Chapter 53: Justice
Update: 4/13/20
This same law will apply to both the native born and to the foreigner who lives among you (Exodus 12:49).Do not cause judgment to be false. You must not show favoritism to someone because he is poor, and you must not show favoritism to someone because he is important. Instead, judge your neighbor righteously (Leviticus 19:15).
Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem; and he went out again among the people from Beersheba to the hill country of Ephraim and brought them back to Yahweh, the God of their fathers. He placed judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city. He said to the judges, "Consider what you should do, because you are not judging for man, but for the Lord; he is with you in the act of judging. Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful when you judge, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor is there any favoritism or bribe taking” (II Chronicles 19:4–7).
Here we have the clearest statements in ancient literature affirming the judicial principle of the rule of law. This principle is theocentric. “There is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor is there any favoritism or bribe taking.” This is stated repeatedly in the Bible. “Partiality in judging a case at law is not good” (Proverbs 24:23b). “For there is no favoritism with God” (Romans 2:11). “So if you call ‘Father’ the one who judges impartially and according to each person's work, go through the time of your journey in reverence” (I Peter 1:17).
The Israelites were taught that God applies His law to everybody impartially, even to the king. “When he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he must write for himself in a scroll a copy of this law, from the law that is before the priests, who are Levites. The scroll must be with him, and he must read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to honor the Lord his God, so as to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to observe them. He must do this so that his heart is not lifted up above his brothers, and so that he does not turn away from the commandments, to the right hand or to the left; for the purpose that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, among Israel” (Deuteronomy 17:18–20). [North, Deuteronomy, ch. 22] This meant that everyone in Israel was required by God to exercise self-government in terms of a predictable standard of law. Law-abiding Israelites expected other Israelites to do the same. This element of predictability was fundamental to the concept of justice under the Mosaic law. People believed that a just government, whether civil or ecclesiastical, would abide by the principle of the rule of law. If governments do this, then people are safe as owners of property. They are protected from unrighteous rulers. Righteous rulers protect them against anyone in society who would violate the laws of God regarding ownership, whether ownership of goods or ownership of personal reputations, meaning people’s names.
Basic to the rule of law is the concept of just weights and measures. God makes it clear that just weights and measures are representative of His predictable rulership. “Do not use false measures when measuring length, weight, or quantity. You must use just scales, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You must obey all my decrees and all my laws, and do them. I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:35–37). [North, Leviticus, ch. 19:B] Any deviation from just weights and measures in the private sector will be punished by God in eternity. Civil rulers must be prepared to enforce such laws. How much more should magistrates who deviate from honoring the rule of law be punished! The prophets came before the rulers of Israel repeatedly to warn them against such practices. Isaiah was clearest in his covenant lawsuit against the southern kingdom of Judah. “How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She who was full of justice—she was full of righteousness, but now she is full of murderers. Your silver has become impure, your wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves; everyone loves bribes and runs after payoffs” (Isaiah 1:21–23a). [North, Prophets, ch. 3] Because of this, God’s negative sanctions against the nation would inevitably come. “Therefore this is the declaration of the Lord God of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: “Woe to them! I will take vengeance against my adversaries, and avenge myself against my enemies; I will turn my hand against you, refine away your dross as with lye, and take away all your dross. I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning; after that you will be called the city of righteousness, a faithful town. Zion will be redeemed by justice, and her repentant ones by righteousness. Rebels and sinners will be crushed together, and those who abandon the Lord will be done away with” (vv. 24–28).
The judicial principle of the rule of law is the foundational political principle of Western civilization. That is because it is the foundational principle of Western law. It did not come from the Greeks. It did not come from the Romans. It came from the Mosaic law.
I begin with this principle: “citizens want justice.” I add this qualification: “at some price.” In a fallen world, perfect justice is not available. It is available at the end of time, and will be implemented. Were it not for the grace of God, the guarantee of perfect justice would be a terrifying threat to all of fallen humanity. Perfect justice comes at the final judgment. It will not come before then. It is not possible to attain perfect anything, but surely not perfect justice. The quest for perfect anything is inherently demonic. It is self-defeating. It is self-destructive.
We all would like benefits free of charge. But if we attempt to structure our lives in terms of the presupposition that somewhere, somehow, we can gain benefits free of charge, we will waste our lives in a fruitless quest. We may even be tempted to vote for political candidates who promise the equivalent of something for nothing. If these candidates are elected, and if they seriously attempt to implement any of their promises, somebody in the society is going to pay more than he should for any benefits received. The policies of something for nothing are the policies of deception. They are fraudulent.
Although God holds each person fully responsible, no agency of human government has the power to do so. This is why we must affirm as Christians that, with respect to the decisions of human governments regarding men's personal responsibility, there must always be limited liability. No agency of government is omniscient; none possesses the ability of God to read the human heart or to assess damages perfectly. We must wait for perfect justice until the day of final judgment. To insist on perfect justice from human government is to divinize that agency. It will also lead to its bankruptcy and the destruction of justice.
Consider the dangerous beast that breaks his restraining rope and kills someone. The victim’s heirs sue the owner. They argue that the owner should have used a more sturdy rope. If convicted, the owner then has to prove that the rope’s manufacturer was the true culprit. The court then investigates the rope manufacturer. Should he be held liable? To defend himself, he charges the hemp growers with selling a substandard product. Each stage in the case gets more technical and more expensive. The quest for perfect justice is suicidal. It increases the costs of litigation to such an extent that real victims cannot ever afford to attain restitution, for the case never ends. The courts become clogged with expensive cases that can never be resolved by anyone other than God. Only the lawyers profit. God's law does not exist in order to create employment for lawyers.
The state that attempts to impose standards of personal responsibility that imply omniscience and omnipotence will eventually make life impossible. Sometime before civilization grinds to a strangled halt, however, the bureaucrats will back down or else there will be a revolution which removes these messianic standards of personal and corporate responsibility from the law books. The price of perfect liability laws, like the price of perfect justice or the price of a risk-free society, is death. Such justice will be available only at the end of history. At that point, it will not only be available, it will be inescapable.
Whenever we speak of deterring crime, we must speak first of the deterrence of God's wrath against the community because of the courts' unwillingness to impose God’s justice within the community. The civil government is required by God to seek to deter crimes because all crimes are ultimately crimes against God. An unwillingness on the part of civil magistrates to enforce God’s specified sanctions against certain specified public acts calls forth God's specified covenantal cursings against the community. This threat of God's sanctions is the fourth section of God's covenant; without this covenant, either explicit or implicit, no community can exist. Only when we clearly recognize the theocentric nature of deterrence, and only when we are ready to seek to have it recognized publicly in our civil and ecclesiastical statute books, can we legitimately begin to speak about deterring criminal behavior for the protection of the community.
The Bible does not distinguish between civil law and criminal law. All sins are crimes against God, for they break His law. All public sins must be restrained by one or more of God's covenantal agencies of government: family, church, and State. Certain public transgressions of God's law are specified as acts to be punished by the civil magistrate. In the modern world, we call these acts crimes. The civil government enforces biblical laws against such acts. The general guideline for designating a particular public act as a crime is this: if by failing to impose sanctions against certain specified public acts, the whole community could be subsequently threatened by God’s non-civil sanctions—war, plague, and famine—then the civil government becomes God's designated agency of enforcement. The civil government's primary function is to protect the community against the wrath of God by enforcing His laws against public acts that threaten the survival of the community.
The Bible encourages the legitimate division of labor in identifying all types of criminal behavior, including such acts of injustice as breaking contracts or polluting the environment. The Bible recognizes that the State is not God. It is not omniscient. The initiation of public sanctions against all criminal acts therefore must not become a monopoly of civil officers. Citizen's arrest and torts—where one person sues another in order to collect damages—are modern examples of the outworking of this biblical principle of the decentralization of law enforcement. All government begins with self-government. The bottom-up, appeals court structure of covenant society (Exodus 18) is protected by not requiring that agents of the civil government initiate all civil government’s sanctions against criminal behavior. Nevertheless, all disputes into which the state can legitimately intervene and settle by judicial decision must be regarded in a biblical commonwealth as criminal behavior.
Victims must be compensated by perpetrators. This is the biblical principle of victim's rights. I have written a book on this: Victim’s Rights (1990). The book is a compilation of chapters from my commentary on the case laws. By upholding the principle of victim’s rights, the civil government represents everyone who resides inside its jurisdictional boundaries. Whenever the civil government performs its task on a systematic, nonarbitrary basis, this extends the division of labor. People can trust each other because they know that serious forms of deception that cause economic harm can become matters for courts to consider. Victims perceive that their interests are being defended. As a result, they have greater trust in the legitimacy of the civil government. They are more willing to cooperate with the legal order apart from the threat of negative civil sanctions. Legitimacy is basic to the survival of civil government. If people do not impute legitimacy to the civil government, the cost of enforcing the laws will inevitably go up when people no longer use self-government to obey the laws.
The Ten Commandments are divided into two halves. Commandments one through five have to do with what we might call priestly requirements. They uphold God, God’s name, God’s sabbaths, and God’s representatives in history: parents. Commandments six through nine have to do with kingly laws: protection against murder, protection against adultery, protection against theft, and protection against false accusations.
The tenth commandment is the only commandment that is exclusively personal: self-government only. There are no ecclesiastical or civil sanctions involved. “You must not covet your neighbor's house; you must not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17). [North, Exodus, ch. 30] It protects marriage, and it protects private property. This reminds us that biblical government begins with self-government under God’s law. He enforces the law impartially, and we should therefore be fearful if we indulge in fantasies involving successful violations of his laws. Jesus said: “For from within a person, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evils come from within, and they are what defile a person” (Mark 7:21–23).
God judges what we think. The state does not. The state has no jurisdiction over what we think. It is not omniscient. But the state has the right to impose negative sanctions on people who violate these laws: murder, adultery, theft, and slander. The biblical penalty for murder is execution. There are no exceptions. I cover the penalties for adultery in Section D. The penalty for theft is double restitution. The penalty for slander is not stated, so it would be a matter for the courts to decide. It is not a capital crime. It certainly is a crime that would impose monetary compensation to the victim.
If someone commits violence against another person, the person committing the violence would have to pay for all medical expenses. “If men fight together and hurt a pregnant woman so that she miscarries, but there is no other injury to her, then the guilty man must surely be fined as the woman's husband demands it from him, and he must pay as the judges determine. But if there is serious injury, then you must give a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, or a bruise for a bruise” (Exodus 21:22–25). [North, Exodus, ch. 37] This is the famous biblical standard of justice, lex talionis. It means an eye for an eye. As I have discussed in my commentary on the case laws of Exodus 21–23, this means negotiable monetary compensation. The victim has the right to force the court to impose an eye-for-eye penalty, but this is really the starting point for negotiation. What would the perpetrator be willing to pay to the victim in order to keep his bodily part? Probably a lot. The victim would benefit financially. If the payment were large enough, this would compensate him for his loss. Instead of seeking physical vengeance, he seeks a large settlement.
Throughout this book, I have made the connection between people’s actions and their legal responsibility. I have argued that the dominion covenant involves an extension of personal responsibility. It is of the essence of the dominion covenant that responsibility be extended by mankind. The increased wealth that someone attains is always accompanied by an increase in responsibility.
Fraud always has at its core the avoidance of responsibility. It is a transgression of the legal chain of responsibility between the seller’s actions and the outcome of these actions. The victim of fraud finds that the seller evades responsibility for his actions. He made a sale on the basis of deliberately inaccurate information. He must therefore be capable of being held accountable in a court of law for this deception. The court reestablishes the judicial link between actions and the results of these actions. The seller who attempted to evade responsibility for his actions is tried in a court of law, and if he is convicted, he must make restitution to his victim.
It is also possible for a buyer to commit fraud. The buyer writes a check for which there is no money in the bank. The check is returned to the seller. The seller gets no money. This is fraudulent. The buyer appeared to pay with money, but he did not. This is clearly a form of theft. Another possibility is that the buyer pays with what he knows to be counterfeit money. A major advantage of digital sales by means of a credit card or other electronic payment system is this: it is almost impossible for a buyer to commit fraud.
Fraud is not a physical act. Someone has deceived another person, and the result is economic loss for the person deceived. This is an aspect of the biblical principle of weights and measures. Weights and measures, in turn, are an aspect of justice. Someone who defrauds another person by substituting false weights has stolen from that person. We call this shortchanging someone.
The victim has to be able to prove that he has suffered a loss as a result of the deception. The court cannot award a penalty payment to someone who cannot prove that he has sustained an economic loss. Most defrauded people do not bother to take someone else to court in order to get a relatively small compensation if he wins his case. His time is valuable. He may have to hire a lawyer. So, this kind of judicial action is limited to larger cases. In the United States, small claims can be adjudicated in small claims courts. But getting into the docket takes time. As with anything else, the lower the price, the more is demanded. You pay either through money or through time. Small claims are matters of payment in time, which is expensive, in order to get compensated monetarily, which is probably not worth most people’s time. This is what restrains the clogging of the courts. It just is not worth the cost of time and emotional stress to pursue a case against someone who has committed fraud.
Counterfeiting is a specialized form of fraud. The term usually is associated with printing paper money and spending it into circulation. The person doing the printing is redistributing wealth away from trusting sellers of goods and services. Because the cost of printing is low, at least if someone can gain access to paper that is similar to the paper used by the government to produce paper money, he can extract wealth from other people. Once the plates are created, the cost of producing the bills is minimal. This leads to a redistribution of wealth based on deception. This is why counterfeiting is an extension of fraud. The statistics on counterfeiting indicate that it has a very small impact on the overall economy. In the United States, the biggest loser is the person who reports a counterfeit bill. Here is an official statement of the Department of the Treasury: “Please Note: There is no financial remuneration for the return of the counterfeit bill, but it is doing the ‘right thing’ to help combat counterfeiting.” The government is wise enough to put the words “right thing” in quotation marks, indicating that it is the stupid thing to do. This policy tempts the retailer who is the victim of a counterfeit bill to include the bill in his daily deposit of paper money to his local bank. The bank will then be stuck with the loss if it discovers that a bill is counterfeit.
The modern world has made a serious error. It has legalized counterfeiting by fractional reserve banks and by central banks. This is counterfeiting on a massive scale. Private counterfeiters could not do this on such a scale. Private counterfeiters are limited to printing pieces of paper. This is a small fraction of the total money supply. The bulk of the money supply is in the form of digital accounts. Here, the degree of counterfeiting is on a massive scale. The redistribution of wealth from people who trust the money to people who are legal counterfeiters is also on a massive scale. There is no other form of fraud which compares with the magnitude of the fraud of legalized counterfeiting by the banking system.
Another form of counterfeiting is counterfeiting a company’s trademark or logo. The company has built up trust among a certain group of customers. It has a good reputation. The counterfeiter trades on the good reputation of the other person’s name. This is a form of bearing false witness, which is prohibited by the ninth commandment. But it is also a counterfeiting violation. It is deception. It is an aspect of false weights and measures.
A buyer believes that he is purchasing a product produced by a reliable producer. The buyer is being deceived by the seller. The quality of the counterfeit product may be just as good as that offered by the original company that established its reputation, but this is a sale that will not be made by the original company. The buyer made the purchase in good faith, but he was the victim of deception. Or the product may fail to work as well as a product sold by the original producer. In either case, the seller has violated the biblical principle of honest weights and measures. A trademark or logo is an aspect of the buyer’s imputation of value. So are honest weights and measures.
As in the case of fraud, counterfeiting is an attempt to break the legal connection between someone’s actions and the results of those actions. When a product is counterfeit, it is difficult for a victim to identify the person who has inflicted a loss on him. He would not have made the purchase if he had known the name and reputation of the producer. Because he did not know this name, and because he was deceived into thinking that the product was produced by someone else, meaning someone with a good reputation, he is the victim of deception. He has suffered a loss. He deserves to be compensated by the person who deceived him, thereby inflicting the loss.
The free market has a system of self-policing. Retailers have an incentive to make certain that they have not been deceived by the seller of a particular good. They do not want to be made legally liable for not having done careful research into the origin of the goods that they sell to the general public. Most of the policing against counterfeiting is done by retailers. Secondarily, the sellers who have been victims of the trademark violation have an incentive to bring the violator before a court. If the jurors determine the counterfeiter is a professional, the jurors may impose such a heavy penalty on him that he will be forced to sell himself into slavery. This is not done in the modern world, but it is a biblical principle. Victims should be compensated, and perpetrators should make the payments. If perpetrators cannot afford to make the payments, then they should be sold into servitude, and the money is then used to compensate the victims. The modern world is more afraid of the accusation of imposing slavery than it is of defrauded victims. The victims are the main losers. The public, including the victims, pays for the prison system. The victims pay twice.
The state has legitimate functions in the area of the enforcement of marital contracts. The state does not have exclusive rights to adjudicate such disputes. Churches have responsibilities in this area. But because there is an element of contractualism in every marital covenant, and because families are under the jurisdiction of the state, the state has legitimate rights in this area. When people marry, they do so under the legitimate authority of the state. The state is responsible for the fulfilling of some aspects of the marital covenant. This is certainly true in the case of adultery. The Mosaic law is clear with respect to adultery: it is a capital crime. "The man who commits adultery with another man's wife, that is, anyone who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife—the adulterer and the adulteress must both certainly be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). The authority to decide what penalty to impose is possessed by the victimized husband. The primary victimized spouse is the husband of the adulterous wife. He can order both of the adulterers to be put to death. If the adulterous male is married, then his wife inherits all of his wealth. On the other hand, if the husband of the adulterous wife decides to show mercy, and the wife decides to have them both executed, they must be executed. She is the secondary victimized spouse, but she has the right to determine who lives and who dies. She may want a divorce. She may want everything her adulterous husband owns. She may grant him life on this basis. But if she wants to get even with his consort, she can have them both executed. She is going to inherit all of his money anyway. Maybe she could negotiate with the husband of the adulterous woman. If he wants to keep her alive, then he can pay the victimized wife. All of this is subject to negotiation. Joseph showed mercy to Mary when the evidence was against her. That is the option of a spouse. But it is not a requirement.
The state has the authority to decide which children go with which parent in divorce cases. It also has the authority to decide the size of payments by husbands to divorced wives and minor children. It settles the distribution of property. It also establishes the grounds for divorce. Biblically, the grounds for divorce in the New Testament are the equivalent of covenantal infractions in the Old Testament that were capital crimes. The marriage is covenantally dead, and the victim deserves the assets of the family. A detailed study on this topic is Ray Sutton’s book, Second Chance (1987). The state has the authority and the power to impose settlements on divorced couples who would otherwise be incapable of settling these issues on their own authority.
The state has the right to adjudicate disputed contracts. This is an aspect of the maintenance of peace. When people are involved in contractual obligations, and they cannot settle these issues, there has to be some agency with superior authority to both of the conflicting parties that is in a position to impose a settlement. On this basis, peace is restored. The conflicting parties can then get on with their lives. This extends the dominion process.
If the contracting parties agreed originally to allow the dispute to be settled by a private agency of arbitration, then the state has no authority to intervene. The state does not have an exclusive monopoly on settling disputed contracts. This principle is an extension of Paul’s statement regarding the authority of churches to settle disputes between members. "When one of you has a dispute with another, does he dare to go to the civil court before an unbelieving judge, rather than before the saints? Do you not know that the believers will judge the world? If then, you will judge the world, are you not able to settle matters of little importance? Do you not know that we will judge the angels? How much more, then, can we judge matters of this life? If then you have to make judgments that pertain to daily life, why do you lay such cases as these before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Is there no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between brothers? But as it stands, one believer goes to court against another believer, and that case is placed before a judge who is an unbeliever!” (I Corinthians 6:1–6) [North, First Corinthians, ch. 6]
In disputes between people under a state’s jurisdiction, courts serve as agencies of adjudication. If citizens believe that the courts will uphold justice, they will be willing to accept minor infractions by other people. But if they suspect that they really are the victims of systematic criminal activity or illegitimate behavior by others, then they may resort to violence. The primary function of the civil courts is to impose negative sanctions that are mandated by God’s law.
God’s law-order is designed to extend peace. Covenant-keepers are required by God to seek peace. Paul wrote the following to Timothy: “Therefore first of all, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may live a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (I Timothy 2:1–2). [North, First Timothy, ch. 2] Biblical civil law is designed by God to extend peace to law-abiding people. The benefits of His laws include peace.
Peace extends the range of voluntary cooperation. This allows the extension of the division of labor, which in turn makes it possible to specialize. Specialization of production increases output. As a result, producers and consumers increase their net worth. This is why the maintenance of peace is crucial for economic prosperity.
The maintenance of peace requires civil government. A cogent presentation of this idea appears in Ludwig von Mises’ third edition of Human Action (1966). It does not appear in the first edition, published in 1949. Mises wrote: “Peace—the absence of perpetual fighting by everyone against everyone—can be attained only by the establishment of a system in which the power to resort to violent action is monopolized by a social apparatus of compulsion and coercion and the application of this power in any individual case is regulated by a set of rules—the man-made laws as distinguished both from the laws of nature and those of praxeology [the science of human action]. The essential implement of a social system is the operation of such an apparatus commonly called government.” He added this: “As far as the government—the social apparatus of compulsion and oppression—confines the exercise of its violence and the threat of such violence to the suppression and prevention of antisocial action, there prevails what reasonably and meaningfully can be called liberty” (XV:6).
The greater the predictability of the legal system, the greater the degree of peaceful cooperation in the society, assuming that people think that the courts will defend justice. But, for day-to-day living, predictability of the courts is more important for the extension of peace and the ethical foundations of the courts. People learn to live with what they regard as minor injustice for the sake of legal predictability. They want to avoid hassle in their lives, and going to court is a hassle. It is not a zero-cost transaction. As long as the injustice is infrequent and minimal, people learn to put up with it. But if the court system is perceived by the broad mass of the population as being rigged against them, then people will begin to cheat. They will begin to cut corners judicially and ethically. This increases the cost of attaining justice, and it decreases the level of peace in society. The result is lower output per unit of resource input. In other words, the result is reduced efficiency and reduced wealth for the society at large.
Jesus preached peace rather than justice. He was preaching to victims of injustice: Hebrews living in the Roman Empire. He recommended this strategy: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. Instead, whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone wishes to go to court with you and takes away your coat, let that person also have your cloak. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to anyone who asks you, and do not turn away from anyone who wishes to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:38–42). We are to pay for peace by suffering injustice when we are victims of an unjust regime. This is the correct long-term strategy of dominion. This would be a strategy of guaranteed defeat if the world were not structured according to this standard: “He fed you in the wilderness manna that your ancestors had never known, so that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end, but you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand acquired all this wealth.’ But you will call to mind the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth; that he may establish his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is today” (Deuteronomy 8:16–18). Because the social world is structured in terms of this principle, the long-run effect of suffering injustice for the sake of peace is the destruction of the systems of injustice that have been established by covenant-breakers.
People want justice. The economist always adds this: at some price. People cannot get perfect justice in history. The quest for perfect justice is an expensive quest. This quest will bankrupt any society that attempts it.
People are willing to put up with minor injustices if they can attain peace. If they can pursue their lives without excessive interference, especially unpredictable interference, either from the government or from criminals, they will usually do this. But if their sense of injustice accumulates over time because of a seemingly irreversible increase of minor injustices, people will begin to change their behavior. They will no longer cooperate with the government, and in this refusal, they will find that they cannot cooperate predictably with other people. This is why an increase of injustice will eventually be reversed. The personal cost of putting up with injustice continues to escalate. At some point, there will be a tipping point. The public will cease to use self-government in their affairs. So, there is a self-destructive, self- reversing aspect of every system of injustice in the civil government’s legal system that does not have ways of self-reform. It will be reformed by people outside the system: either invading armies or revolutionaries.
Tyranny has built-in limits: boundaries. This is not visible to those living in tyrannical societies, but tyrannical regimes do not survive. The social world is a created world, and God is in charge of it. He has created it in such a way that there are built-in limitations on the extension of state power. The famous 1887 statement by Lord Acton is clever: “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was a sentence in a private letter. It is incorrect. Not all power corrupts, if by power we mean delegated authority. Also, long before political power becomes absolute, its own corruption undermines it. God has absolute power; no one else does. God is trustworthy. Absolute power does not corrupt Him. The quest for absolute power by covenant-breakers always backfires. I know of no piece of literature in the ancient world that rivals the fifth chapter of Amos in this regard. If you are ever tempted to despair about the drift of politics, read that chapter. Meanwhile, this is our command: “Instead, let justice flow like water, and righteousness like a constantly flowing stream” (Amos 5:41). Here is the biblical outcome of systematic covenant-breaking by those with power: “So the word of the Lord will be to them command upon command, command upon command; rule upon rule, rule upon rule; here a little, there a little; so that they may go and fall backward, and be broken, ensnared, and captured” (Isaiah 28:13).
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The complete manuscript is here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department196.cfm