WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.360 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:43.680 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:48.720 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing justice and retribution. 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:51.440 A little bit of housekeeping before we begin. 00:00:51.440 --> 00:00:54.400 This will be the last episode of the current year. 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:57.520 We're gonna take three weeks off for the rest of December as 00:00:57.520 --> 00:00:58.480 we're recording this. 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:00.480 So we should be back the beginning of January. 00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:01.920 That's the plan right now. 00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:03.680 If you're a new listener, welcome. 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:07.040 Uh we've seen from the traffic that we've about doubled our active 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:09.760 audience size just as people are checking us out. 00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:12.960 You know, a lot of you heard people saying nasty, mean things 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:15.120 about us and you came to see how terrible we are and 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:18.000 turns out we're not really all that terrible, except for maybe a 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.040 few things that you probably strongly disagree with, and we make the 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:22.640 case for those and that's fine. 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:27.360 But we're not the monsters and the maniacs that uh people say. 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:29.920 We don't do react episodes. 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:33.280 One of the reasons that people do actually go back and listen 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:35.520 to all of our episodes is that they don't get stale. 00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:38.800 We try very hard to make sure that you can pick up 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:41.360 pretty much any episode at any time and it's not gonna be 00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:45.120 irrelevant So we're not going to say anything about the recent drama 00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:48.240 because frankly for us that stuff's been going on for years. 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:50.240 Just new sets of people find out about it. 00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:51.840 So we're glad you discovered us. 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:55.040 If you do enjoy the show, please leave a five-star review on 00:01:55.040 --> 00:01:57.120 Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen You listen. 00:01:57.120 --> 00:01:59.680 We're always getting brigaded by people who want us not to be 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:03.360 discovered. Because again, when people listen, I guess that's pretty good. 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:04.800 Some people really like it. 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:06.880 And if you are a new listener and you pick up a 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:10.240 couple episodes and think that's cool, I've said many times, you've probably 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:12.160 heard this many times, you're a regular listener. 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:14.640 We highly recommend you go back to the beginning and just listen 00:02:14.640 --> 00:02:15.600 to all of them. 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:18.400 Not because we think that it's worth hanging on our every word, 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:21.600 but because that's what most people do and they really like it. 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:24.160 Like it's the reason that our bandwidth has skyrocketed. 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:24.880 It's a good thing. 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:26.080 It's not costing us money. 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:28.640 It's just we're happy to see that people like, oh yeah, this 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:30.240 is worth listening to. 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:34.240 Our job, our goal is to make content that people want to 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.400 hear out and learn something from. 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:39.360 On the subject of money, we very rarely talk about it, but 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:43.280 we do accept donations and frankly, at least for my purposes, it 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:46.160 really is the reason that I'm still able to do this. 00:02:46.160 --> 00:02:49.200 Enough people have donated over the last couple of years to make 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:52.720 it possible for us to spend the time not only on the 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:56.560 show but on talking to people online and so I really appreciate 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.720 everyone who has donated anything, everyone who donates regularly, everyone who doesn't 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:03.920 donate anything and just listens and tells friends there's no such thing 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:04.880 as a freeloader here. 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:06.640 This is a podcast, it's free. 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:09.920 But you know, we occasionally want to acknowledge that people have given 00:03:09.920 --> 00:03:12.560 us generously, some small, some great. 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:14.560 Any gift to a stranger is generosity. 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:15.920 So thank you very much. 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:17.200 It means a great deal. 00:03:17.200 --> 00:03:19.840 I'd say with all sincerity that we would not be able to 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:21.920 do what we're doing if it were not for the folks who 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:23.200 are giving to us. 00:03:23.200 --> 00:03:24.480 So it means a lot. 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:27.360 And if you don't feel like giving anything, that's fine too. 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:28.640 It's a podcast. 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:30.000 We've said that from the beginning. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:32.160 Like we are completely unmonetizable. 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:35.440 No one could ever possibly sponsor us because people are always saying 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:37.600 mean crap and people would be hurt. 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:40.240 Like there are companies I would like to endorse, but I won't 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:42.000 because it would hurt them. 00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:44.480 So maybe take that as a threat. 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:46.800 You know, tell us that you don't want us to endorse or 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:48.080 we will. 00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:52.480 I'm joking, of course, but like it's that's the level of slander 00:03:52.480 --> 00:03:55.440 that goes on in what should be a Christian space. 00:03:55.440 --> 00:03:58.160 Yeah, on social media, a lot of Christians talking to each other 00:03:58.160 --> 00:03:58.640 about things. 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:02.240 And for some reason, it's just okay to treat certain people in 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:05.840 a way that's really if you just objectively look at it, it's 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:07.440 insane and shocking. 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:09.040 But we're not going anywhere. 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:10.480 Glad you found us if you're new. 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:12.960 We're glad you're hanging around if you're old. 00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:16.960 And the reason that we're doing justice and retribution today 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:21.280 is that this is a fundamentally political episode. 00:04:21.280 --> 00:04:26.640 We'll be making the case today that worldly justice is exclusively in 00:04:26.640 --> 00:04:28.160 the left hand kingdom. 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:32.800 It has nothing to do with God's righteousness in spiritual terms. 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:35.920 Has it to do with God's righteousness in terms of what is 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:38.720 right and wrong and what the state enforces. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:41.680 But what it doesn't have anything to do with is the church. 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:44.880 And one of the reasons the Stone Choir has been such a 00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:50.560 profound challenge to these establishment players is that we're not pastors and 00:04:50.560 --> 00:04:51.840 we don't pretend to be. 00:04:51.840 --> 00:04:53.040 These are not sermons. 00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:56.320 When we're talking about these subjects, we're just speaking as Christian men 00:04:56.400 --> 00:04:58.880 talking about whatever we think is relevant. 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:02.240 And that permits us to have a purview that's far greater than 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:02.960 a pastor. 00:05:02.960 --> 00:05:05.840 There's a lot of stuff that we talk about the pastors can't, 00:05:05.840 --> 00:05:10.640 not only because they're incompetent, but they're not suited to it. 00:05:10.640 --> 00:05:13.040 It's not their role to speak about certain things. 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:13.760 That's fine. 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:15.120 That's how things work. 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:17.200 There are lots of things that I wouldn't talk about because even 00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:20.160 if I find it interesting, it's not my place to talk about 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:25.120 it. But the things, the subjects that we discuss often cross what 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:27.840 we consider to be boundaries. 00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:31.280 And one of the purposes of us doing the subjects that we 00:05:31.280 --> 00:05:35.040 tackle is that a lot of those boundaries are synthetic and they 00:05:35.040 --> 00:05:39.840 were erected for specific purposes to actually harm Christendom, to harm our 00:05:39.840 --> 00:05:43.120 communities and our churches and everything. 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:48.240 So when we specifically target stuff that causes problem, creates a crisis. 00:05:48.320 --> 00:05:50.880 We're talking a little about the etymology of crisis. 00:05:50.880 --> 00:05:55.760 The reason that it stirs up so much dissension and upset is 00:05:55.760 --> 00:06:00.800 that we're identifying places where there's not necessarily a clear delineation between, 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:03.840 well, this is political stuff and this is church stuff. 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:08.320 And one of the most wicked things that's happened in Western society. 00:06:08.320 --> 00:06:12.320 Something else I just discovered recently, Western civilization was invented in like 00:06:12.320 --> 00:06:13.680 the eighteen fifties. 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:16.800 If you look at the graph of Christendom and the graph of 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:20.000 Western civilization, they're basically an X. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:24.000 Christendom petered out and Western civilization appeared out of nowhere in like 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.720 the eighteen twenties or so and it just took a big jump 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:27.840 in the eighteen fifties. 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:28.880 Why would that be? 00:06:28.880 --> 00:06:30.640 Because they stopped being Christian. 00:06:30.640 --> 00:06:33.520 Even though you know we still think of those the olden times 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:37.200 of the 1800s as being a Christian era, and kind of was, 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:40.240 but it was fundamentally the de Christianization of America. 00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:41.760 That was when that began. 00:06:41.760 --> 00:06:45.760 The problems that we have now were mostly born in that world 00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:46.960 in the 1800s. 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:49.760 So a lot of times we'll tackle subjects that just leap right 00:06:49.760 --> 00:06:54.240 over these boundaries because when you look at the distinction between Western 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:58.080 civilization and Christendom, which we consider to be the same thing, and 00:06:58.080 --> 00:06:59.760 I've certainly used them interchangeable. 00:06:59.760 --> 00:07:02.080 I'm gonna try to stop now, even though at the beginning of 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:06.640 this paragraph thought I said Western Civ like it's not a thing. 00:07:06.640 --> 00:07:07.920 It's Christendom. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:13.840 And when Christ goes away from the domain of politics, everything falls 00:07:13.840 --> 00:07:17.520 apart. You can't have the West without Christianity. 00:07:17.520 --> 00:07:20.480 And you also can't have the West without white people. 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:22.000 We're Europeans. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:23.520 Most people listening are. 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:24.560 If you're not, welcome. 00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:27.200 As we've said in like the race episodes, we don't hate people 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:28.960 because of how God made you. 00:07:28.960 --> 00:07:31.200 We have a lot of people who are mixed race who listen. 00:07:31.200 --> 00:07:33.680 I've talked to half a dozen guys who are mixed race in 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:36.720 the last week alone, either thanking us for the things we talk 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:40.080 about or asking specific questions, not as like setups or to see 00:07:40.080 --> 00:07:42.320 if we were mean, but because they knew we're the guys who 00:07:42.400 --> 00:07:43.920 actually tell them the truth. 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:46.480 Because there are some people are put in situations where they have 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:47.520 a hard time. 00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:51.200 And when everyone is telling you one thing that's contrary to your 00:07:51.200 --> 00:07:55.120 lived experience, something I laughed about before because it's a leftist trope, 00:07:55.120 --> 00:07:56.240 but it's also true. 00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:59.520 I don't know what it's like to be, you know, half European 00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:00.640 and half African. 00:08:00.640 --> 00:08:02.720 I know what it's like to be half Yankee and half you 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:07.040 know Confederate, half Tarheel, but it's not remotely the same thing, 'cause 00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:09.040 you can't tell by looking at me. 00:08:09.040 --> 00:08:12.320 But at least we will speak honestly about those subjects. 00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:15.920 And we speak honestly in a way that is in opposition to 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:19.840 what everyone in the world is saying in this century. 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:23.680 So I'm gonna run through a few previous episodes that if you're 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:26.240 new to the podcasts and you go back and listen through in 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:28.640 order, you'll get to these if it's old hat. 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:31.760 I want to refresh your memory because as we're talking about justice 00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:38.160 and retribution as a political subject, it's specifically not in view of 00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:40.000 overlap with some of these other things. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.160 So I'll explain it as I go through these. 00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:45.040 The first highly relevant episode for today that we'll refer to a 00:08:45.040 --> 00:08:46.640 few times is perfect hatred. 00:08:46.640 --> 00:08:50.160 In the perfect hatred episode, we discussed the fact that for one, 00:08:50.160 --> 00:08:51.920 that's a term in scripture. 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:55.760 Do I not hate them with perfect hatred is a pure Christian 00:08:55.760 --> 00:08:58.640 confession about evil men. 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:01.520 And we discussed for you know an hour and a half or 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:04.480 so in that episode what it means to have hatred of evil 00:09:04.560 --> 00:09:07.120 men. What does any of that mean? 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:09.840 The gist of it is that we are called as Christians to 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:13.760 hate anything that is contrary to God's will, because God hates anything 00:09:13.760 --> 00:09:15.440 that's contrary to his will. 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:18.960 And so that delineation of good and evil, what does good actually 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:21.200 mean? That which isn't God's will. 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:21.920 What is evil? 00:09:21.920 --> 00:09:23.760 That which is opposed to God's will. 00:09:23.760 --> 00:09:24.400 That's it. 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:25.520 That's good and evil. 00:09:25.520 --> 00:09:28.480 If you do something that's opposed to God's will, you are evil. 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:29.520 Your action is evil. 00:09:29.520 --> 00:09:31.360 Whatever's going on is evil. 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:32.640 That's the definition. 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:36.400 You know, we call that morality, but it's fundamentally about God's will. 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:39.920 So in the perfect hatred episode, we establish the fact that when 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:44.800 you look at all of these moral questions in those terms, it 00:09:44.800 --> 00:09:47.840 changes the equation because it's a lot simpler in some cases. 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:49.200 We're like, oh, it's so ambiguous. 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:50.960 No one could possibly know what God wants. 00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:53.360 Well, sometimes that's a case, but in a lot of cases, he 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:54.080 makes it very clear. 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:58.240 Either by how he created things or what he specifically said. 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:00.960 In episode we did on all sins are not equal, we dealt 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.760 with the fact that there's some things that are actually worse than 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:08.160 others. There's some sins that are more evil than other sins, even 00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:11.600 though all sins are evil, as I just said, but some are 00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:16.080 still worse, and that's an actual thing that has actual consequences both 00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:17.760 temporally and eternally. 00:10:17.760 --> 00:10:22.560 And today's episode about justice is entirely about temporal consequences, has nothing 00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:24.160 to do with the eternal. 00:10:24.160 --> 00:10:27.840 We're going to talk a bit about how they are related, but 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:30.720 when we talk about earthly justice, it has nothing to do with 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:31.920 the church. 00:10:31.920 --> 00:10:35.040 In the episode that we called Judge Not, we specifically dealt with 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:37.360 the claim that, well, Christians can't ever judge anything. 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:39.120 Like is, well, you're a sinner too. 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:42.320 So you can't possibly know if anyone's right or wrong about anything. 00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:43.760 Okay, Satan. 00:10:43.760 --> 00:10:45.680 Next. Like that's just nonsense. 00:10:45.680 --> 00:10:48.880 And yet it's something that's very common for Christians to say today. 00:10:48.880 --> 00:10:52.320 So again, as I go through this list of episodes, when we're 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:55.840 talking about justice, we're setting the rest of those things aside in 00:10:55.840 --> 00:10:56.560 those episodes. 00:10:56.560 --> 00:10:57.680 Those are complete treatments. 00:10:57.680 --> 00:10:59.440 We're not going to touch them today. 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:02.480 The left hand of Christ episode was specifically about the fact that 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:05.680 the state does not bear the sword for nothing, whether it's a 00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:10.160 godly prince or it's the miserable democratic morass that we're stuck with 00:11:10.160 --> 00:11:13.920 today, it's still the government that God permits to be over us. 00:11:13.920 --> 00:11:18.240 It has duties and it has obligations that have nothing to do 00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:20.080 with what the church says or does. 00:11:20.160 --> 00:11:22.800 Doesn't mean that they can't act in anti Christian ways, but it 00:11:22.800 --> 00:11:25.440 means that when we look at what it is Christian for a 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:29.040 nation to do, in some cases, it's very different than what it's 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:30.720 Christian for an individual to do. 00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:34.000 And we're going to be talking about that explicitly today. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.240 The episode on you are forgiven is important because forgiveness is the 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:39.920 essence of the Christian faith. 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:43.840 It's the one thing that guarantees to separate every Christian from everyone 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.280 else is our sins are forgiven and we receive that forgiveness. 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:50.800 And we are to extend God's forgiveness to everyone else. 00:11:50.800 --> 00:11:54.080 When we talk about justice today, has nothing to do with that. 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:58.720 Why? Because forgiveness is entirely a right hand question and it's entirely 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:00.320 a interpersonal question. 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:03.680 When we talk about justice in this world, forgiveness is not in 00:12:03.680 --> 00:12:04.480 the equation. 00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:06.240 So we're gonna make that case. 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:09.280 On the episode on repentance, we talked about well, someone's sorry. 00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:11.040 Someone actually repents of their evil. 00:12:11.040 --> 00:12:12.880 They were doing bad things and they stopped. 00:12:12.880 --> 00:12:16.960 They genuinely had a Christian turn of repentance, they're living a better 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:17.520 life now. 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:19.440 Does that mean they're exempt from justice? 00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:20.320 Absolutely not. 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:21.520 That's what we're doing today. 00:12:21.680 --> 00:12:24.640 Has nothing to do with whether or not someone's repentant because the 00:12:24.640 --> 00:12:26.640 repentance is both interpersonal. 00:12:26.640 --> 00:12:29.200 You know, if I sin against you and then I repent, I 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:32.880 ask you for forgiveness, you are obligated by God to forgive me. 00:12:32.880 --> 00:12:34.400 And that's not self-serving. 00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:36.080 Frankly, that's serving yourself. 00:12:36.080 --> 00:12:38.640 Consult the Lord's Prayer for details. 00:12:38.640 --> 00:12:42.160 If you refuse to forgive someone for one thing that he's done 00:12:42.160 --> 00:12:45.760 to you, when every sin you've ever committed has been against God, 00:12:45.760 --> 00:12:48.160 God promises that you will remember that. 00:12:48.160 --> 00:12:49.760 And the opposite is true. 00:12:49.760 --> 00:12:52.640 If you forgive the small things, God will forgive the great things. 00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:54.480 In fact, he already has on the cross. 00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:57.200 All you have to do is not reject it by refusing to 00:12:57.200 --> 00:12:59.280 forgive someone when he asks. 00:12:59.280 --> 00:13:02.000 But the fact that someone has repented does not mean that they're 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:03.680 free from earthly justice. 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:06.320 means are free from eternal justice. 00:13:06.240 --> 00:13:07.920 Two different things. 00:13:07.920 --> 00:13:13.360 So again, today's episode is about temporal, strictly temporal matters. 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:16.480 And the last two were on violence and making peace. 00:13:16.480 --> 00:13:20.800 We're we specifically talked about the role of political violence and the 00:13:20.800 --> 00:13:23.920 role of choosing to make peace in this life. 00:13:23.920 --> 00:13:28.320 And sometimes peace is made through cooperation and through discussion. 00:13:28.320 --> 00:13:32.320 And sometimes peace is made through eliminating the enemy. 00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:36.000 And while we dealt specifically with some of those mechanisms, we didn't 00:13:35.920 --> 00:13:38.000 discuss it in terms of justice. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.880 And so today as we discuss justice and retribution, it's again, it's 00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:45.200 entirely a political question. 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:50.320 Historically there have been four ways that justice was dispensed. 00:13:50.880 --> 00:13:55.280 The first and the least significant was fines. 00:13:55.280 --> 00:13:58.480 If you do something wrong, you pay a fine and the matter 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:01.760 is considered to be settled again, in the left-hand kingdom. 00:14:01.760 --> 00:14:04.000 We're not gonna be talking about what you owe to God or 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:07.520 anything. We're specifically talking about how our men reconcile to each other 00:14:07.520 --> 00:14:12.240 politically. You do a crime, you pay a fine, and it's over. 00:14:12.240 --> 00:14:16.720 The next level up, going back thousands of years, is corporal punishment, 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:22.160 you know, beatings, canings, maybe amputations, something that God Himself commanded in 00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:23.440 Leviticus 20. 00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:26.000 You can read through that for a list of things that are 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:27.040 potentially on the table. 00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:30.320 Doesn't mean that that's the list of things that we have to 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:33.440 implement as laws, but one of the things that we say on 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:37.520 Stone Choir all the time, and it's vital to understand, is that 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:40.400 while we will point back to elements of the old testament where 00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:45.040 God was dealing directly with Israel politically, we're not saying we have 00:14:45.040 --> 00:14:47.040 to implement exactly these laws. 00:14:47.040 --> 00:14:50.320 What we are always saying is that God did not sin when 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:54.000 he said this is a just punishment for this type of crime. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:58.000 So when God says that someone's hand should be amputated for committing 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.000 theft, that's just. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.120 And if you say today that is injust, that is evil, what 00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:04.960 you're doing is calling God evil. 00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:06.960 And there are a lot of people in the church who call 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:09.200 God evil, and that is why we're here. 00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:10.880 Because that's not Christianity. 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:13.920 You cannot call your creator evil and be a Christian. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.960 Means you're a Satan worshiper, whatever you call yourself. 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:19.920 And the church is frankly full of those people. 00:15:19.920 --> 00:15:23.440 So tackling justice is about tackling that. 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:26.000 We have men creeping in who will say, well, you you can't 00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:26.240 do that. 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:29.920 That would be unjust to to do physical harm to someone. 00:15:29.920 --> 00:15:35.280 Well, God commanded physical harm to Israel in that time for certain 00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:38.080 crimes. Doesn't mean that we have to reimplement those laws. 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:40.000 That's not remotely what we're saying. 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:42.640 The narrow case to be made is you cannot call that evil, 00:15:42.640 --> 00:15:43.600 and many do. 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:47.360 So we have fines, we have corporal punishment, which continued up until 00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:50.400 recently in some countries, continues to this day. 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:52.640 We now consider that to be barbaric. 00:15:52.640 --> 00:15:56.160 It's how civilization's been preserved for thousands of years. 00:15:56.160 --> 00:15:58.320 I think that there's a case that could be made. 00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:00.560 We're not really gonna make it today, but I think if you 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:04.480 look at the fall off on punishments that are considered to be 00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:08.480 barbaric today, what we actually see is a rise in barbarism in 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:13.760 civilization, the death of civilization, when there's a way of instituting justice 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:17.200 that's thrown out, all the wisdom and all the commands of God 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:20.480 going back thousands of years, like we're not gonna do that anymore. 00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:21.600 We have evolved. 00:16:21.600 --> 00:16:23.520 We are more civilized than that now. 00:16:23.520 --> 00:16:26.400 The net result is that we have a less civilized world. 00:16:26.400 --> 00:16:28.240 We have more evil than ever. 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:30.640 That's not a coincidence. 00:16:30.640 --> 00:16:35.360 The next punishment, the list of four punishments that are historical for 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.400 almost all civilizations, is exile. 00:16:38.560 --> 00:16:42.160 It's short of taking someone's life, but you're saying you can't live 00:16:42.160 --> 00:16:42.880 here anymore. 00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:44.240 And this applies to citizens. 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:46.640 You know, this is something that was happening up through the 19th 00:16:46.640 --> 00:16:47.600 century at least. 00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:49.360 People were politically exiled. 00:16:49.360 --> 00:16:51.920 They're sent away from their homeland. 00:16:51.920 --> 00:16:56.240 And things got complicated when basically you have the advent of the 00:16:56.240 --> 00:17:00.560 UN and the advent of passports and global tracking of identity. 00:17:00.560 --> 00:17:02.560 It used to be that if you were out you're welcome in 00:17:02.560 --> 00:17:04.800 one place, you could just leave and you could show up somewhere 00:17:04.800 --> 00:17:06.640 else and be whoever you wanted to be. 00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:11.040 Honesty, dishonesty aside, you can go to some other land and just 00:17:11.040 --> 00:17:12.080 start fresh. 00:17:12.080 --> 00:17:16.800 You're starting from zero, beside whatever you bring along, but you've lost 00:17:16.800 --> 00:17:18.720 your homeland, but you didn't lose your life. 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:22.080 And so exile is basically gone away as a punishment today. 00:17:22.080 --> 00:17:25.120 And I think that's a disaster because the last step on the 00:17:25.120 --> 00:17:30.320 continuum of punishments is death to take someone's life justly for crimes 00:17:30.320 --> 00:17:31.680 that they've committed. 00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:34.960 Again, you can look through Leviticus 20 and elsewhere to find a 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:39.120 long list of crimes that God says this is worthy of death. 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:42.560 Again, things of today Christians, so called to run around and say, 00:17:42.560 --> 00:17:43.600 Oh that's barbaric. 00:17:43.600 --> 00:17:45.760 That's evil to take someone's life. 00:17:45.760 --> 00:17:50.240 Well, you know what doesn't exist in scripture and didn't exist until 00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:52.240 the last two centuries? 00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:56.800 Prisons. I know people think, oh well, Paul was put in prison. 00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:00.800 Prison was fundamentally different until relatively recently. 00:18:00.800 --> 00:18:05.760 These punishments that I've just described, fines, corporal punishment, exile, and death, 00:18:05.760 --> 00:18:10.160 were the only four ways that people in most Western civilizations, most 00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:13.200 Western societies were punished for crimes. 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:19.120 Prisons existed, but almost without exception they were for pretrial confinement. 00:18:19.120 --> 00:18:21.280 It was very rare, it was exceptional. 00:18:21.280 --> 00:18:25.520 The cases are notable when someone's locked in the Tower of London. 00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:29.360 To be put in a prison was something that was not a 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:31.680 normal part of punishment ever. 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:35.120 It was a particularly cruel and an unusual punishment in some ways 00:18:35.360 --> 00:18:37.600 for someone to be sentenced to that. 00:18:37.600 --> 00:18:40.080 And that was a relatively late thing. 00:18:40.080 --> 00:18:43.600 The prisons that you see in scripture and the UC until again, 00:18:43.600 --> 00:18:47.200 like the eighteenth, nineteenth century, really the nineteenth century. 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:50.640 Before that, when there was a prison, prisoners were being held for 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:53.520 pretrial confinement until they had been found guilty. 00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:56.320 And after they're found guilty, they don't go back to prison. 00:18:56.320 --> 00:18:59.920 They are are fined, they're beaten, they're exiled, or they're killed. 00:18:59.920 --> 00:19:04.160 The punishment after adjudication was not you go back to prison. 00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:06.800 The prison was there to make sure that someone couldn't flee. 00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:09.680 Because again, before passports and all this stuff, it was pretty easy 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:11.280 to get on a boat and just vanish. 00:19:11.280 --> 00:19:14.080 If it was important enough to punish someone for a crime, then 00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:18.080 they were kept, in some cases, in prison until the judge could 00:19:18.080 --> 00:19:18.960 see them. 00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:21.520 In other cases there are things like debtors' prisons. 00:19:21.520 --> 00:19:25.520 You know, again, that's a separate subject of should debt exist at 00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:28.480 all to such a degree that someone would be put in prison 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:29.040 for it? 00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:34.080 But prison was not punishment after having been judged guilty of a 00:19:34.080 --> 00:19:37.680 crime. What we do today where we lock men in cages in 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:41.200 some cases for the rest of their life, is completely barbaric. 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:43.360 It is utterly evil and inhumane. 00:19:43.360 --> 00:19:45.120 I find it despicable. 00:19:45.120 --> 00:19:47.920 I think there are probably some men who are listening who have 00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:50.560 spent time in jail or maybe even prison. 00:19:50.560 --> 00:19:52.880 I haven't talked to them, but I would imagine that most of 00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:56.720 'em would probably have preferred taking a beating in public and then 00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:00.960 going home where there's humiliation and there's some pain for a while. 00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:04.880 But you don't spend years locked in a box in completely inhuman 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:10.640 conditions. So when we're talking about justice today, we're explicitly talking about 00:20:10.640 --> 00:20:15.040 the political, and we're setting aside the modern so called justice system 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:20.080 because it's anything but there's so little actual justice in what is 00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:23.760 done today that it's despicable that that name is even used. 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:26.400 We're talking about actual godly justice. 00:20:26.400 --> 00:20:29.360 And so as we go throughout this today, just keep in mind 00:20:29.600 --> 00:20:32.960 not talking about forgiveness has nothing to do with this because it's 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:36.080 one thing for you to forgive whoever has committed a crime against 00:20:36.080 --> 00:20:38.640 you. As a Christian, you're obligated to do that. 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.920 That does not mean that they're free from justice in this life. 00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:45.680 In the case that we're gonna make in today's episode is when 00:20:45.680 --> 00:20:50.320 someone inside a church, someone who is a pastor, comes to you 00:20:50.320 --> 00:20:54.800 and says, No, that person sinned, they committed a crime, but you 00:20:54.800 --> 00:20:56.480 have to forgive them and we have to just make this go 00:20:56.800 --> 00:20:57.600 away quietly. 00:20:57.600 --> 00:20:59.120 We don't embarrass anybody. 00:20:59.120 --> 00:21:00.560 That's profoundly wicked. 00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:02.560 That is a miscarriage of justice. 00:21:02.560 --> 00:21:04.640 That is contrary to God's will. 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:09.600 And the reason for ending this year's episode, this year's series of 00:21:09.600 --> 00:21:16.080 Stone Choir on this subject is that the chief battle in 2025, 00:21:16.080 --> 00:21:20.720 as we're ending December 2024 here, the chief battle of next year 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:23.520 is going to be this type of question. 00:21:23.520 --> 00:21:27.600 Because if Trump delivers on any of his promises about physically removing 00:21:27.600 --> 00:21:32.160 aliens in this country, you're gonna see churches and pastors screaming their 00:21:32.160 --> 00:21:33.760 heads off saying that's unjust. 00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:35.120 You cannot do that. 00:21:35.120 --> 00:21:36.720 You can't remove people. 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:40.720 Family separation, and whatever excuse they want to make, it's going to 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:43.520 be saying you're not allowed to enforce the law. 00:21:43.520 --> 00:21:45.920 You can't do that because Jesus. 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:48.800 So we'll talk about that more at the end, but just keep 00:21:48.800 --> 00:21:52.160 in mind that this is a live issue because this will be 00:21:52.160 --> 00:21:56.000 one of the very most divisive things that occurs inside the church 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:57.200 in the coming year. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:07.120 Before I get into some of the philosophy with regard to the 00:22:07.120 --> 00:22:11.360 subject matter of this episode, which you all inevitably knew that philosophy 00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:14.960 would be part of this particular episode, particularly if you've been listening 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:18.640 for a long time, I want to expand on a few of 00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:22.320 the things that Woe mentioned in his opening there. 00:22:22.320 --> 00:22:26.240 One that may have come to mind for some of you is 00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:27.680 that there is a very clear connection 00:22:28.560 --> 00:22:33.600 here between the rise or the resurgence we should really call it, 00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:38.160 of Gnosticism in the modern world, in the modern era, and the 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:41.360 decline of the use of physical punishment. 00:22:41.360 --> 00:22:44.400 It should be fairly obvious what the connection is there, because of 00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:50.640 course, if you believe in Gnosticism, whether it is consciously or subconsciously, 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:54.880 because you may have simply observed absorbed some of those beliefs from 00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:58.320 the surrounding culture. 00:22:58.320 --> 00:23:03.200 The outcome of holding those beliefs, of holding on to those priors, 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:07.840 examined or unexamined, is that you will believe there is something other 00:23:07.840 --> 00:23:13.760 than the physical body that needs to be addressed when it comes 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:18.800 to matters of so called in this case justice. 00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:23.760 That's part of what feeds into so many of the modern misconceptions 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:30.720 of justice as restorative or whatever other thing it happens to be 00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:33.840 other than retributive, which we will be making that case in this 00:23:33.840 --> 00:23:39.200 episode, that the only thing that is justice is retribution. 00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:42.560 Those two terms are essentially interchangeable. 00:23:42.560 --> 00:23:46.880 There's some nuance there, but they are basically the same thing, just 00:23:47.040 --> 00:23:51.280 looking at it in a different light or from a different angle. 00:23:51.520 --> 00:23:55.360 But if you deny the reality of the physical, then you're going 00:23:55.360 --> 00:24:00.640 to be very easily convinced of an argument that punishments should not 00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:04.080 be physical, because what does it matter what happens to the physical 00:24:04.080 --> 00:24:06.880 body? That's not the real you. 00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:12.720 Historically, we recognize that Gnosticism is of course a heinous heresy. 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.200 You are your body, and so the punishment of the body is 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:19.200 a punishment of the person. 00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:22.000 There's a reason we used to use physical punishment. 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:26.080 It's not just, of course, this philosophical argument that I'm making here, 00:24:26.240 --> 00:24:29.200 theological argument, it's also that it's effective. 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:30.720 It does work. 00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:35.600 We see that even today in societies that still use physical punishment. 00:24:35.600 --> 00:24:37.360 It works. 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:41.280 But in addition to that, and very much related to it, you 00:24:41.280 --> 00:24:44.720 will not be surprised to hear that the rise of the use 00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:50.560 of prisons and the underlying philosophy and the various arguments, political or 00:24:50.560 --> 00:24:57.280 otherwise, used to justify the use of prisons instead of physical punishment, 00:24:57.280 --> 00:25:00.720 or sometimes public shaming was also used. 00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:05.360 Instead of those, we see the rise of prisons at the same 00:25:05.360 --> 00:25:08.560 time as the Enlightenment is taking place, and in fact they are 00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:11.520 really one and the same. 00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:15.200 Because the Enlightenment is making these various arguments about what man actually 00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:19.040 is or what man should be and how society should treat men 00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:22.320 and we will eventually get to an episode or perhaps a series 00:25:22.320 --> 00:25:24.480 of episodes on the Enlightenment. 00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.800 But this is happening at the same time. 00:25:26.800 --> 00:25:29.760 Prisons are a product of the Enlightenment. 00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:35.280 Perhaps add that into the scales when you assess whether the Enlightenment 00:25:35.280 --> 00:25:37.040 was a positive or not. 00:25:37.040 --> 00:25:42.240 We didn't use prisons before the Enlightenment brought forth its arguments that 00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:44.640 made them inevitable. 00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:48.080 So one of the fruits of the poisonous tree that is the 00:25:48.080 --> 00:25:53.840 Enlightenment is the modern penal system, is incarcerating men for 00:25:54.720 --> 00:25:59.840 rather long periods of time, which is quite frankly inhumane treatment. 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:04.240 Neither one of us would ever advocate for the use of prisons. 00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:08.880 That's not to say that you can't confine someone, because you can 00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:12.400 certainly sentence someone to hard labor and you have to confine him, 00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:17.440 but locking someone in a concrete box for years on end or 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:20.000 decades is a is inhuman. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.680 It's a sort of torture that would have been unthinkable to most 00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:29.600 in the modern world, even in societies that actually practiced real torture. 00:26:29.600 --> 00:26:35.040 Because the psychological torture of prisons is on a different level. 00:26:35.040 --> 00:26:37.280 It is a true wickedness. 00:26:37.280 --> 00:26:39.600 It is something that is, of course, again, a product of the 00:26:39.600 --> 00:26:45.120 Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment was an undertaking of Lucifer himself. 00:26:45.600 --> 00:26:50.480 But to move on from that, and to go into the philosophy 00:26:50.560 --> 00:26:55.600 as I said I would, in this episode, as already mentioned, we 00:26:55.600 --> 00:26:58.720 are speaking of retribution. 00:26:58.720 --> 00:26:59.440 We are speaking of 00:27:00.320 --> 00:27:02.160 retributive justice. 00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:07.120 And the reason that we're speaking of retributive justice is that again, 00:27:07.120 --> 00:27:09.840 it is the only justice. 00:27:09.840 --> 00:27:13.360 Because justice demands retribution. 00:27:13.360 --> 00:27:15.920 This is not something that is optional. 00:27:15.920 --> 00:27:18.960 You don't get to say, well, we're going to show mercy instead 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.120 of punishing the crime. 00:27:21.120 --> 00:27:23.040 That's not how this works. 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:26.480 You can have justice or you can have mercy. 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:29.760 And for those who are Christian, which again is going to be 00:27:29.760 --> 00:27:35.120 most of our audience, you may be thinking, how does that square 00:27:35.120 --> 00:27:39.680 with the central beliefs, the central tenets of our religion, how is 00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:42.000 that consonant with Christianity? 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:46.640 And the answer to that is that it's exactly the core of 00:27:46.640 --> 00:27:48.960 our faith. 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:56.000 For eternity, you will receive mercy in paradise or justice 00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:57.760 in hell. 00:27:57.760 --> 00:28:01.840 Mercy and justice are incompatible. 00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:05.200 They are two things that cannot exist simultaneously. 00:28:05.840 --> 00:28:07.520 At least in the same case. 00:28:07.520 --> 00:28:12.240 Obviously, hell and paradise exist at the same time, temporally as it 00:28:12.240 --> 00:28:15.680 were, insofar as that makes sense in eternity. 00:28:15.680 --> 00:28:22.560 If you are a Christian, you do not receive justice from God. 00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:27.280 Because justice from God would be hell. 00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:33.040 You deserve eternal punishment in hell for your sins, however many or 00:28:33.040 --> 00:28:39.120 even however few, because any one sin is an infinite transgression against 00:28:39.120 --> 00:28:41.040 an infinitely holy God. 00:28:41.040 --> 00:28:45.040 And so the punishment for that necessarily is infinite, we've gone into 00:28:45.120 --> 00:28:46.720 this before other episodes. 00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:48.880 And so hell is eternal. 00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:50.000 That's justice. 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:52.400 That's what you deserve. 00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:57.360 What you receive is mercy, and the reason you receive mercy is 00:28:57.360 --> 00:29:01.840 that Christ received justice on your behalf. 00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:06.560 When it comes to the affairs of men here and now in 00:29:06.560 --> 00:29:13.760 this world, in the left hand kingdom, we cannot deal in mercy. 00:29:13.760 --> 00:29:15.920 We have to deal in justice. 00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:19.120 And the reason we have to deal in justice is that we 00:29:19.120 --> 00:29:20.400 are not the infinite God. 00:29:20.800 --> 00:29:25.600 We don't have the option of Christ on the cross standing in 00:29:25.600 --> 00:29:29.840 the place of the person in the docket, of the person who 00:29:29.840 --> 00:29:33.200 is guilty of whatever crime. 00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:35.440 And the King isn't God. 00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:38.320 The King to some degree and in some ways stands in the 00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:41.840 place of God, but he does so to bear the sword. 00:29:41.840 --> 00:29:44.080 Scripture is very clear on this point. 00:29:44.080 --> 00:29:47.120 He does so to punish the wicked. 00:29:47.120 --> 00:29:50.560 That is what it means to be a just king, that is 00:29:50.560 --> 00:29:53.680 what it means to be a righteous king or a godly king. 00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:57.840 And so with regard to the left hand kingdom, it is a 00:29:57.840 --> 00:29:59.520 matter of the sword. 00:29:59.520 --> 00:30:02.800 That is what God has given to the prince, to the godly 00:30:02.800 --> 00:30:05.520 prince. And we can use king or prince interchangeably here. 00:30:05.520 --> 00:30:10.080 It's not a rank, as it were, it's just a stand-in for 00:30:10.080 --> 00:30:11.600 the sovereign. 00:30:11.600 --> 00:30:14.160 The godly prince wields the sword. 00:30:15.360 --> 00:30:18.880 That is how he deals with things in his realm, in the 00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:23.360 domain assigned to him by God, and for which he is responsible 00:30:23.360 --> 00:30:24.160 to God. 00:30:24.160 --> 00:30:26.480 He will one day have to answer for what he did or 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:31.440 did not do with regard to what he was given by God. 00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:38.000 He does not have the option of mercy with regard to justice. 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:41.920 Because if you show mercy to the criminal, what you are actually 00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:45.920 doing doing is transgressing justice. 00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:49.280 Yes, you are also doing a sort of harm to the victim 00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:53.280 or victims, but that actually is not the paramount concern. 00:30:53.280 --> 00:30:57.920 This is another point that is often missed in these discussions. 00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:04.720 When a murderer receives mercy, so called, instead of justice, and of 00:31:04.720 --> 00:31:06.960 course, justice is Genesis 9:6. 00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:08.720 He must be put to death. 00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:10.000 He must be executed. 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.840 Capital punishment is justice for the murderer. 00:31:13.840 --> 00:31:20.320 But if he receives mercy, what you've actually done is transgressed, you've 00:31:20.320 --> 00:31:23.600 violated, you've perverted justice. 00:31:23.600 --> 00:31:27.840 Yes, you have not done what is due to the victim and 00:31:27.840 --> 00:31:30.640 to the victim's family, to all those who have been harmed by 00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:36.560 this murder, but the actual immediate and ultimate debt is owed to 00:31:36.560 --> 00:31:38.000 justice itself. 00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:40.960 It is not owed to the victim. 00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:44.480 We recognize this in our justice system. 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:47.440 This is one of the things we actually get right in our 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:52.960 system. You don't need, in this case obviously the victim cannot bring 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:56.880 charges, but you don't need someone to bring charges on behalf of 00:31:56.880 --> 00:31:57.440 the victim. 00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:05.360 The state has an interest in executing justice against the criminal regardless 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:08.400 of what the affected parties want. 00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:14.000 If you are the spouse of a murder victim and you go 00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:16.720 to the prosecutor, you go to the state and say, I do 00:32:16.720 --> 00:32:21.040 not want this prosecuted, I forgive him, I want mercy, the state 00:32:21.040 --> 00:32:25.760 can tell you, that's great, we're still charging him, we're still convicting 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:28.080 him, we're still executing him. 00:32:28.080 --> 00:32:31.280 Because the state has a different interest. 00:32:31.280 --> 00:32:34.160 That interest is again on behalf of justice. 00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:38.400 There is a debt that is owed, which is a fundamental point 00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:42.880 here. When we speak of sin as a debt, we all recognize 00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:44.640 what that means. 00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:47.360 Crime is also a debt. 00:32:47.360 --> 00:32:51.520 When a criminal commits a criminal act, and that's what makes him 00:32:51.520 --> 00:32:55.600 a criminal, that incurs a debt to justice. 00:32:55.600 --> 00:32:57.760 That debt must be paid. 00:32:57.760 --> 00:33:01.920 The only way in which that debt can be paid is punishment 00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:04.080 of the criminal. 00:33:04.080 --> 00:33:10.160 God requires that of the godly prince, of the sovereign. 00:33:10.160 --> 00:33:13.680 And so there is a duty with regard to the authorities in 00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:18.480 the left hand kingdom to see that justice is done, and that 00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:21.760 is done by inflicting punishment. 00:33:21.760 --> 00:33:28.000 And so these other conceptions of well, so-called conceptions of justice, which 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:31.440 I'll run through some of them quickly so that you have them 00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:34.480 in mind for those who have heard of these before or familiar 00:33:34.480 --> 00:33:36.320 with the topic. 00:33:36.320 --> 00:33:38.640 They are not justice. 00:33:38.640 --> 00:33:40.560 That is not what we're talking about here. 00:33:40.560 --> 00:33:44.400 It's not what Scripture means by justice. 00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:49.040 You can have mercy with regard to certain things. 00:33:49.040 --> 00:33:53.520 So for instance, if you have a contract with someone, And he 00:33:53.520 --> 00:33:57.040 owes you a great sum of money, but you know that he 00:33:57.040 --> 00:34:00.240 can't pay you because he suffered some misfortune. 00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:03.600 You can show mercy and forgive some or all of that. 00:34:03.600 --> 00:34:05.840 That is something you can do. 00:34:05.840 --> 00:34:10.640 The state cannot do that with regard to matters of justice. 00:34:10.640 --> 00:34:12.400 These are separate things. 00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:16.480 To some degree, it's the division historically that you would have in 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.280 English speaking countries, particularly those whose systems have derived from the old 00:34:21.280 --> 00:34:25.440 English system, the distinction between courts of law and courts of equity. 00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:26.800 There's a little bit of that. 00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:28.320 There's some nuance there. 00:34:28.320 --> 00:34:29.600 Not the point of the episode. 00:34:29.600 --> 00:34:32.400 We're not going to go into that in any depth. 00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:37.360 But to return to the so-called types of justice, you have just 00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:40.000 to give some examples of them, these are the main ones. 00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:45.200 Retributive, distributive, procedural, restorative, commutative, and social. 00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:46.960 Only one of those is justice. 00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:48.160 That's that first one. 00:34:48.160 --> 00:34:51.440 Retributive. Retribution is justice. 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:54.800 But you may be familiar with some of the philosophy here, and 00:34:54.960 --> 00:34:59.760 for those who are familiar with that, we're essentially agreeing with, but 00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:05.680 not absolutely, of course, Cicero, Augustine, and Kant on this. 00:35:05.680 --> 00:35:10.080 A little bit of Aristotle, but obviously not perfect agreement, since he 00:35:10.080 --> 00:35:14.800 talks about distributive justice and we would not call that justice justice. 00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:20.480 But some will conceive of justice as being a matter of distribution, 00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:24.720 of resource allocation, so fairness and equity, things like that Like that. 00:35:24.720 --> 00:35:25.920 That's not justice. 00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:27.600 It's not what we're talking about here. 00:35:27.600 --> 00:35:32.240 These are important concerns for the godly prince. 00:35:32.240 --> 00:35:34.400 Because fairness matters. 00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:36.240 Equity matters. 00:35:36.240 --> 00:35:39.680 Not in the Marxist sense, but in the proper sense of the 00:35:39.680 --> 00:35:42.880 term, as it would have been used historically, say in our courts 00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:45.440 of equity. 00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:48.160 But these are not matters of justice. 00:35:48.160 --> 00:35:52.000 Just because it is something about which the godly prince should be 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:56.000 concerned, even if it is something that could come before the courts 00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:59.600 of law, because of course today our courts are unified, we don't 00:35:59.520 --> 00:36:01.840 have separate courts for these things typically 00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:06.000 Even if that is the case, it does not mean that it 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:08.960 is a matter of justice. 00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:12.800 Because when we are speaking of justice, again, we are speaking of 00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:17.280 something that has incurred a debt to justice. 00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:21.440 It is a transgression that must be repaid. 00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:25.760 And of course it can be repaid only with punishment. 00:36:25.760 --> 00:36:30.960 When someone speaks of procedural justice, we're not denigrating that. 00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:31.920 We're not saying it's wrong. 00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:36.080 We're saying it's not justice in the sense we are using it. 00:36:36.080 --> 00:36:41.600 Because procedural justice, so called, is really procedural fairness. 00:36:41.600 --> 00:36:46.160 That is transparency in how these matters are conducted, which is a 00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:47.040 good thing. 00:36:47.040 --> 00:36:50.880 Consistency in how the rules are applied, which is something that should 00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.200 be done, that is a goal. 00:36:53.200 --> 00:37:00.240 All of these things are valid concerns, but they are not justice. 00:37:00.240 --> 00:37:05.040 Another one that we see very commonly today, and this is one 00:37:05.040 --> 00:37:08.640 that you will see anytime you go on social media, anytime you 00:37:08.640 --> 00:37:11.680 turn on the news, you will see it a lot in the 00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:13.040 coming years. 00:37:13.040 --> 00:37:17.520 Restorative justice or rehabilitative. 00:37:17.520 --> 00:37:20.400 Really, you have a little bit of both of those here kind 00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:22.400 of under an umbrella. 00:37:22.400 --> 00:37:26.720 The focus of this is healing, is what they'll often say. 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:33.440 Repair of relationships or a restoration of either the injured party to 00:37:33.680 --> 00:37:37.520 the previous state, insofar as that is possible, obviously does not work 00:37:37.520 --> 00:37:43.680 with murder, or the restoration of the criminal to being part of 00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:48.640 society. His rehabilitation and then reintroduction to society. 00:37:48.640 --> 00:37:50.640 That is not justice. 00:37:50.640 --> 00:37:56.160 In fact, this one, more so than the others, is almost always 00:37:56.160 --> 00:37:59.200 a perversion or a subversion of justice. 00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:00.800 It is a transgression. 00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:03.600 In fact it is a new crime. 00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:09.120 To grant mercy where mercy is not due, and where granting mercy 00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:14.720 would be a transgression of justice, is itself a crime. 00:38:14.720 --> 00:38:19.680 And so this happens all the time in our current system. 00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:24.640 Every time a murderer is sentenced to anything other than execution, unless 00:38:24.640 --> 00:38:29.680 it's a suspended sentence for some reason, so I would not say 00:38:29.680 --> 00:38:35.120 that it is necessarily morally wrongful to sentence him to some sort 00:38:35.120 --> 00:38:36.320 of hard labor 00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:38.800 for a period of time. 00:38:38.800 --> 00:38:41.680 Not that he gets released at the end, but that you are 00:38:41.680 --> 00:38:44.480 having him pay back something to society. 00:38:44.480 --> 00:38:49.520 It is still ultimately a sentence of death, just in a different 00:38:49.520 --> 00:38:53.600 form. A discussion perhaps in detail for another time, but any time 00:38:53.600 --> 00:38:58.320 a murderer is not sentenced to something that is tantamount to death, 00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:03.280 or literally execution, that is a perversion of justice. 00:39:03.280 --> 00:39:08.800 That is itself an additional crime by the system that is tasked 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:10.640 with executing justice. 00:39:10.640 --> 00:39:14.640 So, in fact, it is a particularly egregious crime, but this happens 00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:17.760 all the time in our current system, and it happens all over 00:39:18.160 --> 00:39:18.640 the world. 00:39:18.640 --> 00:39:23.120 This is something that is very widespread because obviously there's an animating 00:39:23.120 --> 00:39:25.600 intelligence behind it. 00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:31.600 Commutative justice is not really a particularly interesting subject for this topic 00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:34.560 and for most of you listening, but this is dealing with sort 00:39:34.560 --> 00:39:37.840 of fair exchange equivalence, honest dealing. 00:39:37.840 --> 00:39:40.160 It's kind of a contract law matter. 00:39:40.160 --> 00:39:43.680 So it's a tangential matter, but you'll see it come up sometimes 00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:46.320 in discussions of so called justice. 00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:49.840 And then of course the final one for this short list is 00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:53.360 social justice. 00:39:53.360 --> 00:39:55.280 This is one that bears 00:39:56.400 --> 00:40:03.520 Not necessarily a slightly longer commentary, but a recognition of the fact 00:40:03.520 --> 00:40:08.480 that in some ways the left gets this one more right than 00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:12.800 the right, or perhaps more correct than the right, not to use 00:40:12.880 --> 00:40:15.840 the same term twice. 00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:19.120 This is not to say that the critiques that come from the 00:40:19.120 --> 00:40:24.560 left, which are usually Marxist in nature, are correct or are accurate 00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:25.840 because they're not. 00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:31.040 They're wrong and they're wicked and they seek evil ends. 00:40:31.040 --> 00:40:40.560 But it is to say that the concerns themselves are morally appropriate. 00:40:40.560 --> 00:40:46.960 The concern with regard to so-called social justice is that you don't 00:40:46.880 --> 00:40:54.480 have wrongful inequality or wrongful inequity in society. 00:40:54.480 --> 00:40:59.760 Insofar as that is a moral assessment with regard to wrongful, that 00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:01.680 is an appropriate concern for Christians. 00:41:01.920 --> 00:41:05.760 It's not only appropriate, it's commanded by God. 00:41:05.760 --> 00:41:09.440 Because every time you see God say that He is concerned for 00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:14.560 the sojourner and the Widow and the Fatherless and the Poor. 00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:17.520 That's social justice. 00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:20.800 Using the term justice in a separate sense we're employing it in 00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:27.600 this episode, of course, that's more of the sense of righteousness, comporting 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:32.560 yourself correctly with regard to the moral law, with regard to morality 00:41:32.560 --> 00:41:35.040 and ethics. 00:41:35.040 --> 00:41:38.800 But those concerns are concerns that are throughout scripture. 00:41:39.040 --> 00:41:41.920 They are concerns that God has for his people. 00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:44.640 They are things that he commands Christians to do. 00:41:44.640 --> 00:41:48.160 And that's one of the reasons that Marxism and other things like 00:41:48.160 --> 00:41:50.080 it are so dangerous. 00:41:50.080 --> 00:41:55.120 Because they say things at the start that sound completely Christian in 00:41:55.120 --> 00:41:59.280 some ways, and in fact sometimes are Christian. 00:41:59.280 --> 00:42:03.040 But they use them to subvert, they use them to build up 00:42:03.040 --> 00:42:06.720 a wicked and an evil argument, and attempt to get you to 00:42:06.720 --> 00:42:07.920 do evil. 00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:11.760 That is when Satan is at his most dangerous, when he presents 00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:16.000 you as something that sounds Christian or very well may be Christian, 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:18.720 because of course Satan quotes scripture. 00:42:18.720 --> 00:42:21.680 He just perverts it when he interprets it. 00:42:21.680 --> 00:42:26.960 But he'll start off, or his minions will start off, using Scripture. 00:42:26.960 --> 00:42:30.800 They'll say, Well look, God has concern for the fatherless and the 00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:33.920 widow, and the sojourner and the poor. 00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:36.640 And so you should do X, Y, and Z. 00:42:36.640 --> 00:42:38.640 The beginning of that is correct. 00:42:38.640 --> 00:42:41.280 It is their conclusions that are wicked. 00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:44.480 But Christians cannot abandon this space. 00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:48.960 We can't say, well, social justice is a major concern of the 00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:53.520 left, and so obviously we have to oppose social justice. 00:42:53.520 --> 00:42:56.960 No, we have to oppose the wicked things they want to do 00:42:56.960 --> 00:43:01.520 in the name of this of this fairness in society in a 00:43:01.520 --> 00:43:02.000 certain sense. 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:04.880 Because of course fairness is something that exists and doesn't exist and 00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:06.160 should and shouldn't. 00:43:06.160 --> 00:43:07.600 It's a complicated matter. 00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:10.240 It's not a simple yes or no. 00:43:10.240 --> 00:43:13.600 But this is something with which Christians should concern themselves. 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:17.600 Again, we can't abandon the field in this place. 00:43:17.600 --> 00:43:22.000 It's not a matter of justice in the sense we're employing it 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:27.280 today, of legal justice, but it is a Christian concern. 00:43:27.280 --> 00:43:30.400 And so when someone brings it up, you can't just say, oh, 00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:32.320 I oppose that entirely. 00:43:32.320 --> 00:43:35.760 No, you have to look at what is being advocated in the 00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:37.840 name of this thing. 00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:41.600 Because if it's Christian, you have to support it as a Christian. 00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:44.800 We should attempt to alleviate the suffering of the poor. 00:43:44.800 --> 00:43:49.920 We should attempt to help those who have suffered some mishap or 00:43:49.920 --> 00:43:53.120 some loss, widows and the fatherless. 00:43:53.120 --> 00:43:56.800 God has concern for these people and so should we as God's 00:43:56.800 --> 00:44:02.320 people. But we should not permit Marxists and other evil men to 00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:06.240 occupy this field and say, This is how you do this thing 00:44:06.240 --> 00:44:08.160 that God commands. 00:44:08.160 --> 00:44:11.840 That is ceding territory to Satan, and we are never permitted to 00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:13.120 do that. 00:44:14.560 --> 00:44:19.440 So that essentially gives you an overview of the so-called kinds of 00:44:19.440 --> 00:44:21.680 justice that you will hear discussed typically. 00:44:21.680 --> 00:44:28.720 And again, those are retributive, distributive, procedural, restorative, or rehabilitative, commutative 00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:31.120 and social. 00:44:31.120 --> 00:44:37.120 We are speaking of retributive justice, because when we speak of justice 00:44:37.120 --> 00:44:41.360 in the sense we are employing it in this episode, the only 00:44:41.360 --> 00:44:44.320 thing that is justice is retribution. 00:44:44.320 --> 00:44:46.240 It is punishment for wrongdoing. 00:44:46.240 --> 00:44:49.920 It is punishment for transgression of the moral law. 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:54.640 That's sort of a short definition of justice as we are using 00:44:54.640 --> 00:44:55.280 it in this episode. 00:44:56.320 --> 00:45:01.520 And so if anyone ever uses the term justice and then makes 00:45:01.520 --> 00:45:06.080 some argument that's completely unrelated to punishment, you need to be very 00:45:06.080 --> 00:45:09.840 careful. That person may be trying to mislead you. 00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:15.360 There's a very good chance in modern discourse the person may just 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:17.440 not know how to use the term. 00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:22.560 Don't immediately assume the person has nefarious intent, but be on guard, 00:45:22.560 --> 00:45:27.120 listen carefully, figure out what is being said, and what they are 00:45:27.120 --> 00:45:29.840 trying to get you to believe and do as a result of 00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:31.760 what is being said. 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:35.200 Because if you are speaking about justice in its core and most 00:45:35.200 --> 00:45:42.240 appropriate sense, it means the punishment of criminals, the punishment of wrongdoing, 00:45:42.240 --> 00:45:43.840 and nothing else. 00:45:45.680 --> 00:45:45.840 And 00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:52.000 what we're saying here about retribution is not remotely controversial in history. 00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:55.120 In fact, one of the most noted legal scholars that you've all 00:45:55.120 --> 00:45:59.040 heard of, the thief on the cross, perfectly well understood the exact 00:45:59.040 --> 00:46:00.720 thing that we're saying here. 00:46:00.720 --> 00:46:02.640 From Luke twenty three. 00:46:02.640 --> 00:46:06.320 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, Are 00:46:06.320 --> 00:46:07.280 you not the Christ? 00:46:07.280 --> 00:46:08.880 Save yourself and us. 00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:11.840 But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God? 00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:16.640 Since you are under the same sentence of condemnation, and we indeed 00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:20.400 justly, for we are receiving the due reward for our deeds, but 00:46:20.400 --> 00:46:22.480 this man has done nothing wrong. 00:46:22.480 --> 00:46:25.600 And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, 00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:28.320 and he said to him, Truly I say to you, to day 00:46:28.320 --> 00:46:30.400 you will be with me in paradise. 00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:33.600 So the thief on the cross understood exactly what we're saying. 00:46:33.600 --> 00:46:36.000 This is not some fancy legal theory. 00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:39.680 This is not how out of left field, and it's not remotely 00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:44.400 immoral. Even someone who all he probably knew of Jesus was that 00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:46.560 it was clear that he was the Son of God and based 00:46:46.560 --> 00:46:49.920 on the things that had happened, he understood enough to say, Lord, 00:46:49.920 --> 00:46:52.160 remember me when you come into our kingdom. 00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:53.920 And what did Jesus say? 00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:56.480 He said, You'll be with me today in paradise. 00:46:56.480 --> 00:46:59.520 He effectively said your sins are forgiven. 00:46:59.520 --> 00:47:01.200 But what didn't he say? 00:47:01.200 --> 00:47:03.040 He didn't say, Well, this is injustice. 00:47:03.040 --> 00:47:04.640 You should become down from the cross. 00:47:04.640 --> 00:47:05.600 We should get out of here. 00:47:05.600 --> 00:47:06.400 This is not fair. 00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:08.480 Like you just said, I didn't do anything wrong. 00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:11.120 You did something wrong, but I forgave your sins. 00:47:11.120 --> 00:47:12.160 So let's beat it. 00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:12.880 Let's get out of here. 00:47:12.880 --> 00:47:14.480 Let's come down off these crosses. 00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:17.920 No. The thief on the cross was exactly right. 00:47:17.920 --> 00:47:21.600 We are receiving the due reward for our deeds. 00:47:21.600 --> 00:47:22.720 That's justice. 00:47:22.720 --> 00:47:23.760 That's retribution. 00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:24.960 That's it. 00:47:24.960 --> 00:47:31.600 The etymological definition of retribution goes back through old French until you 00:47:31.600 --> 00:47:33.680 get directly Latin, unsurprisingly. 00:47:33.680 --> 00:47:38.480 And the original term meant recompense or payment to hand back or 00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:39.760 to repay. 00:47:39.760 --> 00:47:43.200 So retribution literally means just repayment. 00:47:43.680 --> 00:47:47.760 And as Corey said and as scripture makes it clear, what is 00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:49.600 being paid is the debt. 00:47:49.600 --> 00:47:52.800 And this is where the divergence from the left hand kingdom of 00:47:52.800 --> 00:47:57.520 the political and the right hand kingdom of justification before God are 00:47:57.520 --> 00:48:02.800 separated. You all know what Paul wrote in Colossians two. 00:48:02.800 --> 00:48:06.640 And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of 00:48:06.640 --> 00:48:10.560 your flesh God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:15.520 our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us 00:48:15.520 --> 00:48:20.320 with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing to the cross. 00:48:20.320 --> 00:48:24.080 What God makes very clear in Colossians too is that the debt 00:48:24.080 --> 00:48:29.200 that that that thief owed to God was nailed to the next 00:48:29.200 --> 00:48:30.320 cross over. 00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:34.880 The thief was paying the temporal price for his crimes, and Jesus 00:48:34.880 --> 00:48:38.400 was paying the eternal price at the same time. 00:48:38.400 --> 00:48:42.800 This is a crucial part of understanding justice as it occurs temporally 00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:44.480 and eternally. 00:48:44.480 --> 00:48:49.360 Any attack on temporal justice, any attack that says it's unfair to 00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:54.720 punish the wicked is fundamentally and invariably an attack on God Himself. 00:48:54.720 --> 00:48:58.560 It is to say it is injustice for someone to be punished 00:48:58.560 --> 00:49:00.080 for their wickedness. 00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:02.880 That is despising the cross itself. 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:06.560 Because as God makes clear, the punishment that every single one of 00:49:06.560 --> 00:49:10.560 us owes to God, you know, when we talk about salvation, when 00:49:10.560 --> 00:49:13.840 we talk about being saved, we leave off what we're being saved 00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:16.160 from. We're being saved from God. 00:49:16.160 --> 00:49:18.000 God is saving us from God. 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:20.400 And where that occurred was on the cross. 00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:25.680 In this moment where for three hours Jesus suffered and died, he 00:49:25.760 --> 00:49:29.040 paid the eternal price for your sins and my sins and the 00:49:29.440 --> 00:49:33.040 sins of every man who's ever lived, saved and unsaved alike. 00:49:33.040 --> 00:49:36.000 This is one of the most dire Calvinist errors. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:40.640 The concept of limited atonement that Jesus didn't pay for everyone's sins 00:49:40.800 --> 00:49:41.920 kills the gospel. 00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:44.160 Because it means I can't go up to anyone and say Jesus 00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:44.960 died for you. 00:49:44.960 --> 00:49:46.720 I can say, well, I I hope he did. 00:49:46.720 --> 00:49:48.560 I know he died for me because I'm elect, but you, I 00:49:48.560 --> 00:49:48.960 don't know. 00:49:48.960 --> 00:49:50.000 Yeah, we'll we'll see. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:52.320 Let's check your fruits and see if you're Christian or not. 00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:56.480 Nonsense. Every man, the most wicked man you can imagine, Jesus died 00:49:56.480 --> 00:49:57.680 for his sins. 00:49:57.680 --> 00:50:01.200 Jesus died for the sins of the men on both crosses on 00:50:01.200 --> 00:50:04.880 either side of him, the one who reviled him and died and 00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:08.160 went immediately to hell, and the one who confessed him as his 00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:10.960 Lord, and joined him that day in paradise. 00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:14.320 Jesus paid the eternal price for both of those men. 00:50:14.320 --> 00:50:16.800 The difference between them was repentance. 00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:20.640 The one who confessed him as Lord said, Lord, remember me in 00:50:20.640 --> 00:50:26.160 your kingdom, the payment that Jesus delivered on the cross was charged 00:50:26.160 --> 00:50:27.760 to that man's account. 00:50:27.760 --> 00:50:31.600 That man was declared free of sin for everything that he did, 00:50:31.520 --> 00:50:33.680 for the what put him on the cross and all the other 00:50:33.680 --> 00:50:36.400 things that he didn't get punished for in this life, it was 00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:37.840 all nailed to the cross. 00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:39.040 That is justice. 00:50:39.040 --> 00:50:40.640 That is eternal justice. 00:50:40.640 --> 00:50:44.480 And as Corey said, eternal justice is also hell for everyone who 00:50:44.480 --> 00:50:47.440 rejects what Christ did on the cross. 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:51.520 So the concept of justice occurs in both kingdoms. 00:50:51.520 --> 00:50:55.920 It is both temporal and eternal, it is both political and religious. 00:50:55.920 --> 00:51:00.800 The difference is that one has nothing to do with the treatment 00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:01.680 of the other. 00:51:01.680 --> 00:51:05.040 The fact that Jesus died for every man, the fact that everyone's 00:51:05.040 --> 00:51:08.080 sins are forgiven if they ask God for them to be forgiven 00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:11.600 has nothing to do with temporal consequences. 00:51:11.600 --> 00:51:15.680 As Corey laid out the case, it is in fact injustice and 00:51:15.680 --> 00:51:20.320 wickedness not to punish sins temporally. 00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:23.760 One of the hard parts about this discussion is that one, we 00:51:23.760 --> 00:51:26.880 don't have a remote remotely godly government, like we have so many 00:51:26.880 --> 00:51:31.200 problems to solve that it almost seems like these conversations are hypothetical, 00:51:31.200 --> 00:51:32.400 but they can't be. 00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:36.080 If we don't know what godly governance looks like, how can we 00:51:36.080 --> 00:51:39.200 ever possibly hope to even grovel towards achieving it? 00:51:39.200 --> 00:51:43.280 There's no hope of achieving something remotely godly in this life in 00:51:43.280 --> 00:51:46.320 the political sphere if we just reject out of hand what God 00:51:46.320 --> 00:51:47.360 says about it. 00:51:47.360 --> 00:51:50.400 So what we're talking about is what godly justice looks like. 00:51:51.280 --> 00:51:54.400 And that involves actual punishment for sin. 00:51:54.400 --> 00:51:58.080 It involves the state, not just forgiving people, because that's not the 00:51:58.080 --> 00:51:59.440 state's job. 00:51:59.440 --> 00:52:01.440 What does Paul say in Romans? 00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:02.160 He makes very clear 00:52:03.520 --> 00:52:07.200 let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no 00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:12.000 authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:16.400 God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and 00:52:16.400 --> 00:52:18.640 those who resist will incur judgment. 00:52:18.640 --> 00:52:22.080 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. 00:52:22.080 --> 00:52:24.960 Would you have no fear of the one who is an authority? 00:52:24.960 --> 00:52:27.600 Then do it is good and you will receive his approval approval, 00:52:27.600 --> 00:52:29.760 for he is God's servant for your good. 00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:33.040 But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear 00:52:33.040 --> 00:52:36.240 the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an 00:52:36.240 --> 00:52:39.840 avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:44.560 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, 00:52:44.560 --> 00:52:47.520 but also for the sake of conscience. 00:52:47.520 --> 00:52:50.480 Now if you go back and listen to the Left Hand Kingdom 00:52:50.480 --> 00:52:55.680 episode, we link three podcasts that from Godestines that deal very directly 00:52:55.680 --> 00:52:59.600 with Romans thirteen and what it means, particularly in American context where 00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:04.160 we have a democracy and B wicked rulers, which incidentally go hand 00:53:04.160 --> 00:53:04.880 in hand. 00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:06.640 When is it rebellion? 00:53:06.640 --> 00:53:09.040 When is it just we're not gonna get into that today? 00:53:09.040 --> 00:53:11.600 We'll probably get into that in a future episode. 00:53:11.600 --> 00:53:16.800 The vital part of this, the foundational philosophical part of this, the 00:53:16.800 --> 00:53:19.680 Christian part of this, is that the state is an avenger of 00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:26.880 evil. The prince, the democratically elected leader, they have the job to 00:53:26.880 --> 00:53:30.480 God to avenge wrongdoing. 00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:33.120 They don't have the job to forgive sins. 00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:34.960 They do not have that job. 00:53:34.960 --> 00:53:38.880 That is a separate job that is in the right hand kingdom. 00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:42.480 The man who confesses his sins to his priest or his pastor 00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.760 for the things he's going to be executed for, his pastor must 00:53:45.760 --> 00:53:49.520 announce God's forgiveness, and then the state must execute him the next 00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:52.720 day. That is proper, that is just, and has been the norm 00:53:52.720 --> 00:53:55.920 for all of Christian history until recently. 00:53:55.920 --> 00:53:59.040 And now it's so controversial when we put people to death. 00:53:59.040 --> 00:53:59.680 Why today? 00:54:00.240 --> 00:54:02.000 Because they're mostly black. 00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:05.680 Well, racial crime statistics we did a whole episode about that. 00:54:05.680 --> 00:54:07.600 We don't need to dig back into that. 00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:10.800 The fact that people say, well, because of their race they can't 00:54:10.800 --> 00:54:13.280 be held account is despicable. 00:54:13.280 --> 00:54:14.640 That's absolutely wicked. 00:54:14.640 --> 00:54:15.920 It is injustice. 00:54:15.920 --> 00:54:18.000 And yet, as Corey said, they're doing it in a name of 00:54:18.080 --> 00:54:21.280 justice. It's like you can't hold this man to a just standard 00:54:21.280 --> 00:54:22.960 because he's African. 00:54:22.960 --> 00:54:26.960 Excuse me, as Corey said, that's not doing them any favors. 00:54:26.960 --> 00:54:31.440 To not hold a man accountable temporally for his sins just makes 00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:32.560 hell worse. 00:54:32.560 --> 00:54:34.080 Makes hell worse for him. 00:54:34.080 --> 00:54:36.560 And if he does repent, he still has to live with the 00:54:36.560 --> 00:54:39.360 guilt of not having been punished. 00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:43.040 It's very common for someone who has committed a crime and still 00:54:43.040 --> 00:54:46.160 has an intact conscience for it to weigh on them for their 00:54:46.160 --> 00:54:48.960 entire life, to continuously eat away with. 00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:52.000 It's often the case where someone's been on the run for decades 00:54:52.640 --> 00:54:56.000 and they finally get caught, they express a sense of relief. 00:54:56.000 --> 00:54:59.200 A criminal who was getting away with their heinous crimes, who, you 00:54:59.200 --> 00:55:01.760 know, there's no statute limitations for whatever they did. 00:55:01.760 --> 00:55:04.880 They were fleeing, they were living under another name somewhere else. 00:55:04.880 --> 00:55:07.680 When they get caught, they're relieved. 00:55:07.680 --> 00:55:11.680 They're not terrorized by being caught, they're relieved that it finally happened. 00:55:11.680 --> 00:55:16.160 To face justice is actually a relief for the criminal. 00:55:16.160 --> 00:55:19.520 It's it seems backwards, but it's true. 00:55:19.520 --> 00:55:21.280 And they will say it themselves. 00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:24.080 Now, you don't want to face consequences because you know you want 00:55:24.080 --> 00:55:25.680 to get off scot-free. 00:55:25.680 --> 00:55:29.920 But knowing that the retribution is there, hanging over you, it is 00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:33.040 far better for it to be delivered than to evade it. 00:55:33.040 --> 00:55:37.440 And unless a man has a seared conscience, unless he's just really 00:55:37.600 --> 00:55:40.640 ceased to be human altogether, he's going to feel that. 00:55:40.640 --> 00:55:44.080 Even if he's not Christian, even if he's still a wicked man, 00:55:44.560 --> 00:55:47.200 these guys are generally wicked people when they're on the run for 00:55:47.200 --> 00:55:50.480 decades. Sometime, you know, they keep their noses clean for the most 00:55:50.480 --> 00:55:53.520 part, but you know, they didn't get right with God. 00:55:53.520 --> 00:55:57.200 They didn't come to face consequences for their sins. 00:55:57.200 --> 00:56:02.880 The left hand kingdom of Christ involves punishing sins in this life. 00:56:02.880 --> 00:56:07.120 The right hand kingdom is announcing God's forgiveness in eternity. 00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:11.760 It's two separate jobs, two separate realms, and for our purposes, it's 00:56:11.760 --> 00:56:14.000 two separate conversations. 00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:16.240 And again, as I said at the beginning, the reason that it's 00:56:16.160 --> 00:56:19.200 so crucial for us is we're going into the coming year as 00:56:19.200 --> 00:56:24.800 Christians to understand the fact that someone can be forgiven, or that 00:56:24.800 --> 00:56:28.000 Jesus died for them, or even in fact that they have been 00:56:28.000 --> 00:56:32.800 forgiven, is totally irrelevant to whether or not justice is delivered to 00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:33.760 that man. 00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:37.440 Justice has nothing to do with God's forgiveness. 00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:39.920 That's a hard thing for Christians to hear because all we ever 00:56:39.920 --> 00:56:41.920 talk about is God's forgiveness. 00:56:41.920 --> 00:56:45.200 It's the reason that I began with that litany of episodes, including 00:56:45.200 --> 00:56:46.480 the one about forgiveness. 00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:50.720 We are not in any way denigrating or belittling how crucial that 00:56:50.720 --> 00:56:53.600 is. That's the most important thing because that's eternity. 00:56:53.600 --> 00:56:57.360 That's the rest of forever for all of us, for good or 00:56:57.360 --> 00:57:03.040 ill, when we don't accept the fact that this life actually matters. 00:57:03.040 --> 00:57:06.080 We're talking about delving into Gnosticism. 00:57:06.080 --> 00:57:08.880 Well, the first episodes we did this year was about the Gnostic 00:57:08.880 --> 00:57:13.840 heresy. As Corey said, it's come roaring back in this subject to 00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:16.000 say that a man, no, you you can't do anything to his 00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:19.120 body, he God forgave him, so he's off the hook. 00:57:19.120 --> 00:57:23.920 There's a strong vein of Gnosticism underlying that to say, well, you 00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:26.400 know, it's just the spirit is fine, so we don't deal with 00:57:26.400 --> 00:57:27.280 the rest. 00:57:27.280 --> 00:57:29.600 That doesn't actually do anyone any favors. 00:57:29.600 --> 00:57:31.520 As Corey said, that's actually evil. 00:57:31.520 --> 00:57:35.440 It is evil not to visit justice on a man who deserves 00:57:35.440 --> 00:57:40.000 it. The difficult part for us to understand in a democratic society, 00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:43.520 God help us, is that in the case where you have a 00:57:43.520 --> 00:57:46.720 godly prince, even the case where you just have a present, a 00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:50.800 president, a governor has the authority to commute a sentence or to 00:57:50.800 --> 00:57:54.880 pardon a man, to say That crime is wiped away. 00:57:54.880 --> 00:57:57.360 It is as though it didn't happen. 00:57:57.360 --> 00:58:01.200 The reason that the executive is given that authority is godly. 00:58:01.200 --> 00:58:05.200 And it's not that it is necessarily injustice for that to happen, 00:58:05.200 --> 00:58:10.560 is that a ruler, a governor, a king, a president, someone who 00:58:10.640 --> 00:58:14.240 in effect doesn't have anyone over him to whom he answers for 00:58:14.240 --> 00:58:19.840 his judgment is called upon in his role, in that very narrow 00:58:19.840 --> 00:58:24.400 role, at the very top, at the pinnacle of these decision-making processes 00:58:24.560 --> 00:58:26.400 to exemplify wisdom. 00:58:26.400 --> 00:58:29.920 And there are times when it is wise for a man in 00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:34.880 particular circumstances circumstances to extend mercy to someone who's guilty of a 00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:38.720 crime. That is not anti Christian. 00:58:38.720 --> 00:58:43.360 So the premise of a pardon is entirely reasonable, and yet the 00:58:43.360 --> 00:58:46.080 reason that we put it in the hands of the executive is 00:58:46.080 --> 00:58:47.600 it's not subject to review. 00:58:47.600 --> 00:58:50.080 He answers to God for what he does. 00:58:50.080 --> 00:58:51.760 You see what's going on here? 00:58:51.760 --> 00:58:53.920 You don't put the stuff up for a vote. 00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:58.240 You don't let a jury decide way later, it comes down to 00:58:58.240 --> 00:59:03.600 the fact is in this particular set of circumstances, one case, one 00:59:03.600 --> 00:59:08.400 defendant, one man who's been found guilty by the system of justice, 00:59:08.400 --> 00:59:13.040 if the executive says, I pardon this crime, I'm wiping it away, 00:59:13.040 --> 00:59:14.400 that's the end of it. 00:59:14.400 --> 00:59:17.440 It cannot be undone in our system because that is godly. 00:59:17.440 --> 00:59:19.680 And it's not up for us to argue with it. 00:59:19.680 --> 00:59:21.920 Even if you look at an example, say, well, that was clearly 00:59:21.920 --> 00:59:23.520 a miscarriage of justice. 00:59:23.520 --> 00:59:27.760 The reason that that authority is unilateral is that the premise, the 00:59:27.760 --> 00:59:30.800 underlying premise of what is going on there is good. 00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:33.680 So when we talk about justice needing to be enforced, it is 00:59:33.680 --> 00:59:36.720 not that mercy is never in the picture. 00:59:36.720 --> 00:59:39.920 It is that mercy is a matter of wisdom. 00:59:39.920 --> 00:59:42.160 In politics, mercy is a tactic. 00:59:42.160 --> 00:59:43.760 It is not a rule. 00:59:43.760 --> 00:59:46.720 Something I tweeted a while ago and I said yesterday, I said 00:59:46.720 --> 00:59:48.400 today as we're recording this. 00:59:48.400 --> 00:59:51.120 That's one of the summaries of this episode. 00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:55.520 In politics, mercy is a tactic, it is not a rule. 00:59:55.520 --> 00:59:59.280 There is no obligation for any governor, president, or king to pardon 00:59:59.280 --> 01:00:00.480 anyone for any crime. 01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:03.760 Perhaps in his wisdom he chooses to do so for good reasons, 01:00:03.760 --> 01:00:05.120 for bad reasons, it doesn't matter. 01:00:05.120 --> 01:00:07.040 It's not subject to review. 01:00:07.040 --> 01:00:09.600 But it is permissible for that to happen. 01:00:09.600 --> 01:00:09.920 And 01:00:10.800 --> 01:00:13.520 all we can do is say that God's justice is going to 01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:14.960 be served in eternity. 01:00:14.960 --> 01:00:17.440 And what happens in this life in these matters at some point 01:00:17.840 --> 01:00:19.360 it's over our pay grade. 01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:22.880 That's why the democratic aspect of this is such a disaster. 01:00:22.880 --> 01:00:26.320 Because we have this notion that everything has to be continuously subject 01:00:26.320 --> 01:00:29.600 to review and to approval by the masses. 01:00:29.600 --> 01:00:33.360 The man who's actually going to answer to God in terms of 01:00:33.360 --> 01:00:38.800 dispensing wisdom and justice is given the absolute authority to pardon, to 01:00:38.800 --> 01:00:42.240 extend mercy, but he is not obligated to do so. 01:00:42.240 --> 01:00:44.960 And incidentally, this is one of the reasons why girls are utterly 01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:50.880 unfit to be participants in politics, because the girl's natural inclination to 01:00:50.880 --> 01:00:55.520 be merciful, as she would as a mother, you know, every woman 01:00:55.520 --> 01:01:00.480 on a jury, every woman who's a judge or a medical examiner, 01:01:00.480 --> 01:01:03.840 when they see a criminal, they see someone's son. 01:01:03.840 --> 01:01:06.880 Because you know, most violent crimes at least are committed by men. 01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:09.600 That's a function of testosterone largely. 01:01:09.600 --> 01:01:10.880 But it's usually a man. 01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:14.000 So usually a woman is going to see some little boy that 01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:15.120 some mother loved. 01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:17.200 Said before Jeffrey Dahmer had a mother. 01:01:17.200 --> 01:01:19.200 I don't know his backs where I would assume that he was 01:01:19.200 --> 01:01:21.040 loved as a child at some point. 01:01:21.040 --> 01:01:25.200 Whatever went wrong with him, somebody loved him as a child. 01:01:25.200 --> 01:01:27.600 Doesn't make him not guilty. 01:01:27.600 --> 01:01:31.440 Doesn't mean that he doesn't get held to justice. 01:01:31.440 --> 01:01:35.760 Men can extend this principle and see past the fact that oh, 01:01:35.760 --> 01:01:38.080 there's someone who's going to be sad. 01:01:38.080 --> 01:01:40.480 Women almost invariably can't. 01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:42.640 And frankly, it's terrible when they can. 01:01:42.640 --> 01:01:45.760 When a woman becomes hardened to the point that she will be 01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:49.440 bloodthirsty, as a man in some cases must be. 01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:52.640 Not do you want to be bloodthirsty, but you can't be bloodless. 01:01:52.640 --> 01:01:56.560 You have to look at a situation and say, this calls for 01:01:56.560 --> 01:01:58.960 violence, this calls for death. 01:01:58.960 --> 01:02:02.320 Dispassionately. You know, that's not a matter of hatred. 01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:04.240 It's not a matter for individuals. 01:02:04.240 --> 01:02:07.760 This is a matter of judgment in the realm of the government. 01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:11.680 To look dispassionately at a situation and say, justice demands that this 01:02:11.680 --> 01:02:12.560 man die. 01:02:12.560 --> 01:02:14.880 Justice demands that this man be beaten. 01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:17.520 Maybe his hand be amputated as a thief. 01:02:17.520 --> 01:02:19.280 If that were the law, that would be just. 01:02:19.280 --> 01:02:21.120 If it's not the law, that's also just. 01:02:21.120 --> 01:02:23.520 Like I don't care how that's implemented. 01:02:23.520 --> 01:02:26.240 But men have to say, yeah, this guy is gonna get punished 01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:27.360 for what he did. 01:02:27.360 --> 01:02:29.520 And mercy is not a factor. 01:02:29.520 --> 01:02:32.560 The reason we're talking about it as a Christian podcast is that 01:02:32.800 --> 01:02:34.320 it doesn't sound Christian. 01:02:34.320 --> 01:02:35.680 And the point is that it is. 01:02:35.840 --> 01:02:38.080 It is universally Christian. 01:02:38.080 --> 01:02:41.360 And it is in fact a denial of God's mercy to try 01:02:41.360 --> 01:02:43.120 to take things off the table. 01:02:43.120 --> 01:02:46.240 If you say that justice cannot be enforced and you can only 01:02:46.240 --> 01:02:49.440 have so called mercy in this life, all you're doing is making 01:02:49.440 --> 01:02:50.960 hell worse for these people. 01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:54.720 And incidentally, you're also making civilization worse. 01:02:54.720 --> 01:02:58.400 The more liberal we have gone become in terms of just letting 01:02:58.400 --> 01:03:02.720 this stuff slide, not punishing actual wickedness and punishing things that aren't 01:03:02.720 --> 01:03:03.920 wicked at all. 01:03:03.920 --> 01:03:08.720 When good Samaritans are on trial for their life for protecting people, 01:03:08.720 --> 01:03:13.360 and wicked men go free, it's the pinnacle of injustice. 01:03:13.360 --> 01:03:16.000 And mostly that's what we see in the news. 01:03:16.480 --> 01:03:20.480 That is the tail end of us getting all these things wrong. 01:03:20.480 --> 01:03:23.360 It's a tail end of Christians not being a participant in these 01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:25.760 conversations and saying, you know what? 01:03:25.760 --> 01:03:28.480 Shut up about forgiveness and mercy here See here. 01:03:28.480 --> 01:03:31.440 These people are wicked and they need to be punished. 01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:36.240 And once they're sentenced justly for their temporal punishment, we need to 01:03:36.240 --> 01:03:38.560 make sure that they get right with God if they want to 01:03:38.560 --> 01:03:39.440 hear it. 01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:43.200 You take every opportunity to extend God's mercy to them in the 01:03:43.200 --> 01:03:47.840 eternal. But just as the thief on the cross, the punishment and 01:03:47.840 --> 01:03:50.480 the forgiveness is either temporal or eternal. 01:03:50.480 --> 01:03:54.240 And when you confuse the two, you can only produce wickedness in 01:03:54.240 --> 01:03:55.280 this life. 01:03:56.480 --> 01:04:01.440 I recently posted that the king is above the laws. 01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:05.680 This is something that I've said a number of times, and admittedly 01:04:05.840 --> 01:04:07.360 deliberately to get people to act. 01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:13.280 actually think about what the statement means, what it says. 01:04:13.280 --> 01:04:17.440 Incidentally, in the Lutheran case, this is actually something by which we 01:04:17.440 --> 01:04:20.640 are bound because it is in our confession, it is in the 01:04:20.640 --> 01:04:23.600 apology of the Augsburg Confession. 01:04:23.600 --> 01:04:27.760 It is said seemingly in passing, but it is stated in a 01:04:27.760 --> 01:04:32.480 way that it is assumed to be categorically true. 01:04:32.480 --> 01:04:37.680 I want to expand on that because it's relevant here and there's 01:04:37.680 --> 01:04:40.000 a related matter that is worth reiterating. 01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:43.680 We've said it before, but I'll say it again. 01:04:43.680 --> 01:04:47.760 When I say the king is above the laws, and note the 01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:50.560 plural and the lowercase l. 01:04:50.560 --> 01:04:55.440 That means that the king stands above the positive law. 01:04:55.440 --> 01:04:59.440 The positive law is simply the term we use for the enacted 01:04:59.440 --> 01:05:05.040 laws of a given country, of a political entity. 01:05:05.040 --> 01:05:09.840 The king is not above the law, upper case L, in that 01:05:09.840 --> 01:05:12.160 case meaning the moral law. 01:05:12.160 --> 01:05:15.120 And so the king is tasked primarily 01:05:16.000 --> 01:05:20.720 first and foremost with upholding the moral law. 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:26.160 That's one of the things that is central to this subject, because 01:05:27.040 --> 01:05:32.400 justice to define it briefly is to punish appropriately, which is to 01:05:32.400 --> 01:05:38.960 say fully, any behavior that transgresses the moral law. 01:05:38.960 --> 01:05:42.480 That is one of the core, if not the highest duties of 01:05:42.480 --> 01:05:46.320 the king, because of course a competing duty for highest duty would 01:05:46.320 --> 01:05:50.320 be seeing that the Christian faith is taught rightly in his lands. 01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:56.080 The king does also have that duty, a topic for another time. 01:05:56.080 --> 01:06:00.080 But when it comes to the moral law, how things are typically 01:06:00.080 --> 01:06:04.240 supposed to be done is the moral law is transposed into the 01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:07.360 positive law, which is to say that we look at the moral 01:06:07.360 --> 01:06:11.760 law, which says, Thou shalt not murder. 01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:14.800 The man who sheds the blood of man by man shall his 01:06:14.800 --> 01:06:15.840 blood be shed. 01:06:15.840 --> 01:06:16.960 Those are moral law. 01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:21.280 You look at those, and you transpose them into the positive law 01:06:21.440 --> 01:06:25.280 and you end up with our laws against murder. 01:06:25.280 --> 01:06:30.000 Our laws that punish various kinds of homicide, and it's perfectly reasonable 01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:35.680 to recognize there are different kinds of certain crimes, particularly homicide. 01:06:35.680 --> 01:06:39.760 Even Scripture has different treatment for different homicides. 01:06:39.760 --> 01:06:43.360 There's really a distinction between two kinds in Scripture, whereas we have 01:06:44.160 --> 01:06:45.600 more than two. 01:06:45.600 --> 01:06:48.560 Perfectly fine to do that. 01:06:48.560 --> 01:06:54.000 The king is above the positive law, because the way that this 01:06:54.000 --> 01:07:00.560 actually works, morally speaking, Ontologically speaking, is that the king is the 01:07:00.560 --> 01:07:05.840 one who grants the authority to the positive law. 01:07:05.840 --> 01:07:09.120 Because the king is the one who has the duty from God 01:07:09.360 --> 01:07:13.280 to see that the moral law is transposed into the positive law, 01:07:13.280 --> 01:07:16.400 and so he is the one who is supposed to enact and 01:07:16.400 --> 01:07:18.560 uphold those laws. 01:07:18.560 --> 01:07:22.960 He is not beholden to the positive law in the way that 01:07:22.960 --> 01:07:25.680 all of his citizens and subjects are. 01:07:25.680 --> 01:07:28.640 That is what it means for the king to be above the 01:07:28.640 --> 01:07:33.120 laws. I know some will object to the formulation, but this is 01:07:33.120 --> 01:07:35.360 simply how these things work. 01:07:35.360 --> 01:07:38.640 The king is not above the moral law because the moral law 01:07:38.640 --> 01:07:40.640 flows from God's nature. 01:07:40.640 --> 01:07:44.320 It is why the king has certain duties. 01:07:44.320 --> 01:07:47.920 It is why certain things are a matter of justice, and so 01:07:47.920 --> 01:07:53.680 the king cannot grant mercy for certain things because they are part 01:07:53.680 --> 01:07:56.080 of the moral law. 01:07:56.080 --> 01:07:59.360 And so the king cannot say, I'm not going to punish this 01:07:59.360 --> 01:08:05.280 murderer. The king can look at the case and look at the 01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:09.280 man and decide how he is going to punish the murderer, but 01:08:09.280 --> 01:08:12.560 it must be tantamount to the death penalty, because that is what 01:08:12.560 --> 01:08:16.160 is required by God under the moral law. 01:08:16.160 --> 01:08:18.880 Could he send him on a suicide mission if the country happens 01:08:18.880 --> 01:08:19.680 to be at war? 01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:22.080 Sure. The king has that discretion. 01:08:22.080 --> 01:08:24.400 That's still a death sentence. 01:08:24.400 --> 01:08:29.280 But he cannot grant mercy that violates the moral law. 01:08:29.280 --> 01:08:32.720 But he can pardon with regard to the positive law, because he 01:08:32.720 --> 01:08:34.880 is above the positive law. 01:08:34.880 --> 01:08:37.840 He answers to God alone. 01:08:37.840 --> 01:08:40.400 Now some will look at that or hear that language and think 01:08:40.720 --> 01:08:42.000 that's completely ridiculous. 01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:46.160 It's setting the king up as basically a god. 01:08:46.160 --> 01:08:49.520 Think about what that language actually means. 01:08:49.520 --> 01:08:55.760 Anyone in that position, whether he is the highest in this pyramid 01:08:55.840 --> 01:09:01.120 or he is somewhere down the ranks, should be absolutely terrified that 01:09:01.120 --> 01:09:03.440 he answers to God alone. 01:09:03.440 --> 01:09:05.280 So in the case of the king, it's God alone. 01:09:05.280 --> 01:09:07.840 In the case of a lesser magistrate, it's the king and then 01:09:07.840 --> 01:09:11.840 God. That is a terrifying position in which to find yourself. 01:09:11.840 --> 01:09:17.120 Much better to answer to men in this life than to answer 01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:20.960 only to God in eternity. 01:09:20.960 --> 01:09:26.560 To be the king grants certain privileges, but it comes with far 01:09:26.560 --> 01:09:31.760 more duties and far more dangers, because the king is going to 01:09:31.760 --> 01:09:35.840 answer to God for everything he does or fails to do, and 01:09:35.840 --> 01:09:40.320 in many cases he is going to answer only to God. 01:09:40.320 --> 01:09:44.720 Those of us who aren't at the top of the hierarchy, have 01:09:44.720 --> 01:09:49.600 others above us, or at least have peers, to whom we have 01:09:49.600 --> 01:09:52.080 to answer, who can call us to account. 01:09:52.080 --> 01:09:53.920 That is a blessing from God. 01:09:53.920 --> 01:09:55.440 The king does not have that. 01:09:55.440 --> 01:09:58.880 He may have advisors, but they are not his equals. 01:09:58.880 --> 01:10:03.600 Again that is a terrifying position in which to find oneself. 01:10:03.600 --> 01:10:08.240 That should not necessarily be something to which any man aspires. 01:10:08.240 --> 01:10:11.680 That is something for which God prepares you and to which God 01:10:12.400 --> 01:10:17.280 calls you, which is another fundamental problem with democracy. 01:10:17.280 --> 01:10:21.280 But that was the second point that I want to make. 01:10:21.280 --> 01:10:24.800 A president is a King. 01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:29.520 It doesn't matter what title you give the man who sits atop 01:10:29.600 --> 01:10:30.960 the hierarchy. 01:10:30.960 --> 01:10:33.760 If he is the sovereign he is the king. 01:10:33.760 --> 01:10:38.560 Call him the Prince, the King, the President, the Prime Minister, chancellor, 01:10:38.560 --> 01:10:40.240 it does not matter. 01:10:40.240 --> 01:10:43.680 Because the title is not the point, the office is. 01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:47.600 He is going to receive a king's judgment because he held a 01:10:47.600 --> 01:10:48.720 king's office. 01:10:49.440 --> 01:10:54.960 The same thing is true of the men who exercise ecclesiastical authority 01:10:54.960 --> 01:10:59.120 and ecclesiastical power in any of the modern churches. 01:10:59.120 --> 01:11:03.040 Seldom do they call themselves bishops these days, perhaps ironically the ones 01:11:03.040 --> 01:11:06.160 who do are the ones who are the most apostate in many 01:11:06.160 --> 01:11:11.600 cases. But whether you call yourself a bishop or a district president 01:11:11.760 --> 01:11:15.360 or whatever else it happens to be, you are a bishop. 01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:20.480 By virtue of your office, and you will receive a bishop's judgment 01:11:20.640 --> 01:11:23.120 and a bishop's reward or punishment. 01:11:23.120 --> 01:11:27.200 It doesn't matter what title you have, it matters what office you 01:11:27.200 --> 01:11:31.520 hold. Again, this is one of the reasons that democracy is so 01:11:31.520 --> 01:11:37.120 perverse. It calls men to the office who are unsuited to it. 01:11:37.120 --> 01:11:40.800 That is a terrible thing both for the nation and for the 01:11:40.800 --> 01:11:45.200 man. Because if you stick someone in an office who is unsuited 01:11:45.200 --> 01:11:49.120 to that office, he is still going to be judged according to 01:11:49.120 --> 01:11:51.680 where he sat. 01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:55.040 But you stuck someone there who did not have the abilities, who 01:11:55.040 --> 01:11:58.160 did not have the attributes, who had no right to sit in 01:11:58.160 --> 01:11:59.760 that chair. 01:11:59.760 --> 01:12:03.040 That is a horrible position in which to find oneself, and of 01:12:03.040 --> 01:12:07.520 course the same thing is true all over our society. 01:12:07.520 --> 01:12:12.160 When you are given authority, when you hold authority, when you have 01:12:12.160 --> 01:12:16.800 a certain place in the hierarchy, you are expected to and you 01:12:16.800 --> 01:12:19.600 will be judged according to whether or not you behaved in a 01:12:19.600 --> 01:12:20.800 certain way. 01:12:23.360 --> 01:12:27.440 That should give every man pause, with regard to what he has 01:12:27.440 --> 01:12:30.480 been given in life or what he seeks in life. 01:12:30.480 --> 01:12:34.640 Because again it doesn't matter what title you have, it matters the 01:12:34.640 --> 01:12:36.720 office you hold. 01:12:36.720 --> 01:12:41.600 The king's duty, whether he is a king, or a president, or 01:12:41.600 --> 01:12:45.920 a prince, or a prime minister, or a chancellor, or a con, 01:12:45.920 --> 01:12:51.360 whatever he calls himself, his duty is to uphold truth. 01:12:51.360 --> 01:12:54.880 With regard to right teaching of the faith in his lands, that 01:12:54.880 --> 01:13:00.800 is the Christian religion, according to Scripture, how God set it down, 01:13:00.800 --> 01:13:05.120 what God says we must believe, and what we must not believe, 01:13:05.120 --> 01:13:12.000 and with regard to the courts, with regard to his civil society, 01:13:12.000 --> 01:13:14.560 that is a matter of upholding justice. 01:13:14.560 --> 01:13:19.760 And again upholding justice is seeing that retribution is done, seeing that 01:13:19.760 --> 01:13:24.240 the wicked are punished, seeing that criminals are made to repay the 01:13:24.240 --> 01:13:26.880 debt they have incurred by their behavior. 01:13:26.880 --> 01:13:32.800 and the way that debt is repaid is with punishment. 01:13:32.800 --> 01:13:39.040 Sometimes it is a fine, but sometimes a fine is not enough. 01:13:39.040 --> 01:13:41.360 We all know this with murder. 01:13:41.440 --> 01:13:45.440 If a man commits murder, we don't tell him he owes five 01:13:45.440 --> 01:13:46.240 million dollars. 01:13:46.240 --> 01:13:47.760 At least we should not do that. 01:13:47.760 --> 01:13:51.280 There have been times where that has been done. 01:13:51.280 --> 01:13:54.640 We see that in some historical systems where you could simply pay 01:13:54.640 --> 01:13:56.880 a fine for having killed someone. 01:13:57.200 --> 01:14:01.360 were various historical considerations, sometimes it was because you couldn't tell if 01:14:01.360 --> 01:14:06.320 the death was accidental or intentional, But sometimes it was simply because 01:14:06.320 --> 01:14:08.240 that was how they handled matters. 01:14:08.240 --> 01:14:12.480 You see this in the Weergeld system in some of the continental 01:14:12.480 --> 01:14:17.680 parts of Europe historically before essentially Roman law was adapted to those 01:14:17.680 --> 01:14:20.480 areas during Christianization. 01:14:20.480 --> 01:14:23.680 That system was certainly better than some of the things that came 01:14:23.680 --> 01:14:27.600 before it, and certainly better than not having any system of punishment, 01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:31.600 but it does not rise to the level of doing justice. 01:14:31.600 --> 01:14:36.480 Because intentional homicide requires the death penalty. 01:14:36.480 --> 01:14:40.000 That is what God requires, that is what justice demands. 01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:41.840 There is no alternative there 01:14:42.880 --> 01:14:47.920 And so when you see the Christianization of Europe or anywhere else, 01:14:47.920 --> 01:14:52.080 you see the establishment of the death penalty. 01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:55.680 Because the death penalty is required by God, and so Christians will 01:14:55.680 --> 01:14:58.400 always maintain it. 01:14:58.400 --> 01:15:02.720 This is worth repeating a number of times because we see so 01:15:02.720 --> 01:15:07.440 many Christians, supposed Christians in quote marks this time, so many of 01:15:07.440 --> 01:15:13.040 them arguing that the death penalty is morally wrongful. 01:15:13.040 --> 01:15:16.960 And you know that person's apostate as soon as he says that. 01:15:16.960 --> 01:15:22.800 Because he is directly contradicting what God says explicitly in his word. 01:15:22.800 --> 01:15:27.440 There are some things in Scripture where perhaps you can debate, perhaps 01:15:27.440 --> 01:15:32.320 you can speak of nuance or interpretation, exegesis, although often it veers 01:15:32.320 --> 01:15:36.800 into isegesis, but there are places where that's possible, and there are 01:15:36.800 --> 01:15:38.800 places where it is not. 01:15:38.800 --> 01:15:43.920 When it comes to the punishment for certain crimes, there is no 01:15:43.920 --> 01:15:49.040 gray. It is black and white, it is abundantly clear. 01:15:49.040 --> 01:15:55.440 And God doesn't just say that the punishment for intentional homicide is 01:15:55.440 --> 01:15:56.960 the death penalty in one place. 01:15:56.960 --> 01:15:59.840 It's not just Genesis 9:6, it's all throughout Scripture. 01:15:59.840 --> 01:16:03.120 It is said in many places, it is said repeatedly, rules are 01:16:03.120 --> 01:16:07.360 laid out for how these things are conducted. 01:16:07.360 --> 01:16:12.000 To give the comparison there, because I spoke about Wehrgeld in the 01:16:12.160 --> 01:16:17.360 European context, the equivalent of that in the Old Testament essentially was 01:16:18.160 --> 01:16:20.720 the system of the Avenger of Blood. 01:16:20.720 --> 01:16:22.960 This is something that may have come to mind for some of 01:16:22.960 --> 01:16:26.000 you when we're speaking about justice and capital punishment and how And 01:16:26.000 --> 01:16:28.400 how these things are to be conducted and mercy and all of 01:16:28.400 --> 01:16:29.440 those matters. 01:16:29.440 --> 01:16:35.440 The Avenger of Blood was a duty that fell to the closest 01:16:35.520 --> 01:16:39.280 or the next of kin, the male next of kin, because that's 01:16:39.200 --> 01:16:43.200 what is meant in legal context virtually always. 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:45.040 When a man was killed. 01:16:45.040 --> 01:16:51.360 So, for instance, if your brother is killed, and you are in 01:16:51.360 --> 01:16:55.920 the Old Testament Israel context, you have a duty to avenge his 01:16:56.160 --> 01:17:01.440 blood. This is a duty that God affirms, because God actually states 01:17:01.680 --> 01:17:06.160 unequivocally the avenger of Blood will not be guilty of blood, if 01:17:06.160 --> 01:17:10.240 he kills the man who killed his kin, who killed his brother, 01:17:10.240 --> 01:17:12.480 his father, whomever it happens to be. 01:17:12.480 --> 01:17:14.960 This is not something that is condemned by God. 01:17:14.960 --> 01:17:19.440 And so, for instance, this tells us we cannot always condemn what 01:17:19.440 --> 01:17:21.760 we call today vigilante justice. 01:17:21.760 --> 01:17:23.040 It is not always wrongful. 01:17:23.040 --> 01:17:24.880 It is not per se wrongful. 01:17:24.880 --> 01:17:28.480 A Christian cannot say that it is, because God permits it. 01:17:28.480 --> 01:17:29.760 That's what this is. 01:17:29.760 --> 01:17:33.440 The avenger of blood is vigilante justice. 01:17:33.440 --> 01:17:38.080 Now God sets up a system here of refuge. 01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:40.960 He does not set it up so that you can avoid punishment 01:17:40.960 --> 01:17:44.480 if you are guilty, because how the system worked was that 01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:49.520 if you killed someone at this point it doesn't matter if it's 01:17:49.520 --> 01:17:52.560 intentional or unintentional, that comes into play later, but if you kill 01:17:52.560 --> 01:17:56.160 someone, you can flee to one of these cities of refuge, and 01:17:56.160 --> 01:18:00.000 then the Avenger of Blood is not permitted to pursue you into 01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:00.960 the city. 01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:04.000 If you leave the city, he can kill you, and he's not 01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:06.240 guilty of blood. 01:18:06.240 --> 01:18:10.000 But as long as you're in the city, you're safe. 01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:14.480 However, you are to be brought before the community and judged. 01:18:14.480 --> 01:18:20.480 If it is ascertained that you are guilty of intentional homicide, then 01:18:20.480 --> 01:18:22.400 you are to be executed. 01:18:22.400 --> 01:18:23.600 If it is ascertained that you are 01:18:24.640 --> 01:18:28.880 guilty only of unintentional homicide, then you remain in the city of 01:18:28.880 --> 01:18:32.080 refuge until the death of the high priest, and you are free 01:18:32.080 --> 01:18:35.920 to return home, and the avenger of blood may not kill you, 01:18:35.920 --> 01:18:39.920 because then if he does it, he's guilty of murder. 01:18:39.920 --> 01:18:44.080 It's worth noting here sort of as a tangent, but an interesting 01:18:44.080 --> 01:18:47.760 one. Here we have some symbolism. 01:18:47.760 --> 01:18:49.920 We have typology here. 01:18:49.920 --> 01:18:53.040 The high priest is a type of Christ. 01:18:53.040 --> 01:18:55.360 Because what is the death of the high priest here? 01:18:55.360 --> 01:18:58.480 Effectively, the death of the high priest acts as a sort of 01:18:58.480 --> 01:19:02.400 atonement. I'm of course not saying that he actually atones because there's 01:19:02.320 --> 01:19:03.360 one atonement. 01:19:03.360 --> 01:19:07.280 But the death of the high priest typologically is the atonement for 01:19:07.280 --> 01:19:09.760 the sin of homicide. 01:19:09.760 --> 01:19:13.920 Of course, this is the unintentional homicide. 01:19:13.920 --> 01:19:15.120 But when he dies, 01:19:16.160 --> 01:19:19.520 the man who would be subject to being killed by the Avenger 01:19:19.520 --> 01:19:23.280 of Blood is free to go, because you have this typological atonement 01:19:23.280 --> 01:19:25.360 for that sin. 01:19:25.360 --> 01:19:28.400 But that's sort of the comparison between those two systems, the Avenger 01:19:28.400 --> 01:19:30.000 of Blood and the Wehrgeld system. 01:19:30.320 --> 01:19:34.720 This occurs in many cultures because the underlying concept there is a 01:19:34.720 --> 01:19:36.560 blood feud. 01:19:36.560 --> 01:19:42.240 When one party kills another, it creates a blood feud between those 01:19:42.240 --> 01:19:45.680 clans. And incidentally, this is something we used to recognize. 01:19:45.680 --> 01:19:49.280 There is such a thing as honor for a clan or a 01:19:49.280 --> 01:19:51.600 tribe. There is family honor. 01:19:51.600 --> 01:19:54.160 It's not just something that is individual. 01:19:54.240 --> 01:19:57.200 And that is why you wind up with these blood feuds. 01:19:57.200 --> 01:20:01.680 In the Old Testament Israel context, God addressed this by setting up 01:20:01.680 --> 01:20:04.000 this system of cities of refuge. 01:20:04.000 --> 01:20:09.360 In the European context, typically you had to have the local magistrate 01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:15.040 sovereign intervene and broker peace between the warring parties. 01:20:15.040 --> 01:20:19.280 But ultimately speaking, again, the punishment for the crime 01:20:20.160 --> 01:20:23.920 falls to the godly prince, because he is the one to whom 01:20:23.920 --> 01:20:26.240 God has entrusted the sword. 01:20:26.240 --> 01:20:30.480 And so he has a duty to see that justice is done. 01:20:30.480 --> 01:20:31.680 And again, 01:20:32.640 --> 01:20:38.160 At risk of repeating it ad nauseum, the only justice is retributive 01:20:38.400 --> 01:20:44.880 justice. Everything else is a perversion or a denial of justice. 01:20:44.880 --> 01:20:49.440 We are not permitted by God to set up our own moral 01:20:49.440 --> 01:20:56.400 law. We must transpose his moral law into our civil law, into 01:20:56.400 --> 01:20:58.640 our positive law. 01:20:58.640 --> 01:21:02.080 And so, no, as a society, we do not get to decide 01:21:02.240 --> 01:21:06.160 we are going to punish murderers with ten years in prison and 01:21:06.160 --> 01:21:09.680 a fine, or hit you with a stick, whatever it happens to 01:21:09.680 --> 01:21:12.080 be. We are not permitted to do that. 01:21:12.080 --> 01:21:14.880 The godly prince may not do that, and he will answer to 01:21:14.880 --> 01:21:16.720 God if he does. 01:21:16.720 --> 01:21:21.840 And so every nation that has abolished the death penalty will answer 01:21:21.840 --> 01:21:24.800 to God for having done that, because that is a transgression of 01:21:25.040 --> 01:21:27.360 the moral law. 01:21:27.360 --> 01:21:32.000 In fact, it is worse than that because it is effectively blasphemy. 01:21:32.000 --> 01:21:34.160 It is lying about God. 01:21:34.160 --> 01:21:38.720 When you say that it is immoral to execute someone, when you 01:21:38.720 --> 01:21:39.520 say that it is immoral 01:21:40.560 --> 01:21:45.680 to enact any penalty that is in Scripture for a crime, what 01:21:45.680 --> 01:21:49.920 you are actually saying is that God is wrong. 01:21:49.920 --> 01:21:51.440 God lied. 01:21:51.440 --> 01:21:53.760 God God did something sinful. 01:21:53.760 --> 01:21:55.680 That's blasphemy. 01:21:55.680 --> 01:22:00.000 And individuals and nations and kings all will answer to God on 01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:03.200 the day of judgment for doing that. 01:22:03.200 --> 01:22:07.360 As Christians, we should want our laws to be consonant with God's 01:22:07.280 --> 01:22:09.360 law, with God's laws. 01:22:09.360 --> 01:22:12.320 It does not mean, and we have never said that you have 01:22:12.320 --> 01:22:17.200 to take Old Testament Israel's civil law and simply drop it into 01:22:17.200 --> 01:22:18.960 your covenant. 01:22:18.960 --> 01:22:21.280 There are different kinds of law. 01:22:21.280 --> 01:22:24.320 Some of them are binding on Christians, some of them are not. 01:22:24.320 --> 01:22:26.160 Scripture is abundantly clear on this point. 01:22:26.320 --> 01:22:31.440 So for instance, the ceremonial law is not binding on Christians. 01:22:31.440 --> 01:22:34.720 We don't have to sacrifice goats, in fact it would be sinful 01:22:34.720 --> 01:22:35.760 to do that. 01:22:35.760 --> 01:22:38.240 We don't have to burn incense. 01:22:38.240 --> 01:22:41.040 It's not sinful to do that notably, but we don't have to 01:22:41.040 --> 01:22:42.000 do that. 01:22:42.000 --> 01:22:45.360 These things that were part of the ceremonial law for Old Testament 01:22:45.360 --> 01:22:47.440 Israel are not binding on us. 01:22:47.440 --> 01:22:51.600 The civil law is not binding on us, even if it is 01:22:52.160 --> 01:22:56.240 persuasive. We can look at what God set down and take it 01:22:56.240 --> 01:23:00.560 as persuasive because if he said it, we should certainly consider it. 01:23:00.560 --> 01:23:04.880 But he handed it down to Old Testament Israel as a nation. 01:23:04.880 --> 01:23:09.120 It is not something that we have to follow word for word. 01:23:09.120 --> 01:23:12.480 However, this is with the caveat that we cannot call any part 01:23:12.480 --> 01:23:14.480 of it morally wrongful. 01:23:14.480 --> 01:23:16.960 This is the same sort of reason that we can't say that 01:23:16.960 --> 01:23:21.360 slavery is per se sinful, because God permits it, God even commands 01:23:21.360 --> 01:23:24.000 it, and so we cannot say it is sin. 01:23:24.160 --> 01:23:28.560 Similarly, we cannot say any provision of the Old Testament civil law 01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:32.480 for Old Testament Israel is sinful, but we are not bound to 01:23:32.480 --> 01:23:34.640 follow it to the letter. 01:23:34.640 --> 01:23:39.680 The moral law we are bound to follow absolutely. 01:23:39.680 --> 01:23:42.480 Because again, the moral law flows from the nature of God. 01:23:42.480 --> 01:23:46.720 It is unchanging, it is his eternal, unchanging will. 01:23:46.720 --> 01:23:50.880 We are not entitled, whether we are a commoner or a king, 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:54.000 to change anything in the moral law. 01:23:54.000 --> 01:24:00.960 Justice demands that we follow the moral law to the letter. 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:07.280 The ultimate penalty under the moral law is not actually the death 01:24:07.280 --> 01:24:10.400 penalty. That's the ultimate penalty in this life. 01:24:10.400 --> 01:24:15.040 The ultimate penalty under the moral law is hell. 01:24:15.040 --> 01:24:20.560 God is able to grant us mercy because Christ suffered the ultimate 01:24:20.560 --> 01:24:22.560 penalty for us. 01:24:22.560 --> 01:24:25.440 He fulfilled the demands of justice. 01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:29.920 Here in time, and with regard to earthly kings, that is not 01:24:29.920 --> 01:24:35.840 available. For earthly kings, crime, which is to say transgressions of the 01:24:35.840 --> 01:24:41.600 moral law, must be punished according to the moral law. 01:24:41.600 --> 01:24:44.080 The king must wield the sword. 01:24:44.080 --> 01:24:47.680 It's not just that the king does wield the sword. 01:24:47.680 --> 01:24:50.800 It's not just that the king was entrusted with the sword by 01:24:50.800 --> 01:24:54.400 God. It is It is that part of being a king is 01:24:54.560 --> 01:24:57.520 wielding the sword. 01:24:57.520 --> 01:25:00.640 Just as if in a marriage you do not do certain things 01:25:00.720 --> 01:25:04.880 you are not actually married, so a king who does not actually 01:25:04.880 --> 01:25:07.600 use the sword is no king. 01:25:07.600 --> 01:25:11.360 The bad news for him is that he will still receive a 01:25:11.360 --> 01:25:15.360 king's judgment, because he holds the office. 01:25:15.360 --> 01:25:18.640 The worst thing, at least one of the worst things that you 01:25:18.640 --> 01:25:22.960 can do, is hold the office, but not execute the duties of 01:25:22.960 --> 01:25:27.840 it. That is what we see running rampant in our societies across 01:25:27.840 --> 01:25:29.200 the world today. 01:25:29.200 --> 01:25:29.760 We see men 01:25:30.800 --> 01:25:35.520 who have the office, who have the power, who have the authority, 01:25:35.520 --> 01:25:38.800 and are not fulfilling their duties. 01:25:38.800 --> 01:25:41.600 Rest assured they will be judged. 01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:46.080 But in the meantime, it creates chaos in our societies and allows 01:25:46.080 --> 01:25:50.000 wickedness not only to fester but to increase. 01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:52.880 The king who does not do his duty, the king who does 01:25:52.880 --> 01:25:58.720 not fulfill the demands of justice destroys his nation, because he permits 01:25:58.720 --> 01:26:03.920 wickedness to run rampant, and he permits wickedness to cede more wickedness, 01:26:03.920 --> 01:26:07.280 because that is always what happens when it is not punished. 01:26:07.280 --> 01:26:10.080 When one wicked man sees another wicked man get away with his 01:26:10.480 --> 01:26:15.440 wickedness, he is inclined to do more wickedness himself. 01:26:15.440 --> 01:26:19.360 That is one of the reasons it is so important for the 01:26:19.360 --> 01:26:27.040 godly king, for the Christian prince, to enact justice swiftly, consistently, 01:26:27.040 --> 01:26:30.000 and to the letter with regard to the moral law. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:32.320 It is one of the uses of the law. 01:26:32.320 --> 01:26:34.000 It is the curb. 01:26:34.000 --> 01:26:38.080 The curb with regard to the law is that it tamps down 01:26:38.080 --> 01:26:39.920 on wickedness. 01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:42.320 This is one of the places where we would certainly agree with 01:26:42.320 --> 01:26:47.920 Augustine. You are never going to have a perfect system with regard 01:26:47.920 --> 01:26:48.480 to the law 01:26:49.680 --> 01:26:51.120 in this life. 01:26:51.120 --> 01:26:55.040 Because we are fallen human beings, we live in a fallen world. 01:26:55.040 --> 01:26:59.280 But one of the uses of the law is to curb that 01:26:59.280 --> 01:27:02.880 wickedness, is to tamp down on it as much as possible. 01:27:03.920 --> 01:27:08.800 And so we can aspire to perfect compliance, even if we cannot 01:27:08.800 --> 01:27:09.440 reach it. 01:27:09.440 --> 01:27:12.400 It is the same thing that we do in our own lives 01:27:12.400 --> 01:27:14.080 with regard to the law. 01:27:14.080 --> 01:27:16.240 We aspire to be sinless. 01:27:16.240 --> 01:27:20.240 We will never reach that state in this life, regardless of what 01:27:20.240 --> 01:27:24.800 certain supposed theologians have said. 01:27:24.800 --> 01:27:28.880 You cannot become perfect in this life. 01:27:28.880 --> 01:27:34.400 Over time, through the process of sanctification, you become better. 01:27:34.400 --> 01:27:37.520 The same thing can be true of a country, the same thing 01:27:37.520 --> 01:27:39.440 can be true of a nation. 01:27:39.840 --> 01:27:45.760 Generations of effort toward behaving in compliance with the moral law, and 01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:50.880 kings bringing up their sons as new godly rulers to replace them 01:27:50.880 --> 01:27:52.640 when they retire. 01:27:52.640 --> 01:27:57.200 Through that process, you can have an upward progress with regard to 01:27:57.200 --> 01:28:01.040 the morality of a people, with regard to the justice of a 01:28:01.040 --> 01:28:03.840 society. And that is a good thing, and it is something to 01:28:03.840 --> 01:28:08.720 which Christians should absolutely aspire And so when you see in the 01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:16.400 coming year, and in the coming years, supposed Christians, particularly clerics, screeching 01:28:16.400 --> 01:28:22.320 about this miscarriage of justice with regard to a sovereign actually enacting 01:28:22.320 --> 01:28:25.120 what is required under the law. 01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:30.880 Recognize that what you are seeing is them declaring their apostasy. 01:28:30.880 --> 01:28:36.480 You are not seeing an argument for Christianity, because Christianity requires that 01:28:36.480 --> 01:28:43.040 justice be done, not that mercy be granted with regard to transgressions 01:28:43.040 --> 01:28:44.800 of the moral law. 01:28:44.800 --> 01:28:46.800 Because that is the division here. 01:28:46.800 --> 01:28:50.000 With regard to the left hand kingdom, it is a matter of 01:28:50.000 --> 01:28:53.920 justice. With regard to the right hand kingdom, it is a matter 01:28:53.920 --> 01:28:55.120 of mercy. 01:28:55.120 --> 01:28:58.480 And so we forgive those who have transgressed. 01:28:58.480 --> 01:29:02.720 We forgive those who have sinned against us. 01:29:02.720 --> 01:29:05.600 But the prince must still wield the sword. 01:29:05.600 --> 01:29:07.920 He must still punish the wrongdoer. 01:29:07.920 --> 01:29:10.320 He must be a terror to the wicked. 01:29:10.320 --> 01:29:13.840 He does not get to neglect that duty, because with regard to 01:29:13.840 --> 01:29:17.120 the right hand kingdom he too must forgive. 01:29:17.120 --> 01:29:21.840 But he has a different office, and it has different requirements, and 01:29:21.840 --> 01:29:28.000 that requirement is justice, it is to punish the wicked. 01:29:28.000 --> 01:29:28.160 And 01:29:28.400 --> 01:29:32.080 although we often refer to princes and kings and things that are 01:29:32.080 --> 01:29:36.640 basically hypothetical to us, none of this discussion is hypothetical. 01:29:36.640 --> 01:29:38.240 We have a government today. 01:29:38.240 --> 01:29:40.480 We have criminals in our midst today. 01:29:40.480 --> 01:29:42.960 We have victims of those crimes today. 01:29:42.960 --> 01:29:46.960 We don't have to wait to get everything sorted out politically the 01:29:46.960 --> 01:29:50.480 way God would desire it to fix these problems. 01:29:50.480 --> 01:29:53.520 As Corey said, and as I said at the beginning, that's the 01:29:53.520 --> 01:29:56.400 reason we're doing this episode at the end of the year. 01:29:56.400 --> 01:30:01.360 You're going to see a flurry of clerics and entire denominations and 01:30:01.360 --> 01:30:05.280 church bodies screaming at the top of their lungs, no, no, we 01:30:05.280 --> 01:30:06.880 have to have mercy. 01:30:06.880 --> 01:30:07.920 We can't do this. 01:30:07.920 --> 01:30:09.520 And it's gonna be a two step. 01:30:09.520 --> 01:30:12.000 First they're gonna say, No, you don't have the authority. 01:30:12.000 --> 01:30:17.600 You can't separate families by sending some aliens home and not others, 01:30:17.600 --> 01:30:21.600 to which the nominee for DHS said, sure, we're gonna send them 01:30:21.600 --> 01:30:22.320 all home together. 01:30:22.320 --> 01:30:25.360 We're not gonna separate families, we're deporting everyone. 01:30:25.360 --> 01:30:26.960 That's entirely just. 01:30:26.960 --> 01:30:28.560 That is not amoral. 01:30:28.560 --> 01:30:31.040 That has nothing to do with sojourners. 01:30:31.040 --> 01:30:35.360 What you're gonna find is people in the church lie about these 01:30:35.360 --> 01:30:39.520 situations. They just throw as much Jesus dust as they can on 01:30:39.520 --> 01:30:43.360 that situation till you can't even see the alien underneath it and 01:30:43.360 --> 01:30:45.600 they try to say, No, you you can't get rid of those 01:30:45.600 --> 01:30:49.360 people. You don't have the authority And then when they lose that 01:30:49.360 --> 01:30:52.800 argument, as they're already losing, they're going to cry mercy. 01:30:52.800 --> 01:30:57.280 They're gonna cry clemency, say it's it's not forget justice, forget not 01:30:57.280 --> 01:30:58.640 having the authority. 01:30:58.640 --> 01:31:00.960 Jesus says that we should be merciful. 01:31:00.960 --> 01:31:03.440 So I'm going to address that head on here at the end 01:31:03.440 --> 01:31:04.880 of what I have to say. 01:31:04.880 --> 01:31:09.200 In the Beatitudes, Jesus expressly says, Blessed are the merciful, for they 01:31:09.200 --> 01:31:11.600 shall receive mercy. 01:31:11.600 --> 01:31:13.120 So case closed, right? 01:31:13.120 --> 01:31:14.640 Everything we just said is a lie. 01:31:14.640 --> 01:31:18.160 Jesus said, You won't be blessed if you don't show mercy. 01:31:18.160 --> 01:31:20.480 To whom was he speaking? 01:31:20.480 --> 01:31:23.600 What was the purpose of that sermon? 01:31:23.600 --> 01:31:27.360 When Jesus delivered the Beatitudes, when he delivered the sermon on the 01:31:27.360 --> 01:31:29.600 mount, what was going on? 01:31:29.600 --> 01:31:33.200 Was he talking to a conclave of men who are forming a 01:31:33.200 --> 01:31:34.080 new government? 01:31:34.080 --> 01:31:36.560 No. There are people from all around who had heard about the 01:31:36.560 --> 01:31:41.440 miracles. They were coming to see this teacher, and what they heard 01:31:41.440 --> 01:31:46.160 was a man speaking wisdom, God speaking wisdom, not trying to pigeonhole 01:31:46.160 --> 01:31:48.960 him as some wise man, but they didn't know. 01:31:48.880 --> 01:31:51.440 You know, it was basically the new hot podcast and they heard 01:31:51.440 --> 01:31:52.160 stories about it. 01:31:52.160 --> 01:31:54.000 They came to see for themselves. 01:31:54.000 --> 01:31:56.960 When they showed up and Jesus told them, Blessed are the merciful 01:31:57.040 --> 01:32:00.080 for they shall receive mercy, he was not speaking to them in 01:32:00.080 --> 01:32:01.280 a political context. 01:32:01.280 --> 01:32:04.080 What problem was he not trying to solve? 01:32:04.080 --> 01:32:07.920 Jesus was not solving the problem in the crowd that they didn't 01:32:07.840 --> 01:32:10.240 have enough punishment for crime. 01:32:10.240 --> 01:32:15.440 First century Judea, they had crime pretty well nipped in the butt. 01:32:15.440 --> 01:32:18.880 Criminals were killed left and right for all sorts of things. 01:32:18.880 --> 01:32:22.800 Smaller crimes than we would remotely consider that penalty today. 01:32:22.800 --> 01:32:24.560 That was well in hand. 01:32:24.560 --> 01:32:29.040 What they didn't have was the proper teaching of the law that 01:32:29.040 --> 01:32:31.360 had been with them for thousands of years. 01:32:31.360 --> 01:32:35.280 And so when Jesus was explaining things like, you have heard it 01:32:35.280 --> 01:32:38.400 said, don't commit adultery, I say don't lust. 01:32:38.400 --> 01:32:42.240 You've heard it said don't commit murder, I say unto you, don't 01:32:42.240 --> 01:32:46.080 commit hatred, because all sin begins in the heart. 01:32:46.080 --> 01:32:50.080 Jesus in his teaching to these individuals was talking to them personally 01:32:50.240 --> 01:32:52.560 about interpersonal relationships. 01:32:52.560 --> 01:32:54.240 And every word of that is true. 01:32:54.240 --> 01:32:57.840 And nothing that we've said here has anything to do with interpersonal 01:32:57.840 --> 01:33:02.320 relationships. The example of the Avenger of Blood, that was a system 01:33:02.320 --> 01:33:03.440 that was in place. 01:33:03.440 --> 01:33:06.080 And in fact, it was a system that to some degree was 01:33:06.080 --> 01:33:11.200 preserved in Western civilizations and varying embodiments until the last century or 01:33:11.200 --> 01:33:14.720 so. You know, there were duels and they were recognized as legal 01:33:14.880 --> 01:33:19.760 that it was legal to duel someone to the death for slights. 01:33:19.760 --> 01:33:22.160 It was it was legal to do that. 01:33:22.160 --> 01:33:23.440 We're not advocating for that. 01:33:23.440 --> 01:33:27.280 We're simply saying that that is something that is not beyond the 01:33:27.280 --> 01:33:31.520 law. If a society wants to behave that way, they're up are 01:33:31.680 --> 01:33:33.360 upsides. There are downsides. 01:33:33.360 --> 01:33:36.080 There are upsides and downsides to every approach. 01:33:36.080 --> 01:33:39.920 Everything that we do in this life in terms of political justice 01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:42.400 is going to be imperfect. 01:33:42.400 --> 01:33:43.520 Doesn't matter. 01:33:43.520 --> 01:33:45.840 You still have to do the best you can, which is why 01:33:45.840 --> 01:33:47.840 it doesn't matter whether we don't have a godly prince or king 01:33:47.920 --> 01:33:48.880 or any of that crap. 01:33:48.880 --> 01:33:52.160 You don't need to be a monarchist or sympathetic to think that 01:33:52.160 --> 01:33:56.560 we need to have men in office doing the right things today, 01:33:56.560 --> 01:33:58.240 enforcing the law today. 01:33:58.240 --> 01:34:02.880 And what we cannot permit is for clerics in these so-called church 01:34:02.880 --> 01:34:08.480 denominations coming along and screaming about Jesus when justice has nothing to 01:34:08.480 --> 01:34:09.680 do with that. 01:34:09.680 --> 01:34:13.840 What they're doing is they're destroying Christianity and they're destroying civilization at 01:34:13.840 --> 01:34:14.960 the same time. 01:34:14.960 --> 01:34:17.280 We as Christians cannot participate in that. 01:34:17.280 --> 01:34:18.640 We cannot permit it. 01:34:18.640 --> 01:34:20.640 We cannot permit it in God's name. 01:34:20.640 --> 01:34:22.560 We cannot permit it in our name. 01:34:22.560 --> 01:34:23.760 It is wicked. 01:34:23.760 --> 01:34:27.600 And we are responsible for the teachings of the men in our 01:34:27.600 --> 01:34:31.280 pulpits and our denominations that go around doing this stuff. 01:34:31.280 --> 01:34:35.840 When there is ongoing abuse in a congregation that's covered up by 01:34:35.840 --> 01:34:39.120 the pastors and elders because they don't want the bad press. 01:34:39.120 --> 01:34:43.200 And so men who are committing heinous crimes have those crimes covered 01:34:43.200 --> 01:34:45.440 up for the sake of reputation. 01:34:45.440 --> 01:34:48.640 That is profound wickedness and injustice. 01:34:48.640 --> 01:34:50.800 That sort of behavior is rampant. 01:34:50.960 --> 01:34:54.320 Number of people can probably guess an example I have in mind. 01:34:54.320 --> 01:34:56.480 I have half a dozen examples in mind. 01:34:56.480 --> 01:34:58.960 This stuff happens all the time. 01:34:58.960 --> 01:35:03.920 In the church, men who call themselves Christians conceal and cover up 01:35:04.080 --> 01:35:09.920 wicked heinous crimes, subverting justice for the sake of people not looking 01:35:09.920 --> 01:35:10.880 bad in the church. 01:35:10.880 --> 01:35:12.560 They don't want to get a bad reputation. 01:35:12.560 --> 01:35:13.760 They don't care about the victims. 01:35:13.840 --> 01:35:15.360 They don't care about justice. 01:35:15.360 --> 01:35:19.200 The one thing that they care about is not looking bad. 01:35:19.200 --> 01:35:23.440 These are the men who are acting in ways politically today that 01:35:23.440 --> 01:35:27.520 are interfering with the sovereign right of the government to execute justice. 01:35:28.240 --> 01:35:30.800 And so that's my immediate concern here. 01:35:30.800 --> 01:35:33.840 It's not that people aren't being merciful enough in their personal lives, 01:35:33.840 --> 01:35:36.400 although there should always be more of that. 01:35:36.400 --> 01:35:42.080 You know, whenever someone personally apologizes to me for anything. 01:35:42.080 --> 01:35:45.600 I I want to say I panic, but like the most important 01:35:45.600 --> 01:35:49.040 thing for me, as soon as I learn that, I'm talking seconds, 01:35:49.040 --> 01:35:52.160 not hours or days, the very next thing that needs to come 01:35:52.160 --> 01:35:55.120 out of my mouth and my heart is I forgive you. 01:35:55.120 --> 01:35:58.160 And whatever else was going on, until the moment that someone says 01:35:58.320 --> 01:36:00.400 I apologize, forgive me. 01:36:00.400 --> 01:36:04.080 Whatever I was doing before, I drop it all and I address 01:36:04.080 --> 01:36:05.840 that situation and I forgive them. 01:36:05.840 --> 01:36:10.960 Why? Because I take the parable seriously about the wicked servant who 01:36:10.960 --> 01:36:14.000 was greedy and selfish when he had a small debt owed to 01:36:14.000 --> 01:36:17.600 him, and he disregarded the massive debt that was forgiven to him 01:36:17.600 --> 01:36:18.640 by his master. 01:36:18.640 --> 01:36:20.000 That's talking about us. 01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:21.440 It's talking about our sins. 01:36:21.440 --> 01:36:24.000 We owe an infinite debt to God for all the crap that 01:36:24.000 --> 01:36:25.840 we do in our lives. 01:36:25.840 --> 01:36:29.520 The people who slight us, who sin against us, have very small 01:36:29.520 --> 01:36:30.800 debts by comparison. 01:36:30.800 --> 01:36:34.560 Even these heinous crimes that we've been talking about are small debts 01:36:34.560 --> 01:36:38.480 compared to an accumulated lifetime of wickedness. 01:36:38.480 --> 01:36:41.600 The reason that hell is eternal is that is how big the 01:36:41.600 --> 01:36:42.480 penalty is. 01:36:42.640 --> 01:36:44.640 It is a real penalty. 01:36:44.640 --> 01:36:48.240 The forgiveness that was delivered to every man on the cross, that 01:36:48.240 --> 01:36:51.840 was paid for every man on the cross, it's only delivered through 01:36:52.160 --> 01:36:54.960 justification and receiving it. 01:36:54.960 --> 01:36:59.120 But the act of those sins being paid for was paid by 01:36:59.760 --> 01:37:03.680 Jesus. His death and his suffering on the cross paid for all 01:37:03.680 --> 01:37:04.640 of it. 01:37:04.640 --> 01:37:09.680 What stupider more malevolent thing could we possibly do than despise that, 01:37:09.680 --> 01:37:11.440 not take that seriously? 01:37:11.440 --> 01:37:13.360 And that's why it's so important for us to forgive each other 01:37:13.760 --> 01:37:16.400 when we sin against each other and ask forgiveness. 01:37:16.400 --> 01:37:19.120 And that's why it's so dire when we sin against each other 01:37:19.120 --> 01:37:20.640 and we don't ask forgiveness. 01:37:20.640 --> 01:37:22.240 We don't even think we did anything wrong. 01:37:22.240 --> 01:37:23.520 And that guy had it coming. 01:37:23.520 --> 01:37:24.400 He deserved that. 01:37:24.400 --> 01:37:25.840 I'm not gonna ask for forgiveness. 01:37:25.840 --> 01:37:27.440 He got half of what he deserved. 01:37:27.440 --> 01:37:28.960 I'd do more if I could. 01:37:28.960 --> 01:37:31.360 That's a typical attitude that people have. 01:37:31.360 --> 01:37:32.880 It's wicked. 01:37:33.120 --> 01:37:36.720 When Jesus talks about extending mercy, he's talking about that. 01:37:36.720 --> 01:37:39.280 He's not talking about the political. 01:37:39.280 --> 01:37:42.000 One of the problems that we've also had and we're going to 01:37:42.000 --> 01:37:45.360 continue to have, especially like as we're recording this right now, we're 01:37:45.520 --> 01:37:49.200 month or two before Trump's nominees for his cabinet are going to 01:37:49.200 --> 01:37:50.960 be up for a lot of public debate. 01:37:50.960 --> 01:37:52.560 The men aren't perfect. 01:37:52.560 --> 01:37:55.360 Some of them are adulterers, some of them are Zionists. 01:37:55.520 --> 01:37:58.400 Thousand things you could say are wrong about those men. 01:37:58.400 --> 01:38:02.720 The one question that matters for guys like Robert F. 01:38:02.720 --> 01:38:06.240 Kennedy, in the role that he's gonna have an HHS, is he 01:38:06.240 --> 01:38:08.080 gonna do the best possible job? 01:38:08.080 --> 01:38:12.000 And I think given all the possibilities, the answer's probably yes. 01:38:12.000 --> 01:38:14.560 Would I commend the guy for a thousand other things? 01:38:14.560 --> 01:38:17.920 No. That one thing, I think he can do pretty well. 01:38:17.920 --> 01:38:20.320 Same is true of the Secretary of Defense. 01:38:20.320 --> 01:38:23.200 The guy has a reputation that I don't know if it's true 01:38:23.200 --> 01:38:26.000 or not, but people say that there are things about him that 01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:29.360 are morally undesirable, publicly so. 01:38:29.360 --> 01:38:33.840 The question is will the Secretary of Defense, which until incidentally nineteen 01:38:33.920 --> 01:38:36.080 forty seven was a Secretary of War. 01:38:36.080 --> 01:38:38.880 That's what it was from the beginning of this nation. 01:38:38.880 --> 01:38:41.680 The Secretary of War is a cabinet position. 01:38:41.680 --> 01:38:45.120 Why? Because it's important to have men who have mastered the art 01:38:45.120 --> 01:38:46.240 of violence. 01:38:46.240 --> 01:38:49.440 And whatever else that man is, I truly believe that he is 01:38:49.440 --> 01:38:51.920 a man who has mastered the art of violence. 01:38:51.920 --> 01:38:55.680 And therefore, in the political realm, to me, it does not matter 01:38:55.680 --> 01:38:58.320 if he is the most morally upright man in the world. 01:38:58.320 --> 01:39:01.680 What matters to me is as the secretary of war, is he 01:39:01.680 --> 01:39:06.160 going to be equipped to reorient our military so that it can 01:39:06.160 --> 01:39:08.000 fight a war against China. 01:39:08.000 --> 01:39:11.360 Because in the next eight years, that is what we're looking at. 01:39:11.360 --> 01:39:14.160 I think in the next four years that's what we're looking at. 01:39:14.160 --> 01:39:17.440 That is what the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of War has 01:39:17.440 --> 01:39:18.240 to do. 01:39:18.240 --> 01:39:20.640 You don't want the nicest guy in the world. 01:39:20.640 --> 01:39:24.080 You want a man who will do violent things to bad people. 01:39:24.080 --> 01:39:26.640 That's the man who needs to be in that position. 01:39:26.640 --> 01:39:29.280 Those men aren't always going to have clean hands. 01:39:29.280 --> 01:39:32.560 And as much as I long for a world and a country, 01:39:32.560 --> 01:39:35.840 a nation A nation where we have such a preponderance of good 01:39:35.920 --> 01:39:39.920 morally upright men who have also mastered the art of violence, which 01:39:39.920 --> 01:39:41.520 in the past was the case. 01:39:41.520 --> 01:39:43.600 Guys like Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. 01:39:43.760 --> 01:39:48.480 Lee, there were good men who were valiant warriors, who were violent 01:39:48.480 --> 01:39:52.240 men when they needed to be, and were also morally upright. 01:39:52.240 --> 01:39:54.800 The fact that we have a dearth of men who were morally 01:39:54.800 --> 01:39:56.880 upright doesn't mean we have a dearth of men who are good 01:39:56.880 --> 01:39:58.000 at violence. 01:39:58.000 --> 01:39:58.960 That's what we need. 01:39:59.120 --> 01:40:00.720 That's what we need in the position. 01:40:00.720 --> 01:40:03.920 And this is something that Christians are so bad at. 01:40:03.920 --> 01:40:07.360 We're not looking at church positions where you have to have the 01:40:07.360 --> 01:40:12.560 perfect man who has a complete squeaky clean record or he's disqualified. 01:40:12.480 --> 01:40:15.040 I would love it if we had a thousand men as competent 01:40:15.040 --> 01:40:18.320 as the current guy for Secretary of War who didn't have the 01:40:18.320 --> 01:40:19.360 moral problems. 01:40:19.360 --> 01:40:23.120 But if he's the best guy for getting this particular job done, 01:40:23.120 --> 01:40:24.800 all the pastors need to shut up. 01:40:24.800 --> 01:40:27.040 They have no business talking about that. 01:40:27.040 --> 01:40:28.240 Because you know what? 01:40:28.240 --> 01:40:33.440 Eternal repentance if forgiveness has nothing to do with prosecuting the political 01:40:33.440 --> 01:40:37.680 question. We're looking at political questions that are matters of survival for 01:40:37.680 --> 01:40:39.600 our for our very nation. 01:40:39.600 --> 01:40:42.240 Their decisions are going to be made in the next couple years 01:40:42.400 --> 01:40:47.040 that will decide whether or not America sees its 275th anniversary. 01:40:47.040 --> 01:40:48.880 I don't think it's going to make it that long, but the 01:40:48.880 --> 01:40:51.920 only way it possibly can is for the right men to be 01:40:51.920 --> 01:40:53.120 in those positions. 01:40:53.120 --> 01:40:55.360 And those are probably not going to be men that I'd be 01:40:55.360 --> 01:40:58.240 happy about in every other possible scenario. 01:40:58.240 --> 01:40:59.200 Doesn't matter. 01:40:59.200 --> 01:41:02.400 Are they right for this particular job? 01:41:02.400 --> 01:41:06.480 Someday, if and when we win, we will have cleaned house to 01:41:06.480 --> 01:41:09.040 the point that we'll have a thousand guys to choose from and 01:41:09.040 --> 01:41:10.480 you don't have to compromise. 01:41:10.480 --> 01:41:13.840 You don't have to make political compromises where a guy who has 01:41:13.840 --> 01:41:16.400 some dirt, but he's good at the one thing you need done, 01:41:16.400 --> 01:41:18.800 you can pick from someone who is good at the thing and 01:41:18.800 --> 01:41:19.920 he doesn't have dirt. 01:41:19.920 --> 01:41:21.760 We don't have those options today. 01:41:21.760 --> 01:41:24.240 All we have are dirty men who are competent at the thing 01:41:24.240 --> 01:41:25.520 that's in front of them. 01:41:25.520 --> 01:41:27.920 If that's the best we can do, then that's what we have 01:41:27.920 --> 01:41:28.480 to do. 01:41:28.480 --> 01:41:31.360 Politics is about expediency. 01:41:31.360 --> 01:41:35.280 It's not always about the absolute perfect moral choice. 01:41:35.280 --> 01:41:38.240 It's about doing the thing that is going to provide the optimal 01:41:38.240 --> 01:41:39.600 political outcome. 01:41:39.600 --> 01:41:42.560 And this is why to some extent it is important for politics 01:41:42.560 --> 01:41:46.080 and religion to be divided because the very rules that have to 01:41:46.080 --> 01:41:49.760 be enforced in the church, which incidentally are not, but they must 01:41:49.760 --> 01:41:54.400 be enforced for Christians, to apply them in the political context is 01:41:54.400 --> 01:41:56.400 suicidal as a nation. 01:41:56.400 --> 01:41:58.720 It's national suicide. 01:41:58.720 --> 01:42:01.200 We don't have the men to choose from, or we can get 01:42:01.280 --> 01:42:04.800 like Trump's not the best candidate for president if you talk about 01:42:04.800 --> 01:42:08.400 morally upright and all these other things, but he's the best we 01:42:08.400 --> 01:42:12.640 got. On one hand, Christians want to say, oh, well, you know, 01:42:12.640 --> 01:42:16.080 we're all guilty of sin, so I can't judge anybody. 01:42:16.080 --> 01:42:19.040 On the other hand, as soon as someone in the political realm 01:42:19.040 --> 01:42:23.600 has some actual problem that we want to clutch our pearls at. 01:42:23.600 --> 01:42:26.080 Like, oh no, I don't care what he's good for. 01:42:26.080 --> 01:42:27.040 He did this one thing. 01:42:27.360 --> 01:42:29.280 that's really bad morally. 01:42:29.280 --> 01:42:32.480 I'm not poo-pooing the idea that we have to have high standards 01:42:32.480 --> 01:42:33.440 for these men. 01:42:33.440 --> 01:42:36.480 We should be able to have a man that's completely trustworthy in 01:42:36.480 --> 01:42:41.440 everything. But at the end of the day, the most important thing 01:42:41.440 --> 01:42:44.560 politically is can I trust that this guy will get the job 01:42:44.560 --> 01:42:48.640 done? And when we look at these situations, we as men who 01:42:48.640 --> 01:42:53.520 are involved in the political process have to make wise choices. 01:42:53.520 --> 01:42:57.520 And the wise choice is sometimes not the one that seems like 01:42:57.520 --> 01:42:59.520 it's the most morally upright. 01:42:59.760 --> 01:43:03.520 There will be guys like RFK who have no problem with abortion. 01:43:03.520 --> 01:43:06.240 Trump doesn't have as much, nearly as much of a problem with 01:43:06.240 --> 01:43:08.640 infanticide as he should. 01:43:08.640 --> 01:43:12.480 But the bottom line is that the alternative is so much worse 01:43:12.640 --> 01:43:16.080 that politically, that's all we have to choose from. 01:43:16.080 --> 01:43:20.320 So the purpose of doing an episode on justice, you know, we 01:43:20.320 --> 01:43:23.440 talked a lot about executions for murders. 01:43:23.440 --> 01:43:27.040 You go you go down to the least significant thing, to shoplifting. 01:43:27.040 --> 01:43:30.000 Look what happened in California when they said, you know what? 01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:35.120 If they shoplist something below $950, we're not even gonna do anything. 01:43:35.120 --> 01:43:37.440 You saw mass chaos. 01:43:37.440 --> 01:43:40.880 You saw stores being cleaned out continuously in San Francisco. 01:43:40.880 --> 01:43:41.760 Because, like, you know what? 01:43:41.920 --> 01:43:44.240 If it's under 950, we don't care. 01:43:44.240 --> 01:43:48.400 That caused horrors for the smallest crime. 01:43:48.400 --> 01:43:51.600 Shoplifting is not a big deal compared to murder. 01:43:51.600 --> 01:43:53.440 It is a less serious sin. 01:43:53.440 --> 01:43:56.080 Nevertheless, that's destroying someone's livelihood. 01:43:56.080 --> 01:43:58.160 That's driving prices up for everyone. 01:43:58.160 --> 01:43:59.040 That's a disaster. 01:43:59.040 --> 01:44:04.880 It's a civilizational disaster to be unjust by not enforcing the law. 01:44:04.880 --> 01:44:08.000 What we're faced with right now in both kingdoms, in the left 01:44:08.000 --> 01:44:11.760 and the right, is men who are effectively crying Barabbas, Barabbas. 01:44:11.760 --> 01:44:15.040 They want to free the man who's a murderer, and they want 01:44:15.040 --> 01:44:17.840 to condemn those who are not guilty of anything. 01:44:17.840 --> 01:44:20.560 We must enforce the laws justly. 01:44:20.560 --> 01:44:23.360 We must have men who will enforce the laws justly. 01:44:23.360 --> 01:44:26.000 And that is going to mean that people are punished for their 01:44:26.000 --> 01:44:29.120 crimes. There's actually going to be consequences again. 01:44:29.120 --> 01:44:31.840 That's the only way to clean house is for there to be 01:44:31.840 --> 01:44:34.560 real material consequences. 01:44:34.560 --> 01:44:38.080 And it's up to the president and the Congress and the court 01:44:38.080 --> 01:44:40.800 system to sort out what those penalties are. 01:44:40.800 --> 01:44:42.320 And they're going to make a mess of it. 01:44:42.320 --> 01:44:44.720 They're not going to do nearly as good a job as they 01:44:44.720 --> 01:44:47.680 should. But it's their job to try to get those things right 01:44:47.840 --> 01:44:49.840 and God will hold them to account. 01:44:49.840 --> 01:44:53.120 We cannot get in their way as Christians by saying, no, no, 01:44:53.120 --> 01:44:54.560 you have to have mercy. 01:44:54.560 --> 01:44:56.640 No, absolutely not. 01:44:56.640 --> 01:45:00.720 The mercy that is necessary is baked into the system to make 01:45:00.720 --> 01:45:01.920 sure that the just 01:45:02.880 --> 01:45:08.880 are found innocent, found not guilty, and the unjust are found guilty. 01:45:08.880 --> 01:45:12.160 That's the extent of the mercy in the justice system when it's 01:45:12.160 --> 01:45:15.280 functioning properly. 01:45:15.280 --> 01:45:19.680 As Christians, in the coming year and in the coming decade, we're 01:45:19.680 --> 01:45:24.960 gonna have to understand that the beatitudes are interpersonal and they're about 01:45:24.960 --> 01:45:26.400 our relationship with God. 01:45:26.400 --> 01:45:28.400 They're not about how you run a country. 01:45:28.400 --> 01:45:29.360 They're just not. 01:45:29.360 --> 01:45:31.200 There's wisdom there that applies. 01:45:31.200 --> 01:45:34.480 But to proof text and say, Blessed are the merciful, therefore you 01:45:34.480 --> 01:45:36.240 have to show mercy to everyone who commits a crime 01:45:37.120 --> 01:45:38.800 Satan is talking that way. 01:45:38.800 --> 01:45:39.920 That's what Satan wants. 01:45:39.920 --> 01:45:44.080 That is Satan quoting scripture to burn down civilization. 01:45:44.080 --> 01:45:46.720 We're not going to make it if we act like that. 01:45:46.720 --> 01:45:49.840 And the point of this episode, the point of creating this sort 01:45:49.840 --> 01:45:53.040 of crisis, I mentioned at the beginning that I noticed the etymology 01:45:53.040 --> 01:45:55.280 of crisis has to do with judgment. 01:45:55.440 --> 01:45:59.040 Going back far enough, it's related to judgment result of trial. 01:45:59.040 --> 01:46:02.320 It basically has to do with it was a medical context. 01:46:02.320 --> 01:46:05.040 The moment of crisis where, you know, a fever is about to 01:46:05.040 --> 01:46:08.560 break, where someone is so sick they're basically a rock bottom and 01:46:08.560 --> 01:46:12.960 they've reached the point medically where in the medical crisis were either 01:46:12.960 --> 01:46:16.000 they're going to die or they're gonna recover. 01:46:16.000 --> 01:46:18.320 That is related to judgment. 01:46:18.320 --> 01:46:21.920 That's what we have with these situations that have to be judged. 01:46:21.920 --> 01:46:23.840 It's the moment of truth, basically. 01:46:23.840 --> 01:46:25.840 A crisis is a moment of truth. 01:46:25.840 --> 01:46:29.200 These questions that are arising, in some cases a stone choir is 01:46:29.280 --> 01:46:31.280 forcing, are moments of truth. 01:46:31.280 --> 01:46:32.880 Which direction are we gonna go? 01:46:32.880 --> 01:46:36.320 Are we gonna say that God was sinning and we've evolved to 01:46:36.320 --> 01:46:39.520 some new species that has transcended the moral law? 01:46:39.520 --> 01:46:42.640 That's what the pastors are saying, that's what the churches are saying 01:46:42.720 --> 01:46:46.560 overwhelmingly. We are not wicked like the Bible, we are new and 01:46:46.560 --> 01:46:47.680 more moral. 01:46:47.680 --> 01:46:50.080 It sounds silly when I say it that way or in Corey 01:46:50.240 --> 01:46:52.640 says it that way, but when you look at their actual pronouncements, 01:46:52.640 --> 01:46:53.600 that's how it works. 01:46:53.600 --> 01:46:56.480 When you write down what's in the Bible and you write down 01:46:56.480 --> 01:47:00.320 the things that they're condemning, one of them is wrong. 01:47:00.320 --> 01:47:01.440 That's a crisis. 01:47:01.440 --> 01:47:04.240 That's a moment of judgment for us as Christians, for us as 01:47:04.240 --> 01:47:05.040 a church. 01:47:05.040 --> 01:47:07.040 Are we going to make it or not? 01:47:07.040 --> 01:47:10.400 And there's no promise to any individual or to any individual congregation 01:47:10.400 --> 01:47:15.600 or to any denomination that God will preserve us through our apostasy. 01:47:15.600 --> 01:47:19.040 The only way that we as Christians make it through this, as 01:47:19.040 --> 01:47:22.640 Christians in the faith, is to stick to what God says. 01:47:22.640 --> 01:47:25.760 And the only way that our nation makes it through this crisis 01:47:26.000 --> 01:47:30.400 is if we make sure that the churches and the clerics do 01:47:30.400 --> 01:47:35.200 not interfere with the political process when they are implementing justice. 01:47:35.200 --> 01:47:39.600 We have had years and decades, and in some cases centuries now, 01:47:39.600 --> 01:47:42.320 of injustice in the political realm. 01:47:42.320 --> 01:47:45.760 If we're going to survive as a polity, those things are going 01:47:45.760 --> 01:47:46.720 to have to change. 01:47:46.720 --> 01:47:48.960 And it's going to make some people sad. 01:47:48.960 --> 01:47:51.120 And some people are going to get hurt. 01:47:51.120 --> 01:47:54.880 When there's retribution, that means that someone gets hurt. 01:47:54.880 --> 01:47:58.960 And the hard part about understanding justice is that it is a 01:47:58.960 --> 01:48:02.800 case where two wrongs are actually making a right. 01:48:02.800 --> 01:48:07.120 That's what that passage in Colossians is about in Colossians two. 01:48:07.120 --> 01:48:11.200 All of our sins were nailed to the cross on Jesus, on 01:48:11.200 --> 01:48:14.320 his body, in his flesh, he suffered bodily. 01:48:14.320 --> 01:48:18.000 That was our wrongs in the injustice that was done to him 01:48:18.400 --> 01:48:19.840 balance each other out. 01:48:19.840 --> 01:48:21.280 It's neutralized. 01:48:21.280 --> 01:48:24.720 Two wrongs in this case are actually making a right. 01:48:24.720 --> 01:48:28.880 Justice is about saying you did something evil, evil is going to 01:48:28.880 --> 01:48:30.800 be visited upon you. 01:48:30.800 --> 01:48:33.760 That's why it's crucial that this isn't an individual matter. 01:48:33.760 --> 01:48:35.680 This is strictly a political matter. 01:48:35.680 --> 01:48:38.480 That's why the interference of clerics is so dire. 01:48:38.480 --> 01:48:42.000 They're used to dealing with individual men and individual sins. 01:48:42.000 --> 01:48:46.080 When we're dealing with the political, it's a completely different matter. 01:48:46.080 --> 01:48:48.720 Not that wisdom's out the window, not that 01:48:49.600 --> 01:48:51.760 God's law is out the window. 01:48:51.760 --> 01:48:55.120 It's that when you actually look at God's requirements, we're not going 01:48:55.120 --> 01:48:56.640 nearly far enough. 01:48:56.640 --> 01:48:59.200 We're gonna have to get back there if we're gonna make it. 01:48:59.200 --> 01:49:02.960 Christians, if we're going to be participants in the political realm, are 01:49:02.960 --> 01:49:05.120 going to have to say what God says. 01:49:05.280 --> 01:49:08.080 That's gonna mean getting harder about this stuff than we have in 01:49:08.080 --> 01:49:08.960 the past. 01:49:08.960 --> 01:49:13.680 It's gonna be about making political compromises that we find distasteful and 01:49:13.680 --> 01:49:16.480 that our goal should be ten years, twenty years down the road, 01:49:16.480 --> 01:49:19.440 we can do do a whole lot better than we are right 01:49:19.440 --> 01:49:22.640 now. But until we get there, we still have to do something. 01:49:22.640 --> 01:49:24.400 We can't just throw up our hands and say, well, this is 01:49:24.400 --> 01:49:24.960 all disgusting. 01:49:24.960 --> 01:49:26.240 I'm I'm above all this. 01:49:26.240 --> 01:49:29.280 No. Our country's being burned down by wicked men. 01:49:29.280 --> 01:49:31.040 They want us as Christians to check out. 01:49:31.440 --> 01:49:34.400 They want us to hold our noses and just walk away in 01:49:34.400 --> 01:49:37.840 disgust. We have to show up because of the moral voices who 01:49:37.840 --> 01:49:41.680 actually care about God either snipe from the sidelines or 01:49:42.560 --> 01:49:45.440 say what Satan says about just no show mercy. 01:49:45.440 --> 01:49:46.640 Don't no one's guilty. 01:49:46.880 --> 01:49:48.080 don't punish any sins. 01:49:48.080 --> 01:49:50.160 Don't punish any crimes. 01:49:50.160 --> 01:49:52.320 If we do that, we will lose everything. 01:49:52.320 --> 01:49:53.760 We will lose our nation. 01:49:53.760 --> 01:49:56.400 We will lose Christianity, we will lose our lives, and we will 01:49:56.400 --> 01:49:57.920 lose our souls. 01:49:57.920 --> 01:50:01.120 Stone choirs here is the small part that we can play in 01:50:01.120 --> 01:50:03.280 making sure that doesn't happen. 01:50:03.280 --> 01:50:06.320 So thank you for listening to us because this is hard stuff 01:50:06.320 --> 01:50:06.800 to hear. 01:50:06.800 --> 01:50:09.440 There's a heavy episode to end the year on. 01:50:09.440 --> 01:50:14.000 But if these things are not kept in mind as these discussions 01:50:14.000 --> 01:50:16.160 unfold, everyone's going to be tricked. 01:50:16.160 --> 01:50:19.600 Because everyone's going to be shouting about Jesus and what Jesus wants. 01:50:19.600 --> 01:50:22.240 And as Christians, that should be the most important thing to us. 01:50:22.240 --> 01:50:25.920 And in fact, this episode is about what Jesus wants. 01:50:25.920 --> 01:50:30.960 Jesus who caused the flood and killed everyone but eight people, Jesus 01:50:31.040 --> 01:50:34.160 who's returning on the last day to kill everyone who's not the 01:50:34.480 --> 01:50:38.400 elect, to wipe away everything in fire, that's God. 01:50:38.400 --> 01:50:40.000 That's justice. 01:50:40.000 --> 01:50:41.680 That's God's justice. 01:50:41.680 --> 01:50:43.280 That's not sin. 01:50:43.280 --> 01:50:47.280 If we can't look at that and praise God, we have spiritual 01:50:47.280 --> 01:50:51.200 problems. And if we can't understand this in the political context, we're 01:50:51.200 --> 01:50:55.120 gonna have lives that are bad until the end. 01:50:55.120 --> 01:50:58.560 So please keep these things in mind as you hear other people 01:50:58.720 --> 01:51:00.560 talking about completely different things. 01:51:00.640 --> 01:51:03.520 They're going to go in a whole nother direction, but they're always 01:51:03.520 --> 01:51:05.440 going to cry barabbas, barabbas. 01:51:05.440 --> 01:51:07.360 At the end of the day, that's what it's going to be. 01:51:07.360 --> 01:51:12.320 Don't hold the guilty to account and punish people who haven't actually 01:51:12.320 --> 01:51:13.680 done anything wrong at all. 01:51:13.680 --> 01:51:15.200 That's where we are spiritually. 01:51:15.520 --> 01:51:18.160 That's Satan versus God in a nutshell. 01:51:18.160 --> 01:51:20.080 It's been that way since the garden. 01:51:20.080 --> 01:51:23.440 It was that way in the courtyard when the brain crowd called 01:51:23.440 --> 01:51:26.080 for Christ's blood and when he was crucified. 01:51:26.080 --> 01:51:29.040 And it's that way today in our courts and on TV and 01:51:29.040 --> 01:51:30.160 everywhere we look. 01:51:30.160 --> 01:51:32.080 And as Christians, we should know better. 01:51:32.080 --> 01:51:35.360 We should recognize all of this and have a voice that speaks 01:51:35.360 --> 01:51:38.000 and says, This is what God wants from us. 01:51:38.000 --> 01:51:41.760 If our churches, if our pastors fail, Christian men still have a 01:51:41.760 --> 01:51:46.160 duty to obey God, and the consequences are up to God. 01:51:46.160 --> 01:51:47.360 We belong to Him. 01:51:47.360 --> 01:51:51.040 Good or ill, we have to do what is right, and God 01:51:51.040 --> 01:51:54.640 will take care of the rest. 01:51:54.640 --> 01:51:54.800 And 01:51:54.800 --> 01:51:57.840 so here at the end of the year, I want to leave 01:51:57.840 --> 01:52:02.800 you with four short readings from Scripture and one thing to think 01:52:02.800 --> 01:52:06.400 about as you're reading Scripture, and I do recommend that you go 01:52:06.400 --> 01:52:11.360 and look up these sections of scripture and read the context, read 01:52:11.360 --> 01:52:14.400 the entire chapter, read the entire book if you happen to have 01:52:14.400 --> 01:52:15.280 the time. 01:52:15.280 --> 01:52:17.840 Some of them are not very long. 01:52:17.840 --> 01:52:22.160 I'm going to read from Zechariah, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and Micah. 01:52:22.160 --> 01:52:24.960 You can go and find the sections for yourself. 01:52:24.960 --> 01:52:28.160 It'll be a good exercise in reading through scripture. 01:52:28.160 --> 01:52:31.280 But what I want you to think about when you listen to 01:52:31.280 --> 01:52:34.800 what I'm about to read, and when you read scripture on your 01:52:34.800 --> 01:52:41.120 own, is that righteousness and justice are two closely related concepts, but 01:52:41.120 --> 01:52:43.360 they are also distinct. 01:52:43.360 --> 01:52:45.360 We cannot conflate them. 01:52:45.680 --> 01:52:48.320 When we conflate them we wind up with the same sort of 01:52:48.320 --> 01:52:54.240 problems that we see when justice and mercy are conflated, or used 01:52:54.240 --> 01:52:57.120 inappropriately where they should not be used. 01:52:59.200 --> 01:53:02.560 Incidentally, in the Greek, these are very closely related terms, which you 01:53:02.560 --> 01:53:06.480 can certainly look up if you are so inclined. 01:53:06.480 --> 01:53:09.920 But the first two readings, and I will actually be reading the 01:53:09.920 --> 01:53:12.960 third reading in two different versions because I want you to note 01:53:12.960 --> 01:53:16.480 something about the language that is used in I will be reading 01:53:16.480 --> 01:53:20.000 from the ESV for the first and then a more literal translation 01:53:20.000 --> 01:53:22.480 of the Septuagint for the second. 01:53:22.480 --> 01:53:26.000 But the first reading And the word of the Lord came to 01:53:26.000 --> 01:53:32.160 Zechariah saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show 01:53:32.160 --> 01:53:35.920 kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the 01:53:35.920 --> 01:53:40.000 fatherless, the sojourner or the poor, and let none of you devise 01:53:40.000 --> 01:53:43.200 evil against another in your heart. 01:53:43.200 --> 01:53:44.800 The second reading 01:53:46.080 --> 01:53:51.120 You shall not pervert justice, you shall not show partiality, and you 01:53:51.120 --> 01:53:54.720 shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of 01:53:54.720 --> 01:53:58.320 the wise, and subverts the cause of the righteous. 01:53:58.320 --> 01:54:02.560 Justice and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and 01:54:02.560 --> 01:54:07.360 inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 01:54:07.360 --> 01:54:09.280 The third reading. 01:54:09.280 --> 01:54:15.440 Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the 01:54:15.440 --> 01:54:18.720 fatherless, plead the widow's cause. 01:54:18.720 --> 01:54:23.280 The same reading, in a more literal translation of the Septuagint. 01:54:23.280 --> 01:54:28.240 Learn to do good, seek out fair judgment, resign Rescue one who 01:54:28.240 --> 01:54:32.640 has been wronged, give a fair judgment to the orphan, and vindicate 01:54:32.640 --> 01:54:35.120 the widow. 01:54:35.120 --> 01:54:37.760 And the fourth and final reading, and this is one that I 01:54:37.760 --> 01:54:42.800 actually recommend, go read the entire book and memorize at least this 01:54:42.800 --> 01:54:45.360 specific portion. 01:54:45.360 --> 01:54:48.960 He has told you, O man what is good, and what does 01:54:48.960 --> 01:54:53.040 the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love 01:54:53.040 --> 01:54:57.680 kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. 01:54:57.680 --> 01:55:05.600 Amen.