Does God’s Law still apply?

God's Ten Commandments

Do they still apply?  What do they mean?  Do they trump man's laws?

Was Jesus Christ the walking, talking, embodiment of God's Law?  How are we dead to the law? 

What is the yardstick for right and wrong?  Is it a rubber yardstick or do the 10 Commandments rule?

What can the Bible, religion and faith possibly have to do with civil government and the state?

Now I am going to make some shocking statements here.  Not that I am especially qualified.  But I am a student of R.J. Rushdoony.  So these ideas did not originate with me or even with him.  They are simply what the Bible says about itself. You almost certainly have never heard them before.  Your first reaction is practically guaranteed, by your education and by powerful cultural forces, to be hugely negative.  In fact, you have been subjected to heavy propaganda your whole life long to keep you from taking the Ten Commandments seriously, much less delighting in them and studying them everyday.

Nonetheless, here we go.  Hang on to your thinking caps...

All laws are based on a religion.  The religion here is either Humanism or Biblical Law.  There can be no separation between religion and the state.  A state is based on the rule of law.  Laws are either based on the infallible word of God or the infallible word of Man which changes from day to day and even minute to minute.  Without Biblical Law there is no basis for any morality.  Each man is then a law unto himself since he is his own god.  Then civil government becomes indistinguishable from organized crime, existing primarily to maintain the power and enhance the lifestyle of those in power.

Now that wasn't so bad was it? Now we are going to follow on with a few more statements.

The establishment of any law outside of Biblical Law is the establishment of lawlessness. God is not mocked. To legislate any other law than the Bible, the LawWord of God, is to usurp God as the Law-Giver.  All authority given to man in the familial, vocational, personal, civil, and other realms is administrative, not legislative.

What?  You mean all legislatures should just give up and go home?  Well, they can still do things like make sure the armed forces and police have enough money to protect the country.  But no more making laws.  Judges would be told, here is the Bible, now apply it to all the cases that come before you.  That would bring unprecedented peace to our country.  Anything else devolves into tyranny.

Christians need to educate themselves on this matter. To quote RJ Rushdoony:

God's peace is the establishment of justice according to His law.

It begins with the atonement of Christ as the satisfaction of God's judgment. It is followed by our regeneration, so that we are now empowered to live the laws of justice. These laws of justice are set forth by God in His Law.

Peace, both as our Lord uses the word, and peace as the Old Testament peace offering speaks of it, means justice. Our Lord says he is giving peace because he is going to the cross. But today peace is a propaganda word, a much abused word taken to mean whatever the person wants.

The politics of peace in our time is the politics of injustice and death. Both the meaning and the fact of peace escape us in our time. A generation and nations at peace with abortion and homosexuality are at war with God who will not stay the plague. Apart from justice there is no peace. Apart from God's law peace is an impossibility.

May God give us grace to seek after His peace, His justice, His law, to grow in Him, to trust in Him, to know His peace, to rejoice in His justice, to delight in His law, for the world can give us none.

R.J. Rushdoony

That is just a part of one of the tapes.  R.J. Rushdoony is a wonderful speaker and full of integrity and character.  But what about you personally?  Are you ready to listen?  Its a humling thing but, hey, it is better to be humble before God than before tyrants.

When you are weary of lawlessness and disorder and sick of injustice and tyranny... Turn to God's Law and become meek before Him, become the tamed of God, willing at last to submit to His LawWord. Give up hope of finding some other order, some other foundation on which to stand.

Once you have surrendered to God you find that, actually, it is a great place to be.  Finally you can relate to Psalm 119, "Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my delight. " and "I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word."  Amazingly this delight, missing from Christendom for centuries, is the key to health and healing, longevity, strength, security, peace of mind, and happiness in general.

When Christians finally understand that Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord, then we will see what we have been commanded to seek after: God's Kingdom. 

That's right.  Studied irrelevance is not holiness or even piety.  It is antinomian - anti-law.  It is to be at war with God.  If you hate God's Law you hate God.

What?  Is this a denial of justification by faith alone???  Hold on to your thinking caps.  It is no such thing.  Simply put: Christ died to reconcile us with God. He did not die to reconcile us with ourselves or with others. We must die, in Christ, to ourselves and to others to do that. That is, we must die to our sin and become alive to righteousness, the righteousness of God's LawWord, which is the content of Christ's character. There is no other basis for justice and community.

Thus we offer you the Institutes of Biblical Law set of lessons by RJ Rushdoony, 146 lessons on God's Law, the 10 Commandments and what they mean.

But why should you care about justice and community?  Because God commands you to care about more than your own personal comfort.  "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you."  Make God's priorities your priorities and He will take care of the rest of your worries for you.

****

What does God say we should do?

 

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

Deuteronomy 6:6,7

 

Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.  All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

Isaiah 40: 13-17

If God's Law is not the law for men and nations then God is not the Lord. Then He is a bystander while others rule. A sovereign is the source of law; law is what the sovereign says. The test of whether you are a Christian is not whether you have had an experience, but whether you know and believe the LawWord of God. You cannot separate your personal sanctification from society. To avoid anarchy, rechristianization is urgently necessary.

When you have the law written on your hearts then you are ready to implement God's Law in your lives. We waste our time if we expect justice from evil men. Christians in the early church created their own courts based on God Law.

For a review of the Insitutes of Biblical Law by Patrick Hurd see: http://www.fortifyingthefamily.com/institutes.htm