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Should Christians always obey civil law? The Apostles’ reply to the civil authorities of their day established the answer to that question. They stated,
“We ought to obey God rather than men.”
(Acts 5:29)
We must obey civil law only if it agrees with the Scripture. Building from this principle, when America’s Founders wrote The Declaration of Independence they actually listed 27 reasons why they should declare their independence from England, because the King had broken “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”, and had violated the citizen’s rights of “life, liberty, and [property]”. Let us consider these violations in the next several messages.
The first violation Jefferson listed stated:
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
In the 1760’s, the colonies had passed laws to accommodate their rapidly growing population and economy. The King disallowed these, causing the colonists great hardship.
The second violation Jefferson listed stated:
“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance…till his assent should be obtained; and… he has utterly neglected to attend to them.”
The colonial Legislature in Massachusetts, believing all should pay their fair share of the taxes, passed a tax law in 1770 which would force the King’s men to also pay taxes; the King commanded his Governors not to agree to these laws without the King’s own consent. The Massachusetts Legislature then passed a Resolution stating “that for the Governor to withhold his assent to bills, merely by force of his (the King’s) instructions, is vacating the charter, giving instructions the force of law…” In other words, the Colony’s Charter, which was their equivalent of our Constitution, was thrown away; now the King’s word would be the law. This meant they were now living under a dictator.
This is what is happening right now in America. When the Congress threatened to resist Mr. Obama’s programs and he said in January of 2014, “I have a pen and I have a phone”, he was acting like King George. He was saying, “If the People’s Representatives won’t do what I want, I will enact law by myself through executive orders.” The Supreme Court has essentially done the same thing by expecting their rulings to have the force of law. We have now basically lost the rule of law to the renegades in the White House and the Supreme Court!
Is it right to throw off a yoke of dictatorship when tyrants have stolen their power by trampling on our Constitution? God gave the Jews, under Moses, a Covenant. Their Covenant was their agreement with God, as a nation, that they would walk in His ways—which included His civil laws which Moses had written down for them. Thus, God gave them a Constitutional form of government (Deuteronomy 1:9-18) And since God exalted constitutional (covenant) government to be the highest legal authority in the nation of His people, anyone who would destroy constitutional government, as a form, is outside the will of God for civil government. This is what makes dictatorial government wrong. It exalts the will of one or a few (like Supreme Court judges) above the law God has established. This is rebellion by rulers against God.
Thus, America’s Founders would believe, as Jefferson stated in The Declaration,
“…it is the right of the people to throw off such government… [and] to institute new government.”
Should we not “Obey God rather than men?”
Think about it; because if we don’t, someone else will do our thinking for us—and for our children! And we won’t like what that brings to us. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.