Hate Crimes

(Article for publication week of 7-9- AD 2015)

 

"For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another" (Titus 3:4).

Our text tells us the awful condition of humanity. The text describes us who are saved before we were regenerated by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. And our text perfectly describes everyone of you who are unsaved. We are not basically good, we are basically evil, and only the sovereign grace of God that comes to us through the saving work of Christ will ever change us. We are by nature "hateful and hating one another." We have all come short of the glory of God and have failed miserably in loving Him with all our being and in loving our neighbour as ourselves. All of us, including you dear reader, and me have hateful hearts by nature. Thanks be unto God for the washing of regeneration that renews our hearts. And thanks be unto God that in His goodness, God restrains the hatred in the hearts of unconverted people. Were it not for God's restraints of the government of the home and the civil magistrate, and the common operations of the Holy Spirit, the world would be unbearable. By such external influences the hatred in the human heart of all of us is restrained so that the world is at least bearable. But again I emphasize that only God can change a sinner inwardly so that he can quit hating and being hateful.

Now this is the reason that it is unreasonable and actually an evil thing for the civil government to try to enact "hate crime" laws. The fact is that all sin is hateful. People do not murder, fornicate, steal and lie out of love, but out of hate. Note well, I said fornication is hateful. Men seduce other men's wives and daughters because of base lust, not because they love the objects of their lusts. Sexual sins are not acts of love, but acts of hatred, as are murder and theft and lying. Now in the case of murder, the wretched murderer is to be put to death (Exodus 21:12; Mark 7:9-13; etc.). It matters not if he murders a person of his own race, or a person of another race, the murderer is to be put to death. God's law recognises all sin as criminal, and establishes just penalties for such criminal acts. The murderer does not owe his victim life in prison, he owes his life. (Note well, God did not establish prisons in His law; capital crimes were punished by death and property crimes required restitution.) This is the reason that it is an evil act for a civil government to try to enact and enforce "hate crimes" because it insinuates that some crimes are not hateful. It also insinuates that some human lives are more important than others. (By the way, this is the reason that it is also wicked for the State to enact harsher penalties for killing policemen, or for committing murder with certain weapons.) Murder is to be punished by the execution of the murderer, regardless of the victim's race or station, and regardless of the weapon used to kill.

When the State seeks to make "hate" criminal, it sets itself up as God by claiming omniscience. The truth is, only God can rightfully judge a person's heart, for only He knows infallibly the human heart within us. "Hate crime" legislation seeks to govern the heart of man which only God can do. Thus the government seeks to declare itself as omnipotent, another attribute exclusively God's. The civil laws of a commonwealth must be in accord with God's law, or there can be no true justice. Our civil law must always be objective, not subjective, for such subjectivity can be swayed back and forth by popular whim usually excited by demagogues. It is time for the Lord to work, for they have made His law void.