This next week we will celebrate Independence Day. It is a time to thank our Lord for the opportunity to live in this nation and to remember the events that brought the United States into being. Our Constitution was framed by men who knew the Bible and looked at the world with a Biblical worldview. This way of looking at the world influenced the nature of our new nation.
James Madison, our 4th president, also known as the “Father of the Constitution†possessed a Biblical view of human nature. That is, mankind possesses a certain dignity, being created in God’s own image, but mankind is also morally depraved, all having sinned and all being part of our fallen race. Madison wrote, in the Federalist #51: “But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.â€Â It is with this understanding of the nature of mankind that the ‘checks and balances’ were insisted on in our Constitution.
Some of these ‘checks and balances’ were as follows: (1) The State was to exert no power over the churches of the land. This would allow the populace to hear from God’s Word and hold the government in check when it encroached upon it. “We ought to obey God rather than men.†(Acts 5:29) (2) The federal government was to be divided into three branches of equal authority: the executive, legislative, and judicial. “In multitude of counselors there is safety.†(Pv 24:6) (3) The federal government was delegated certain powers while the rest remained with the individual states. A king with unlimited power will “take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen…†(I Sam 8:11)
Working within the framework of a Biblical worldview, the framers of our Constitution produced a form of government that allowed unprecedented freedom and growth. Understanding the value of each individual life, as created by God, led the framers to do all they could to keep the government from exerting tyranny over the population. Knowing that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God†(Rom 3:23) led the framers to understand that the absence of government and law was not the answer either. They did not want a land where “every man did that which was right in his own eyes†(Jdg 21:25) because they saw the results of that philosophy in the terrible acts of the nation of Israel in the Book of Judges.
Independence Day is a time that we, as Christians, can look back on the wisdom that was exhibited by our forefathers in framing our Constitution. We can thank our Lord for the opportunity to be born in a nation founded on the principles of His Word.
Pastor Lee Smith
