God’s Law… The Light That Outlasts Empires

At some point, the very essence of true law… its weight, its gravity, its sacredness… seems to have slipped out of modern memory. Not long ago, ordinary people understood that law wasn’t just a stack of rules scribbled by men in suits.

It was something higher, heavier… the command of a Sovereign whose word bound both kings and commoners. Every nation drank from a single fountain of law. Whoever owned that fountain sat on the throne. That’s the true Lord or Sovereign.

Yet today, it’s hard to miss what’s happened. Most churches, and countless “believers,” have quietly handed the crown back to Caesar. Like the Hebrew aristocracy who once shouted, “We have no king but Caesar,” they’ve traded divine authority for comfort.

That surrender, a choice almost always made for comfort over divine authority, has seeped deep into the marrow of our culture and the heart of the church itself.

Remembering Who Is Lord

To remember who reigns, we must recall those who dared to thunder it. One was William Symington, the blazing 19th-century Scottish preacher who roared of Christ’s crown rights. Pouring out his soul, he cried, “Alleluia, salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God… We hail Thee Sovereign of our hearts. We adjure forever all other lords who have had dominion over us and declare from the heart, ‘We have no king but Jesus.’

In plain words, Symington warned: if we refuse God’s Word as the law over life, we’ll kneel beneath someone else’s—a new “lord” in polished shoes and hollow promises.

When “Jesus Is Lord” Shook an Empire

In the first centuries, that short confession—“Jesus is Lord”—wasn’t safe religion. It was open rebellion. Historian Ethelbert Stauffer wrote that Rome tolerated any worship you liked—so long as you finally whispered, “Caesar is Lord.”

But Christians wouldn’t bow. They didn’t riot or rally; they simply lived otherwise. They remembered Christ’s words: “You shall know them by their fruits.” Grapes don’t grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles. So they stopped expecting rotten rulers to bear righteous fruit… and became the orchard themselves. That’s pretty darn smart. Please read that again.

A Quiet Revolution of Good Fruit

Those early believers turned their focus homeward… to their families, churches, and small fellowships. They raised children, rescued infants, and cared for widows. They didn’t beg justice from a blind empire; they embodied it.

When Paul told the Corinthians not to drag disputes before pagan judges, they obeyed. They built their own courts… Scripture-led, fair, and merciful. Before long, even pagans stood in line for verdicts there. They wanted the real thing… justice uncorrupted.

Rome took notice. Tiny Christian colonies were sprouting like wildflowers… self-governing outposts of heaven cracking the empire’s marble crust. It was a quiet insurrection, a moral uprising without swords. Justice, mercy, and order outshone Rome’s pomp, and it terrified the powers that be.

The Spirit of Rome in the Modern Age

Fast-forward, and the old empire’s ghost is back… this time wearing suits and smiles. Governments parade as saviors while tightening the chains of control. Check the headlines: injustice applauded, virtue mocked, perversion crowned as progress.

And the church? Too often silent… or worse, compliant. Maybe gutless is the right word. Nations that once bent the knee to Christ now brag about laws that mock Him. In America, Congress crafts “anti-hate” bills that punish truth and glorify sin. Vast tracts of land rot in state hands while honest families lose their farms. Courts, once meant to guard justice, now weaponize it against the righteous.

So what can believers do? The same thing they did two millennia ago: convert hearts, write God’s law upon them, and live as walking testaments of it. This means living in a way that reflects God’s justice, mercy, and order. Real order doesn’t rise from Capitol Hill… it rises from the hearts of faith.

The Futility of Human Authority

History’s graveyard is filled with rulers who tried to burn out evil with terror… Dracula, Mao, Stalin —all brands of tyrants. They all ended the same way: in ashes. Law without God always eats itself and its children.

There was a time, yep, in my lifetime, people didn’t lock their doors… not because sheriffs were everywhere, but because neighbors feared God. Communities were held together by conscience, not the prying eyes of government digital cameras. The result: Fear rules where faith once did.

Now look, elections can’t heal this. Scripture still whispers, “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price.” That’s ownership language… binding, blazing, freeing. We belong to Christ, yet most tremble more before the FBI than the Almighty.

A century ago, a satirical novel, Crucible Island, imagined children reciting a creed:

“The State is the perfect being, the creator and conserver in whom I live and move and have my being.” Once parody and prophecy. Now reality.

When Law Forgets Its Maker

Every civilization bows to something. Remove God, and politics becomes God. In 1945, Roosevelt, when discussing post-war peace, suggested that the Pope should be invited to the negotiations. Stalin sneered, “How many divisions has the Pope?”—proving he never learned that truth needs no tanks.

America once burned white-hot with Puritan conviction. Over time, that flame sank to embers. Historian Philip Gura mapped the slide… from antinomians who ditched God’s moral law, to revivalists who prized emotion over obedience, to perfectionists who fled the world instead of redeeming it.

Now the fruit of secularism hangs sour, and even its champions can taste the rot. The soil is ready for something old to grow new again.

Re-Christianizing the Foundations

There’s only one road back: reclaim the law that built the West. Legal scholar Harold J. Berman warned that by the new millennium, civilization would either rediscover biblical law or disintegrate. At its heart lies the atonement… the pulse of divine justice itself.

Man broke the law; Christ fulfilled it. He bore the penalty, restored the order, and birthed a new humanity rooted in mercy and righteousness. The old Danish code said it best: “By law shall the land be built.” They meant God’s law… the one made flesh in Christ. Grace doesn’t cancel law; it crowns it.

Where atonement reigns, grace reigns too. Atonement, the act of reconciliation between God and humanity through Christ’s sacrifice, is the foundation of grace. And from that union springs civilization that stands… clean, free, and unshakable.

The Final Court of Heaven

Harold Berman warned that Western law endured only because men believed in the Last Judgment… that unbreakable certainty that God Himself would set the record straight. Remove that, and justice collapses.

John Keble said it in 1839: “God the Lord, a King remaineth, robed in His own glorious light.” Nations are but “a drop of a bucket” beside His throne. While rulers plot and empires crumble, God laughs. His justice always gets the last word.

Building on Rock in the Age of Sand

It’s true, everything built on sand must fall… apostate churches, wicked cultures, and evil empires alike. Only what’s anchored in Christ endures. The call still stands: Don’t live for self. Don’t trust the world’s increasingly hollow systems.

Look instead to the true Sovereign… The Christ, The Lawgiver, The Lawkeeper, the King above kings. Do everything in your power to help His rule reach over family, church, court, and nation. Only by this law, and by this grace, can this once great land be rebuilt… and when it is, it will stand unshaken on the Rock, not the sand.