We have been addressing the issues surrounding self-government, and this includes our emotional deportment towards others. People without self-control collide with one another, because their vices collide and because their emotions follow suit. In a selfish world, people often grab for the same thing. This leads to the plainest and most obvious litmus test for …
Toddlers Out of Temper
We have been addressing the theme of self-government, and considering that as the foundation of every other form of lawful and limited government. A nation of slaves to sin and vice can never be a free people. They are far too easily threatened, manipulated, seduced, and bribed. They will trade away the most precious liberties …
Love and Liberty
The theme we have been developing is that self-government is the ground of all other government. Men and women who cannot govern themselves will in fact be governed by others. The less government they have at home, in the heart, the more government from the outside will necessarily be imposed. This liberty we are speaking …
Grace and Gospel Down in the Bones
Without self-government, no other form of righteous government is possible. The only way to balance form and freedom in any larger society is when the individuals in that society know how to balance form and freedom in their own lives. The framework of structured liberty is freedom from vice on the individual level. Those who …
Two Birds With One Stoner
We have been looking at self-control as the foundation of all civic and political liberty. Living as we do in a time when such liberty is eroding at alarming rates, we need to make sure that when we run our spiritual inventories we do not do what sinners always love to do, which is to …
The No That Prepares for Yes
We have noted that the foundation of every form of free government is self-government. Fools and blockheads cannot build a free society. We cannot govern ourselves collectively unless we know how to govern ourselves individually. And we cannot learn self-government apart from a work of the Spirit of God. This applies to every area where …
The Foundation of Free Government
The foundation of every form of free government—whether in the family, or in civil affairs, or in the government of the church—is self-government. If the people do not have self-control, then you may depend upon it that they will be controlled by outside forces. It is easy to lament despotism when it pinches, when the …
Hard-Headed, Tender-Hearted
A number of wonderful things are said about love in 1 Cor. 13, but we too often let the words flow over us soothingly, rather than letting them do what they do best, which is to arrest us, bring us up short, make us think hard about our responses to others. Among other things, love …
Not the Same as a Judge
I have recently given a couple of exhortations on receiving slanders and misunderstandings about us with joy. That is all good, and remains important. But if we are to live peaceably in community, there is another side to it, and that is that we must not slander or misrepresent others. The judgment with which you …
Inner and Outer Darkness
We know that when we are lied about and misrepresented, our response is supposed to be that of gladness and joy. Rejoice, Jesus said, when they tell all sorts of slanderous stories about you. Rejoice, He said, and be exceeding glad (Matt. 5:12). Too often we regard this as simply a tough assignment, that of …