All Laws Are Powerless. Here’s Why.
A Poll
On Thursday, the popular conservative media organization Prager University posted a poll on YouTube:
The poll prompts responders to answer in one of three ways about the U.S. Constitution: “It’s incredible,” “It’s fine,” or “It’s horrible; start over.” As of the writing of this article, with 94K votes, the results are 81% for incredible, 14% for fine, and 5% for horrible.
Whenever I see polls like this, I presume that they do more to gauge the audience of a particular content creator than to say anything about the opinions of society at large. Still, it’s interesting, and it’s a conversation starter—which, in PragerU’s case, is probably the real purpose.
One such “conversation” got started in the comments section when someone opined about the Constitution, “Can’t be that incredible if it let this sh** come to fruition” (censor added). So, basically, the idea is this: if the U.S. Constitution were so wonderful, it would have prevented the nation from descending into its current state—divided, distanced from its founding principles, etc.—these 233 years later.
That raises an important question: does the fact of the U.S.’s departure from its origins mean that the Constitution has failed?
An Illustration
In an interview conducted last year by Pastor George Lawson Jr. of Baltimore Bible Church, Just Thinking Podcast hosts Darrell Harrison and Virgil Walker made some insightful comments that bear on this issue. The discussion had come to the topic of sin, and whether legislation can help deal with the problem of sin. Harrison offered an illustration.
“George,” he said, “when you’re driving . . . you come to a traffic light, the light is red. Chances are you’re going to stop, right? The light is red, you’re probably going to stop your car. I say ‘probably,’ because you don’t have to stop. You can make a decision not to stop. The physical traffic light has no bearing on stopping your vehicle, does it?”
“Right,” Lawson agreed.
“You come to a stop sign,” Harrison continued, “You know what the stop sign means, but the stop sign cannot force you to stop your vehicle. You have to make a volitional decision to stop your vehicle, to put your foot on the brakes and stop that car. And not only that. When your light turns from red to green, you hope . . . the drivers going in the opposite direction — when their light is red, you hope they stop! But there’s no guarantee they will stop. Right? My point is this: the law itself is inherently impotent . . . apart from hearts and minds that make willful, volitional decisions to obey the law. That’s what creates a just society - is when you obey the law. The laws themselves mean nothing apart from a heart and mind that willingly and volitionally chooses to obey that law . . .”
This concept is simple and self-evident, but not something we tend to acknowledge much. In fact, all too often, we in our culture tend to call for legislative action as though a problem will be solved by merely passing a law. This impulse is exactly what Harrison was speaking to. It’s vanity; it won’t work. True, the penalty of law may (and likely will) deter some, and deterrence is indeed one important use of the law, but there is no guarantee that the threat of punishment will be enough to deter anyone from committing a given act. How do we know that to be true? Because people commit crimes all the time! Any time someone commits a crime, it means they were undeterred by the possibility of punishment. Even if the criminal only did the crime because he was convinced he would get away with it, that only further illustrates the point: the existence of the law could do nothing to stop him.
On the Constitution
Now apply that to the discussion of the U.S. Constitution. Even if the Constitution were perfect—the “greatest human document,” as conservatives are fond of saying—would it be able to ensure that the people it governs would continue to live according to its precepts? No, it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. That’s not something that a constitution, or any law, can do. Laws are powerless to make people obey.
In the same aforementioned interview, Walker also added to this discussion with an important observation:
“We’re talking about man-made laws — man-made instituted laws into the culture that are supposed to be in place to keep us from doing x, y, or z. When we talk about ‘law’ scripturally, we’re talking about the law of God, the Word of God . . . And what we see here in [Romans 8] verse 3 [is], ‘For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.’ The law of God was weak, it could not do it! Why? Because the flesh desired to do something totally different. If that’s the case with the law of God, how much more the case with man-made instituted laws?”
So yes, even God’s law is powerless to keep people from sinning. And if that’s true of God’s law—which really is perfect (Psalm 19:7 literally says, “The law of the LORD is perfect“)—then it’s certainly true of a man-made constitution. For even a perfect law to mean anything in practice, people have to be the kind of people who will obey it.
The Founders knew this to be the case. As John Adams acknowledged in his often-quoted remark, “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Simply put, a good law is only effective in conjunction with a good people. That means the sad state of our nation right now has less to do with the Constitution and more to do with the people we have become. And if the issue is not the law itself but the type of people we are, then we must ask: how can we be a people who would be worthy of a good law?
A Good People
The answer to that is found in that passage Walker mentioned. Here’s some additional context:
“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 7:22-8:4 ESV)
So, the writer of this passage (Paul the apostle) relates how he struggles to follow the law of God, despite his desire to do so. The reason he struggles? There’s another “law” at work: sin. Due to his own sinful nature (a.k.a. “flesh”), Paul cannot follow God’s law. There is nothing that he can do to guarantee his obedience, and there’s nothing that God’s law itself can do to guarantee his obedience. What’s the way out of this dilemma? The way out, he exclaims, is Jesus Christ. First, he notes that there is no condemnation for those in Christ; whoever is “in Christ” has forgiveness for their transgressions against God’s law. Second, he notes that the “Spirit of life” (the Holy Spirit) has set free those who are in Christ. Free from what? From that “law” of sin; in other words, from being enslaved to the flesh, that sinful nature. So, through Christ, God did what His own law was incapable of doing: He made it possible to obey the law. And He did this by transforming the person, making him or her a person who is identified as a person “who walk[s] not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” That is who a person is, if he or she is in Christ.
What does it mean to be in Christ? It means to be a believer and follower of Jesus. It means to acknowledge your sin before God and your incapability to redeem yourself; to turn from your life of sin; and to trust completely that the death of Jesus, God incarnate, paid the penalty for your sin, and that Jesus came back to life, indicating both His victory over death, and a new life for those who believe in Him. If and when you repent and believe in this manner, you have experienced what Jesus called being “born again”; the Holy Spirit has transformed you into a new person. So, that’s what Paul is talking about: a person who has been transformed in this way has been made into the kind of person who can obey God’s law.
...So what about the U.S. Constitution? The principle is the same. No righteous law can be consistently obeyed by an unrighteous person, let alone by a nation of unrighteous people. A righteous law can only be consistently obeyed by righteous people, and people can only be righteous if they are in Christ. In other words, obedience to the law of God and obedience to the U.S. Constitution (insofar as it is consistent with the law of God) is made possible by the same thing: the good news of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Needless to say, that does not characterize our nation today. We are not a good people. — On the contrary, we are a people coming under judgment. Indeed, it may be too late for our nation to recover. But if a recovery is to happen, it will only happen “in Christ.”