[This is part 20 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, Salvation, and Revival. See part one. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In a continuation of our study of various words expressing the general idea of being in sin or rebellion to God otherwise, which we have been linking to mankind’s statist political ideology and his political pursuit of worldly governments, we come upon the idea of being “guilty.” We do not speak here of the idea of a man feeling emotional guilt, but rather the idea of God seeing a people as guilty of having transgressed His Law and thus being targets for divine judgment. 

As with all other words we have discussed, the statists of the world today who profess to be Christians do not believe that their statism (i.e., their support for human government) is sin, rebellion, wickedness, iniquity, or any other concept that we have shown to be connected to the belief or support for human governments. They believe, under the many dilutions of modern Christianity, that they are “saved” on account of their mere professions of faith and that they don’t actually have to walk in the ways of the Lord, keep His commandments, do as He says, or seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. They believe that they can continue to walk in the statists ways of the world, violate God’s Law forbidding them from having other gods than the Lord, choose whether or not they want to obey His commandments, and pursue the kingdoms of man if they wish. And in all this rebellion, they think, they should still be blessed rather than cursed. After all, they say they “believe in Jesus,” which for them is good enough to be counted as one of God’s children; to support the government of the devil is apparently something that God does not take seriously. 

If you took it from most so-called Christians today then, you would believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the call to repent and seek the Kingdom of God—is apparently just some vague message that “Jesus died for our sins so that we can keep sinning.” Though they wouldn’t admit this outright, this is what their actions amount to: that since Jesus died for our sins, we no longer need to repent of our support for the kingdoms of the world. Yet this is not the message we find in scripture, that it is permissible to continue on the wicked path of the world since Jesus has already shed His blood for us. We read instead that “surely God will crush the heads of His enemies, the hairy crowns of those who persist in guilty ways” (Psalm 68:21). The main people who are guilty of living contrary to God’s ways are the statists of the world who have outsourced their law, justice, protection, and welfare to human rulers to provide it for them, as well as all those likewise wicked men who rule over these systems.

Statists as guilty of sin 

The primary Hebrew word that gets translated into guilty is אָשַׁם (Strong’s H816), which gets transliterated as asham. It gets defined, in a rather straightforward translation, as “to offend, be guilty, to trespass, to do wrong, to offend.” 

In one usage of this word asham, which is probably the best example of this word being linked to the political ideas and acts of men, the Book of Ezekiel connects the word guilty directly to the statist order of the day, even directly speaking of “how every prince of Israel has used his power to shed blood” (Ezekiel 22:6). God calls the prophet to bring this word of judgment precisely against a statist people, whose practice of the wicked acts that are bound-up with all statist societies have them guilty before God. 

“Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘As for you, son of man, will you judge her? Will you pass judgment on the city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her abominations and tell her that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘O city who brings her own doom by shedding blood within her walls and making idols to defile herself, you are guilty of the blood you have shed, and you are defiled by the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close and have come to the end of your years. Therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations and a mockery to all the lands. Those near and far will mock you, O infamous city, full of turmoil” (Ezekiel 22:1-5). 

The prophecy of judgment that God brings against people over and over in Scripture is almost always under the charges of guilt related to the corrupt and backward statist order of the day, which has perverted His justice, corrupted His natural anarchistic order, and brought everyone into the bondage of their system. The people themselves were guilty of the existence of these inherently corrupt and plunderous political orders, too, which cannot exist without sinners to prop them up through their ideological belief that they should even exist, not to mention their common belief that they are a force for good in society or at the very least a “necessary evil.” These evil systems exist because of wickedhearted people who do not believe that God alone would provide for them in an anarchist society or otherwise do not believe that it is their responsibility to maintain these weightier matters themselves out of personal responsibility, such that they turn their trust to human rulers to provide their justice, law, defense, and welfare for them through a socialist system of robbing their neighbors. Contrary to all those men who link chaos, disorder, and lawlessness with anarchism, Scripture however links such turmoil with cities, i.e., with man-made political systems that trace their lineage back to Cain’s city-state and Nimrod’s Babylon. These systems, and not a decentralized anarchist society, are “cities of bloodshed” (Ezekiel 22:2). 

The main thing that men are guilty of in God’s eyes is bloodshed, and the main bloodshed of mankind is that which is perpetrated by systems of human government. It is hardly even necessary to list presidents, judges, congressmen, police officers, or soldiers as the type of people who God is judging to be guilty in Ezekiel 22. The prophet makes it clear that these are “men bent on bloodshed” (Ezekiel 22:8) and men with “unjust gains” (Ezekiel 22:13). In other words, the statists of the day. To be sure, this chapter goes on to describe—in a subsection titled “Israel’s wicked leaders”—a “conspiracy of her princes” who are “like a roaring lion tearing its prey.” It goes on, “They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her” (Ezekiel 22:25). It adds that “her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives for dishonest gain” (Ezekiel 22:27). And, implicating the people at large who support these systems, it adds that “the people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and have exploited the foreign resident without justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). Though agents of the State are the men who actually carry out these wicked deeds and strap boots on for Pharaoh’s, their predation is possible only through the idolatry of the people who shout “support the troops” or “back the blue” from the sidelines.

In another instance of the word that gets translated into guilt, God speaks of Judah avoiding the guilt which had come upon Israel in His eyes (Hosea 4:15). In this case, it is once again clear what made them guilty: “Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another” (Hosea 4:2). The kingdoms of men are societies of violence and bloodshed. They are all—without exception—built on robbing and murdering men to even exist, not to mention the acts of invasion and war and other wicked fruits that this wicked tree produces once it is planted and watered. All human civil governments are founded and furthered on violence, rather than the perfect law of liberty that God’s Kingdom order is based on, which consists of voluntarily appointed ministers who operate on private charity and do not exercise authority over other men like the so-called “representatives” of man’s authoritarian systems.

It is all the violence, bloodshed, slavery, and general corruption that exists in every statist society that God determines a people to be guilty of sin and rebellion against His Law, and that a people find themselves under judgment for these evils. It is the wicked practice of setting up and furthering systems of human government that show a people to be evil in God’s sight and by which they invite divine justice upon themselves. When the psalmists use the word asham to tell God to “declare them guilty” (Psalm 5:10), it is likewise clear that such men who are guilty are “men of bloodshed and deceit” (Psalm 5:6). All statists are guilty of sin, and all statist societies are bound for judgment. All statist systems are enemies of God’s Kingdom and all of them are raised up in rebellion against His natural order or anarchism under God.

Repenting from the guilt of statism 

Though men today believe that they already are or should be “saved” without actually turning back to God’s ways, Scripture has it that God is waiting for men to repent and change their ways. Over and over, God says how He has shut His ears off to the cries of a people who will not turn back to His ways, i.e., a people who will not admit that their statism leaves them guilty of sin. “I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me” (Hosea 5:15). 

What is needed today is for men to admit that their love affair with the kingdoms of the world, both their ideological belief in human government as well as the wicked practice of actually erecting these systems and furthering them, has them guilty of sin. Unfortunately, most professing Christians refuse to admit this today. They are too proud to confess that they have been idolaters whose sin has led to their own bondage. Instead, they not only do not believe that supporting human government is sinful, but that these institutions are the very source of their salvation! They believe that it is through these systems of men, which consist of commanders in chief, soldiers, and police officers, that they have had peace, prosperity, protection, law, and order. 

Confessing the guilt of statism 

The Hebrew word that gets transliterated into `avon is sometimes translated into “guilt,” too, which in this case is shown to be a sin in connection to idolatry. It is relevant to the point that men need to repent from such corrupt, statist ways of thinking that they currently hold on to. As one prophet is sent out to proclaim, 

“‘Return, O faithless Israel,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will no longer look on you with anger, for I am merciful,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled against the LORD your God. You have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every green tree and have not obeyed My voice,’ declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 3:12-13). 

When men refuse to see that statism — that is, men whoring themselves out to human rulers for protection and bread — is one of the foremost sins of mankind, naturally they will refuse to repent for these sins and continue headlong on their path of destruction. This is why it’s important for us to establish that the idolatrous belief in human civil government is sin, so that it will result in repentance for the iniquity that has led to our bondage. Statists are guilty of sin. All those who believe in human rulers are, in God’s eyes, men who are guilty of having turned away from the Lord’s anarchist path and who have gone down the sinful road of statism instead. They are people who have rejected God as their King (1 Samuel 8:6-8).

Unfortunately, men have not come around to seeing these things yet. Most professing Christians remain the primary mission-field for our evangelism in the abolitionist ideology, as they are chief among the idolaters of the world, who add to their sins taking the Lord’s name in vain. They have yet to see that the main sin men are guilty of in God’s eyes is having turned down the crooked road of statism, rather than to seek God’s Kingdom in exclusion to the kingdoms of the world. It was always man’s whoredom for the kingdoms of the world, where they sought peace, protection, and prosperity from human kings, their armies, and their lawmakers, that has been the great sins which led to their bondage. It was evils such as these, which led to exile in Babylon, that God could say of Israel and Judah that “their land is full of guilt before the Holy One of Israel” (Jeremiah 51:5).