A Return to Lawfulness
Liberty is at risk today as an antinomian spirit has taken hold of our nation. The word antinomian means “without law.” In America today we see many who have adopted this as a philosophy of life, and it is becoming more and more prevalent across the nation. There was a major wave of this antinomian philosophy immediately following the death of George Floyd as the Marxist group Black Lives Matter (BLM) organized, what the mainstream media called, “peaceful protests” around our nation. What BLM organized was neither peaceful nor a protest, it was an anarchist movement that came complete with rioting, looting, and vandalism. These riots led to autonomous zones across our nation, most notably CHAZ or CHOP in Seattle. These autonomous zones were nothing more than antinomian colonies that despised the constitution and all authorities that would seek order in the midst of a sin cursed and chaotic world. This spirit of lawlessness has continued to spread across America as many call for the defunding of police solely based on the merit of escaping law and order.
This antinomianism or lawless spirit is nothing new to our nation, we are simply reaping the seeds we have sown for quite some time. Through the rise of radical feminism, no fault divorce, and public schools teaching corrupt morality and ethics we have seen utter destruction to the family hierarchy and the legitimate authority it brings. By means of villainizing from the mainstream media, pastors who seek to be preachers of righteousness and give our society a conscience have had their authority ignored and ridiculed. Even the constitution has been neutered of its authority through fiat executive orders and the overreach of courts who wrongly call their opinions rulings. This lawless spirit has been at work in our society for decades as we have seen a rise in sexual anarchy, murder of children for the sake of convenience, and a rejection of God’s moral law. This lawlessness and antinomianism is a danger to any society as it is nothing more than a cheap trick by tyrants to create instability through a perceived moral vacuum in order to get citizens to trade their citizenship for safety and ultimately becoming the subjects of these tyrants.
When it comes to liberty there are two competing worldviews. One worldview is that of tyrants and holds the perspective that it is the government who gives permission to the people to be their subjects. The other worldview is that of our founding fathers, and is rooted in the word of God, they held that it was the people who gave permission to the government to govern. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This view holds the truth that all legitimate authority is delegated by God to people and people in return give up some of their self-government (authority) to a civil government who is to rule righteousness. To this fact John Hancock pointed out that we ought not be friends to every government when he said, “Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.” The antinomianism we are seeing today is nothing short of a pathway to tyranny and we ought to avow our enmity against tyranny with in the same way Hancock did. Lawlessness creates fear, instability, chaos, and injustice this causes the population to seek safety over liberty. Truly antinomianism as a direct assault on liberty. John Locke put it this way, “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.”
In America today we have a need for lawfulness and our founding fathers recognized this fact. Chew on these quotes:
“The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”- Benjamin Rush
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”- George Washington
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”- John Adams
“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”- Patrick Henry
“The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.”- James Madison
A societal agreement on law and order is necessary to have any functional freedom in a world where sin abounds. Without an agreement on law and order antinomianism creeps in and tyranny takes hold of a nation. The communist dream of a utopia where mankind can be personally immoral and do what is right in their own eyes, while society is functional and free, is a delusion. The communist dream is nothing short of a nightmare in reality, where the state is an unjust moral arbiter and the people are slaves to their kingly tyrants. In a lawless society raw power becomes the effectual moral arbiter. When raw power becomes the only consideration for morality freedom is chained and inaccessible to the individual who is not wielding the greatest power. This leads to moral instability and a society filled with injustice. We understand that true injustice is the antagonist of true liberty.
Ultimately, a nation will not last long in a state of lawlessness or anarchy, someone will bring order to the nation. The question comes, “What order or what laws are the right ones?” To answer this question, I will turn to the great legal commentator Sir William Blackstone.
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation. Depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.
The doctrines thus delivered we call revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures.
Blackstone was clear that the ultimate source of any law’s legal standing is the laws of nature and the laws of God (found in the Bible). This was the same line of thought that our founding fathers had when they appealed to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s of God” in the Declaration of Independence. If we are to defeat lawlessness, we must recognize the only true foundation for lawfulness, the Bible.
What must we do to secure and maintain our liberty? We must return to lawfulness. As Christians we understand this as something that is in accordance with the grace of God. Titus 2:11-14 says:
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself [His] own special people, zealous for good works.
It is God’s desire to redeem us from lawlessness ultimately by means of salvation. We also know that it is God’s curse to give anyone or any nation over to sin.
As a nation we must strive to return to God’s moral standard. This standard can be summed up in the Ten Commandments. God’s moral law is the true foundation for America’s organic law (The Declaration of Independence) and our Constitution. If we do not return to our foundation, we will have nothing short of a spectacular collapse and tyrannical chains will be placed upon us. We need a return to simple obedience and the fear of God in our society to truly preserve our liberty.
As Americans we must not forget where we have come from and we must once again let our godly heritage shape our future. We must turn back to trusting in God, we must seek God’s blessing, we must obey the laws of nature and nature’s God, and finally we must secure our liberty in law.