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In the late 1700’s, there were those in France who dreamed of establishing a much better government in their nation. Their battle cry was, “Liberty, equality, and fraternity”, meaning “brotherhood”. Their dream was good; for God puts these desires in the heart of all men. However, they attempted to work what they called a “revolution”, without depending on the God of heaven. This was much different from America’s Founding Fathers, who worked a true revolution by publicly acknowledging in our Declaration of Independence, “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence…” In America the greatest amount of liberty was established for the greatest number of citizens of any nation in history. The high ideals in France ended in a bloodbath by a dictatorial government. In our present trend of a growing dictatorial national government, we can learn much from these two different attempts at establishing liberty.

In a previous message, we listed several Biblical examples where people disobeyed bad civil law with the blessing of God. There is a time for this. But how do we know when that time is? One time to disobey is when government violates major teachings of the Scripture. When government takes away one’s life unjustly it is time to defy that law or government practice. Abortion is just such a practice; thus, it should be resisted by the citizenry. Another example is marriage. Only God has the right to define marriage because He is the Author of it (Genesis 2:22-25); thus, we should disobey our government’s attempt to redefine marriage. These are correct ways to disobey civil law.

While America’s Founder’s based their Declaration of Independence on their Biblical right to disobey bad law, they did make it plain that we should disobey civil law cautiously. Jefferson wrote in The Declaration of Independence about altering government. He stated,

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…”

Since law is what brings necessary order to a society, it should be respected and obeyed whenever possible. Even bad law should be obeyed temporarily, while we are working to change it through our legislatures—if it does not violate major principles of life or government revealed in the Bible. Examples of bad law to be tolerated for short times are the seat belt law, or small increases in taxes.

Because the sin root in man screams for independence from God’s control, it is easy to want to disobey civil law for selfish reasons. But those who reject the Bible and set up their own moral code always bring to themselves death! The selfishness in them always eventually brings them to fight one another: Thus, the one with the strongest army winds up being the dictator, who then kills off his opponents. This is why the French Revolution (which was not actually a revolution but a rebellion) ended in dictatorial government. In contrast, our American Revolution established civil liberty by basing it on internal liberty worked by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was liberty with law—as opposed to freedom without law.

Which do you want: another French Revolution, or another American Revolution? These are the only two choices for a nation. Remember the Bible says,

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

(2 Corinthians 3:17)

Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.