On the Civil Magistrate

"To punish sinners, according to the measure of their crimes"

September 28, 2024

On the Civil Magistrate

Sometime it would be worth writing a history of the horrors American Christians have endured over the past four years, just to put things in perspective.  I have listened to many of my parishioners as they shake their heads in wonder at the things they have seen.  It seems to many of them that the four horsemen of the apocalypse have been unleashed on the earth since the year of our Lord 2020.

We lived through the experience of the Covid lockdowns.  Around the same time American cities were set on fire in the wake of the death of George Floyd.  In two big cities near me, Portland and Seattle, absolute chaos and lawlessness reigned for months.  In Portland, the Federal Courthouse was firebombed by “antifascist” terrorists for weeks (or was it months?  I can’t remember anymore.)  In Seattle, Black Lives Matter and assorted leftists claimed several neighborhoods as an “autonomous zone” patrolled by armed terrorists for about a month.  We also watched as sexual perverts like Richard (“Rachel”) Levine were given prominent positions in the Biden Administration.  One, Sam Brinton (1) was arrested for stealing a woman’s suitcase from an airport and later wearing her clothes.

During that time many people were killed and injured.  The killings that made the news were ones perpetrated by people supposedly on the political right, such as Kyle Rittenhouse, although it is conveniently forgotten that these shootings would never have happened if the country hadn’t been stirred up into a frenzy of race riots.  But most of the killings and violence were perpetrated by Antifa, transgender maniacs, and black racists, and were quickly memory-holed by the press and excused by government officials, such as the man who ran over and killed six people at a Waukesha Wisconsin Christmas Parade in 2021 (2) and the mass shooting at Covenant Christian School perpetrated by a woman who wanted to be a man, driven by hatred of white people and Christians (3). 

I mention these examples because, despite incredible moral abominations and terror imposed on the country coming almost entirely from the American left, the authorities continue to sound the alarm about right-wing extremism.  They warn about the terrible danger of Christian Nationalism.  And, for the most part, the American Churches, including conservative and confessional ones like the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, have agreed with the authorities.  A survey of the resolutions of our last convention would make you think the great danger to the life of the Church is white racism, not an anti-Christian ruling class hell-bent on inculcating the LGBTQ religion or demanding that parents allow the authorities to give their children puberty blockers.

What accounts for this terrible failure on the part of the leadership of American churches to accurately assess the actual dangers facing the churches?  Simply, the churches, or their leaders, have adopted the values of the persecutors of the churches.  The mainline churches have done so wholesale; conservative churches like the LCMS or the Southern Baptists have done so unwittingly, because they grew up in the United States and were steeped in the political ideology that led to the Black Lives Matter riots and LGBTQ supremacy.  Or perhaps they wittingly made concessions, thinking that when the churches appeared to be listening, their critics’ hostility against them would mellow.

But the riots, the tearing down of statues of Lincoln and the founding fathers, drag queen story time, Pride Month, and all the rest of the carnival acts of early twenty-first century America didn’t arise out of the ether.  They are the natural outgrowth of errors and falsehoods embraced by our country long ago.  And the American churches’ eagerness to please in the chaos of the last few years is nothing new either.  For decades, the LCMS in particular has been eager to try to show that the moral indignation of the American left has its echo in Christian doctrine.  Just as Protestant theologians under Marxist-Leninist regimes often claimed that Christian theology and Marxist doctrine could be harmonized, the LCMS since around the death of Francis Pieper has responded to the critique of American leftists by agreeing with them or making concessions.

Analyzed theologically, the errors leading to Black Lives Matter violence, LGBTQ indoctrination in media and schools, and government-sponsored transgender acceptance are errors regarding theological anthropology and the Law.  The people responsible for pushing or tolerating these three things are people who do not know or have rejected what God in Holy Scripture says about man and about righteousness according to the Law.  But these errors are not new in the United States.  In some respects they go back to the founding of our country.

Over the next several posts I am going to address some of the major errors regarding the nature of man and the Law of God in our culture and the ways American Christians in general and the Missouri Synod in particular have accepted the premises of these errors while trying to steer clear of their more egregious conclusions.  Most of them, as far as I can see, boil down to burning a pinch of incense to the god of liberalism—Equality. 

Today I want to deal with one error in particular—regarding God’s institution of the civil authority, what our fathers in the Lutheran Church liked to refer to as “the magistrate.”

What is the Civil Magistracy?

The text for today’s lesson is Leonhart Hütter’s Compendium Locorum Theologicorum ex Scripturis Sacris et Libro Concordiae.

It can be purchased here:

However, it is prohibitively expensive.  I bought a copy in my first congregation because I had a book allowance, for which I thank God, because it has proven to be a worthy investment. 

**(A reader has informed me that it can be purchased here for nine dollars instead of $300 at the link above)

Hütter was a professor at Wittenberg and published the work in 1610, and for some time the Compendium was the most common theological textbook used to train theologians and pastors in the Lutheran Church.

The Compendium addresses the topic of civil authority and civil affairs in Article XXVII with the first question, “What is the civil magistracy?”  It answers the question with a reference to Melanchthon: “It is a rank ordained of God, which is to uphold, as to both tables [of the Law], external discipline, and also to maintain peace, having the power to punish with physical force.”

I have asserted above that the errors among the ruling class in the United States that have led to the chaos of the last four years are errors regarding the nature of man and the Law of God.  Our leaders do not know, or do not want to know, the answers to the question, “What is a man?” and “What is righteousness or justice?”  And I also have asserted that the American churches have coddled those errors, conceding the premise that justice means the same thing as “equality” and that equality among men means there are no real differences between them.  Men and women are fundamentally the same; nothing should be denied women that is allowed to men because men and women, both being equally “man” or “human” must be equal.  Likewise, any difference in outcomes between different types of men are unjust.  If black people are incarcerated more often than whites or consistently have worse economic or educational outcomes, it must be a result of sinful injustice because people must be equal.  Further, to deny the rights of marriage to same sex couples or deny children the right to change their sex because their parents think it is a bad idea is also unrighteous, because to be a human is to be equal with other men and children and homosexuals should have the same rights as parents and heterosexuals.  Many will no doubt disagree that the American churches have conceded the premise and will point out that at least some churches have opposed transgender ideology, homosexual marriage, and women’s ordination.  My contention is that while some of the churches have opposed those symptoms of wrong teaching about the nature of man and the law of God, they have conceded the premise that equality is fundamental to the nature of man and the righteousness according to the Law.  I will argue that further in later posts as we consider the response of the churches, particularly the LCMS, to questions raised by feminism and other “liberation” movements in the United States over the past century-and-a-half.

But let us begin by noting the Compendium’s definition of the civil magistracy.

First, it is the rank ordained of God.

Second, it is to uphold external discipline and peace.

Third, the discipline and peace it is to maintain is according to both tables of the Law.

Fourth, it has the power to punish with physical force.

Regarding the first point, it deserves notice that the civil judges are not in place by human right.  God has ordained that we have judges and government.  Judges do their work, unless they step outside their calling, in the stead and by the command of God.

Secondly, they do not do so in order to establish perfect justice on earth.  God has not ordained them to bring about a utopia, but instead to maintain external discipline and peace.  They are there to maintain order and to ensure that people, outwardly, are kept in check.

Third, the discipline they are to maintain is according to both tables of the Law.  Both as regards their actions toward God and toward men, people are to be governed by the magistrates so that their outward conduct is in conformity with the Ten Commandments. 

Fourth, to that end, the magistrates are empowered by God to punish with physical force; they are empowered to kill, to injure, and to imprison—that is, to enslave, which is actually what imprisonment is.

So according to the Lutherans immediately following the Reformation, the correct answer to the question, “What is justice or righteousness, at least among men?” the answer is, “External obedience to both tables of the Ten Commandments.”  Righteousness among men, which the state is required by God to enforce, is to not openly worship idols, blaspheme, despise God’s Word; it is to honor parents, refrain from murder, adultery, theft, and false witness.

Likewise, according to the Compendium, a man is a creature of God that requires physical force to maintain external peace and outward order according to the Ten Commandments.  A man is such a creature that, if not compelled by violence, he will flagrantly disobey God’s commandments, and instead of maintaining peace, will create chaos.  If human beings are not compelled to outwardly submit to God’s Law, they will worship false gods and teach others to do the same, blaspheme, despise God’s Word, despise parents, murder, break apart their marriages and seduce other people’s wives, steal, and destroy one another’s reputation.

From Hütter’s definition of the magistrate, several things become clear about the chaos we have endured in the United States in the past four years.  First of all, the governing authorities in our country, together with the press and educators, have rejected or do not know that man is a creature who must be curbed with bit and bridle (Psalm 32:9).  Second, they do not know that the bit and bridle that must be used on human beings is not equality, but the Law of God according to both tables.  Third, they do not know that God has put the magistrate in place not to destroy the enemies of equality, or to root out inequality from the hearts of some humans (which is impossible), but to preserve external discipline and peace. Martin Luther King famously said that “riots are the language of the unheard,” implying that, although he didn’t approve of them, the way to stop rioting was to bring about “justice” or “equality.”  The problem with this lawless sentiment is that it supposes that, if we just made life more fair for people, human beings are rational creatures who would refrain from violence and uproar.  But uproar and chaos in society are not merely reactions to injustice.  Human beings revolt against God’s Law not because it is unjust, but because it is just.  Human suffering is just, even when it is caused by unjust rulers, because human beings are under God’s curse because of the sin they inherited from Adam.  People don’t riot only because the social order they live in is unjust; if they lived under a perfectly just social order they would revolt all the more because they are rebels against God and His judgment.

But in addition to these conclusions about our country’s magistrates and leaders in education and information, we have to draw one more.  The recent lawlessness and chaos in our country in part is owed to the failure of the American Churches to believe and bear witness to the Scriptural teaching about man, the Law, and the civil magistrate.

What Are the Chief Duties of the Civil Magistrates?

To this second question in Article XXVII, the Compendium answers:

“Four: First, to care for the commandments of both tables, so far as they concern external discipline.  Secondly, to make laws concerning civil and domestic matters, which correspond with divine and natural right.  Thirdly, to carefully attend to the execution of the laws which are passed.  The fourth, to punish sinners, according to the measure of their crimes, but favor and reward the obedient.”

Again, Hütter reiterates that the magistrate and the ruling authorities have been instituted by God to “care for the commandments of both tables”. 

It is the specific task of the Church to preach the Law according to its spiritual use, what Lutherans call the second use of the Law, which, like a mirror, reveals that we are fallen and unable to accomplish the righteousness of God, though we are able to some extent to accomplish external obedience to the Law. Likewise, the Church teaches Christians who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and who love God the Law in order that they may know what works please God, which we call the third use.  In addition, the Church is required to preach the Law in order to strike fear into the hearts of men so that, even though they do not recognize their fallenness and repent, they curb the most egregious desires of their flesh to violate God’s commandments out of fear of His punishment.

But government has also been instituted by God to uphold His Law and punish those who break it externally by words and actions.  And, as Hütter points out, the government is not merely tasked with punishing those who commit adultery or murder, but also those who institute the worship of idols, who blaspheme the name of God and teach false doctrine in His name, and who despise preaching and the Sacred Scriptures.

Most Lutherans, of course, would be shocked to hear an orthodox Lutheran say this.  Many, in fact, attack this teaching as a Calvinist heresy.  Your average Lutheran thinks the government is supposed to uphold the second table of the Law insofar as it doesn’t violate the “right” of godless people to be godless.  Unfortunately, as we have learned by experience, the government is really unable to uphold the second table of the Law while neglecting the first.  There was a period in perhaps the 90’s and 2000’s when the government could completely take its hands off the first table of the Law while expecting the citizenry to still intuitively have some regard for the second, although only in the most limited way.  During that period, religious liberty meant you could believe in whatever God you wanted, or no god whatsoever, and while people thought fornication and divorce under any circumstances were acceptable, they would have still been disgusted at homosexual marriage and drag queen story time.  But that time was short-lived. 

Today, “upholding external obedience only according to the second table of the Law” means that Christian legislators fight a losing battle to permit parents to resist their children being taken away from them by the state, indoctrinated with homosexual ideology, and given “gender-affirming care” against their will.  “Upholding the second table of the Law” means Christian legislators essentially have to allow the murder of infants, but try to stop the state from allowing the murder of babies after birth.  It means Christian legislators saying nothing about homosexual marriage, divorce, babies born out of wedlock, prostitution, and pornography.

And if a Christian legislator were to try to pass legislation preventing altars to Satan standing next to the Nativity display in the state Capitol, or banning pornography, some of his biggest critics would be otherwise conservative Christians who fear that in actually trying to uphold external discipline according to both tables of the Law, even in a limited way, he is trying to turn the state into the Church and confuse the two Kingdoms.

In reality, contemporary Lutheran teaching on the two kingdoms is a teaching of one Kingdom.  Christ rules in the Church through the Gospel, but has nothing whatsoever to do with earthly government.

Against this, the Compendium says something that every Lutheran should spend some time marking and inwardly digesting.  “The fourth, to punish sinners, according to the measure of their crimes, but favor and reward the obedient.”

It’s easy to miss what Hütter just said, so let me draw your attention to it again: To punish sinners. 

The government is instituted by God to punish sinners.  The government is not a human institution that is supposed to call good whatever most of its citizens have been seduced or threatened into thinking is good.  It is God’s institution to punish sinners in His stead.

On the last day, Christ will cast unrepentant sinners into the lake of fire, sentencing them as Judge to eternal torment.  But in this world, He punishes openly defiant sinners through the magistrate.  He does that to preserve peace and order, but also to bring them and other ungodly ones to the knowledge of their sins and to repentance, like He brought one of the robbers on the cross to repentance by means of Pilate’s condemnation.  That brigand confessed, We are receiving the due reward of our deeds (Luke 23:41).

The civil magistrate has been ordained by God to punish sinners in His place.  Every Christian who opposes the magistrate doing this, whether he realizes it or not, is opposing the work of God.  God wants to save sinners.  But in order to save sinners it is necessary that there be peace and order in the state so that the Church can carry out her work.  When lawlessness and disorder reign, the preaching of the Gospel is impeded.  The obedient, as the Compendium says, are supposed to be rewarded and protected by the government.  If the government encourages disobedience to God’s Law, it will necessarily either punish the ones who are obedient to God’s Law or stand by as they are molested. And while God has often made the blood of the martyrs the seed of the Church, He has also allowed churches to be destroyed in some places by persecution. Anyone who doubts this should consider the fate of the Lutheran Church under the German Democratic Republic, or read Shusaku Endo’s Silence and the history of the Catholic Church in Japan after the Portuguese were banned from the country. Christians who are silent while the government casts aside the Ten Commandments are preparing the way for the obedient to be molested and persecuted and for the government to stand by instead of protecting them; that is to say, they are preparing the way for the persecution of the Church and Christians who are obedient to the Law of God.

And not only this, but when Christians say the state should leave the wicked alone so they are free to pursue their wickedness, they help the wicked promote wickedness.  Nearly 1/3 of Gen. Z claims to be LGBTQ.  (4)  Back before state support for homosexual “marriage”, something like one percent of the country claimed to be homosexual.  The blame for this lies not only at the feet of the government and LGBTQ propagandists, but also the churches, whose failure to teach and proclaim that the government is required to uphold the sixth commandment has aided and abetted this perversion of our children.

Finally, when the government carries out its divinely ordained office and punishes not merely ideological enemies or transgressors of human laws, but as the institution of God punishes open sinners, it helps bring sinners to repentance.  The thief on the cross, instead of screaming that crucifixion was cruel and unusual punishment, or that Pontius Pilate was racist, confessed that his agonizing, shameful death was God’s righteous punishment on his deeds. 

Christians who oppose the government upholding both tables of the Law because they think by doing so they prevent people from being prejudiced against the Gospel are actually working against the conversion of sinners.  As C. F. W. Walther points out in The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, the Law is already inscribed on people’s hearts, and when people hear it preached, their conscience convicts them that it is true.  On the other hand, when a fallen person hears the Gospel, it does not receive an echo in the fallen heart.  It sounds like nonsense and fairy tales.  The Law of God is what makes sense to a fallen person.  When Christians participate in the state dismantling the Law of God in civil society, thinking that people will be more open to the Gospel as a result, they are working at cross purposes with God.  Whenever the Law is taken away, people become more arrogant and self-willed.  What the churches have done by their neglect in the last several decades is teach people that the Ten Commandments are a Christian idiosyncrasy.  We should have been affirming that Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all, will punish all who despise the Law, not only in the world to come, but also in this life, through His left hand, the civil magistrate.

Conclusion

A man is a creature of God who is fallen and must be bridled by God’s institution of government, which enforces external obedience to the Law of God according to both tables.  Without this man becomes barbarous and civil life is reduced to chaos.

Civil righteousness is external discipline according to both tables of God’s Law.

The civil magistrate, or government, is the rank instituted by God to enforce this external discipline with the sword.

The American churches have failed to bear witness to these teachings of God’s Word.  Instead, they have accepted the premise that the false god Equality must be served, even if we don’t want to go as far in this service as its more devoted worshippers have gone.  The false god Equality demands that the civil magistrate allow everyone to follow their own definition of righteousness, and set aside God’s Law, particularly in the first table. 

Unfortunately, in agreeing that the government is not obligated to uphold the first table of the Law, Christians have tacitly agreed that the government is not obligated to uphold the second table, either, because that would interfere with pagans following their own definition of righteousness. 

The bitter fruits of this failure on the part of the American churches to bear witness to God’s Word on these three points are evident.  Over 60 million babies have been murdered by abortion since 1973.  One third of our young people claim to be homosexual.  Nearly all the churches are in decline.

The question: “How would the government begin to uphold both tables of the Law, even if Christians were in control of the government?” is a worthy one, and a difficult one, that must be addressed at a later point.

For now, faithful Christians, particularly in the Missouri Synod, ought to consider how far our understanding of the role of the government is from what Lutheran Orthodoxy taught.  We ought to repent of our disregard of God’s Word regarding the place of His Law in the Kingdom of His left-hand, and begin to bear witness in our churches and to our neighbors that a nation cannot disregard His Law without coming under His judgment, and that it is the role of the government to maintain external obedience to the Ten Commandments according to both tables.