Can We Legislate Morality?
I’m addressing the question of whether or not we can legislate morality. What does it mean to legislate morality? Do we already legislate morality, and if so, who does?
Of course, I’m addressing this from a biblical perspective. The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, provides lessons and commands regarding morality.
Defining Moral Law
Let’s look at a brief definition of Moral Law according to law.com
Moral law refers to a set of principles or guidelines for behavior that are believed to be universal and inherent, governing the conduct of individuals based on notions of right and wrong.
According to this statement, morality is supposed to govern our conduct based on our notions of right and wrong (more on this last part later).
This is what John Adams, a Founding Father and the second president of the United States of America, had to say:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,"
John Adams
John Adams is here saying that the Constitution, which makes up our basic principles and laws that determine the powers and duties of our government and guarantee our rights as American citizens, is made only for moral people.
We can see then that moral law, or laws, do indeed dictate our behavior and are a part of any nation’s laws. Furthermore, they come from our notions of right and wrong, for good or for evil.
What about breaking down the commandments or laws in the Bible?
The laws in the Bible, whether in the Old or New Testament, would not have been understood by the authors and hearers to be separated into different categories. Even though breaking them down into moral laws, ceremonies, and civil laws can be helpful in our understanding of the laws, they are often intertwined with one another.
To the Jew, every law commanded by God in the Old Testament was moral in the sense that it had moral significance to it.
RC Sproul
For Christians, moral law refers to all of God’s laws that are still applicable today, whether in the Old or New Testament. Those laws define every part of our lives, whether they are about how we relate to God or how we relate to each other.
What About A Government’s Role?
Romans 13:1-2 (NET)
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment.
(emphasis mine)
According to God, we are supposed to be subject to godly government and laws. Here is what the word subject means here:
hupotassesthō/ὑποτασσέσθω:
To subject one's self, obey, 4) to submit to one's control
We see here, then, that we are to obey a godly government. If we do not, we are disobeying God, and He will punish us for that.
There is a reason I keep stressing godly government; as we saw during the COVID lockdowns, many church leaders abused Romans 13 in many ways. Many times, as a reason why churches should have obeyed the government-ordered lockdowns. Even though BLM activists were gathering en mass and looting, some church leaders and Christians even went so far as to condemn anyone unwilling to wear a mask and take the vaccine as disobeying God.
I bring this up because when a government’s laws contradict God’s laws, we Christians have a God-given responsibility to disobey ungodly laws and obey God’s laws instead. We can read examples of this throughout the Book of Acts.
Romans 13:3-6
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.
Further, in Romans 13, we see that a government is godly when it enforces morality. Government servants, such as peace officers or the military, punish those who disobey.
How do we, or anyone else, know if a government is godly? Which laws are good and evil? Why do we even have laws?
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All Governments Legislate Morality
Whether we want to admit it or not, all governments legislate morality.
Not all governments are godly, and many have been downright wicked throughout the ages. We see examples of this in the Bible, from Sodom and Gomorrah to the Canaanites to the nations in the book of Revelation.
We saw this throughout the reign of the Holy Roman Empire, especially under the Roman Catholic Church, which legislated that the only religious beliefs in the West were to be Roman Catholic. The punishments for disagreeing with Roman Catholicism were brutal, and the bloodshed because of Roman Catholic legislation would cover the world in an ocean of blood.
We see this in the nations that held to and still have Communism that outlaws Christianity. We saw this in Nazi Germany, with its hundreds of antisemitic laws, decrees, directives, guidelines, and regulations that were a form of legislating evil morality. How did this legislation get passed? In the same way the Nazi party gained power and influence in the first place, with a lot of help from the church in Germany at that time. Many times, simply by the inaction of the church. (more on this in a bit).
Of course, we see godly forms of government throughout history as well. From the ancient Israelites receiving God’s laws at Mt. Sinai to the Judges in the Book of Judges, the Davidic Kingdom, the Sanhedrin of the Second Temple Period, and even church government.
Referring back to John Adams's quote, the United States of America’s legislation was supposed to be for a moral people.
Whether the wicked rule or the righteous, every single form of government legislates morality, and God holds each nation accountable for how it legislates its people.
Psalm 22:28
For the kingdom is the Lord’s
And He rules over the nations.
Psalm 66:7
He rules by His might forever;
His eyes keep watch on the nations;
Let not the rebellious exalt themselves.
Psalm 82
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
(all emphasis mine)
God Judges Each Nation According To Their Morals
One day, all of the nations of the earth will be judged by Jesus based on their morals:
Joel 3:12
Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
Zechariah 14:3, 12
Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle.
And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
Revelation 19:11-16
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
(Emphasis mine)
I want you to catch that language and fight against those nations; he is clothed in a robe dipped in blood; from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations; he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
That is battle language! This is what God will do to all of the immoral nations on the earth when He returns. Every single nation that is against God will be destroyed.
When Jesus establishes His Kingdom, He will legislate morality.
Zechariah 14:16-17
Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them.
More important than God judging nations in the future is how He judges the nations right now.
God judged Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt, the Canaanites, ancient Israel, and Babylon.
God judged Persia, ancient Greece, and then Rome after them.
These are all nations that set themselves against God and had societies that were extremely wicked and now no longer exist because of God’s judgment against them.
Read more about that here:
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Where Do We Get Our Morals From?
Psalm 19:7
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
Then we should ask, where do we get our morals from?
Are morals just subjective beliefs that differ from culture to culture, religion to religion, and household to household?
If morals are subjective, they aren’t morals; they are simply opinions. For morals to be moral, there must be an objective standard by which to judge morality. There is only one genuinely objective standard: God’s standard.
Romans 2:11
For there is no partiality with God.
Colossians 3:25
For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.
Psalm 19:7-8
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
For anyone, any governing authority, and any nation to truly have an objective set of moral laws by which to govern its people, those laws must be biblically based. Mankind is far too fickle and prone to sin have any other standard.
Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
In fact, the Bible provides a contrast.
1 Kings 15:5
because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
Judges 2:11-13, 17
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.
Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.
(emphasis mine)
In other places in Judges, the term did what was right in their own eyes is used, and did evil in the sight of the LORD, to illustrate that disobeying God and His commandments is evil.
Therefore, we get our morals from God and His Word.
Determining Which Laws
Of course, the question may arise: which laws and commandments? Which laws were only for the nation of Israel and which laws are for all people for all time?
One easy way is to look at Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 and see which laws the Canaanites broke that God was punishing them for.
Another is to read what Jesus commanded. The best place for that is in Matthew 5-7, where Jesus lays out how we must conduct ourselves and those who belong to His Kingdom.
A quick word of caution. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law as He said; he came and raised the standard, making the law a matter of the heart, just as Jeremiah prophesied.
Jeremiah 33:31-34
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
God never abolished His laws for all mankind. The same laws by which He judged the earth in the days of Noah are the same laws He judges us by today and will judge everyone by when Jesus returns.
Here are a few places in addition to Matthew 5-7 where see which laws those are:
Matthew 15:19
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
1 Corinthians 6:9
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
Galatians 5:21
envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Revelation 20:8
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
God Expects Us To Legislate Morality
We can see that we should legislate morality, and God expects us to!
The common objection is that we can’t, especially since we can’t stop people from doing so. However, that doesn’t excuse us from having just and moral laws in the first place. God certainly never held to that. In fact, God had exacting punishments for lawbreakers in ancient Israel.
God also has an exacting punishment for anyone who breaks His eternal moral law. To break His commandments is to be in rebellion against God. Why do we think we get to be any different if we’re children of God?
We love to pray that God’s Kingdom would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we ever consider what we’re asking for? God’s Kingdom is a Kingdom because it is a place with a king who rules with just and moral laws. When we ask for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done, a massive part of that is godly laws being in place. Just because there will be those who will break the law doesn’t mean that we don’t have laws that forbid murder, abortion, homosexuality, thievery, and so on. It means that we punish those who break the law, even if that means the death penalty.
As soon as ancient Israel stopped following and enforcing God’s laws for them, they slid into wickedness and depravity. However, when they would turn back to the Lord, it was measured by their keeping and enforcing God’s commandments.
We can see this play out when Josiah became King.
1 Kings 23:2-3
And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.
You can read the rest of what Josiah did in detail here: 2 Kings 22-23.
The bottom line is that God expects us to have laws that forbid what He forbids and allow what He allows. Anything else is considered to be sin by the Lord. Someday, that sinful nation will be judged accordingly.
A Word of Warning
Never take God’s patience for His approval.
Deuteronomy 28:15–68 reveals that while the Lord was slow to get angry with His old covenant people, warning them of their sin's consequences through many hardships, His patience was not eternal. Persistent, impenitent, and flagrant covenant violation would get them expelled from the Promised Land. God's patience with the northern kingdom of Israel ran out in 722 B.C., and Israel was exiled to Assyria (2 Kings 17:7–23). The Lord's patience with the southern kingdom of Judah ran out about 120 years later.
Eventually, God’s patience always runs out. It ran out with Israel, then with Judah. Many people mistook God’s patience as a sign of His approval, saying: ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11, Ezekiel 13:10).
Yet, Israel was scattered, and then the southern kingdom of Judah was taken into captivity.
After that, Babylon was destroyed by God, followed by Persia, Greece, Rome, and others. All nations that disobeyed God and His moral laws.
Make no mistake, America could be on that list if we don’t repent. If we decide that who rules doesn’t matter because Jesus is on the throne, then we will suffer accordingly. Of course, I affirm that Jesus is King and on the throne, and because of that, my peace of mind isn’t based on who is or who isn’t in charge. It’s also because of that I’m writing this warning to us. Jesus was King when Rome was destroyed, just like He was King when the Spanish and British Empires were destroyed.
Every empire that was destroyed was because they were an unjust and immoral society.
Not only should we legislate morality, but for the sake of our nation and the people in it, we must!