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This time of year there’s a lot of reference to the Baby Jesus in the manger.  That’s a good thing.  We think of the Christ child and hope comes to us that God literally invaded history and brought hope that there could be “peace on earth toward men of good will” (Luke 2:14).

And yet, for all this good feeling surrounding the Baby Jesus, few ever think beyond the manger.  And even of those who do think of His important life, death, and resurrection, even fewer ever come to understand His impact on all civilization; and particularly here in the western hemisphere.  Jesus was the most important Lawgiver in world history.  His influence over moral and civil law in this world makes Him, without question, the most influential person in all of history.  Yet, few law schools in America ever acknowledge His powerful impact at all.

Jesus’ birth came at a time when Rome ruled the world with crushing dictatorial power.  No one criticized Roman authority without placing their lives at great risk.  Into this oppressive realm Jesus was born.  The very place of his birth was determined (naturally speaking) by the edict of Augustus, the Roman Emperor, that every Roman citizen must travel to his native town to register for oppressive taxes.

Jesus’ life was lived out under this same oppressive government.  By the way He lived, He showed us the delicate balance of acting in accordance with civil law whenever possible, while, at the same time, speaking the truth in love, though that generally contradicted Roman law.  Indeed, He would be executed on a Roman cross simply because He refused to bow to those who had bowed to Rome.

Jesus’ teaching and demonstration that man was a vessel God had created for Himself and in whom God wanted to dwell, would revolutionize civil government.  When Jesus said, “The Father dwelling in me, He does the works…” (John 14:10), He was teaching God could live in and through a man.  Jesus was demonstrating that anyone who had God living inside them could think with God about government and government servants.  Though it would be thirteen centuries before John Wycliffe would write into the introduction of the first Bible in English the words, “The Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, for the people,” here resident in the life and teaching of Jesus was its root.  That truth would change the course of history.

America would be birthed by the power of this truth.  The Pilgrims would bring it to these shores and work it into their civil government.  Thus, for the first time in history, the common man would demonstrate that he could rule his own civil government because he could rule himself by the power of Christ.  Taking his blueprint from his own Biblically based home and church, he would create a civil government that was both responsive to the common man, and submissive to the will of God as revealed in the Bible.  It was the marriage of democracy with law, and it is called a republic!

This is why America’s Founding Fathers identified the source of their thinking as being the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Sam Adams, later known as the Father of the American Revolution, stated this fact when he wrote:

“…the rights of the Colonists as Christians may best be understood by reading and carefully studying the institutions of The Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written…in the New Testament.”

(Adams, Samuel. November 20, 1772, in his pamphlet entitled, The Rights of the Colonists, in the section: “The Rights of the Colonist as Christians.” (Boston: Old South Leaflets, 1772), Vol. VII, Adams, Writings | John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution – The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, A Mott Media Book, 1987; 6th printing, 1993), p. 254)

This is what made America the freest and most prosperous nation in world history.

Does Jesus Christ live and rule inside you; inside your home; inside your children?  Would you want your self-government to be the standard for civil government?  It is you know.

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.