The argument may be made that John Glover Roberts Jr.
is the most powerful man in America.
As the 17th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States, when Roberts says no, even the current president reluctantly backs down.
For that matter, lower court judges have blocked, delayed or nullified Mr. Trump’s
initiatives over the last four years on any number
of fronts.
Surprising, no?
The Absolute Power of the Secular Jurist
In Western countries, unelected jurists may not draft laws
or executive orders, but they have more to do with policy implementation than
any politician or body of legislators, redefining
even the Constitution of the United States of America as they see fit.
This has been the case throughout history and all across the
world: wherever members of the human race dicker with one another over this or
that, some (hopefully) objective third party has to have the final word. That “somebody”
may also be a king, a prophet or even a priest, but when he renders his
decision, he is acting as a judge. And because men and women need answers to
their day-to-day problems with one another, even today a secular judge remains
a figure of considerable respect.
An Abrupt Dismissal
Consider, then, this rather abrupt dismissal of the decision-making
authority of the secular jurist by
the apostle Paul:
“So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?”
What a remarkable statement. A civil magistrate has “no
standing in the church”. For all his worldly power, with respect to the things
of God he is not fit to pronounce an opinion.
Now, that doesn’t mean, of course, that the rulings of
secular judges have no impact on
churches. Far from it. The aforementioned Justice Roberts recently joined with
the progressive wing of the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that casinos
and restaurants have more freedom to operate than churches, a move The Washington Times calls “an
astonishingly unconstitutional and un-American finding”. Such a ruling
certainly packs a punch, and Christians across America will be working out how
they think they should respond to it.
And yet for all their ability to transform society and bring
pressure to bear on institutional Christendom, Justice Roberts and his black-clad
brethren behind the benches are non-entities so far as the Body of Christ is concerned. Their expensively-educated,
much-sought legal opinions are worth precisely nothing to believers. They have
no standing in the church.
Fundamental Principles
Even when it is the product of the most ingenious legal minds
in the world, an opinion not firmly grounded in the word of God is bound to be glaringly
deficient. How can it not be? It is based on a
flawed understanding of the operative principles of our universe:
“For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness,’ and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’ ”
And again:
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
The people of God need to remind ourselves of this truth whenever we face tough decisions. Many of the choices before us have both practical and spiritual aspects to them; they are not all one thing or another. But
when Christians disagree about how to respond to the pressure of the
world’s rules and regulations, we will not find our answers back in that same secular
world. We will not find them by reasoning and rationalizing after the manner of the unsaved. Our society has nothing useful to say to us about that. It operates on different
fundamental principles than we do.
Subject to the Authorities
In our present environment of restrictions, guidelines,
bylaws and endlessly shifting legal goalposts, many are counseling Christians
to re-read Romans 13, which begins with the words, “Let every person be subject to the governing
authorities.” Indeed. It’s good advice. The authorities, including our secular
court systems, are “ministers of God”, God’s servants for our good. If we put
the best construction on it, we might say they are doing the best they can with
what they have.
But bear in mind the Word says, “let every person be subject”, not “let the church be subject”. These are two different things. In the
church, the secular magistrate has no standing. The holy places are off limits to him. He cannot tell us how to go about worshiping our God, nor does his learned opinion dictate what we may do or not do in the course of our service to our
Master. He has no means of understanding the significance of simple
obedience to Christ in even the smallest of small matters. His pragmatic or ideological value system is not scaled
according to the weights and measures of the eternal God. Blundering into unfamiliar territory, and territory over which he has no rightful jurisdiction, he may easily and ignorantly find
himself held in contempt by a Higher Court.
Our leaders are wise to keep this in mind.
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