there's no other consequence than feeling bad about one lie, the consequences of telling the truth - causing my blood relative's death, losing my brother's companionship, getting the ire of my other relatives, appearing selfish to myself and everyone else - why not live with a bad conscience if it means saving my brother's life?
Therefore, the society with no fear of God also has little justice, if the godless society even knows how to define justice. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" means, in part, that our society seek God's justice and truth in the judicial system. Without the fear of God's justice after this life, there will often be lies in the judicial system. Man needs to know that he will suffer negative consequences or be rewarded something good in order to do right. It is how we are made, and it is especially important after the Fall, when sin infects every aspect of our lives. To assume that people will tell the truth in court because they're "honest, upstanding citizens" is quite naive. Without a commitment to God's justice, all the judicial system has is an arbitrary standard of justice to which a witness may or may not be loyal. If we judged ourselves rightly, considering what could be the consequences in the afterlife, we would be more committed to God's justice than man's. It takes a combination of imagination about what could happen in the future and the factual truth of God's word and law to create the correct perspective for such judgment.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Monday, September 12, 2016
Did Christ Change the Judicial System? 7
How do Christ's people exercise judicial authority in the era of the New Covenant? Like everything else - through faith. They have faith in His word to give them guidance on how to judge and rule. Deuteronomy 4:5-8. They have faith in his sovereign power, choice, and timing as to when, who, and where they rule. John 19:11. They have faith in His protection of them when they are attacked for exercising their faith in the civil sphere. II Samuel 7:8-9. They have faith in His Word - that it is good, that it will show them what a judiciary should look like, and that it shows us what law should look like. Deuteronomy 4:8; Psalm 19:7-11. It's worth quoting extensively from Gary North's comments in his economic Commentary on Luke, "Treasure and Dominion," on the question of what "Social Theory" was taught by Jesus.
"In a review of a book by Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishing, 2000), libertarian and Catholic columnist Joseph Sobran wrote: “Unlike most spiritual leaders and moral leaders, Jesus of Nazareth offered no formula for worldly happiness and social order. Just the opposite: he told his disciples to take up their crosses (an image he used well before the Crucifixion) and to expect suffering. He warned them that the world would hate them as it hated Him; it was their destiny as Christians.” His view is shared by most Christians today.
"The problem for those who hold this view of Jesus’ ministry arises as soon as any society embraces Christianity. This happened under the emperor Constantine and his successors, as Sobran noted. Martyrdom for Christians ceased. It reappeared with a vengeance in the twentieth century—the most militantly anti-Christian century since the fall of Rome. In the intervening centuries, how were Christians supposed to discover God-given answers for the multitude of social and political issues that confront leaders in every era?
"If Jesus really offered no social theory, then how could He have expected His followers to have known how to rule society from 325 A.D. to, say, 1700, when the moral art of casuistry began to disappear in the West? Without casuistry—the application of Christian principles to specific cases—the church becomes dependent on promoters of one or another nonchristian social theory. The twentieth century revealed where this voluntary defection by Christians ends: either in the persecution of Christians, which is the left wing Enlightenment’s answer to Christianity, or in their political marginalization, which is the right wing Enlightenment’s answer.
"It is true that Jesus did not teach a comprehensive social theory. He did not have to. He taught from the Old Testament. He said that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament (Luke 4:16–21). In His divine nature as the second person of the Trinity, He co-authored the Old Testament. Why would any Christian believe that Jesus annulled this judicial heritage? Why would He have done this? He did not say that He did this. Where is the evidence from Scripture that Jesus annulled the social theory that had been taught from Moses to Malachi?
"If Jesus did annul all of the Old Testament law, His followers have a major problem: He did not explicitly replace it with anything. He has therefore seemingly left His people culturally impotent. The old political slogan, “You can’t beat something with nothing,” haunts all Christians who maintain this view of the Old Testament. They must defer socially and politically to anti-Christians, and do so in the name of Christ.
"Ask these pro-annulment Christians if they believe in the Ten Commandments, and they say that they do. Then ask: On what basis? Ask them if they think that bestiality is immoral, and they assure you they do. Then ask them if they think that bestiality should be made illegal. They begin to get nervous. Finally, ask them if they think that bestiality should be made a capital crime, and they back off. Yet the passages in the Bible where bestiality is condemned as morally evil call
for the death penalty for those who practice it.
"'And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast (Lev. 20:15).'
"'And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast:
they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Lev. 20:16).'
"The New Testament is silent on the practice of bestiality. So, in order to make a biblical case against the practice, a Christian must appeal to Leviticus. But most Christians do not want to have anything to do with Leviticus. That book is just too . . . too theonomic! Theonomy in turn is too theocratic. Christians prefer legalized bestiality to theocracy. Step by step, this is what they are getting.
"This judicial schizophrenia of modern Christians has led to their political and cultural paralysis. Their paralysis has led either to their persecution or their marginalization politically. In the case of marginalization, most of them have praised the result. They have joined with humanists in an alliance called political pluralism. They cry out, “Equal time for Jesus!” But equal time for Jesus has steadily become no time for Jesus in the public arena. Millions of pietistic Protestants prefer it this way. They believe that their retreat from public issues in the name of Jesus reduces their level of personal responsibility. It doesn’t. It merely increases their vulnerability.
"Mammon and Jesus cannot make a permanent alliance. Jesus taught: “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon’s followers are increasingly consistent: they seek to remove Jesus from the public arena. Christians are not equally self-conscious. They still seek to achieve in politics what Jesus said is impossible anywhere in the universe. Then they wonder why they have so little influence. They invent eschatological systems to explain and even justify such a lack of influence."
North, Gary, "Treasure and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Luke" (Point Five Press: Dallas, GA) 2012, pp. xiv-xvi.
Theonomy in its essence means the law of God. Christians teach - rightly - that salvation from sin and its consequences, the just judgment of God, is by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone to the glory of God alone. It cannot be by the works of the law. See King James Bible, Galatians 2 and Ephesians 2. But salvation involves turning from a lack of faith in God to faith in God. If we have faith in the God of the universe to save us, then shouldn't we also have faith in Him to guide us? If you believe you're saved by Jesus Christ, but you don't trust His words, then do you really have faith in Him. And if you do have faith in Him but don't have faith in the Father who gave the law to Moses, then don't we have a consistency problem. Is Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity or not? Does He disagree with the law given to Moses? That would be mighty strange.
Yes, Christ's primary mission was not to give us law. In fact, the opposite. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." John 1:17. The argument from silence - that Christ didn't address certain sins; therefore, He didn't think them important - ignores the context in which Christ came to earth. He could not stand for the law because He came to show the grace and mercy of the Father. And He need not bring the law again, for it had already been given. Those two reasons alone are adequate to explain why Christ did not present an argument against specific sins, like homosexual sodomy, something the law of Moses already addresses. It also explains why he didn't set forth a comprehensive legal or judicial system. That also would have implied that He came to bring us a new law or that His main purpose was that of a lawgiver. He was much more than that. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Matthew 5:17.
Christians live by faith in their personal lives. Why not in their civic lives also? I must go further and answer one of the first assertions of this post: "They have faith in His Word - that it is good, that it will show them what a judiciary should look like, and that it shows us what law should look like." So, if we walk by faith in our personal lives, shouldn't we also walk by faith in our political and judicial lives? And shouldn't we believe that the good God who sent Jesus Christ for our salvation also sent us the law for our guidance? In fact, it is the law, which shows us our faults, which leads us to see our need for Christ as our savior.
"In a review of a book by Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishing, 2000), libertarian and Catholic columnist Joseph Sobran wrote: “Unlike most spiritual leaders and moral leaders, Jesus of Nazareth offered no formula for worldly happiness and social order. Just the opposite: he told his disciples to take up their crosses (an image he used well before the Crucifixion) and to expect suffering. He warned them that the world would hate them as it hated Him; it was their destiny as Christians.” His view is shared by most Christians today.
"The problem for those who hold this view of Jesus’ ministry arises as soon as any society embraces Christianity. This happened under the emperor Constantine and his successors, as Sobran noted. Martyrdom for Christians ceased. It reappeared with a vengeance in the twentieth century—the most militantly anti-Christian century since the fall of Rome. In the intervening centuries, how were Christians supposed to discover God-given answers for the multitude of social and political issues that confront leaders in every era?
"If Jesus really offered no social theory, then how could He have expected His followers to have known how to rule society from 325 A.D. to, say, 1700, when the moral art of casuistry began to disappear in the West? Without casuistry—the application of Christian principles to specific cases—the church becomes dependent on promoters of one or another nonchristian social theory. The twentieth century revealed where this voluntary defection by Christians ends: either in the persecution of Christians, which is the left wing Enlightenment’s answer to Christianity, or in their political marginalization, which is the right wing Enlightenment’s answer.
"It is true that Jesus did not teach a comprehensive social theory. He did not have to. He taught from the Old Testament. He said that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament (Luke 4:16–21). In His divine nature as the second person of the Trinity, He co-authored the Old Testament. Why would any Christian believe that Jesus annulled this judicial heritage? Why would He have done this? He did not say that He did this. Where is the evidence from Scripture that Jesus annulled the social theory that had been taught from Moses to Malachi?
"If Jesus did annul all of the Old Testament law, His followers have a major problem: He did not explicitly replace it with anything. He has therefore seemingly left His people culturally impotent. The old political slogan, “You can’t beat something with nothing,” haunts all Christians who maintain this view of the Old Testament. They must defer socially and politically to anti-Christians, and do so in the name of Christ.
"Ask these pro-annulment Christians if they believe in the Ten Commandments, and they say that they do. Then ask: On what basis? Ask them if they think that bestiality is immoral, and they assure you they do. Then ask them if they think that bestiality should be made illegal. They begin to get nervous. Finally, ask them if they think that bestiality should be made a capital crime, and they back off. Yet the passages in the Bible where bestiality is condemned as morally evil call
for the death penalty for those who practice it.
"'And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast (Lev. 20:15).'
"'And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast:
they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Lev. 20:16).'
"The New Testament is silent on the practice of bestiality. So, in order to make a biblical case against the practice, a Christian must appeal to Leviticus. But most Christians do not want to have anything to do with Leviticus. That book is just too . . . too theonomic! Theonomy in turn is too theocratic. Christians prefer legalized bestiality to theocracy. Step by step, this is what they are getting.
"This judicial schizophrenia of modern Christians has led to their political and cultural paralysis. Their paralysis has led either to their persecution or their marginalization politically. In the case of marginalization, most of them have praised the result. They have joined with humanists in an alliance called political pluralism. They cry out, “Equal time for Jesus!” But equal time for Jesus has steadily become no time for Jesus in the public arena. Millions of pietistic Protestants prefer it this way. They believe that their retreat from public issues in the name of Jesus reduces their level of personal responsibility. It doesn’t. It merely increases their vulnerability.
"Mammon and Jesus cannot make a permanent alliance. Jesus taught: “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon’s followers are increasingly consistent: they seek to remove Jesus from the public arena. Christians are not equally self-conscious. They still seek to achieve in politics what Jesus said is impossible anywhere in the universe. Then they wonder why they have so little influence. They invent eschatological systems to explain and even justify such a lack of influence."
North, Gary, "Treasure and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Luke" (Point Five Press: Dallas, GA) 2012, pp. xiv-xvi.
Theonomy in its essence means the law of God. Christians teach - rightly - that salvation from sin and its consequences, the just judgment of God, is by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone to the glory of God alone. It cannot be by the works of the law. See King James Bible, Galatians 2 and Ephesians 2. But salvation involves turning from a lack of faith in God to faith in God. If we have faith in the God of the universe to save us, then shouldn't we also have faith in Him to guide us? If you believe you're saved by Jesus Christ, but you don't trust His words, then do you really have faith in Him. And if you do have faith in Him but don't have faith in the Father who gave the law to Moses, then don't we have a consistency problem. Is Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity or not? Does He disagree with the law given to Moses? That would be mighty strange.
Yes, Christ's primary mission was not to give us law. In fact, the opposite. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." John 1:17. The argument from silence - that Christ didn't address certain sins; therefore, He didn't think them important - ignores the context in which Christ came to earth. He could not stand for the law because He came to show the grace and mercy of the Father. And He need not bring the law again, for it had already been given. Those two reasons alone are adequate to explain why Christ did not present an argument against specific sins, like homosexual sodomy, something the law of Moses already addresses. It also explains why he didn't set forth a comprehensive legal or judicial system. That also would have implied that He came to bring us a new law or that His main purpose was that of a lawgiver. He was much more than that. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Matthew 5:17.
Christians live by faith in their personal lives. Why not in their civic lives also? I must go further and answer one of the first assertions of this post: "They have faith in His Word - that it is good, that it will show them what a judiciary should look like, and that it shows us what law should look like." So, if we walk by faith in our personal lives, shouldn't we also walk by faith in our political and judicial lives? And shouldn't we believe that the good God who sent Jesus Christ for our salvation also sent us the law for our guidance? In fact, it is the law, which shows us our faults, which leads us to see our need for Christ as our savior.
Did Christ Change the Judicial System? 4
Can Christ judge in history? Or must He wait until the Final Judgment? To say No to the first question implies a limit to His sovereign authority. Is this possible? The following are some statements that contradict such a limitation on His part.
"Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Matthew 26:64. Jesus spoke this in answer to the high priest's demand: "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God." Matthew 26:63. In other words, the high priest would see Christ ruling at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds to judge the high priest and all of Jerusalem.
So, if Christ was about to ascend to sit at His Father's right hand, the most powerful position in the universe, and if God Himself has sovereign sway over the heavens and the earth, then Christ rules the earth now. To assert that he has to physically return in order to exercise his authority is to place a serious limit upon the sovereign God. What He does in heaven right this moment is rule for us, as the Son of Man, thereby nullifying not only Satan's power but man's loss of rule to Satan in the Garden of Eden. We are in the process of advancing that rule over the earth and in our own lives. That is why we pray, "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
Christ is also head of His Church. What does that mean for the judicial system? Christ has special care for His Church, just as He had special care for his disciples, who heard that which others did not. They learned more because they, like Mary, sat at His feet to learn His word. They had special access to His presence, as well as His words. These two things alone would be significant, but the Church also has the sacraments, in which Christ is specially present and nourishing and in which covenant promises reside. Christ leads His Church into all righteousness and makes her the example for the world, if the Church will obey Him. The Church does not obey Him at her peril. Revelation chapters 2 and 3.
But if she does obey fully, she is raised up to rule and reign with Him. But the Church must not truncate its message and limit it to just the individual. It has a message for the family, the civil government, all aspects of life, for God rules over all of life. The Church must lead the world into the truth, thereby making it jealous for her truth, its orderly arrangement of life and all the institutions of life, its guidance it gives to man. To limit itself is to fall short in its duty and leave the world without guidance. Time for the Church, the pillar and ground of the truth, to prophesy to the nations and the institutions of society, showing them the way. In that way, the world becomes jealous and wants to hear all of the gospel message, not just that which pertains to institutions and law.
The world may come into the kingdom through the back door. We must not limit our message to the individual only, as if God could not speak through His law to guide people to Himself and His grace and His only Son. If we can follow Christ and His law and thereby change the justice system for the better, could we not show the world that grace which saves from the condemnation of the judicial system and point them to the true Judge and Savior of all men?
"Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Matthew 26:64. Jesus spoke this in answer to the high priest's demand: "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God." Matthew 26:63. In other words, the high priest would see Christ ruling at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds to judge the high priest and all of Jerusalem.
So, if Christ was about to ascend to sit at His Father's right hand, the most powerful position in the universe, and if God Himself has sovereign sway over the heavens and the earth, then Christ rules the earth now. To assert that he has to physically return in order to exercise his authority is to place a serious limit upon the sovereign God. What He does in heaven right this moment is rule for us, as the Son of Man, thereby nullifying not only Satan's power but man's loss of rule to Satan in the Garden of Eden. We are in the process of advancing that rule over the earth and in our own lives. That is why we pray, "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
Christ is also head of His Church. What does that mean for the judicial system? Christ has special care for His Church, just as He had special care for his disciples, who heard that which others did not. They learned more because they, like Mary, sat at His feet to learn His word. They had special access to His presence, as well as His words. These two things alone would be significant, but the Church also has the sacraments, in which Christ is specially present and nourishing and in which covenant promises reside. Christ leads His Church into all righteousness and makes her the example for the world, if the Church will obey Him. The Church does not obey Him at her peril. Revelation chapters 2 and 3.
But if she does obey fully, she is raised up to rule and reign with Him. But the Church must not truncate its message and limit it to just the individual. It has a message for the family, the civil government, all aspects of life, for God rules over all of life. The Church must lead the world into the truth, thereby making it jealous for her truth, its orderly arrangement of life and all the institutions of life, its guidance it gives to man. To limit itself is to fall short in its duty and leave the world without guidance. Time for the Church, the pillar and ground of the truth, to prophesy to the nations and the institutions of society, showing them the way. In that way, the world becomes jealous and wants to hear all of the gospel message, not just that which pertains to institutions and law.
The world may come into the kingdom through the back door. We must not limit our message to the individual only, as if God could not speak through His law to guide people to Himself and His grace and His only Son. If we can follow Christ and His law and thereby change the justice system for the better, could we not show the world that grace which saves from the condemnation of the judicial system and point them to the true Judge and Savior of all men?
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