The False Hope of The Law

In a speech given in 1969 by Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, he said, “Is it possible that much of what frightens and disturbs us started with us? With a gradual and silent erosion of our moral code? Are we the lost generation? No government at any level and for any price can afford the police necessary to assure our safety and our freedom unless the overwhelming majority of us are guided by an inner personal code of morality.” 

Unsurprisingly, Reagan spoke these words near the end of one of the most tumultuous times in our nation’s history. 

It was a decade that saw the assassination of a President and a bitter and divisive fight over civil rights that led to its leader lying in a pool of his own blood. 

Images of anti-war protests and body bags filled with the corpses of our brave soldiers killed in Vietnam flashed across Americans’ TV screens daily. 

Crime and corruption infested our cities, our enemies pointed thousands of nuclear weapons at us from behind an iron curtain, and our young were dying in droves from drug overdoses. The whole country and the world seemed like they were coming apart. 

The decade did end on a positive note, however, as just three months before Reagan’s speech, Neil Armstrong took his famous first step for mankind, fulfilling a young President’s dream of what his country could accomplish if it came together in the spirit of the nation’s motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” out of many one. 

Much has changed for the better since 1969, but Reagan’s words are hauntingly still applicable today. We see a society where one’s internal moral code is based on what each person considers right and true. In effect, truth is now relative to the individual instead of the individual being relative to the truth. 

A perfect example was an Orwellian moment during a 2017 Meet the Press interview with Kellyanne Conway, advisor to the President. When asked about the different crowd size estimates at the inauguration, she said, “Sometimes what you have in these situations are “alternative facts.” 

Since Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, man has struggled to obey God’s word by replacing it with his “alternative facts.” Over the centuries, in an attempt to keep the letter of the law, the Jewish religious leaders came up with hundreds of additional rules to help enforce this moral code of God on the people. 

The Jewish Talmud includes 613 additional commandments or mitzvot governing diet, ceremonial laws, marriage, and many others. In addition, there are over 39 rules governing the Sabbath, which have spawned an entire industry of gadgets and tricks to comply with the letter of the law while skirting the spirit of it.  

Likewise, today, thousands of laws and regulations attempt to enforce civility and morality.

However, as Reagan pointed out, it is foolish to expect that we can impose morality solely through legislation on a society that has no moral core at its center. 

As in the Old Testament laws, civil laws exist to point out what society believes is wrong, but it does not ensure compliance. They are like guardrails on a winding road warning us of impending danger, but they will not keep us from going off the cliff if we want to kill ourselves. 

The apostle Paul clarifies this in Romans 3:20 when he says, “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; through the law, we become conscious of our sin.” He is not saying that we are to disobey the law willingly. However, he points out that because of our sinful human nature, there is no way we can obey God’s law and achieve righteousness before Him on our own. All attempts at forcing our righteousness through the tools of this world are fruitless. 

We cannot obtain holiness because we cannot follow the law alone. However, because of our faith, we are given grace and a desire to follow the law written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

It is a holiness that produces obedience out of our love for God and our desire to please Him, not solely out of fear of what will happen if we disobey Him. God desires us to freely choose to obey Him because of who He is rather than to follow strictly out of fear, obligation, or some earthly reward.

The New Covenant of the Heart 

This internal and voluntary obedience from the heart is at the core of God’s new covenant with His people. The Old Covenant was based on the law written in stone, but the New Covenant ushered in by Jesus is written on our hearts. 

The Lord speaks of this new covenant in Jeremiah 31:33: “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

So, how can Christians promote God’s truth in an impactful way to a world swirling in conspiracies, confusion, and alternative facts?

Many believe the answer is the worldly approach of attempting to force morality primarily through governmental laws and control. In this line of thinking, all we need to do is enact the proper legislation, elect the right politicians, put prayer back in schools, and post the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Problems solved, right? 

Obviously, this is a false hope and has yet to solve the many problems we face in our society. History has shown that the opposite happens when Christians attempt to exercise the worldly levers of power to change the culture in order to advance the spiritual kingdom of God. 

Of course, Christians should support laws that align with our beliefs. However, using them as a primary means of influencing society and culture creates more resistance and contempt, which pushes people away from God’s kingdom.

I think all Christians can agree that expanding God’s kingdom here on earth would solve many, if not all, of the world’s moral problems today. So, how do we do that? What are the levers of Christ’s power that we can use to better influence our culture and grow His kingdom?

The answer lies in the differences between the kingdoms. 

The Power of the Sword vs. The Power of the Cross

The kingdom of the world trusts in the power of the sword rather than the power of the cross. 

The world says that one can achieve victory using man-made weapons, but Jesus did not use any weapon crafted by man to achieve victory. Instead, His power was its greatest at His weakest moment on the cross. 

The world saw, and many still do see, the body of a bloody, battered, and defeated man who was humiliated and ultimately murdered.

To the world, this was the ultimate defeat. However, we see our God who came down from heaven, became man, and showed us that His and our ultimate victory is measured by how much we are willing to sacrifice for others, not in how many we kill in His name. 

Jesus further reiterated this for us in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was arrested when He rebuked Peter for using his sword to cut off the temple guard’s ear (John 18: 10-11) and then healed the man (Luke 22:51). 

Power Over Vs. Power Under 

The kingdom of the world advances by exercising “power over.” It tells us that the only way to rule is by using physical, economic, or manipulative power to force others to comply. However, the kingdom of God advances by exercising “power under.”

In Matthew 20: 25-29, Jesus tells us, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” God displays the true nature of His power through His ultimate sacrifice for and service to others, not physical conquest.  

Outside In vs. Inside Out Approach

The kingdom of the world seeks to control behavior from the outside in, while the kingdom of God seeks to transform lives and thus behavior from the inside out. 

Again, we get back to the issue of the willingness of the heart by its conviction versus the worldly focus on force and coercion. 

The world attempts to control behavior from the outside by forcing moral compliance solely through laws, rules, and systems of punishment. This is the Pharisaical system at its finest and is in full swing today. 

However, through our faith in Jesus, God invites us into the New Covenant, where we are reborn and our hearts changed from one of stone to one of flesh. As Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” The old has gone, the new is here!”. 

This new heart does not have to be told to obey God. Instead, it desires to please God with every heartbeat in unison with the Holy Spirit. 

Our Will (Selfishness) vs. God’s Will (Selflessness)

The kingdom of the world focuses on preserving and advancing one’s interests and one’s own will. In contrast, the kingdom of God is exclusively centered on carrying out God’s will, even if it results in us sacrificing our worldly interests.  

Of course, because of our sinful human nature, we often conveniently ascribe our self-interests as being the same as God’s. This conflation of God’s and Man’s interests promotes an “any means necessary” approach, often resulting in evil means to justify a good end. I truly believe that God will never ask us to do evil to accomplish His will.  

Tribalism vs. Unity

The kingdom of the world is organized according to tribes. It is primarily concerned with defending and advancing one’s own tribe based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and politics, to name a few. The very nature of this division is the root cause of the perpetual conflict we have seen throughout human history.  

In contrast, the kingdom of God is universal and spiritual in nature. Its citizens unify around the belief in Christ as savior and His call to love others as God loves, at all times, in all places, and without condition. It has no real estate or borders and is not based on DNA, so it has no concern for human groups or tribes. It is composed of all believers in Christ in what Scripture calls the Body of Christ.

As Paul tells us in Galatians 3:26-27, “So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”

Retaliation vs Mercy

A tit-for-tat mentality rules the kingdom of the world. It operates under the motto “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth .”It has to work that way by its very nature because no worldly kingdom can survive long by loving its enemies and those that persecute it. It has no choice but to use the sword to survive under these conditions.

However, once again, we see the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom compared to the world’s kingdoms, for Jesus calls us to carry the cross, not the sword. When we carry the cross, we also hold the very weapon of Christ, which calls us to turn the other cheek when struck, forgive and pray for our enemies, and never return evil with evil or violence with violence. 

The Solution

So, how do we reverse the gradual and silent erosion of our moral code that Reagan spoke about?

Fortunately, we have been given a perfect road map to success.

The first step is to put down our swords and pick up our crosses. 

It involves serving others instead of seeking to be served by them. 

It means allowing the Holy Spirit to affect change from the inside by convicting the hearts of our fellow man rather than attempting to control behavior solely from the outside using the worldly tools of condemnation and punishment.  

It calls for us to seek God’s will instead of pursuing our own, even if it costs us personally.

This means we should promote peace by seeking common ground rather than act as agents of division by focusing on our differences. 

Finally, we must love our enemies and others as we love God and ourselves, which ultimately allows us to share the gospel as Jesus commanded us to do, 

By doing these things, we demonstrate to the world the grace, mercy, and love given to us by our Lord. After all, this is how Jesus does it. Is there any greater example?