(Article for publication week of 7-9- AD 2015)
"For we
ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers
lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one
another" (Titus 3:4).
Our text tells us the awful condition of humanity.
The text describes us who are saved before we were regenerated by the sovereign
work of the Holy Spirit. And our text perfectly describes everyone of you who
are unsaved. We are not basically good, we are basically evil, and only the
sovereign grace of God that comes to us through the saving work of Christ will
ever change us. We are by nature "hateful and hating one another." We
have all come short of the glory of God and have failed miserably in loving Him
with all our being and in loving our neighbour as ourselves. All of us, including
you dear reader, and me have hateful hearts by nature. Thanks be unto God for
the washing of regeneration that renews our hearts. And thanks be unto God that
in His goodness, God restrains the hatred in the hearts of unconverted people.
Were it not for God's restraints of the government of the home and the civil
magistrate, and the common operations of the Holy Spirit, the world would be
unbearable. By such external influences the hatred in the human heart of all of
us is restrained so that the world is at least bearable. But again I emphasize
that only God can change a sinner inwardly so that he can quit hating and being
hateful.
Now this is the
reason that it is unreasonable and actually an evil thing for the civil
government to try to enact "hate crime" laws. The fact is that all
sin is hateful. People do not murder, fornicate, steal and lie out of love, but
out of hate. Note well, I said fornication is hateful. Men seduce other men's
wives and daughters because of base lust, not because they love the objects of
their lusts. Sexual sins are not acts of love, but acts of hatred, as are
murder and theft and lying. Now in the case of murder, the wretched murderer is
to be put to death (Exodus 21:12; Mark 7:9-13; etc.). It matters not if he
murders a person of his own race, or a person of another race, the murderer is
to be put to death. God's law recognises all sin as criminal, and establishes
just penalties for such criminal acts. The murderer does not owe his victim
life in prison, he owes his life. (Note well, God did not establish prisons in
His law; capital crimes were punished by death and property crimes required
restitution.) This is the reason that it is an evil act for a civil government
to try to enact and enforce "hate crimes" because it insinuates that
some crimes are not hateful. It also insinuates that some human lives are more
important than others. (By the way, this is the reason that it is also wicked
for the State to enact harsher penalties for killing policemen, or for
committing murder with certain weapons.) Murder is to be punished by the
execution of the murderer, regardless of the victim's race or station, and
regardless of the weapon used to kill.
When the State seeks to make "hate"
criminal, it sets itself up as God by claiming omniscience. The truth is, only
God can rightfully judge a person's heart, for only He knows infallibly the
human heart within us. "Hate crime" legislation seeks to govern the
heart of man which only God can do. Thus the government seeks to declare itself
as omnipotent, another attribute exclusively God's. The civil laws of a
commonwealth must be in accord with God's law, or there can be no true justice.
Our civil law must always be objective, not subjective, for such subjectivity
can be swayed back and forth by popular whim usually excited by demagogues. It
is time for the Lord to work, for they have made His law void.
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