We’ve been sold a lie about freedom.
Modern liberalism tells us that liberty means being left alone to do whatever we please, provided we don’t “harm” anyone else. The government, we’re told, exists to protect individual rights, enforce contracts, and prevent violence while remaining neutral to concepts such as “good” and “evil.”
But here’s the problem: There is no such thing as a morally neutral government. Every law makes a moral judgement. It decides what may be done and what should not be done.
As such, the question isn’t whether the government will legislate morality. It already does. The question is, whose morality will it legislate?
Speaking of civil authority, the Apostle Paul tells us, “he is God’s servant for your good, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
Don’t overlook the first part of that sentence. He is God’s servant—or deacon—for your good.
The magistrate isn’t a neutral referee whose only legitimate function is preventing citizens from physically harming one another. He is God’s minister, entrusted with the sword for the good of those under his authority.
“For your good.”
This should come as no surprise, really. Christ commands every Christian to love his neighbour as himself. We usually think of that as a private moral obligation. But Paul connects neighbour-love directly to civil authority.
“Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom. 13:10)
Notice the context here. Just a few verses earlier, Paul described the magistrate as God’s servant. The one who bears the sword against the wrongdoer. That’s the context in which Paul is speaking.
The magistrate is God’s servant for our good, and love seeks the good of our neighbour.
As such, a ruler who loves his neighbour doesn’t merely wish him well. He protects the innocent, restrains wrongdoing, and punishes evil.
If one man is about to murder another, love doesn’t stand aside and say, “Who am I to impose my morality on him? After all, he may not even be a Christian.” No. Love intervenes.
If a child is being abused, love doesn’t turn a blind eye and call it tolerance. It acts to stop the abuser.
If thieves are preying upon the community, the magistrate doesn’t love his neighbours by leaving the victims to fend for themselves. He uses force to impose a morality on the guilty, regardless of their personal beliefs.
The magistrate has been granted the special privilege of wielding the sword legally. In other words, he’s been given the right to use legal violence. Not to his own ends, but for the good of the community over which he has authority.
In the Bible, love isn’t merely sentimental. Love seeks the genuine good of others. And the magistrate has been given a particular responsibility to seek the good of those under his authority.
But What Is “Good”?
All of this raises an obvious question. If the civil authority exists to act as God’s minister, for the good of others, then who decides what is good?
The answer can’t be Parliament, or popular opinion, or the prevailing moral sentiments of the age.
Jesus said we are to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). But God never gave civil authorities the right to define or redefine good and evil. That authority belongs to God alone. (Isa. 5:20; Rom. 13:3–4).
“Sin is transgression of the law” (1 Jn. 3:4). God’s law establishes the moral order. The magistrate doesn’t create that order; he is accountable to it.
This is one of the greatest differences between Christian government and modern secular governments. The Christian magistrate doesn’t possess ultimate authority to declare whatever he likes to be good and whatever he dislikes to be evil. Neither does he possess the freedom to declare evil good simply because the people demand it.
He is himself under authority, and the basis of that authority is not the demands of the masses. King Saul lost his kingdom after he “feared the people and obeyed their voice” (1 Sam. 15:24). The democratic vote is not a licence for civil rulers to disobey God’s decree.
Rulers answer to God first and foremost, not the people. And they are to exercise their authority consistent with God’s law.
So, when a politician asks, “Who am I to legislate morality?” the answer is simple: You’re already doing it. Every statute embodies a moral judgment. The only question is whether that judgment corresponds to reality; that is, whether it reflects God’s righteous order or merely the ever-shifting morality of the moment.
The Sword and the Soul
None of this means that the magistrate should police people’s thoughts. Of course, that is an impossible task. The state can’t see the heart. It can’t regenerate sinners, create faith, or compel genuine repentance before God.
But the fact that the magistrate can’t judge the heart doesn’t mean he can’t judge conduct. And just because the power of conversion belongs to the Gospel does not mean that the civil magistrate has no meaningful role to play in society.
In fact, his position presupposes a world that consists of deadly, unregenerate men against whom he is to wield the sword for the good of others.
David understood this as king. He said, “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless… I will destroy all the wicked in the land” (Psa. 101:3, 8).
The magistrate doesn’t govern the soul, but he does govern society. And that society is largely shaped by what it permits in public.
What society tolerates becomes commonplace. What becomes commonplace becomes respectable. What becomes respectable is eventually celebrated, institutionalised, and taught to the next generation—not only as normal, but as a moral good.
While God’s laws are chiefly concerned with the soul, when it comes to civil penalties, the issue is largely publicly provable sin. There can be no civil charge without sufficient witnesses to establish wrongdoing. Consider the woman caught in adultery in John 8.
Jesus pardoned her, not because she was innocent, and not because He lowered the standard of God’s law, nor because He was being “gracious” rather than obedient to God. Jesus pardoned her because her accusers had failed to satisfy the legal requirements for bringing a charge.
Under the law, the witnesses were required not only to throw the first stone (Deut. 17:6–7), but also to suffer the same penalty if their accusation is ever proved false (Deut. 19:16-19).
It’s a high standard, and rightly so. As such, the penalties were largely reserved for blatant and indisputable public displays of sin, because when evil is publicly tolerated, community standards are lowered. And when community standards are lowered, people collectively suffer.
The magistrate therefore has legitimate concern for the moral conditions of the society he governs—not because he can save souls, but because wickedness damages communities as well as individuals.
Sin Is Not Freedom
Today, modern liberalism often treats consent as the decisive moral category. If two adults freely choose something, we’re told, the government should have nothing to say about it.
But consent does not make something good. A man can freely choose his own destruction. And this is exactly what sin does.
Jesus said, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (Jn. 8:34). While sin promises liberty, it produces slavery.
The drunkard isn’t free because he drinks voluntarily. The adulterer isn’t liberated because his affair has become a social norm. The man enslaved to lust isn’t free because nobody forced him into it. The drug addict isn’t a picture of liberation, but a vivid example of bondage.
Sin is slavery because it places man under the dominion of something other than God. That’s why Christian freedom is radically different to the modern liberal conception of “freedom.”
Freedom isn’t licence. Freedom isn’t the legal permission to do whatever you want. Freedom is the liberty to do what is good.
As the Apostle Paul said, “Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery… Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13).
Biblical liberty has a purpose. It is freedom for righteousness.
When Moses demanded that Pharaoh let the Hebrews go, it wasn’t so they could become their own masters. It was so they could be freed from the king of Egypt to serve the King of Glory instead (Ex. 8:1; cf. Ex. 9:1).
The truly free man isn’t the man who can indulge every appetite without legal interference. He is the man who is free to pursue what is good without being hindered by unjust coercion.
Law Protects Freedom
Every law restrains something. The question is what it restrains, and what it protects.
A law against theft restrains the thief and protects the neighbour’s property. A law against violence restrains the violent man and protects the innocent. A law protecting children restrains the abusers and protects the child.
Law restrains the wrongdoer, not the innocent, by giving civil authorities the lawful right to wield the sword against those who do evil for the protection of the innocent.
In a sinful world, inhabited by sinful men, restraint is precisely what makes ordered liberty possible. A fence around a cliff restricts movement, but nobody thinks the fence exists to oppress the public and stifle their freedom of movement.
In the same way, the magistrate doesn’t fulfil his calling by maximising the number of things people are legally permitted to do. He fulfils it by upholding justice and protecting the good—not as he defines it, nor as the public defines it, but as God defines it.
This is why the Bible says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pro. 14:34).
A ruler who refuses to restrain wickedness simply because wickedness is popular isn’t being tolerant or impartial. He is abandoning his God-given responsibility and abdicating his duty.
Punishment Teaches
Biblical justice also recognises that punishment has a public informative purpose. God repeatedly commanded Israel to punish certain forms of wickedness so that others would see and fear.
“All Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you” (Deut. 13:11).
Public executions, even in the Western world, were carried out for this very reason. Not because our grandparents took some morbid pleasure in them, but because they served a social purpose.
The punishment wasn’t merely about the offender. It taught the community. It warned those thinking of doing the same. It reinforced the moral boundaries. And it deterred future wrongdoing.
Paul likewise applies the principle within the context of church authority when he says that public rebuke can act as a deterrent by causing “others also” to fear (1 Tim. 5:20).
The law, therefore, ought to teach society what matters. A law against murder declares that human life is valuable. A law against theft declares that property isn’t yours simply because you want it. A law protecting children declares that the strong aren’t free to prey upon the weak.
And when government refuses to restrain public wickedness, that teaches society something too. It teaches that the conduct is tolerated—or even normal.
And the thing about bad behaviour is, when it’s left unpunished, you only get more of it. As Scripture warns, “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11).
The Magistrate’s Forgotten Duty
Of course, the magistrate is not the church. He cannot save souls. He cannot search the conscience. But neither is he merely a glorified security guard whose only concern is physical harm.
He is God’s minister for good, Paul tells us.
The magistrate is a neighbour too. And he has a particular responsibility to love the neighbours placed under his authority. To love them means seeking their good. To seek their good means protecting the innocent and restraining what has the potential to harm and destroy them.
And because God, not the magistrate, defines good and evil, the magistrate must exercise his authority according to a standard higher than himself.
This doesn’t mean every private sin becomes a matter for the criminal law. It doesn’t mean the state can read minds or compel repentance. It doesn’t mean Parliament can legislate salvation.
What it does mean is that pubic wickedness is not beyond the concern of the magistrate simply because it is “sin.”
When evil becomes outward, public, and socially destructive, the magistrate has a legitimate, and sometimes an obligatory, interest in restraining it.
The sword wasn’t given to make men righteous. Only God can do that. The sword was given to restrain evil, uphold justice, and secure the good of the community.
Nobody is opposed to locking murderers in prison because a jail cell cannot regenerate their hearts. That’s not the purpose of the punishment, but it doesn’t make the punishment any less necessary for the good of society.
So when a ruler wields the sword to defend the innocent—threatening, restraining, and punishing those who would harm them by doing what God has declared evil—he isn't violating the command to love his neighbour.
He is fulfilling it.
For the civil authority, loving your neighbour sometimes means leaving him alone. Sometimes it means protecting him. Sometimes it means warning him. And sometimes it means drawing the sword.
Every magistrate does this.
The only question is whether he will submit his authority to God’s definition of love, justice and the good—or claim the authority to arbitrarily define them for himself.