God’s Plan for a Blessed Nation:
Principle #5 – The Purpose for Law
A Stand in the Gap Today Transcript
August 2, 2021
Host: Sam Rohrer
Co-hosts: Dr. Keith Wiebe, Dr. Jamie Mitchell
Click HERE for PDF version.
Segment 1:
Sam Rohrer:
Well, hello and welcome to this Monday edition, actually a new week. Hope you had a great weekend. We have a great week lined up ahead of us here on Stand In The Gap Today. And this is, today, it’s going to be our focus, it’s going to be the fifth in our series of 10 principles to national renewal. Put it another way, you could refer to this set of principles as God’s plan for a blessed nation or 10 principles America ignores at its own peril. I’m Sam Rohrer. And today, I’m going to have with me two of our Stand In The Gap Today and APN team members, Dr. Keith Wiebe, who is as you know, Stand In The Gap Today co-host and a Dr. Jamie Mitchell, APN director of church culture and pastoral engagement. And together, these two have pastored and taught best I configure for nearly 75 years, give or take a few years.
Sam Rohrer:
While all three of us today on this program are not only patriots in mind and heart, and citizens in good standing in our respective states, each of us are located today in a different state, but we are first and foremost, careful citizens of the kingdom of heaven, as we talked about last week, and many of our founders were too, and they knew that. And, we know this as well, that all Christians, obedient in their walk before God, also recognize themselves as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Well, our motivation for bringing the series is to provide understanding, and bring clarity to the confusion reigning in our nation today, by identifying biblical and historical solutions. And as such, we identify our nation’s greatest problems. We consider the cause, but then present a solution and sure while we have many corrosive symptoms like confusion, division, hatred, animates rising up from within and threatening our nation from without, the core problem is far more serious.
Sam Rohrer:
Our problem in this nation is that we are in the midst of God’s judgment just as he warned in Deuteronomy chapters 28 through 30 and elsewhere in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, frankly. But indifference, deception, moral free fall, lawlessness, injustice, bribery, corruption, tyranny, and a silent church with many hirelings in most pulpits. These are the markers of our current culture. We ought to call it the way it is. Well, that’s the problem. The cost though is simple. We’ve forgotten God due to our own pride and our own rebellion to God and his word. In a short, we’re experiencing the result of our choices, augmented by God’s justice against those who rebel against his moral law. Nothing’s changed since the beginning of time. And as God warned Israel of old in Deuteronomy 28:1-2,15, it says this, I’m going to quote it for you, apply it to today and it’ll fit right in with this program.
Sam Rohrer:
He says this, “If you hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord, thy God, to observe and do all his commandments, which I command you this day, then I will set you high above all nations of the earth and all these blessings,” and He enumerates a lot of them. He said, “All these blessings shall come upon you and literally overtake you. You won’t be able to handle them.” In verse 15, he said, “but it shall come to pass. If you will not hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God to observe his commandments and his statutes, which I command you this day, that all these curses,’ and about 50 verses of them, ‘shall come upon you and they will overtake you.” That’s the cause. And the solution is to fear God and worship him and keep his commandments. Please, you ask these 12, 13 makes that clear.
Sam Rohrer:
Now that’s God’s plan for a blessed nation. We do what he says. Now the plan is further reflected in 10 principles, identified in scripture, identified and embraced by our founders, and frankly incorporated all of them within our organic documents of law. The Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence on a various state and U.S. Constitutions. And thus far, we’ve identified on these series of programs, principle number one, the foundation of integrity. Principle number two, the nature and the role of God. Principle three, the nature of man. And principle four, from last week, the purpose for government.
Sam Rohrer:
All of these principles, from the laying of the foundation of integrity, to erecting the walls of civil society through application of God’s revealed will and way, to the capping of the roof of this house, this prayer roof, it’s all part of the understanding and application of the verse that our founders quoted, Psalm 127:1, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen wakes, but in vain.” Our title for today and intricately connected to number four, the purpose of government, is principle number five, the purpose for law.
Sam Rohrer:
And with that, we’re going to identify the purpose for law, the definition of law, the constraints of law, and conclude with a very practical response to the law. And with that, I’m going to welcome in right now, Keith and Jamie. And gentlemen, I’m going to ask you to do the impossible, really it is. And just a very brief moment, I’d like for you to explain the two basic purposes for law. Jamie, you first. The first purpose for law as identified by God and our founders is this, the law is to establish the framework for right actions and to enact justice. Can you cite a key scripture perhaps? And then comment just briefly as what it meant by right actions and right justice, according to whom.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, Sam, the keywords of your question there, and what is stated is the word right and just. Obviously, that has to do with righteousness and justice. The idea of living godly, living in ordered, living a life that brings righteousness and blesses people, and then justice, a fair and equitable way to keep order both in punishing the law breaker, but also lifting up the one who keeps the law. The two passages I was thinking about when you told me about this question was Deuteronomy four. Moses is reminding the people of Israel, what makes the nation great? And he says, “What is a great nation?” He says that God is so near that his statutes or rules are righteous and set before us. Moses knew that the people of Israel had to have laws to keep order to help them know how to live and act righteously, but also a way to identify those who were breaking the law. And to be fair about that and bring justice. And we see it again and affirmed in first Timothy one where Paul is writing the same thing.
Jamie Mitchell:
He says, “Look, the law is good and good both for the one who keeps it and honors it”, but it also reveals the one who breaks the law and provides a just way to bring them back into line with the law and into this pre-bid term as a way of keeping order and bringing righteousness.
Sam Rohrer:
Jamie, that’s excellent. And Keith, I’m going to have you come back and answer the question at the beginning of the next segment.
Sam Rohrer:
The other purpose for the law, not just the framework for right actions and justice as Jamie just said, but the other is the law was made for law breakers. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have Keith come back and explain that to being in the segment. And then, we will move into the definition of the law. What is meant by law and the difference between commandments and statutes and precepts? We’ll talk about that in the next segment.
Segment 2:
Sam Rohrer:
We’re going to continue now in our fifth emphasis here in our series of 10 principles to national renewal. I’m Sam Rohrer accompanied today by Dr. Keith Wiebe and Dr. Jamie Mitchell. Now, Keith, I want to go back to you because we didn’t have time in that last segment, but there are two purposes for law our founders identified. William Penn identified it in his documents, and another founder did as well, but it comes right off the pages of scripture. The first one was that Jamie just talked about is that, a purpose for the law is to provide a framework for an orderly society and to enact justice. But the other one that this talked about is to control the law breaker. Would you build that out please?
Keith Wiebe:
Yeah. Sure, Sam. That is very much a biblical concept. Galatians 3:19 says, “The law was added because of transgressions…” In 1 Timothy 1:9, scripture actually gives us a list and he says, “the law was not made for the righteous man.” And if I could put a sidebar in here, make it a very practical thing. The speed limit on the interstate highway of 70 miles an hour is not for the person who never drives more than 60. They don’t need it. But it’s for, maybe I should say, the rest of us who would tend to push it more than we should. Therefore, the limits are put there, very simple illustration. And so 1 Timothy 1 goes on and says, “the law was not made for the righteous man, but for the disobedient, the ungodly, for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers, for whore mongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for man stealers, for liars, for perjured person.”
Keith Wiebe:
And the Bible further goes on to say that no law of man, very important point, no law of man can ever make void any law of God. And that comes from Galatians 3:17. Paul said, “the law does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void.” So any law that man makes that contravenes one of God’s laws, one of those inalienable rights that we’ll refer to later in the broadcast, is an illegitimate law.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. And Keith, we’re going to get into that as we move into it. Ladies and gentlemen, that verse that Keith just quoted, by the way, about perjurers and man stealers, that was quoted directly by William Penn in his 1682 Frame of Government, just so you know that. That didn’t come out just from Keith’s mouth. It came off the pages of Scriptures, but it was actually written down and considered by our founders. So let’s move into now, as we talk about the definition of law. Those are the purposes, the two purposes of law, control lawbreakers, and to establish a framework for an orderly society. But as the apostle Paul said, and God made clear in Scripture that the concept of law was established by God himself. Now understand that here, this is where it came from. Isaiah 33:22. Perfect verse. It says, “For the Lord is our judge. The Lord is our law giver. The Lord is our king.”
Sam Rohrer:
God himself is the law-giver. There’s nothing higher inherent within the concept of law and they get this. We’ve talked about it last week is the word authority, often translated as government, and that’s principle number four in our 10 principles to national renewal. However, only legitimate authority. And Keith just referenced that a little of it started to get into it. Legitimate authority, only legitimate authority can issue legitimate law. And only legitimate law can underpin legitimate government. And only legitimate government can justly govern mankind and provide righteous societal order and justice.
Sam Rohrer:
Now that’s a very clear linkage. But, in context with that, only God himself can perfectly fulfill the duties of ultimate authority, comprised of lawmaking as the law-giver, adjudicating the law as the judge, and enforcing the law as king. All others in human authority, and our founders went through, what I just went through. Many of them did. All others in human authority act as God’s stewards or deacons or ministers of God as described by the apostle Paul in Romans 13. Now, to what degree they reflect God’s model? Aha. That’s the difference between freedom and bondage. Jamie, I’d like for you to first define law and then cite a scriptural reference that speaks to the foundational evidence of law in mankind’s heart and mind.
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, Sam, as always, let’s go to Webster’s and see what Webster said. Webster said that, in general, laws are rules of action prescribed for government of rational beings for moral agents, to which rule they are bound to yield obedience in default of which they are exposed to punishment. So again, a law is this predetermined stated standard by which a group of people, or a nation, or an entity adheres to. And it provides us with how we are to obey and how we’re to live, and the direction we’re to go. And if we go against that law or get out of step with that law, then there’s going to be some kind of punishment or correction.
Jamie Mitchell:
And so, Romans 2, Sam, says something really interesting. He says that the law is written on our hearts. God has created us in a way that we understand that there are to be laws, there’s to be standards. God puts that barometer in our hearts. And so, this thing about laws is not foreign to us. We understand them because that’s the way God created us. He knew, as created beings, we needed to have a way to keep us in order and to give us direction and to prick our conscience, to know when we were doing something wrong.
Sam Rohrer:
And Jamie, that’s going to lead us in. We’re going to talk more on that, the next segment. But ladies and gentlemen, you see what Jamie’s describing the law in our hearts. It’s something for which we are born, because it’s made right by our creator, God. And we can think of laws as those things that prevent us from doing certain things, but laws are also like fences to keep us from getting into danger zones, as well. Think about that. So, let’s go back to Keith. Earlier, I referred to Ecclesiastes 12:13. King Solomon says. All right, let’s hear the conclusion of the matter, take everything in the whole of discussion of mankind and put it all together. And what’s the bottom line, fear God and keep his commandments. Deuteronomy [inaudible 00:15:10], I shared, the Scripture there refers to law, commandments, statutes, precepts. All right, that may be confusing. Boil all those down, put together briefly the distinctions and the similarities between those other things like commandments, statutes, precepts, law, put those together.
Keith Wiebe:
So those concepts, Sam, are very interesting. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, 176 verses uses eight different terms, all to refer to the word of God in broad strokes, the law of God. And it refers to one of those in all, but for those verses. But the passage for me that really nails it down is one in Psalm 19, where it gives a list of several of those. He begins by saying, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” That refers to God’s overall moral law, not just the old Testament, mosaic law. And then it begins to break it out, statutes, precepts, all supportive of God’s law. Many of those enacted by human government to support what God has said in scripture. Now, Sam, let me ask you a question. I know that you served in the Pennsylvania general assembly for 18 years in the legislature. You were a lawmaker. Can you share how this type of law refers to the greater aspect of law, kind of supports it as related by God, incited by William Penn as the mechanism to control lawbreaker?.
Sam Rohrer:
Yeah. Keith, I can. And I’m glad for the verse to which you went there in Psalms, because what you did is what our founders did. They said, “All right. There is God.” “We believe that there is God a creator, and He is the ultimate law giver,” Isaiah 33:22. And therefore, His law is at the top. Well, in reality, any person is in a position of lawmaking, as myself in elected office at that time was to say, where do I fit in this picture? Because, I’m not God. So, I’m not making God’s law, but I do have an obligation to make sure that whatever I do, doesn’t violate God’s law. So in a position of civil government, the legislative branch in our nation is in this context. They make what’s called statutory law, but that statutory law must always be subordinate to the higher law of our constitution.
Sam Rohrer:
And our constitution was made subordinate to the higher law of God’s law. So, God’s law and here our nation constitution, then you’ve got your statutory laws. Then, it’s anything that would come down underneath of that from the local level to the municipal and so forth. On the wall of the US Supreme court in Pennsylvania is a drawing. And it’s entitled the scale of nations. It’s called the scale of law. It’s written as a musical score. There are notes off to the side, just like you’d see on a piano score. And there’s eight of them. If anybody understands music, understand that eight notes form an octave. And it’s perfect when it’s an eight, because then you can take and do any kind of music anytime, anywhere in the world, because you’ve got it complete. It starts at the bottom with moral law, with the divine law. And then it cites law of nature, maritime law, common law, international law. And then it ends up on the top of divine law.
Sam Rohrer:
God’s law must start where you are. God’s law is underneath where you are. And together, you have legitimate law and legitimate government. Without it, you have illegitimate government and tyranny. Our founders knew it. That’s what the Bible said. When we come back, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to continue with the idea of the constraints of law. Well, there are some things that law can’t do. Something law is supposed to do. Talk about that, next.
Segment 3:
Sam Rohrer:
Welcome back to Stand In The Gap Today. And if you’re just tuning in with us, this is our Monday edition. We’re in the middle of a series that we’re tying all 10 principles to national renewal, trying to provide answers for what we must do as Americans. Those of us who know the truth in these days when we are being threatened, increasingly as we know with tyranny at the highest levels, threatening our freedoms, threatening the church with persecution, all these things are happening. Let’s not hide our head in the sand. It’s real. It’s happening.
Sam Rohrer:
All right. So what do you do about it? Well, the Bible does provide a solution. God does provide a plan for a blessed nation and what we are providing in the series. Ultimately, 11 programs altogether deals with what our founders recognized as the essential principles for building a house, a nation that God could bless right off the pages of scripture. That’s what we are doing. I encourage you to go to our app or our website, standinthegapradio.com and you can search and you can find it there, principle number one, principle number two, as we work our way through every Monday here now.
Sam Rohrer:
Now, ultimately, and I’ll have more on the program about this later, we’re going to be providing, free of charge for you, downloads of the transcripts of these completed programs. We’re also putting this together into a booklet that for a certain donation, and I have all the information later, you will be able to get it. And when you take the extent of these programs and you put it together with the book and the transcripts, you will have the essence of this holy experiment and freedom that William Penn put together that made America what it is right off the pages of Scripture.
Sam Rohrer:
You will have it at your fingerprints, a blueprint for the rebuilding of America. If God’s people, if they’re serious enough, will actually do what he says. Well, God can hear and He can turn around. But at this moment in time, we’re still running from him, not running to him. So this series, is in the intent of bringing this information for you, that you can then spread around and use for others because it is the solution. Our solutions are not political, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m afraid that even much of the church in America are still believing and looking for a human savior and a political solution. But we’re way beyond that.
Sam Rohrer:
We’ve got to get back to the solution as the Lord put together. Now, that being the case, when it comes to identifying and making legitimate law, we’ve used those terms, legitimate law, that law must comport with God’s moral law, which we know is then universal. And because of the character of God, it’s unchanging and because of the character of God, to which there is no exception. And Keith talked about that in the last segment. There are laws which enslave men. There are laws which set men free. The question is, will a people hold to that which is right and good and true for themselves only? In other words, make up whatever you want, depending on who you are and where you are or will we hold to that law which is right and good and true for all mankind because it’s the law of God established by the creator God, the law giver, the judge and the king of the world, Isaiah 33:22?
Sam Rohrer:
To this question, our founders held to this universal law with identified rights coming from our creator. Those rights they said were self-evident. As our declaration, the signer said, and they said for the purpose of protecting these rights, based on the law of God, governments are instituted among men. Wow. How this plan of God just fits so perfectly. If we understand what it is. All right, Keith, going to you first. In our nation in the Western world, the 10 commandments as delivered by Moses really formed the basis of all our civil laws where they hang behind all of courtrooms in the country, mostly instilling our Supreme court, even though they don’t look at them. Yet, those who oppose God often accuse God-fearing office holders. I was accused of this when I was in that position. They say, “That is not right, because you are legislating morality.” Well, can you clarify the truth about this misleading charge?
Keith Wiebe:
Sam, that accusation is as old as is the discussion between what’s right and what’s wrong. In my lifetime, when they debated the equal rights amendment, I heard the accusation. When they debated about abortion, we heard that accusation. When they debated about marriage, we heard that accusation. It’s the wrong question. Any law can impose morality. The only question is, whose definition of morality is going to be followed? And as you just summarized so well, and your setup for this question, laws that men make, if they want their country to be blessed of God can be only those laws that ultimately support God’s broader definition and understand what morality really is. So, the issue is not, are we going to legislate morality? All law does that. The question is, who’s morality [inaudible 00:24:12]? Is that legislation’s going to support?
Sam Rohrer:
It’s simple, isn’t it Keith, when you lay it out like that? But reality, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it. Think about that. All law by its right nature has some moral underpinning. The question is, put in a practical perspective, whose worldview do you want making laws? The globalist? The Islamist? The communist? Well, we see what’s happening when they’re doing it. We see it coming out of Washington right now. Frankly, there are laws and dictates being made by people who have no fear of God. All right? It’s not a matter of morality. It’s a matter of whose definition. So Jamie, let me go back to you. In Penn’s holy experiment in freedom or a Winthrop’s shining city on a hill view, as he looked at it, their hope was for a nation with limited civil government and maximum citizen self-government. That was Penn’s holy experiment. Self-government under God, limited government, civil government, citizen self-government.
Sam Rohrer:
So, how does understanding here, if we talk about the purpose for law, as you defined it in the first segment, the 10 commandments, how does that definition and the 10 commandments, which have formed the basis for Western law and limited government? Would you tie these together and how they reinforce the concept of limited civil government?
Jamie Mitchell:
Yeah, Sam. It’s really important. And I’m glad that you’re doing this in a series, but I want to just remind people that it’s important to understand all of the principles because you integrate them all together and you understand people like Penn and Winthrop. They had a biblical worldview when they talked about law because they understood, because God is holy and just, and the source of all truth, that defining law, keeping law, following law was really an act of worship. It was an act of worship. And so, worship is that when I freely give myself to the things of God and God doesn’t have to be micromanaging my life. And so, the 10 commandments were basically these very broad outline laws that provide a framework for us to live righteously and to legislate justly. But within that framework, we were to really bend our heart towards what God was desiring.
Jamie Mitchell:
And so, when it says to honor your mother and father, it’s not telling you exactly how you were to interact in that parent-child relationship but the understanding that overall the law of God is going to prescribe how that family relationship is to work. There isn’t a be abusiveness. There’s not to be disobedience. There is not to be a wrangling. And so, that’s how God defined his 10 commandments in our lives, and truly how I believe America was formed to create this large framework where government wasn’t micromanaging our lives, but allowing the integrity of man to be played out towards righteousness and justice.
Sam Rohrer:
And Jamie, that brings us to another point. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s this. Penn said, Madison said, others said that our frame of government, this thing that would be this holy experiment in freedom may be small, limited, central, civil authority, but with big citizens. Self-government was all dependent upon the voluntary commitment of individuals, citizens, and those who would be in office to what the 10 commandments of God, the moral law of God said. If that would happen, they said, then you could have a limited government. Our frame of government, they said was impossible. If man did not limit themselves, otherwise you would have a soldier on every street corner. But here’s another thing, often, a mark of tyranny, tyrannized government, despotic government, have a tendency to believe, ladies and gentlemen, that laws don’t apply equally to all people. They exempt themselves. We see that happening today, do we not?
Sam Rohrer:
Those who can make the law or control somebody else, but they let themselves go free. There’s a principle that our founders adopted from the Latin Lex Rex law, and they made it very, very clear that in a society of just government, God is recognized as supreme authority, there had to be in place a concept regarding law. Meaning, Lex Rex, it’s from the Latin. It means law over the king, not Rex Lex, not king over the law, but Lex Rex, meaning law over the king. I think about the practical applications of that. Hey, just law applies to everybody regardless of their position. And if it does not, then it’s not a just law. Okay. That’s the basis for it. All right. Now we’re going to come back in the next segment and we’re going to talk about it. There’s a response to law. Now, if you’ve got law in place, sometimes loss may conflict. We’re going to explain that a little bit about what do you do. What’s the practical application? What do we do when we run into perhaps conflicting law?
Segment 4:
Sam Rohrer:
Well, welcome back to Stand In The Gap. I wonder if this program is gone as fast for you as it has for us. There’s so much to cover, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll give more information on this, but we want to make all of the transcripts for these various programs that we’re doing in this series, ultimately available for free on our website. And again, I’ll give that shortly, not today, but later this week.
Sam Rohrer:
There’s a response though, to the law. We’ve talked about the purpose for law it’s to provide a framework for an orderly society. It’s God’s idea for an orderly society, but to God’s build off the character of God, which is predictable and orderly. It’s also there to provide the framework to control the law breaker. And there’s a lot of law breakers, that’s why the law is there. And then we defined law. And then we talked about certain other applications of the law that defined it. And then we just, in the last segment, we talked about the constraints of the law, the 10 commandments and how this fits together. But there’s another practical aspect that often comes to mind and that’s how do we respond to law, generally.
Sam Rohrer:
Now, once truth is pursued and embraced in the form of integrity, which is what the definition means. And then virtue, which we’ve defined as principle number one. Virtue is the only responding obedience to truth. That’s the definition of virtue. And our founders use that. It’s on many of our states seals like Commonwealth of Pennsylvania starts with virtue and that virtue means only voluntary obedience to truth.
Sam Rohrer:
So, once you pursue truth and integrity, that’s principle number one, and then that leads you then to God himself. And you recognize him as creator and sovereign and supreme authority, perfect in holiness and justice. That’s principle number two. Then, that can lead you to the concept of the nature of man. And you have to understand that man is fallen, sinful, bent to evil from birth, deserving of God’s justice. That’s principle number three. And our founders talked about all of these. Only then when you have those in place, then can the purpose for government, as a delegated authority, answerable to Jesus Christ as King of Kings, be understood as to its limited purpose. That is to praise those who do well and punish those who do evil. That’s principle number four. We covered that last week. Then that leads us to then the purpose for legitimate law, being the framework for society and to control lawbreakers. Here, principle number five is we’re discussing today.
Sam Rohrer:
But Keith, I want to go to you on this, as we wrap up the program, because we talk regularly on this program about reflecting a biblical worldview. I’ve already referred to it multiple times in this program. And in that context, simple definition, biblical worldview recognizes that God is, He always has been, He always will be. God created, our founders recognized the declaration of independence. Man’s sin, they also recognize that. William Penn talked about the sinfulness of man, but then their founders also talked about God’s promised redemption. And we talked about that in the last program. But within the purpose for law, Keith, it’s not only to control the law breaker, but God ties it directly in with his justice and his love for mankind and redemption. Can you make this connection as the scripture lays it out?
Keith Wiebe:
Yeah, certainly can, Sam. The Scriptures use a very fascinating connection and illustration for this. It described the law as our school master. Now that means that the law wasn’t the origin itself, the law wasn’t the curriculum. If I go to a classroom, I love education. And I think of a school master or a teacher. Their purpose is not to design the overall curriculum for their students. It’s to teach the particular subjects that support that curriculum and remind their students of their needs. The law is designed as a school master to call our attention to our need for Christ. It supports the overall concepts of God. That’s what the school master does. And it is intended. It is designed to call our attention to God’s love and his plan for redemption in Jesus Christ.
Sam Rohrer:
Keith, You could say a whole lot more. You can preach the entire sermon on this, but ladies and gentlemen, the idea of God’s law is that it provides a framework, but it also lets us know that we can’t keep it perfectly. When’s the last time you think you’ve worshiped some other God? Guilty of idolatry? As Christ said, have you been angry with somebody in your heart? Therefore you’re guilty of murder, the sixth command. Have any of you not coveted? We all have, right? That’s the point. The law is there to provide a framework for justice when we break it. But it’s also to let us know that we can’t keep it because we’re sinners and that’s why we need Jesus Christ. And that is the whole point of redemption, all established in God’s perfect plan. And the last program I read actually from William Penn, who talked about Jesus Christ coming as the love of God and that when we understand this, we come to him in faith, through repentance.
Sam Rohrer:
I shared that quote on this program. It’s incredible. They understood it. We need to and reacquaint ourselves with it as well. But Jamie, let me conclude that with you a little bit here, because there are times when different laws seem to compete because we didn’t get into the detail here, but every position of delegated authority. Mom and dad are delegated authorities. They rule over the children. The church has a framework of government and there’s a jurisdiction there and civil authority. We’re talking about that, but so do employers in that context. Can you just give us just a little bit of an understanding here of how do we go about understanding how we respond to laws that may be laid down upon us by one jurisdiction that would compete with another or compete with what God says?
Jamie Mitchell:
Well, Sam, what’s interesting is all of those authorities that you mentioned, God is the one who created them. They are God-ordained authorities, the government, the home, the workplace, the church. And so, if we work within the framework that God has provided for us in the scripture of seeing those authorities as his delegated representatives here to guide us towards righteousness, there’s not going to be conflict. The problem is when some of those authorities take in their own hands to rewrite laws and to subvert the law of God and to make arbitrary decisions that really go against God’s framework, that’s where the conflict comes. When government begins to reach into the authority, the home, or when the home tries to reach into church or the church into government, that’s where we had confusion. So, those were lines of demarcation between God’s authorities are very important. What we need to do as God’s people is to understand those authorities, respect those authorities and work within each of those God-ordained authorities, as they apply to our life.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know if some of you may be in positions. I am one, and I’ve referred to that picture on the wall of the Pennsylvania supreme court written as a musical scale, the balance of the law, they call it the harmonization of the law. I love that. When we understand God’s plan for a blessed nation and how he has set it up, the purpose for authority, all answerable to him and the law legitimate. And when it corresponds, it’s beautiful music. It’s harmonized. There is no conflict and freedom is the result. But when anyone in the process says, I don’t care who God is, I don’t care about God’s moral law. I don’t care about my duty to uphold God’s moral law. Then you have tyranny. You have dictatorship and you have bondage.
Sam Rohrer:
And we could spend a lot of time, but we’re being taught. We’re being subjected to that today in our nation. We need to understand how this fits together that determines how we respond. Keith and Jamie, thank you so much for being on today. Ladies and gentlemen, join me tomorrow. Frank [Gaffney 00:37:49] will be with me and we’re going to talk about China right now in its emerging threat to the world. You don’t want to miss that program. Thanks for being with us here today.
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