Tag Archives: Law

Beware the One-Handed Woman!

March 18, 2010

The miscellaneous laws of the Old Testament are just awesome.  If you’ve never taken the time to read through a book like Deuteronomy, then you need to.  It’s a real treat.  Not only is this where Jesus got all of the ammunition that He used against the Devil during His temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11), but there are also some rare gems among the various laws.

Now, I don’t mean in any way to make fun of the law that I’m about to discuss, but it’s one of those rules that makes me chuckle when I read it.  It makes me think of playground hi-jinks and people making funny faces.  I’m talking about Deuteronomy 25:11-12.

When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.

I suppose you could say that I have an “immature” sense of humor for laughing when I read a law that mentions seizing someone by the “private parts”, but so be it.  This is a funny picture in my mind.

The Law makes it clear, however, that this is in no way a minor offense.  Other cultures and religions have various situations in which a person’s hand is to be cut off as punishment for an offense, but this is the only case in the Bible’s Law that calls for this particular penalty.  But what makes it such a serious crime?  Why take such drastic measures against an action that seems rude but not overly injurious (other than that sickening pain)?

Well, I suppose you could say that since the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” law can’t possibly apply here, something else had to be done, but I don’t think that’s it.  The true answer probably lies a couple of chapters back in Deuteronomy 23:1, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.”  In other words, the woman who reaches out to grab hold of her husband’s enemy’s “private parts” may end up permanently disqualifying him from participating in the worship assembly.

Sadly, there are a lot of men sitting through worship services in our churches today that probably wish that there was something to disqualify them from having to be there.  Men have become so effeminate in our culture that they abandon the spiritual headship of the home to their wives while they go out and do supposedly “manly” things.  In the Bible, however, faith and worship are extremely masculine pursuits.  One could make a joke concerning these laws that I’ve mentioned about what you have to have to be able to worship.

Worship of the Almighty Creator and King of the cosmos is at once our highest privilege and the most natural expression of our faith.  Worship is not our right.  God makes that clear by denying many people access to the assembly (Deuteronomy 23:1-8).  It is a gracious blessing to be able to draw near to God, even just to be able to sing with others about His greatness.  But this is exactly what the man who loves God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength greatly desires to do.  When something or someone is truly praiseworthy, we long to give the deserved praise.

Men who show little or no desire to be in worship ought not to kid themselves that they are genuine believers.  Disobeying the Word of God when it commands attendance at worship (Hebrews 10:25) is not a “cool” and “manly” thing to do.  It is a faithless and cowardly thing.  Real men worship God with all their hearts.  The rest may as well just go ahead and emasculate themselves (Galatians 5:12).

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The Mark of the Feast

March 11, 2010

So many people today miss the real danger of the message of the mark of the beast in Revelation 13.  They get all caught up in wondering if it’s going to be a microchip or a bar-code tattoo that most don’t realize they’ve already been marked.

The beast’s mark, which goes on the forehead and the hand (Revelation 13:16), is not referring to some technological means of physically marking someone.  This imagery of marking clearly represents a spiritual reality because those who receive the mark are judged for it by God and receive His wrath (14:9-10).  In fact, the great horror of the mark of the beast is that it goes in the same place that God’s mark was supposed to go.

God commanded His people to bind His Law as a sign on their hand and as frontlets between their eyes (Deuteronomy 6:8).  The implication is that the Law of God would guide their thoughts (the mark on their forehead) and their actions (the mark on their hand).  And when this mark of God’s Law is forfeited in favor of the mark of the beast – the adoption of Satan’s rules and morality – then one has truly abandoned the proper worship of God, which is so wrapped up in obedience to His commands, and has decided to worship the Enemy.

The beast’s mark is offered everywhere today.  Instead of godly parents teaching the laws of God diligently to their children and talking about them when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise (Deuteronomy 6:7), many send their children to a state-run public school where the beast has his opportunity to influence them for hours a day.  The television pumps metric tons of marking ink straight toward our foreheads and our hands.  The internet is the Devil’s own tattoo parlor.  Even taking a leisurely stroll through a local mall is to be surrounded by legions of those who already bear the mark and who are looking for a fresh flesh canvas to cover with their way of thinking.

Our culture shows very clearly that its thoughts and its actions are not guided by God’s Law.  No, it bears the competing mark – the counterfeit one – and it wants us to wear it too.

But the beast’s mark promises only safety from persecution at the hands of others who bear it.  If you take it, you will “fit in”, but that’s as far as the benefits go.  Not so with God’s mark.  Ultimately, God’s promise of protection is far greater than the beast’s, because His wrath is more to be feared than man’s (Matthew 10:28), but His mark also carries other blessings.

God promises those who are obedient to His commands that He will love them, bless them, and multiply them (Deuteronomy 7:13).  He will bless the fruit of their womb and the fruit of their ground: their grain, their wine, and their oil.  He promises to bless their herds and their flocks.  He will not bring disease on them as punishment, as He did the Egyptians (verse 15).  They will be blessed above all peoples (verse 14).

The Psalms contain similarly glorious promises of blessing for those who obey.  The man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers will be greatly blessed (Psalm 1).  He who delights in God’s Law and meditates on it day and night will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season (verse 3).  The Psalm even says that “in all he does, he prospers”.

Our God is a feast for those who love Him and who obey His commands.  “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

I couldn’t stop thinking about this song this morning as I was meditating on all of this.

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The Law of Liberty

March 10, 2010

“The most difficult concept to grasp in all the Bible is the interaction between Law and grace.”

That’s what I used to tell everyone.  We grow up learning the Ten Commandments.  We are taught that rules are very important; we were always expected to obey some rules, no matter where we were.  But then we learn the Gospel.  We hear about God’s grace.  We are taught that Jesus saved us from our sins and that salvation is not of works, but of faith.

What about the Law then?  What about those Ten Commandments?  Do I still have to follow them?  Some places in the Bible call one of the Commandments into question.  Romans 14 and Colossians 2 seem to indicate that obedience to the Sabbath command is a matter of personal conviction.  But then other New Testament passages make it seem like if I don’t follow God’s commands, I will end up forfeiting my place in the Kingdom of God (Galatians 5:17-21, Colossians 3:5-6).  How are we supposed to navigate this difficult terrain?

Some Bible teachers foolishly simplify the issue: “We’re no longer under Law, but under grace!” they exclaim, citing Romans 6:14 or Galatians 3.  By taking those words out of context, these teachers have created generations of antinomians (those who subscribe to no law) and worse: legalists (those who subscribe to their own law), to which I belonged.

The key to understanding Law and grace is not to arbitrarily decide which things are good for Christians to do and which are not.  This just leads us to become the same as the Pharisees, and certainly this has happened.  Many churches have replaced God’s commands with their own: “Don’t drink”, “Don’t smoke”, “Don’t gamble”, and “Don’t dance”.  But when it comes to what God has commanded (the very things that Jesus in the Great Commission told us to teach – Matthew 28:18-20); in those things they will say, “We are not under Law but under grace.”  No, the key to understanding Law and grace is to recognize the order and the function of each.

The Exodus is a great example of the place of Law and grace in God’s people.  God did not first give the Israelites a Law and then promise to free them from Egypt if they obeyed.  To the contrary, He broke them out of their slavery first and then gave them the Law.  This is the same order with the Christian: God saves us quite apart from our own righteousness, and then commands us how to live.  Therefore, our salvation is not of the Law, but of grace.  We are, however, then expected to obey God’s revealed will for our lives (His commands) in order to please Him and glorify Him before men (Matthew 5:16).

Also, to clarify these issues of Law and grace, we also need to understand the role of Law in society.  Christians frequently have a hard time looking at the Old Testament Law and thinking that it has to do with them because so much of it is to be enforced by the government.  This is the other key: much of God’s Law is to be obeyed by the state.  We look at commands that say things like, “You shall not permit a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) and we know that we are not supposed to go out killing witches, so we think that the Old Testament Law is no longer applicable.  That command is not for individual Christians (although it does teach individual Christians not to dabble in sorcery), it is for the government.  The nation/state is supposed to wield the sword of God’s justice in punishing unrighteousness (Romans 13:4).

Armed with a proper understanding of God’s Law, it does indeed become a “Law of Liberty” as James 1:25 calls it, because it frees us from wondering if what we are doing is right or wrong.  Truth is always what sets us free, not cloudy confusion.  So the Christian knows he has the freedom to dance or to enjoy God’s gift of wine without becoming drunk because the Law never speaks against those things.  And to break the Law by killing or committing adultery is to go right back into slavery to sin, destroying our freedom.  The Law is a very good thing.  That’s why so many of the Psalms praise it (19 and 119 especially), and that’s why Moses can say of it in Deuteronomy 4:5-8,

See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

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Blood Pollution

March 9, 2010

Procedural crime dramas like CSI may represent some of the most flagrant disregard for God’s Law on display in our culture.  I’m not just referring to the fact that many of the episodes feature hookers or strip clubs; I’m referring to the ways that the forensic scientists go about identifying and prosecuting their suspects.  This is rarely if ever done on the basis of two or three witnesses as the Biblical Law demands, but is rather almost always accomplished by means of scientific study of the materials left at the crime scene.

Now, we know from the Bible that God takes the issue of murder very seriously.  In Numbers chapter 35 we are given what is undoubtedly the most thorough and just system of dealing with the violent death of human beings that has ever been conceived.  And in that chapter, God makes plain the vital importance of solving a murder: “You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Numbers 35:33).  But how are these murders to be solved?  Verse 30 of the same chapter gives the answer: “If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses.  But no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness.”

God’s Law gives one and only one way to solve a murder: the evidence of witnesses; and there must be more than one.  It is significant that God does not include forensic evidence in His Law as permissible to convict a murderer.  Certainly such evidence existed in those days.  The Old Covenant Israelites were not complete simpletons that were unable to match a bloody hand to a bloody knife.  God just decided that He would not allow that kind of “testimony”.  His reasons are certainly His own, but we know enough about how it is possible to “frame” innocent people for crimes using staged forensic evidence to give us some sort of explanation for not permitting this evidence at all.

In fact, one of the most telling stories involving a known murderer in the Bible also includes unmistakable forensic testimony, and yet he is not allowed to be put to death.  The story I am referring to is the very first murder ever: that of Abel by Cain.  There in Genesis chapter 4 we have again the polluting effects of the blood in the ground as God declares that the blood cries out to Him.  In addition, God places a mark on Cain that absolutely declares his guilt in the killing, and yet the mark also keeps Cain from being attacked and killed himself.

What is going on in that story?  Why doesn’t God allow someone else to put Cain to death for his crime?  Did He change His mind between Genesis 4 and Numbers 35?  Absolutely not!  In fact, it is precisely because He has not changed His mind between those two occasions that He does not let anyone else put Cain to death for the murder of his brother.  There were no witnesses!  God is totally upholding every single detail of the Law of Numbers 35 that will be revealed in the future way back here in His encounter with Cain in Genesis 4.  We have reference to both the pollution of the ground with the blood and the implied necessity of capital punishment being carried out on the basis of witnesses.  God doesn’t change His mind (Number 23:19) and His Law will never pass away until all is accomplished (Matthew 5:17-20).

Some might object: “But if we structured our laws like this, then some murderers might get away scott-free!”  This is where God expects us to trust Him to properly avenge (Deuteronomy 32:35).  God eventually drowned all of Cain’s entire family tree in the flood.  He will not permit the wicked to evade just recompense for their evil deeds.  His Law, however, does prevent similarly wicked people from staging evidence to condemn the righteous.  His ways are perfect.  Our thinking is subject to our fallen nature.  So I think I’ll just let Him decide how these things ought to be.  Just a warning to any future fellow jurors of any trial that I sit in on: if there is not testimony of two or more witnesses, I’m not voting “guilty”.

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More Capital Punishment

February 23, 2010

True justice is so terribly perverted in the United States.  Thieves are punished by fines and imprisonment as if their crime was against the state, while the victims of the crime have their property replaced by insurance companies.  This is utter foolishness.  In addition, a person can get into all kinds of trouble for driving too fast or too erratically, while those who have sex with animals or with other humans of the same gender receive no rebuke.   What we Americans have apparently decided is that we know better than God about which things to label as crimes and that we know better than He does about the ways that those crimes ought to be punished.  And the saddest part of all of this is that most Christians are more likely to support man’s definition of crime and punishment than God’s own wise revelation of justice in His Word.

In our land, if a man commits adultery there is absolutely no penalty.  No one is fined.  No one goes to jail.  There’s not even a public flogging of such a person.  A person can commit such an atrocity with no fear of a just punishment from the state.  Jaywalking carries a stiffer penalty.  Not so in the perfect Law of God.  We find in Leviticus 20:10 that “if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”  In the Law of God, the punishment fits the crime.  Breaking the sacred marriage vows that image forth the fidelity of Christ and the church to one another needs to be punished as severely as possible by the state.  To let something like adultery happen day by day in this country with no just penalty is a downright abomination.

The same thing could be said for any of the other crimes that call for the death penalty in God’s Law.  Homosexual acts are an abominable crime, and the state ought to hand out the just penalty (Leviticus 20:13).  Intercourse between humans and animals ought to penalized with death (Leviticus 20:16).  Even things like witchcraft and pagan worship should be punishable by death by the state because trafficking with demons will always lead to the downfall of any society (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:2).  Instead, however, our military creates chaplaincies for those who practice witchcraft and even sets up pagan worship areas in complete rebellion against the Law of God (see the story here).

Some Christians are quick to defend the man-centered and sin-centered laws of the United States by claiming that God’s Laws were only for the Old Covenant Israelites – as if what God decided was good for society is no longer important now that Christ has come.  These folks will often and even loudly lament the state of our nation, and will decry the sinful presence of homosexuality and adultery, but at the end of the day will still claim that not wearing a seat belt should be a greater crime in the eyes of the state than cheating on one’s spouse.  Not only is this the height of foolishness, it is also patently unbiblical.

God has always held all nations accountable for the ways that they either keep or dismiss His laws.  In fact, Israel was able to conquer the land of Canaan, slaughtering all the inhabitants, precisely because the Canaanites had lived contrary to the laws of God (Leviticus 20:23).  And Jesus was very clear to state that His coming did absolutely nothing to negate the previously given Law of God, but that – to the contrary – “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.  Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:18-19).

We need to wake up and understand that there has been a great relaxing of the commandments of God (and not just the least of them, but the greatest of them as well) in our nation and even among those in our churches.  We are in dire straights at the moment and the ‘Christians’ have contributed to this downfall of our society as much as or more than anyone else because it was our duty to educate our people in the importance of God’s commands (Matthew 28:20).  May God have mercy on us for failing so miserably at what He called us to do, and may He give us the boldness and the wisdom to begin to make it right.

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An Eye for an Eye

February 16, 2010

The following quote is from Greg Bahnsen’s book, Theonomy in Christian Ethics.

The main underlying principle of scriptural penology (whether civic or eternal) is not reformation or deterrence, but justice. The outstanding characteristic of theonomic punishment is the principle of equity; no crime receives a penalty which it does not warrant. The punishment for a violation of God’s law is always appropriate for the nature of the offense; “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Here is the most blessed standard of social retribution that man’s civilization has ever seen. That the Older Testament law sets forth humane and just punishments for crime is immediately apparent when one compares it with the legal codes of the nations around Israel. God’s penal sanctions are not overweighted, cruel, unusual, or excessive; a criminal receives what he deserves: no more, no less. It is especially important for Christians to recognize this fact, for it is the underlying principle at work in the atoning death of Jesus Christ upon the cross; He is the sinner’s substitute in order to effect atonement. Sin must meet divine judgment (e.g., Nah. 1:2, Hab. 1:13), and God can only forgive sin in a manner consistent with His holiness (Ps. 85:9 f.). Hence a sacrifice had to be offered to placate divine wrath occasioned by sin.

Within this framework Christ came as our sacrificial substitute; He is the Lamb of God who brings redemption by His sacrifice upon the cross (John 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7; Heb. 9:11-15; 10:3-18; 13:10-12; 1 Pet. 1:18 f.) and thus substitutes Himself for the sinner by taking God’s wrath upon Himself (Col. 2:14; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:10, 13; cf. Deut. 21:23; 27: 26; Jer. 11:3). The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon Him (Isa. 53:6). Christ laid down His life to atone for the sinner’s life; Christ took the punishment warranted by the sinner’s violation of God’s
law upon Himself. Therefore, the sinner need not fear God’s eternal punishment, for his sin has been atoned. The principle of retribution is prominent in man’s salvation. This illustrates the importance of the scriptural penal system: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

This principle of equity applies to civic punishments imposed by the civil magistrate; there must be equity in punishment, even at the social level. God operates on the basis of retribution (Job 34:11; Ps. 18:25 f.; Ezek. 18:4, 20; Gal. 6:7—and even restitution, Job 42:10), and the penalties which He prescribes for social sins are based on the same principle of retribution, restitution and compensation (Ex. 21:18-22:7; Lev. 6:4 f.; 24:17-21; Deut. 19:21). None of God’s penalties are excessive or lenient; hence the Older Testament does not detail arbitrary punishments for crimes (as with the varying fines for traffic violations from state to state in our modern day), but the punishment was made to correspond to the social heinousness of the offense so that the culprit receives what his public disobedience merits (e.g., Deut. 19:19). The penalties imposed upon social crime are just as appropriate, equitable, and just with respect to their sphere of reference (civil society) as the eternal punishment for that crime (considered now as sin) is just with respect to its sphere of reference (the God-man relation with respect to eternity).

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To Steal a Man

February 10, 2010

The Law of God in the Bible condones slavery.  Oh don’t try to deny it, it’s absolutely true!  It has rules for how to sell yourself into slavery (Exodus 21:1-6), how to sell your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7-11), and some crimes are even punished by selling the perpetrator into slavery (Exodus 22:1-3).  It also has many different rules on how to treat your slaves (Exodus 21:20-21, cf. Colossians 4:1).  And I believe that all of these laws ought to be adopted by our own nation.

Well, those are fighting words in many parts of the country, I understand, but I believe that all nations are held accountable for how well they implement God’s Law (compare Romans 13:1-7 with Revelation 13).  Our nation has had a long and ugly history with slavery, though, and so to even suggest that such a thing be made legal makes the one doing the suggesting look like a racist and a bigot.

The truth of the matter, however, is that if this nation would have structured its laws to reflect the Law of God from the beginning, we never would have had the trouble with the institution of slavery like we did prior to the Civil War.  The Law of God allows a man to sell himself to another man as a slave (apparently for the purpose of overcoming financial difficulty).  The Law allows a father to sell his daughters (the feminists won’t like that one, but then again, they’re going to hate most of the Bible anyway), but it also protects those women from any mistreatment.  The Law uses slavery as a punishment for crime – especially theft – and even allows wartime captives to be taken as slaves in some circumstances.  But what we find absolutely forbidden in the Biblical Law is the taking of a man against his will (outside of a formal war) in order to make him a slave.  In fact, the Bible states that if this done, the one who ‘stole’ the man and any other person found in the possession of the ‘stolen’ man should be put to death (Exodus 21:16).

Imagine if that law were applied to the situation in the South prior to the Civil War.  How many of those slaves that were being brought over here by the boatload do you think were ‘stolen’?  Many Southerners tried to defend the practice of slavery by saying that the Africans’ own people had sold them to us, but we know that virtually none of those slaves came into the system according to the ways that the Bible prescribes.  Practically all of them were stolen men (and women).  If the Biblical Law were the basis of the system, though, those distinguished Southern gentlemen would be put to death as soon as it was determined that they were in possession of man who had been taken against his will.  In fact, the whole African slave trade would never have been started in this country because of the fear of violating this command.

In addition, if our nation’s laws were built around God’s Law, we wouldn’t have the kinds of problems that we have today with unemployment, an abused welfare system, and overcrowded prisons (actually, the Biblical Law has no place at all for incarceration).  Someone who has fallen to the lowest rungs of society could easily sell themselves for a time to a wealthy family and be well taken care of while providing a valuable service.  Those who have been reduced to theft in order to survive would be sold into the same system to make restitution for their crime, but also to be taken care of so that they would no longer have to steal.

The Old Testament’s laws are not antiquated and naive.  They have not been proven less civilized than modern American thinking in these areas.  They reflect the perfectly just, good, and wise character of the benevolent God who gave them.  Fallible and fallen man will never improve on them.  This is as good of a blueprint for a Utopian society as you can get.  Whenever someone complains that God’s Law just doesn’t work – like in the story of the Salem witch trials – the problem can always be traced back to those in the wrong not following the Law of God close enough.  May those of us who are believers in Christ ever strive to show the holy character of God in the Law.

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Crime and Punishment

February 3, 2010

Let’s say you wake up tomorrow morning and discover that some time in the night all of your valuables have been stolen.  You call the police and fill out a report.  Two days later, the cops catch the thief and are able to return some but not all of your things.  At this point, what do you expect should happen to the thief?  In most states, he will go to jail or prison, and the sentence length is based on what the value of the property stolen happened to be and whether his theft can be counted as a misdemeanor or a felony.

But is this what should happen?  In America, we witness so many cases where the punishment does not fit the crime that the grand majority of us don’t even know that there might be a problem.  We see it on the news when drug lords are put away for life.  We see it in television shows like 24 when Jack Bauer does inhumane things in pursuit of the next lead – we even applaud it!  We especially see it in the way that our laws have no punishments for evil acts like aborting unborn children, participating in homosexual acts, practicing witchcraft, or bowing down to false gods.

God’s Law, as revealed in His Word, contains appropriate and fitting punishments for transgressions of that Law.  The thief is not incarcerated; he is merely forced to either return what was stolen and/or pay back two to five times the value of what he took, depending on the circumstance (Exodus 22:1-4).  That’s a punishment that fits the crime.  The victim actually ends up in a better place than he was before his property was stolen – something that never happens in our criminal justice system – and the thief has to do some hard work to make right his wrong, but he does not have years stolen from his life in incarceration.  Both sides are “happy” with this outcome.

On the other end of the spectrum, if someone has committed murder or adultery or practiced witchcraft, that person’s life is forfeit immediately on the basis of two or more witnesses (Exodus 21:12, Deuteronomy 22:22, and Exodus 22:18 respectively).  There are no life sentences or paroles.  The punishment fits the crime.  In our society, some crimes are punished far too harshly, and some abominable crimes are not punished at all, or else they receive such measly consequences that it becomes a joke.

I found myself recently swept up in the cultural delusion concerning just punishment when I read Genesis 34.  In the story, Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, is raped by Shechem the son of Hamor the Hittite.  Dinah’s brothers are, of course, furious over this, and so two of them, Simeon and Levi, concoct a very Jack Bauer-like plan to have every male in the town circumcised.  Then, on the third day, when all of the men are so sore that they can’t even get up, these two brothers come through and put the whole city to the sword.  I’ve seen enough TV that I actually applaud this kind of commando behavior.

Jacob was not very impressed with his sons’ vengeance, however.  At first, he rebukes Simeon and Levi for causing him to “stink to the inhabitants of the land” (Genesis 34:30).  He is concerned that the rest of the people of the surrounding area might attack him.  But at the end of Jacob’s life, he hands out an even sterner criticism of the boys’ actions during the “blessing” of his twelve sons.  He says in Genesis 49:5-7:

Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords.  Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company.  For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.  Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel!  I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.

This is how we ought to think about what the boys did.  Killing an entire town was not a just punishment for the actions of one man – it was mass murder!  In fact, not even the rapist should have been put to the sword; even that punishment would not have fit the crime.  Later, the Law would say, “If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins” (Exodus 22:16-17).  This is exactly what Shechem tried to do (Genesis 34:12).

Our understanding of what punishment a crime ought to deserve needs to come from a reading of God’s Law, not our own feelings.  This is just one more place in our culture where we have replaced the Word of God with the whim of man.

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Civil Government and God’s Law

February 2, 2010

The following quote is from Greg L. Bahnsen’s, Theonomy in Christian Ethics:

The fact that Christians are commanded to obey the civil magistrate is another indication that human government is obligated to follow God’s holy law. Scripture clearly teaches that God’s people must obey and respect civil magistrates. And yet in the book of Revelation men are indicted and held culpable for following the dictates of the “beast,” that is, sinful Rome and its emperor. Moreover, those who followed the beast are contrasted with those who, instead, kept the law of God (Rev. 14:9-12). Rulers are consequently expected to follow the law of God so that Christians can obey them—or else those who are punished for obeying sinful Rome according to Revelation 14 would be exonerated by Romans 13! The way to reconcile Romans 13:4, where the state is spoken of as in the service of God, and Revelation 13:2, where the state is said to be in the service of Satan, is by viewing the former as the norm for government and the latter as indictment for deviation from that norm. Outside of that one must either forfeit the unity of Scripture or appeal to principles (e.g., Rom. 8:28) to explain Romans 13 which that passage itself gives no hint of utilizing as necessary for understanding its message. Thus the civil magistrate ought to promote obedience to God’s law (the good) and to punish with God’s wrath (i.e., according to the just penal sanctions for society) those who publicly perform evil deeds (violations of God’s laws). Toward this end believers are exhorted to pray for all kings and authorities: in order that they might lead peaceful lives in all godliness and holiness (1 Tim. 2:1-3).  The tranquility which the magistrate should establish and protect in society must be characterized by justice and civic righteousness, for his reign should enable Christians to live in peace (which does not mean, in this passage, that believers have “personal” peace while nevertheless under public persecution) and should provide for, and promote, an environment characterized by justice and righteousness (which, as in the case of tranquility, does not simply mean that believers have personal or private godliness in the midst of complete social unrighteousness and public injustice). The peace which the believer wants to have, and also the godliness which the believer wants to express, should be made possible by the civil magistrate’s proper administration of government; toward that end Christians are told to pray.

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