“To the Son, God said, . . .
‘You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
therefore, God, even your God,
has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.’”
Hebrews 1:8–9
Recently, the Lord put the above scripture together with another one that I had never associated with it. That second scripture is from 2Peter 2, where Peter is describing self-willed believers, saying, “The Lord knows how . . . to preserve the unjust under punishment until the Day of Judgment, but especially those who walk after the flesh in corrupting lust and despise government. Bold and self-willed, they do not tremble when speaking evil of authorities” (2Pet. 2:9–10). It was a new thought to me that to be “without law” is to despise government, but that is exactly what it is. And to be lawless, that is, to despise government, is a damnable offense in the kingdom of God. It is rebellion, and in God’s sight, “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1Sam. 15:23), and as we know, witches “are an abomination to the Lord” (Dt. 18:12).
Paul exhorted the elders in the Assembly in Thessalonica to “warn the unruly”. To be unruly is to be lawless, or we could say, to despise government. But because God rules among the saints through men He anoints to be visible representatives of His Son, for a believer to be unruly means to refuse to submit to those through whom God rules. And to be lawless means to refuse to submit to those through whom He administers His law. And to despise government means to refuse to submit to those through whom He governs. There is no rule, law, or government in God’s kingdom as a thing; God’s rule, God’s law, and God’s government are a person, Jesus Christ, and Jesus governs the saints through his ministers. That has always been and will always be true, and because of that, the unruly, the lawless, and the despisers of government are those who do not have a right relationship with those who are over them in the Lord.
You can only love and obey the true God by loving and obeying Jesus, His Son, whom God has anointed to be over us all. And you can only love and obey His Son by loving and obeying the ministers he appoints to be over you. To think otherwise is to be lawless.
