What About Sovereignty?
December 10, 2007
Is it for Nations?
Many patriot United States citizens are concerned about national sovereignty. The New World Order crowd, both overt and covert, are pushing for world government that would create a new authority above the United States Constitution. Congressmen and Senators who support this proposal do not discuss it openly because they know that their votes will transfer sovereignty from the nation we love to a foreign international entity and remove the waning freedom we still enjoy.
The dictionary lists sovereignty as a synonym for freedom but in reality there is a significant difference between the meaning of the two words. “Freedom is the absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, or repression.” while sovereignty is “above or superior to all others; chief, greatest, supreme”. Freedom has to do with action and sovereignty has to do with station.
Absolute freedom is like infinity, unattainable by created beings. Each of us is captive in physical bodies and a prisoner of the earth and its environs. We are not only restricted by the milieu in which we exist but by the capacities of our creation. We are created creatures with limited abilities. The freedom we desire is a personal freedom to be without hindrance, restraint, confinement, or repression within the boundaries granted us by our Creator.
Though it sounds anachronistic, in another sense freedom involves captivity. Every individual becomes captive to a sovereign. Some are humanists who try to exert supreme authority through their limited capacities, others believe the mandates of a humanistic government should be the final word. Some are captured by drugs or sex or food or alcohol and their addiction becomes their God. Various religions become the sovereigns for millions.
The sovereign sets the legal standard and determines the perspective from which individual decisions emanate.
Sovereignty is dangerous when it is improperly used.
Human beings were created to exist under the authority of their creator. Before the Fall they did not know evil and their life under God’s dominion was without conflict. There was no question about who was sovereign. The Fall involved an encroachment on the sovereignty of God and exposed men to knowledge they were not created to know. The disobedience of Adam and Eve involved being beguiled into eating the forbidden fruit and as a result usurping an element of sovereignty to which they were not entitled.
Following the Fall sin became pandemic and God destroyed his creation with a flood. Noah, God’s first recorded choice of an individual, alone acceded to God’s sovereignty, built an Ark and loaded it with every species. The Ark, Noah, and the cargo survived and following the flood repopulated the earth.
Several generations passed and the now numerous inhabitants of God’s creation got together and decided to become great in the world by building a tower that would reach to heaven. God’s response was to confuse their language with multiple tongues and to create the first Diaspora. It was called Babel.
Later, God made another choice and set his Love on Abram and led him to a land He promised to him and to his descendents. He made a covenant with Abram, changed his name to Abraham and set the stage for the Biblical narrative of the Old Testament.
Again, generations passed with God choosing individuals as His particular agents in His creation. To His selected servant Moses He gave the Law. The Law set a standard of behavior that pleased God and that if obeyed would grant Him dominion over His creation. There is punishment for disobedience for two reasons. One, because God is sovereign and demands respect and obedience and, two, because obedience is the only path that will produce righteousness, peace, and joy.
God’s perspective is perfect. We are created beings living in a world He created. He is all powerful and able to control each individual as well as His entire creation. His ways are not our ways and we are unable to understand why God chooses to manage His creation in they way that He does. He is God and we are to obey even when we do not understand.
God created us in His image and endowed us with an individual sovereignty that was intended to be an extension of His own. It is our mission to subdue and populate the earth with obedient people that can return it to a semblance of the original Garden.
God made a covenant with Abraham to create many nations from his progeny and the sons of Israel inherited the Promised Land and became a nation chosen by God.
The Bible provides a detailed account of the obedience and disobedience of God’s Chosen people. In the end the covenant between
God and His chosen people was irretrievably broken and God sent His own Son, the second part of the Trinity, to shed His blood for the remission of their sins. It was a New Covenant providing forgiveness from sin and through the Holy Spirit a new ability to obey.
Sadly, sin had so thoroughly overcome God’s chosen people that they rejected His provision for their salvation and stubbornly clung to their own righteousness going so far as to assent to his crucifixion and having responsibility for it placed on them and their descendants.
Now, God is absolutely sovereign and He could have intervened but instead He allowed His chosen people to reject Him.
It was not the first time this had happened. When Samuel was judge over Israel, in spite of warnings that a king would be a threat to their freedoms, the people demanded a king. Samuel was dismayed but God told him not to take it personally because it was not him they were rejecting but God Himself!
There is a sovereignty to be exercised by nations and a sovereignty to exercised by individuals. Men as heads of their families are to exercise a sovereignty over their families and sovereign nations are to protect the families that make them up.
All sovereignty is delegated by God. His Laws are to be obeyed and His dominion enforced. Human sovereignty not proscribed by God’s control is always tyrannical. It is the pathway to chaos and death.
Man was not created to govern himself and when he slips from under the control of God’s Laws he loses his freedom and falls under judgment.
The United States of America is misusing sovereignty by attempting to exert control over God’s creation without regard for His Laws and His Kingship. It will end in disaster. God will not be mocked.
A recently published book by R. J. Rushdoony explores sovereignty in depth. Order the book here.
Al Cronkrite is a guest columnist for Novakeo.com
Al Cronkrite is a writer living in Florida, reach him at:
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