“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

This is the last verse of the book of Judges, describing in a nutshell the chaotic period “in the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1). In principle, the Lord was supposed to be ruling in Israel, in a theocracy, but the people refused to obey His word, and the system often became anarchistic rather than theocratic, with men all living as they pleased. As the Lord said to Samuel, their last judge in those days: “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (I Samuel 8:7).

Modern Christians decry this period of Israel’s history as one of spiritual anarchy, but fail to see that much the same situation prevails in the world of Christendom today. With thousands of different Christian and pseudo-Christian sects and movements in the world, not even to mention the religious, political, and moral anarchy that seems to prevail everywhere, our text for the day could be applied to our modern world quite appropriately.

There is even a very real danger that in this dispensation of grace, the spirit of antinomianism (against law) is becoming prevalent among Bible-believing Christians. Witness the cancerous spread of fornication and adultery, even homosexuality, as well as dishonesty and greed and general worldliness, among evangelicals and fundamentalists today, all in the name of grace and Christian liberty.

We do thank God that we are saved by grace, for “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” But, as Paul says: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 5:20; 6:1,2). We “ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves . . . for even Christ pleased not Himself” (Romans 15:1,3). HMM