The following is an excerpt from How The Nations Rage by Jonathan Leeman.
Three Purposes Of Government
Purpose 1: To Render Judgment for the Sake of Justice
The first and most immediate purpose of government is to render judgment for the sake of justice.
The reckoning here requires parity: life for life. It's not life for stealing a horse or life because you hold different religious views. It's life for life. A principle of mathematical equivalency and fairness is built into God's authorization in Genesis 9:5–6. The implication is that lesser crimes should also be punished with matching penalties. Whatever the severity of the circumstances at play, at the end of the day it's about justice, and God requires it. It's this divine requirement to shed blood for blood that provides the government's authority with teeth. It can require you to pay your taxes or drive the speed limit or keep your employer from cheating you. It possesses the threat of force, and that threat is a morally legitimate one, says God. It gives a government the right to defend its citizens from foreign invaders, and it gives them the right to imprison people for life when they take life from others.
The life-for-life principle is perhaps most obviously illustrated in discussions about capital punishment. Now, we can argue about whether life imprisonment or capital punishment is a more just and better way of establishing a reckoning, but here's a point we must not miss. The punishment given for a crime—whatever form it might take—is not merely about retribution or paying someone back. It's not just about deterring future crimes or rehabilitating the offender. Rather, punishment, most fundamentally, is about affirming the life and worth and value of the victim.
Look again at the last phrase of verse 6: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image" (emphasis added). Taking the life of the killer demonstrates that the life of the person who has been killed really is worth that much. It's that valuable. After all, it was a life in God's own image.
Ironically, the refusal to even consider the possibility of capital punishment, typically argued as a way of affirming a murderer's life, undermines the value of the victim's life. It says, "Sure, your murder was bad, but it can be weighed out against a few years in prison." The mathematical equivalency of blood for blood affirms the value of the shed blood. It yields a reckoning. It doesn't undo the crime, but it acknowledges fully for a watching universe the gravity of what's been done. It offers justice. And justice, the rest of the Bible teaches, is a beautiful thing. It protects the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the hurting.
Are there limits to a government's authority when it comes to rendering judgment? And what if the government uses force excessively and unjustly? Just ask the families of victims of police brutality how they feel about governmental force.
Yet here's another beautiful element of the call in Genesis 9:6 for mathematical equivalency: it creates a governing mechanism that is self-correcting. The verse creates a boomerang effect against any excessive force, no matter the source. If a dirty sheriff shoots a man for a minor altercation in the town saloon, the verse boomerangs back against him, even if he is the dusty cowboy town's lawman.
No person and no governing authority stands above Genesis 9:6. The dirty town sheriff, the power-hungry king, the genocidal dictator, nor the racist police officer should be permitted to use force unjustly. Rather, we should work to correct the injustice, even if perpetrated by the one in authority. God requires it, says verse 5.
In short, God grants authority to human beings to form governments for the sake of establishing a preliminary, this-world justice.
- 1 Kings 3:28: "And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice."
- Proverbs 20:8: "A king who sits on the throne of judgement winnows all evil with his eyes."
- Romans 13:3–4: "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."
Governments should protect their citizens from threats from the outside and the inside. They should punish the Cains when they kill the Abels, or do what they can to protect the Abels in the first place. They should uphold the value of every single human life, young and old, aging and unborn, rich and poor, minority and majority.
Purpose 2: To Build Platforms Of Peace, Order, And Flourishing
Governments don't possess the authority to render judgment and establish justice for their own sake. The goal is to build a platform of peace, order, and even flourishing on which humans can live their lives.
Let's get into the textual weeds for a second. Think of the context of Genesis 9:5–6. God had punished the world through the flood and just brought Noah and his family off the ark in chapters 6 through 8 of Genesis. Verses 1 and 7 of chapter 9, then, like two pieces of bread on a sandwich, repeat the charge given to Adam and Eve: "Be fruitful and multiply," God said at the beginning and end of the paragraph.
Then notice how the meat of verses 5 and 6 fits inside the two pieces of bread given in verses 1 and 7. The authority that God gave to shed blood for blood (vv. 5–6) facilitates the larger enterprise of filling the earth and ruling over it (vv. 1 and 7). Governments establish peace, order, and some measure of flourishing so that people can fulfill God's greater dominion mandate.
Purpose one leads to and allows for purpose two. Justice leads to and allows for order and flourishing. So says Proverbs: "By justice a king builds up the land" (29:4; also, 16:12, 15). And we see commendable examples of governing authorities doing this in the Old Testament:
- Joseph as prime minister of Egypt helped the nation prepare for famine.
- Israel's law included provisions in its agricultural policy that cared for the poor.
- King Solomon pursued an astute export and import strategy that made Israel prosperous.
These leaders were concerned with more than punishing crimes and administering justice; they were looking to establish a foundation of provision from which the people could pursue God's greater calling. Sometimes people describe government as a "necessary evil." But that's not right. Even in a perfect and unfallen world, someone has to decide whether cars are going to drive on the right or left side of the road. Order must be established for people to flourish.
A contemporary illustration of how governments bring peace and flourishing can be found in the work of the US Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA establishes regulations on everything from the installation of rivets on the body of the aircraft to the pilot's command of weather theory. Is this governmental intrusion? Is this going beyond God's Genesis 9 authorization? The regulations of the FAA arguably save thousands of lives each year. And this is tied to the government's mandate to do justice.
In other words, governments exist to build a platform on which human beings can pursue God's dominion mandate. It's a platform of peace, order, and prosperity, albeit one that should always be tied to the more foundational call to produce justice.
