The news of the day focused every day this week on the confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The proceedings were full of references to "the law," specifically "the law of this land."
It's clear that judges interpret law before they apply it for rendered decisions. I heard the new Senator from Minnesota, sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, say, in effect, "this decision is up to Congress." He might also have said, "We are sitting down," another obvious fact. He was nervous, a former Saturday Night Live comedian now in the early days of sitting with the Senate. A reminder to us of the flaws each of us carries.
Senators on the Judiciary Committee who are also lawyers stressed the law, while other Senators stressed opinions and the temptations of biases and prejudices. Yet everything came back to "the law." It was law founded on and accountable to one document, the U. S. Constitution. Every law must meet its requirements. That is what the Supreme Court weighs each decision by, as the ultimate test.
We should revere The Constitution and protect it. Without that wise document that set the course for a new and unique country it could not have withstood the many tests against it. Sometimes The Constitution did not go far enough, some believed later, and amendments were made. However, every amendment to it must agree, in basic principle and expressed thought, with the original.
As a Christian, I am well aware of another, even higher law, the Law of God. The finger of God wrote Ten Commandments on tablets of stone for Moses to give to the people of God. Those Commandments established unchangeable benchmarks of testimony to the holiness and perfection of God only, of relationship with Him, of relationship with others, and of specific behaviors.'
From the highest body of law, the Ten Commandments, are derived the laws of man that stand the tests of history as right and just. The Ten Commandments establish the basis for every human law against murder, fraud, false witness, covetousness and stealing, immorality against the sanctity of the marriage relationship, and religious infringement. The laws that Moses added expanded on the Ten Commandments and were supposed to agree with and not veer from them. Hence, laws about purity, dealing with property, how to settle disputes, morality, and other matters of life, including the value of life itself, developed to fit with and express man's use of the Ten Commandments of God.
When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven to enter the human sphere as God and Man, He came "to fulfill the law," He said. The law, believers then learned, had been real and true, to be revered and followed. But, the Law of God was not fulfilled until the Son of God came to earth, God and Man as one, living and teaching that highest law on earth.
C. H. Spurgeon wrote, rightly, that every look or expression, every word, and every action of Jesus, including on the Cross, spoke for God. Jesus the Christ, Messiah and long-awaited Savior of the world, lived and taught on earth, whether silent or speaking.
Therefore, the fulfillment was puzzling to many and heinous to the most strictly religious. When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, for example, He broke the legalistic interpretation of the law. When He allowed His hungry disciples to pick wheat to eat on the Sabbath, He fulfilled the spirit of the Law of Moses in ways never expected.
Jesus' fulfillment showed mercy for the weak, disabled, and hungry without infringing on anyone else's legal rights. Jesus never did anything that would disrespect life and the honor God placed in it and how it is lived.
For that reason, He taught that looking on a woman with lust is equal to adultery, which was forbidden by The Law. That took law further, not only into action, but also into secret, unlawful desires. He taught that thinking of murdering someone is as wrong as murdering someone. Again, He fulfilled the law in these and other ways, by getting to the heart of the matter.
"Out of the heart flow the issues of life," Scripture says.
I have compared the U. S. Constitution with the Law of God in this respect: It is the document that forms a foundation for living, relating. Whereas The Constitution deals with earthly matters only, the Law of God deals with heavenly and earthly matters. Therefore it is above the Constitution or any other man-made document, and is the key measure for the best of man-made law.
The Constitution is similar also to the Law of God in that its main writer, James Madison, and its endorsers knew that it could not make earthly life perfect in the "new land." In fact, every day individuals or groups break some part of it, in spirit or in action.
Long before that, when the God and Father, Creator of all mankind gave the Ten Commandments to His chosen people through Moses, He knew that it could not make their earthly or spiritual lives perfect. God knew that the perfect document cannot make perfect people.It would require a Perfect Person. The Law of God would show men and women how incapable they were of keeping it apart from God. Legalism could never do what Christ would offer to do for those who would believe.
It is said in the Preamble of the U. S. Constitution that it was made as part of the founders' desire "to form a more perfect union." Their awareness of imperfection was clear. That imperfection relates to human flaws, borne by all.Today, we are aware that not all people that are born in or immigrate to this country even care about our basic governing documents. Some do not care for democracy at all.
Similarly, God knew that His perfect Law would be read, attempted, and passed down by imperfect people.
That is why, in the fullness of time, a Man broke through the earthly bounds of life when Jesus was born, having been brought into new life by the Holy Spirit's hovering over a virgin called Mary.
The Holy Spirit moves not in human ways but in the heavenly, eternal ways of God. No man can predict or see the Holy Spirit which, like the wind, blows over the earth on its own, not under any human authority, control, or likeness of type or action. The Holy Spirit guides and helps those who seek God, those who long for His life and salvation.
The U. S. Constitution cannot save a country of fallen people. Like the Law of God, it must be fulfilled perfectly, though godliness. Only Jesus can supply that godliness to a people to form "a more perfect union." Those who deny God thereby weaken the power of the Constitution, which was formed by Judeo-Christian faith, knowledge, and application.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace..." (Romans 8: 1-6- italic emphasis added here).
In this sense, Christians are reminded to be careful to live and walk by the Spirit, not according to our earthly or selfish desires. Christ gave us the honor to "be salt and light" in the world. By this, earthly and heavenly things are accomplished and offer good to all.
This is the good news of today and every day, till Jesus returns as He promised.
Jean Purcell is a book publisher and writer. Her first book was Not All Roads Lead Home under her pen name, Jane Bullard. Her web site is http://www.opinebooks.com and her Writing and Publishing Nonfiction Books blog is at http://janebullard.blogspot.com/ Sign up for the free Opinari Quarterly for Christian Writers, Publishing Professionals, Book Lovers, and Reviewers on her web site.
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