The Perfect Law of Liberty
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass [mirror, NASB]: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:22-25)1
The law of Yahweh2 is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of Yahweh are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7-11)
James also warned:
So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. (James 2:12)
The Declaration’s signatories and Constitution’s framers should have heeded what comes from Yahweh’s law of liberty—whether the blessings resulting from obedience per Deuteronomy 28:1-14, or the curses resulting from disobedience per Deuteronomy 28:15-68.
Tragically, because of their combined failure to heed God’s law, America has invariably endured more and more (and more to come) of the Deuteronomy 28 curses since the adoption of the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land.3 This further demonstrates the 18th-Century founding fathers’ Grand Experiment in Self Government to have been a Grand Failure—destined to be so, as are all governments built upon man’s whimsical notions.
The Declaration Speaks for Itself
Paragraph #2, Sentences 6–7
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
As we continue to biblically examine the twenty-seven Facts (grievances), take note again how many of these same abuses can be leveled at both the Declaration’s signatories and the Constitution’s framers.
Grievances #13 & 18
He [Britain’s King George III] has combined with others [members of England’s Parliament] to subject us to … their Acts of pretended Legislation: … For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
In 1768, the British Parliament passed a law that placed violations of Britain’s revenue laws under the jurisdiction of admiralty, or military, courts. The American colonials were thereby deprived of juries of their own peers in such cases. The British prosecutors and judges in admiralty courts were invariably biased towards the Crown.
This grievance appears to be justified, but only from the Declaration’s non-biblical paradigm. There is no biblical authorization for juries consisting of people randomly picked from the general population for the purpose of adjudicating cases at law.
In other words, there is no biblical sanction for juries, whether Great Britain’s, the United States of America’s, or any other nation’s. They are all man-made surrogates for the Bible’s juridical system.4
This is but another instance from the Declaration of Independence demonstrating its signatories were more concerned with King George’s abuses against themselves then they were with King George’s violations against Yahweh and His perfect law of liberty. Had it been otherwise, they would have strenuously objected to George’s unbiblical judicial system (both its admiralty courts and its jury system), and the Constitution’s framers would not have repeated King George’s sins when they created their own unbiblical judicial system, including its non-biblical jury system.4
While conducted differently, both Britain’s and the United States’ judicial systems are prime evidence that both governments were secular humanist governments, representing the people (whether one or many) rather than God.
The Constitutional Republic’s Idolatrous Jury System
Article 3’s jury system4 is one of the most sacred components of the Constitution—as well it should be if We the People rather than Yahweh is your Sovereign,5 and if you look to the Constitution as your supreme law per Article 6.6 While venerated by constitutionalists, the Constitutional Republic’s jury system is one of the most biblically seditious components of the entire Constitution.
The power assigned inanimate idols (that have replaced Yahweh as God) is merely a figment of the idolater’s wild imagination, whereas both the Constitution’s juries and human elections7 are two instances in which the surrogate God, We the People, actually wields power. This would, arguably, make constitutional idolatry a much more serious offense than other forms of inanimate idolatry.
Because We the People are animate beings created by Yahweh, We the Peopleism8 is a First Commandment violation.9 Because the Constitution is inanimate, created by man, constitutionalism is a Second Commandment violation.10 However, in this instance, the two are inseparable, alone or combined they constitute a treasonous act against Yahweh as Sovereign and His law as supreme.
U.S. Constitution, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 3: The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.
Article 3’s provision for juries is yet another instance of the constitutional framers deciding they knew better than Yahweh. The Bible offers nothing resembling a jury system—not that some died-in-the-wool constitutionalists don’t try their best to read juries into the Bible.
For example, Mark Beliles and Douglas Anderson coauthored Contending for the Constitution: Recalling the Christian Influence on the Writing of the Constitution and the Biblical Basis of American Law and Liberty. A biblically uninitiated person might be convinced by this title alone that the Constitution must be biblical. Don’t be swayed by this book’s impressive-sounding title—Beliles and Anderson have no case!11 Case in point:
[T]the right of ‘trial by jury’ [was] set forth in the Bible in Deuteronomy 19:15-19.12
Does Deuteronomy 19 provide for juries?
One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established. If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. (Deuteronomy 19:15-19)
Anyone can read Deuteronomy 19 and see it’s a blatant fabrication that “the right of ‘trial by jury’ [was] set forth in … Deuteronomy 19:15-19.”12 Deuteronomy 19 speaks of witnesses to the crime and it cites priests and judges, but it says nothing about juries summoned from the general population. A population, the bulk of whom are not only generally illiterate in Bible law, but who Christ, in Matthew 7:13, depicted as being in the broad way leading to destruction.
Is that who you want determining your case if ever you’re brought to court? Not that the Constitutional Republic’s biblically unqualified judges will perform any better. Either one is a wretched choice!
Because juries are foreign to the Bible, they are therefore merely man-made surrogates (poor substitutes) for biblically qualified judges, adjudicating by the Bible’s perfect law of liberty—the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments—by which such judges prove themselves to be a continual blessing to the righteous and perpetual terror (deterrent) to the wicked, per Romans 13:1-7.13
Anything less than a biblical judicial system, established upon the Bible’s commandments, statutes, and judgments, and adjudicated by biblically qualified men of God fails the Romans 13 criterion.
There are a plethora of passages (Exodus 1, Judges 6, Acts 4 & 5, 17:6-7, etc.) that dictate Christians14 reject any government mandate requiring them to disobey their Lord and King. Romans 13 is not one of them.
Romans 13:1-7 has absolutely nothing to do with secular civil government. Rather everything therein depicts a biblical civil government,15 making it our commission for dominion over government and society.
Biblical Courts
The courts the Apostle Paul advanced in 1 Corinthians 6 begin with Christians judging Christians, with the eventual objective to also judge the world—that is, non-Christians—as well:
Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters [among yourselves at that present time]? …How much more things that pertain to this life? (1 Corinthians 6:2-3)
1 Corinthians 6 should be read in conjunction with the following:
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. ( 2 Corinthians 10:4-6)
The purpose of taking every thought captive is for eventually eliminating God’s enemies’ strongholds—what’s depicted in Acts 17:6-7 as turning their world upside down.
The New American Standard Bible translates 2 Corinthians 10:6 as “[W]e are ready [not yet occurring] to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.”
This Verse is typically interpreted as referring to disobedience in the church. But why would Paul delay punishment of disobedient Christians until they had become obedient? In other words, why would he wait to punish their sins until after they had repented? That makes no sense and therefore cannot be Paul’s intention.
Instead, in perfect harmony with 1 Corinthians 6:2-3, Paul is referring to a future point in history when the Christian community would be mature and powerful enough to influence and even control government policy, including the judgment and punishment of the unregenerate wicked.
This is also born out in Romans 1316 in which the Greek word ekdikos (from which the Greek word ekdikeesai translated “revenge” in 2 Corinthians 10:6 is derived) is translated “revenger”:
For rulers [biblical judges] are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute [God’s] wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. (Romans 13:3-5)
As with 1 Corinthians 6, Romans 13 depicts a Christian civil body politic (local biblical ecclesia17) that metes out Yahweh’s civil judgments upon the wicked. Romans 13 and 2 Corinthians 10 are first and second witnesses to Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 6, charging the Christian community to set up their own judicial system, governed, not by constitutional judges and/or juries, but by biblical judges.
[T]hou shalt provide [judges] out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness…. And let them judge the people at all seasons…. (Exodus 18:20-22)
For all manner of trespass …. the cause of both parties shall come before the judges…. (Exodus 22:9)
I charged your judges … saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. (Deuteronomy 1:16)
Judges and officers shall thou make thee in thy gates [where open court was convened] … and they shall judge the people with just judgment. (Deuteronomy 16:18)
If there is a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. (Deuteronomy 25:1)
And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God … set magistrates and judges … all such as know the law of thy God…. (Ezra 7:25)
Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? … I speak [this] to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you … that shall be able to judge between his brethren? (1 Corinthians 6:1, 5)
When a judicial system is governed by biblically qualified judges whose decisions are based exclusively upon Yahweh’s commandments, statutes, and judgments, juries based upon their members’ capricious morality are not only dangerously foolhardy, they’re entirely superfluous.
Under a biblical justice system, all judicial decisions reflect Yahweh’s never-changing morality.
In Deuteronomy 25:1, judges are admonished to “justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.” Is this most likely to occur: 1) in the courts of sinners, adjudicated by biblically unqualified judges and/or biblically illiterate juries, or 2) in the courts of the saints, adjudicated by biblically qualified justices?
Don’t look for it to occur in the courts of the unrighteous:
Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves … they have done violence to the law.” (Zephaniah 3:3-4)
[T]he law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore, justice comes out perverted. (Habakkuk 1:4)
Constitutional Juries
Most constitutionalists favor the jury system, provided jury nullification is in play—that is, every juror’s right to not only determine the guilt or innocence of the accused but also the validity of the law by which the accused is being tried as unjust, oppressive, or inapplicable to the case against the accused.
However, even if jury nullification were restored to the Constitutional Republic’s juridical system (unlikely), juries would still render decisions based upon each jury’s collective standard of morality, or immorality:
A jury drawn from the [biblically] uninstructed population is no better equipped to administer the just requirements of God’s law than a corrupt judge.18
Case in point: a jury awarded $2.3 million to Stella Liebeck when she burned herself with McDonald’s coffee. Case in point: a jury found O.J. Simpson innocent of all charges. And case after case of jury trials could be cited.
Although it might be argued that it only takes one juror to dissent and prevent a railroad job, most people lack the independence and resolution to resist the will of the majority, let alone the biblical acumen to judge righteously. Consequently, more often than not, today’s jurors reflect the type of people we’re warned against by King Solomon:
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment. (Exodus 23:2)
Juries, at best, produce unpredictable and unreliable justice, if justice at all—justice as can only be determined by God:
Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy [Yahweh’s] throne…. (Psalm 89:14)
Without the Bible’s moral law as the standard, jury decisions are based upon the capricious morality of its members. Nothing demonstrates this better than Jesus’ trial by an alleged jury of His peers, with Pontius Pilate presiding. The prevailing immorality of the jury demanded Jesus be crucified, even though He was clearly innocent of all charges.
[Under the Constitutional Republic’s unbiblical jury system] The character of the courts, judges, and legal system cannot be long maintained if the character of the people is delinquent and degenerate. [Constitutional] Courts and judges do not exist in a vacuum: they are part of the faith, culture, and moral standards of the people at large, of the nation of which they are a part.19
Any juridical system that relies upon the “character” and “moral standards of the people,” the bulk of whom are in the broad way leading to destruction, is destined for failure from its inception. Considering Americans’ general lack of morality today, is it any wonder there’s a general lack of confidence in today’s constitutional courts?
Hypocritical Ignorance
In Paragraph 20, Grievance 18, the Declaration’s signatories had the audacity to complain about King George depriving them of the “benefits of trial by jury,” when instead they should have been looking to rid themselves completely of George’s horrendous judicial system, including its unbiblical jury system.
Whereas the Constitution’s Criminal Justice System is dependent upon either biblically unqualified judges and/or the collective capricious morality of its juries, the Bible’s Criminal Justice System is based upon Yahweh’s never-changing triune moral law, adjudicated by biblically qualified justices.
The constitutional right of a trial by a jury of “impartial” peers is regarded by Americans—ironically, especially by Christian constitutionalists—as one of the last bulwarks against tyranny. If this were true, Yahweh, who is the God of justice and mercy, would have included juries somewhere in His perfect law and righteous judgments as part of His criminal justice system.
Surely one of the reasons He did not provide for juries is that juries, like elections, place judicial decisions and government policy under the control of an unpredictable and unequally yoked public, the majority of whom are in broad way leading to destruction, per Matthew 7:13.
At best, juries are but another band aid on a self-inflicted wound that when covered only chafes, festers, and rots, invariably becoming something much worse, rather than being healed.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)
Stay Tuned for Part 18.
Related posts:
“Biblical Examination of the Declaration of Independence” (Audio series)
“Biblical Examination of the Declaration of Independence, Pts. 1-12” (Articles)
Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant
A Biblical Constitution: A Scriptural Replacement for Secular Government
Ecclesia vs. Church: Why Understanding the Difference is Critical to Our Future
Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective
End Notes
1. All scripture is quoted from the King James Version unless otherwise noted.
2. YHWH, the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, is most often pronounced Yahweh. It is the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible and was inspired to appear nearly 7,000 times in the Old Testament. It was unlawfully deleted by the English translators. In obedience to the Third Commandment and the scriptures that charge us to proclaim, swear by, praise, extol, call upon, bless, glorify, and hold fast to His name, I have chosen to memorialize His name, per Exodus 3:15, in this article.
For a more thorough explanation concerning important reasons for using the sacred name of God, see Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain, the third in a series of ten free online books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments.
3. Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
4. Chapter 6 “Article 3: Judicial Usurpation” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
5. Chapter 3 “The Preamble: We the People vs. Yahweh” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
6. Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
7. Chapter 5 “Article 2: Executive Legislation” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
See also blog article “Constitutional Elections: Dining at the Devil’s Table.”
For how the Bible’s election system operates, see blog article “Salvation by Election.”
8. Chapter 3 “The Preamble: We the People vs. Yahweh” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
9. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, the first in a series of ten books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments.
10. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, the second in a series of ten books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments.
11. See Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective, in which every Article and Amendment is examined by the Bible.
12. Mark A. Beliles, Douglas S. Anderson, Contending for the Constitution: Recalling the Christian Influence on the Writing of the Constitution and the Biblical Basis of American Law and Liberty (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 2005) p. 145
14. Not everyone claiming to be a Christian has been properly instructed in the biblical plan of salvation. Mark 16:15-16; Acts 2:36-41, 22:1-16; Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:11-13; and 1 Peter 3:21 should be studied to understand what is required to be covered by the blood of Jesus and forgiven of your sins.
For a more thorough explanation concerning water immersion and its relationship to salvation, the bookBaptism: All You Wanted to Know and More may be requested from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for free.
Additionally, listen to audio series “I Had a Dream: Judgment’s Coming. Are You Under the Blood?” Part 1 can be found here. Or a MP3 CD, containing all ten messages, can be requested from Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for free.
15. For more on how the Bible’s triune and integral moral law (the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments) applies and should be implemented today as the law of the land, see Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant.
Also A Biblical Constitution: A Scriptural Replacement for Secular Government.
17. Ecclesia vs. Church: Why Understanding the Difference is Critical to Our Future
18. Dennis Oliver Woods, A Handbook of Biblical Law (Prepublication, 2010) p. 12
19. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) p. 639