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The Power of Imposed Law (the power of the state)
In this six-part series, we are exploring the six powers of Satan and how to overcome them. These six powers of Satan are:
- Lies—he is the father of lies
- The kingdoms of the world with their imposed law with coercive enforcement—he is the prince of this world
- Worldly economics—mammon, the false god of money, buying, selling, and owning
- Accusations—he is the “satan,” the accuser
- Temptation and division—he is the devil, the ancient serpent who tempts and divides
- Death and destruction—he is the destroyer whose powers result in death
In part one of our series, we examined the power of lies—how lies that are believed break the circle of love and trust and result in fear and selfishness, and how every human born after Adam’s sin is born infected with fear and selfishness.
This fear-driven, me-first survival instinct is the energizing motivator of the dark-side, and all of Satan’s various powers are used to increase fear and inflame selfishness, which gives him greater control over people—ultimately destroying love and the fruits of the Spirit out of the hearts of those who turn to self and practice selfish methods to cope with the fear.
Here in part two, we examine Satan’s second power, which is the power of imposed law and coercive enforcement—the power of worldly government. This is why Satan is known as the prince of this world; all the governments of the world throughout all history have embraced his view of law and his view of justice, which is making up rules and enforcing them with the infliction of punishment.
The Power of Imposed Law
Satan’s kingdom is external—people using force, might, power over others to control, dominate, and compel compliance. But Jesus said that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Jesus’ kingdom is internal; it is the kingdom of love, truth, freedom, the design protocols for life that our Creator God writes on our hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10) to transform the character.
God’s laws are not made-up rules to be enforced externally. God is Creator, and His laws are the laws upon which reality operates, upon which life is constructed to function, and God’s works to restore people back to life, to harmony with His design. This can never happen by the use of Satan’s methods, by the use of man-made laws, by coercive enforcement, by inflicted punishment.
This is why Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews” (John 18:36 NIV84). Notice the difference: Satan’s agents used force, legal authority, the power of the state to arrest Jesus, put Him on trial, find Him legally guilty of breaking their made-up laws, sentence Him to death, beat Him, mock Him, and kill Him. But Jesus said that is not how His kingdom operates; if it were, His followers would fight.
Jesus did not dispute Satan’s claim to being the ruler of all the kingdoms of this world. Why? Because every earthly government operates upon made-up imposed rules and laws that require judicial oversight and external enforcement through the infliction of punishment.
The rule of law with externally imposed punishment—the kingdoms of this world—is Satan’s second power.
Satan combines his first two powers, lies and the rule of law, so effectively that, essentially, the entire world believes that God’s government in heaven operates like human governments on Earth. This is why the Bible uses the symbol of Babylon to represent the queen of Satan’s domain, the Mother of Harlots, the progenitor of those who are unfaithful to God yet claim to be representing Him.
Why is Babylon chosen as the queenly symbol of Satan’s domain? Because of all the nations that assailed Israel in Old Testament times, Babylon was the first with a formal legal code, the Code of Hammurabi. (I recently wrote the blog Babylon, the Mother of Harlots—It’s Time to Come Out! where I describe this in detail.)
Let’s now explore further the idea of imposed law, made-up rules, placed upon a people and coercively enforced through external punishments as being Satan’s invention for rulership; it is his method of governing. God is the Creator of reality, and His laws are the laws built into the fabric of the cosmos itself and upon which life and health are constructed to operate.
These design laws are many, and if you haven’t read my blog about them, I encourage you to do so. These design protocols include the laws of physics, gravity, the laws of health, and the moral laws. Whenever someone violates a design law, they damage themselves and, without remedy, the violation will eventually result in death.
If a person jumps into a lake with weights tied to their feet, they violate the law of respiration, and without intervention, the result is death. All of God’s laws work in this manner. When Adam sinned, he left the safety of God’s laws of life; he corrupted himself and began to die and, without God’s intervention, he and all humans would die of unremedied sin (fear and selfishness).
Therefore, God sent Jesus to reveal the truth about God, which destroys the lies infecting our minds and wins us back to trust. Furthermore, Jesus also came and took up humanity broken, damaged by sin and infected with fear and selfishness; as a human being, He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet He was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). With a human brain, human mind, and human abilities, Jesus overcame fear and selfishness and loved perfectly, even when faced with death on the cross. In doing so, He restored God’s design principles for life back into the human species and, thus, He became the second Adam, the second head of humanity, the connecting link to God’s kingdom, which doesn’t operate upon imposed rules and imposed punishment but on design law.
But those who accept the wine of Babylon, the lies about God—that His laws function like human laws, imposed rules that require imposed punishments—distort all Christ came and achieved, and they continue to spread the lie that God’s law functions like human law. This obstructs God’s healing of hearts and minds.
Why? Drunk on its wine, Babylon-inspired Christianity teaches the lie that sin in our hearts and minds isn’t the actual problem from which we need to be saved; rather, it is the punishment that God is legally required to inflict upon us that we need to be saved from—what many call His “wrath.” Rather than teaching what John the Baptist taught, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), mainstream Christianity has been falsely teaching that Jesus came to take away the inflicted punishment from God for sin.
This prevents God’s love from healing our hearts! By embracing the false rule-of-law view of justice, millions have been duped into turning away from loving people, what Jesus and the apostles taught, and, instead, are investing their energy in seeking “justice” through human governments and human law to impose their morality and coerce others to embrace it.
Satan exploits us with fear, which leads to selfishness—the desire to comfort ourselves at the expense of others. It is this fear that drives people to make up rules and use power to force others to comply with those rules. Whether the rules are through actual governments or merely the rules of the hood, it is the same dynamic: fear driving people to make rules in order to have power over others and to make themselves feel powerful and safe.
It is our fear of being robbed, being cheated, being abused, being exploited in some form or fashion that leads us to make up rules (laws) that we demand others live by. We enforce our legal demands through threats of punishment—whether fines, beatings, imprisonment, or death. (This is exactly how the worldly powers treated Jesus and His apostles, yet they refused to allow their hearts to be infected with such corrupt methods and, instead, they forgave all who mistreated them and never taught their followers to use worldly governments or imposed laws or coercive enforcement to advance the kingdom of God. Why? Because all worldly governments are part of Satan’s kingdom.) This threat of legal trouble incites fear, so people comply.
But if people do not agree with the current laws then, while they behaviorally comply to avoid being punished, they seek to gain more power for themselves in order to replace the current ruling authority and to change the laws to ones they like better; they then turn around and punish those who won’t comply with their newly made-up rules. And, thus, the world constantly fights—nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, political party against political party—yet all are equally deceived into believing that “if we can only get the right laws passed, the right judges, the right elected officials, the right police force, the right people arrested and imprisoned, then we can have justice, safety, and security.”
It is all a lie—the wine of Babylon; whether you are politically left or politically right, God is calling you out of Babylon, out of Satan’s kingdom of imposed law, and into His kingdom of love, truth, and freedom.
And for those who leave Babylon, we are not left under the powers of our enemy. The Bible says about Jesus:
- Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15 NIV84).
- No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37–39 NIV84).
The most important point to realize is that all of Satan’s powers exploit or magnify fear, and what casts out all fear? Love! It is God’s love in our hearts that is the key, being loved and loving others. Satan wants to separate us from God’s love and truth—but if we remain in God’s love, we are more than conquerors. But without love, real love, we will be destroyed by fear; all of Satan’s powers incite fear and his methods of governing are self-centered ways of trying to cope with that fear.
It is the truth and love of God revealed at the cross that destroys the lies of Satan and wins us back to trust. Then in trust, we open our hearts and God pours His love into our hearts (Romans 5:5). And His perfect love casts out all fear. Those who have God’s law written on their hearts live free of the control of the state—they live to glorify God by love for Him and love for their fellow man. They do what is right because it is right, because it is in harmony with God and His designs for life. And the contrast is sharp for all to see:
- Those who hid Anne Frank were breaking the laws of their land, while those who killed her were obeying them.
- Those who sought to kill Martin Luther were obeying the laws of their land, while those who protected and hid him were breaking them.
- Those who enslaved people throughout history were obeying the laws of their land. Those who helped the slaves escape to freedom were disobeying them.
- Those who discriminated against black people under Jim Crow were obeying the laws of the land. Those who treated them as equals were disobeying them.
We will never achieve God’s goal of a kingdom of perfect peace, perfect security, perfect safety—a kingdom free of fear, free of sin, free of exploitation and abuse—by using Satan’s methods. We must come out of Babylon. We must reject imposed law as a means of justice. We must know God and have His law written upon our hearts so that we love Him supremely and no longer give in to fear and try to make ourselves feel safe through more human law or changing human government.
So come out of Babylon and into the kingdom of God!
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