Why God’s Law… Not Natural Law… Must Govern Christian Life and Society

The Psalmist’s Warning Against Lawlessness

Psalm 1 starkly contrasts the righteous and the ungodly, declaring that the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord, meditates on it day and night, and flourishes like a tree planted by rivers of water.

Meanwhile, the ungodly… literally the lawless… are like chaff driven by the wind, destined for destruction.

This passage reveals a foundational truth: prosperity and stability come only through anchoring life in God’s revealed law, not in any supposed “natural law” discernible by fallen, autonomous human reason.

The Problem With Natural Law

Even in our day, many Christians and conservatives talk about “natural law” as a kind of universal moral code accessible through autonomous human reason. Yet the Bible never speaks of natural law. Nope, not once…  it speaks only of God’s law.

Throughout Scripture, it couldn’t be more clear that the only standard for right and wrong is the revealed will of God in Scripture. To introduce another standard, especially one allegedly rooted in “nature,” is to introduce another god, another authority.

Historically, polytheistic cultures accepted many gods because, as pluralists, they accepted many competing laws. Each nation or tribe had its own standard of right and wrong. When Christians speak of natural law today, they unknowingly echo that same polytheistic relativism, proposing a form of morality apart from the unchanging word of the one true God.

Melanchthon’s Error and the Damage to the Reformation

Philip Melanchthon, my distant relative and Luther’s close associate, did some real damage to the Reformation by promoting his version of natural law.

Though he acknowledged that human conscience bears witness to God’s requirements, he mistakenly asserted that there is some universal law in nature to which all men give assent. But history and anthropology refute this. In many cultures, theft, murder, and adultery are not merely permitted but celebrated under certain circumstances.

Melanchthon tried to define natural law with three main principles: First, worship God, harm no one, and share all property. What the heck, right? Arbitrarily share all property? Talk about messed up, deeply flawed, throwing logic under the bus. After all, he took “worship God” from Scripture, not nature.

His second principle, “harm no one,” opened the door to radical pacifism and the abolition of capital punishment. His third principle, advocating common ownership, aligned more closely with communism than biblical morality.

When Melanchthon extended his natural law theory, he embraced majoritarianism… the rule of the majority… as the final authority, replacing God’s law with the autonomous man’s collective will.

And so he laid the groundwork for political systems where the majority could trample the rights of the minority, the exact logic used by Caiaphas in condemning Christ.

Natural Law’s Descent Into Relativism

Melanchthon’s ideas inevitably collapsed into relativism. Once law is separated from the eternal decrees of God, it becomes subject to human compromise. When natural instincts, not divine commandments, dictate morality, the result is a man-centered ethic where the majority, a dictator, or an elite, as Plato wanted, defines right and wrong.

This is why natural law theorists ultimately paved the way for Enlightenment thinkers who championed the slogan, “Whatever is, is right.” The fruits of this thinking are evident today in the moral chaos of modern culture, where perversions are justified on the grounds that they occur “naturally” and therefore must be acceptable.

True Law Is Found Only in God’s Word

Psalm 1 also offers a sharp corrective to the false promises of natural law. The righteous man is not guided by the shifting opinions of the lawless but by the immutable law of the Lord. God’s law… not some foggy consensus of humanity, not some undefinable impulse in nature… provides the foundation for personal sanctification, societal stability, and eternal blessing.

The Bible speaks of God’s law as comprehensive, covering morality, civil justice, family life, and religious worship. In contrast, it says, those who reject God’s law and look to nature or autonomous reason for guidance will ultimately perish. They are like chaff, rootless and worthless, easily blown into oblivion by the winds of God’s judgment.

Living in God’s Created World Under His Revealed Law

It is important to understand that the natural world is not autonomous. It is not governed by impersonal forces as Aristotle would have you believe, but by the personal God who created it. Every aspect of creation… biology, physics, economics… operates under laws established by God, not by random chance or by human social contracts. Denying God’s sovereignty over creation is to deny the possibility of true knowledge and even science itself.

As Cornelius Van Til observed, if God exists, there are no brute facts (facts that have no explanation): everything must be understood in light of God’s revelation. To reject God’s law as the ultimate standard is to embrace irrationality, where no distinction exists between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness.

The Conservative Temptation and Its Fatal Flaw

Today, many so-called “conservative” thinkers seek to revive natural law as a foundation for society without fully submitting to God’s authority. They want some form of order, morality, and economic stability, but without the demands of divine lordship over every area of life. They treat God like a distant insurance policy rather than the King who must be obeyed.

In contrast, liberals are at least more honest. Having rejected God, they have also abandoned any claim to absolute law, embracing relativism and nihilism. Ironically, conservatives who ground their ethics in natural law rather than God’s revealed word are only a few steps behind the liberals and, in due time, convert to lawlessness themselves. Sadly, in time, they too will find that without God’s law, there is no law at all.

Natural Law Theology and the Death of True Justice

Jesuit scholars and Enlightenment Protestant thinkers alike have tried to construct systems of justice based on natural law and some type of compromise with God’s law. But the slippery slope of compromise, not obedience to God’s unchanging word, always becomes the new subjective standard.

This leads inevitably to a collapse of justice, where the state’s authority comes about, not from God’s command but from the demands of pragmatic human necessity. Law becomes merely a tool for managing conflicts rather than upholding righteousness.

Once law is reduced to a matter of negotiation and consensus, it loses all absolute moral authority. It becomes, at best, a dim reflection of the majority’s preferences, or worse, an instrument of a dictator’s oppression.

Conclusion: Rooted in God’s Word, Flourishing in His World

As Psalm 1 teaches, the blessed life is rooted in God’s law, not in the shifting sands of autonomous human reason or vague natural impulses. To be firmly planted by rivers of water, continually nourished and fruitful, we must delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night.

The world around us, terribly corrupted by sin, is filled with the wreckage of those who trusted in natural law, in majorities, and in compromise with God’s law. But those who stand on the firm foundation of God’s word will endure the coming winds of judgment and will prosper in the kingdom of God.

In a time when both conservatives and liberals alike are abandoning the only sure foundation, the calling for anyone who claims to be Christian is clear: reject the siren song of phoney natural law theory and build your life, your family, your work, and your culture firmly on the infallible and unchanging law of God.

Source: https://www.offthegridnews.com/religion/why-gods-law-not-natural-law-must-govern-christian-life-and-society/