Judge, Lawgiver, King

             For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; it is he who will save us. (Isaiah 33:22)

                Two possibilities immediately leap to mind that really have nothing to do with God, and everything to do with politics. The first is that the government should never be God, even though throughout history, that’s precisely what happened. The second is that the functions listed above are ones for which some level of responsibility has also been given to mankind, with God as the supreme judge, lawgiver, and king. This is the idea that the Founding Fathers used when designing the federal government. No king, but a panel of judges, two large bodies of lawgivers, and no king but a president. And they set up checks and balances designed to prevent any of these from usurping the power of the others.

                But, on to the verse. For the Lord to be our judge, and be both a legal and fair judge, He has to know and to understand the law. This applies only to the written law, but to the other laws He established, such as the laws of nature. He must recognize that some laws are universal, and others are particular. And He must uphold the law no matter how He feels about it. A good judge would punish someone He loves who is guilty of the crime in question.  That is, in part, an answer to the question, “How could a good God send people to hell?”

                In addition, for the Lord to be our judge, He must understand us. Not only did He create us, but He became one of us. He understands us better than we understand ourselves.

                Closely connected to the role of judge is “lawgiver.” He is the one who makes the law. In order to do that, He has to make laws governing Himself and governing His creation. He built the law, so to speak, from quarks and leptons up. In devising those laws, He can include flexibility. Within this range is acceptable; outside of it is not.

                The third claim about the Lord is that He is our king. I don’t think we Americans understand the idea of a king all that well. Etymologically speaking, a king is the leader of a family or people. Of course, it’s been misused, and its misuse was the reason for the American Revolution. It was also the reason we chose not to have “king” but instead to have a “president.” A president is the elected head of a republic.

I would suggest that a king is the leader of the people, while the president is the leader of the government.  In a sense, a king is a judge of both the judges and lawgivers, and a lawgiver to the lawgivers and judges. He brings the parts together. But the Lord is our King. He is our Leader.

Lastly, the verse says that He will save us. This has several aspects. He can save us from ourselves. He can save us from others. He can even save us from Himself. But, given His other roles, we don’t get to decide how He saves us. The manner He chose was the one only He could accomplish: to take the punishment on Himself and yet rise again. Some people complain that He could just choose to let it all go, to let us make the laws for ourselves, or to not punish any sins, but that would require that God sin against Himself and against us. It would require that He not only not want the best for us, but actually that He want the worst because it would involve us doing what we are not designed to do.