The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God… then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) - the standard of self-law or autonomy. And when autonomous laws come to govern a commonwealth, the sword is certainly wielded in vain, for it represents simply the brute force of some men’s will against the will of other men. Greg L. Bahnsen
About This Quote

In this quote, John Adams wrote that the civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God… then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) - the standard of self-law or autonomy. And when autonomous laws come to govern a commonwealth, the sword is certainly wielded in vain, for it represents simply the brute force of some men’s will against the will of other men. In this situation, any laws or rules that govern a commonwealth must be based on a set of principles that allow for fairness and inclusion.

Those principles must take into consideration all citizens and must be crafted in a way that does not privilege one person or group over another. Otherwise, those who are treated unfairly by law could claim that their rights were violated and bring about a state where people’s rights are more important than those of government. The idea behind this quote is that if there is no ethical guidance from above, then self-governance will take place as individuals make their own judgments as to what is good or bad as they see fit.

In this way, all civil society falls apart as people make judgments based on their own backgrounds and personal experiences rather than following a set of established moral guidelines.

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  1. The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God… then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law...
  2. If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes--there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism.
  3. Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day, when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and...
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