Laws

I think we've thoroughly bought the lie. Perhaps it's the whole "People are basically good" thing that's messing us up. It can't be because we're clear thinking people ... because we're not.

What lie am I talking about? "Better laws make a better world." So we pass gun legislation and police legislation and voting laws and more and more rules so that people will be better people and our society can be a better society. Now, I could go through the effects of "better laws" we've seen that have not resulted in a better world, but, as you all know, my starting place is Scripture, so let's try that one on for size.

Here's what our Bibles tell us. "By works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." (Rom 3:20) Isn't that interesting? According to this text (and others), the purpose of the law is not to make a better world, but to ... describe sin, so to speak. Paul wrote, "What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead." (Rom 7:7-8) In essence, then, God laid down "the perfect law" (Psa 19:7; James 1:25). Not a "better law," but the best. But God's goal was not to make the best world; God's goal was to tell His creation what sin was. Without that law, we wouldn't know the standard so we wouldn't know if or when we transgressed the standard.

A couple of observations at this point. First, since God made laws, we must agree that, in principle, laws are good and right (as long as, you know, the law in question is good and right). I'm not suggesting that we should be lawless. We need and should have laws. Second, making laws that are not enforced is stupid ... but we do it all the time ... which suggests we, as a society, can be stupid. No, we need laws. They ought to be good laws and they ought to be enforced.

So what's my point? We need laws, but it's unwise to expect laws to make a better world. You can't expect better gun laws to make people better gun people. You can't expect better police laws to make police better. Better rules don't make better people; better people make better people. If God's "perfect law" made no one perfect, it would stand to reason that our best laws, imperfect as we admit them to be, will not make people better either. So we need laws, but we need more urgently to have better people. That only occurs in changed hearts. Christians, our failure to share Christ with people -- our lack of obedience to Christ's command to make disciples -- has made America a mission field like never before. Christians, we need to get to work on obeying the Laws (Matt 22:38-40; Matt 28:18-20). Because better laws don't make a better nation; better people do. And we know Who can accomplish that.