The best one can hope for from a secular government, based upon finite man’s fickle edicts, is that it occasionally punishes the wicked and does good to the righteous. Without Yahweh’s immutable law as his standard, it is impossible for man to sustain righteous government on any consistent basis. This is but one of many reasons why God’s law order is imperative under the New Covenant 3 and why every Christian should be promoting it as government and society’s standard.
Fickle traditions
The following exposes the inherent volatile nature of man’s ever-changing standard and why secular government can never be counted on to do what’s right:
Two people could have walked down any U.S. street in 1930—one with a bottle of whiskey under his arm and one with a bar of gold in his pocket, and the one with the whiskey would have been a criminal whereas the one with the bar of gold would have been considered a good law abiding citizen. If the same thing happened in any U.S. city in 1970, the one with the whiskey would be the law abiding citizen and the one with the gold bar would be the criminal.4
In a mere forty-year period, man’s standard had completely reversed itself.5 The United States Supreme Court reversed itself in 219 cases in its first 212 years. Judicial “standards now change as rapidly as the Justices. This causes an uncertainty for society; and, in fact, often establishes a dubious standard which, in effect, is no standard at all.”6
The same transposition of ethics has occurred innumerable times under all governments based upon the fickle traditions of man. There’s no enduring continuity in such capricious traditions. They provide a never-ending cycle of volatility.
Moreover, whenever a biblical government ceases to perform in the fashion Paul details, it ceases to be the government depicted in Romans 13. It has ceased to uphold what made it a biblical government—that is, its devotion to God’s law. It then becomes a secular government, based upon man’s capricious edicts—the polar opposite of the government described in Romans 13.
Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?... Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, ... in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines [and, in many instances, legislating] the commandments of men.
(Matthew 15:6-9)
To claim Paul was promoting secular government in Romans 13 is to make him complicit in the type of government condemned by Christ. It would, in effect, make Paul a Pharisee all over again.
No Moral Vacuums
There are no moral vacuums. Thus, there are no constitutions or procedural manuals void of their own inherent ethics. These procedural ethics are either moral or immoral depending upon whether or not they’re established upon God’s moral law.7 Government either promotes Yahweh’s morality as reflected in His triune moral law8 or it promotes finite man’s immorality as reflected in man’s surrogate edicts.9
Unless government is established to perform Yahweh’s will as reflected in His law and persists in the same, it is not the government to which Paul declares we’re obligated to submit ourselves.
END NOTES
1. James Strong, “Dictionary of the Greek Testament,” The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, s.v. “proskarterio” (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990) p. 61.
2. A Biblical Constitution: A Scriptural Replacement for Secular Government
3. For more on how Yahweh’s moral law applies and should be implemented today, see Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant.
See also series of ten online books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes, and judgments, beginning with Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4. W.W. Turner, The Amazing Story of the British Sovereign (Nashville, TN: 1970) p. 4.
5. Under biblical law, neither the bottle of whiskey nor the bar of gold is unlawful.
6. David Barton, Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 2005) p. 233.
7. A Biblical Constitution: A Scriptural Replacement for Secular Government
8. “[Yahweh] declared unto you his covenant [law], which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments…. And Yahweh commanded me [Moses] at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it.”
(Deuteronomy 4:13-14)
9. The United States Constitution is a perfect example of a procedural manual rife with man-made decrees, which, in turn, created a secular government. See Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective, in which every Article and Amendment is examined by the Bible.
What makes a government secular is its rejection of Yahweh as its sovereign and thus His moral law as society’s standard.
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