lawyer … One versed in the law, or a practitioner of law….1
lawyering … the practice of law.2
Despised profession
Lawyering, today, is a nearly universally despised profession. For example:
Question: “Do you know the difference between a dead skunk and a dead lawyer on the highway?
Answer: “There are skid marks in front of the skunk.”
And, so it goes, to the point that a Christian lawyer is considered an oxymoron.
Well, let me be the first to say these portrayals are completely unjustified and un-Biblical. I will even go so far as to declare it should be the ambition of all Christians to be lawyers.
Delineating terms
Now that I have your attention, let me explain.
“Lawyer” is but another term that has been stolen from Christians3 and redefined to denote something nearly opposite of its true meaning (another instance of calling evil good and good evil, per Isaiah 5:20).
Note the use of the word “law” in the definitions above. Are today’s attorneys versed in and practitioners of the law? Are they practicing law or are they practicing the antithesis of law? In order to answer these questions correctly, it’s imperative we grasp the true definition of law.
For YHWH is our judge, YHWH is our lawgiver, YHWH is our king; he will save us. (Isaiah 33:22)
There is [only, NASB] one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy…. (James 4:12)
As Creator, Yahweh4 is the only one with the authority to determine good and evil—that is, what is lawful and what is unlawful. Anything contrary to His law is not law but lawlessness:
Isaiah 33:22 and James 4:12 declare that Yahweh is the exclusive legislator. There are no others, period! Anyone who claims the title of legislator (particularly when his “laws”—whether commandments, statutes, or judgments—are inconsonant with Yahweh’s) is a usurper and is perpetuating the sin begun by Adam and Eve. The same is true for any one of us who would modify Yahweh’s triune law….
Any legislation antithetical to Yahweh’s turns evil to good and good to evil (Isaiah 5:20). When man rejects Yahweh’s standard of morality, it is inevitable he will make legal what Yahweh has made unlawful (e.g., infanticide and sodomy) and make illegal what Yahweh has made lawful (e.g., monotheistic Christianity outside the four walls of church buildings).5
Today’s attorneys do not represent Yahweh and His law. Instead, they are officers of the Biblically adverse Judicial branch of the Constitutional Republic,6 sworn to uphold We the People’s7 supreme law of the land.8 Today’s attorneys are not lawyers but legalers.
Today’s legalers correspond to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:2. They usurped “Moses’ seat” and exchanged Yahweh’s law for their own traditions:
[Y]e made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, … in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:6-9)
Christian lawyers
In the tradition of Ezra, all Christians should be versed in and practitioners of the law of Yahweh and, thus, lawyers:
For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of YHWH, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. (Ezra 7:10)
Not every Christian will be a teacher of the law. But every Christian’s aim should be to seek and obey the moral law of Yahweh in his own life, per Matthew 6:33, John 14:15, Romans 8:4, 1 Corinthians 7:19, 1 John 2:3, and 1 John 4:39:
The law sends us to the gospel for our justification; the gospel sends us to the law to frame our way of life.10
May Yahweh speed the day when the legalers are replaced with lawyers.
Related post:
Right, Left, and Center: Who Gets to Decide?
Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant
1. Noah Webster, “Lawyer,” American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 edition reprinted (San Francisco, CA: The Foundation for American Christian Education, 1967).
2. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, s.v. “lawyering” (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2000) p. 752.
3. Other terms that have been stolen from us are: “mother earth” (Adam was “born” from the earth), “the rainbow” (the rainbow was given to Noah as sign of Yahweh’s protection), etc.
4. YHWH, the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, is most often pronounced Yahweh. It is the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible and was inspired to appear nearly 7,000 times in the Old Testament. It was unlawfully deleted by the English translators. In obedience to the Third Commandment and the many Scriptures that charge us to proclaim, swear by, praise, extol, call upon, bless, glorify, and hold fast to His name, we have chosen to memorialize His name here in this document and in our lives. For a more thorough explanation concerning important reasons for using the sacred name of God, see “The Third Commandment.”
5. Right, Left, and Center: Who Gets to Decide?
6. Chapter 6 “Article 3: Judicial Usurpation” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
7. Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
8. Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.
9. Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant
10. Samuel Bolton, The Moral Law: A Rule of Obedience, <http://www.the-highway.com/articleFeb00.html.>
Legal and Lawful are to different animals,,
Lawful is what Is Was and always will be true and Legal is just the lies of Attorneys, and are ever changing.
Attorneys Attorn things around and make them appear true but are as wrong as they can be.
Actually, “legal” is just what man creates as “law” in order to control the people and give more power to themselves. Legal is not always lawful, but lawful is always legal. I call man’s law “Agenda Law” since it is always to give them the right to do whatever crimes they please against we the people, and since as Thomas Jefferson stated, laws by man are always made to give themselves more power and control over others, and thus they feed themselves power to get what they want..Obama proves this every day with a new “laws” HE creates to give himself more power over us and the world, as he sees himself as the Dictator over the entire World, not just our America. He and his gang see his made up ‘laws’ as ‘legal’, but NONE of them are ‘lawful’ !
Nothing is more frivolous than it can be when religion is involved.
Bill, thanks for joining the discussion.
Religion is *always* involved.
There are no vacuums when it come to legislated morality or, more often than not, immorality. Thus, there are also no vacuums when it comes to religious-influenced government, be it even secular humanism, and it usually is.
For example, what the constitutional framers did was merely a contemporary example of man doing what is right in his own eyes, per Judges 21:25. Judges 21:25 is what today is commonly known as humanism, aka We the Peopleism. And We the Peopleism is merely a contemporary form of Baalism.
See blog article “Could YOU Be a Disciple of Baal and Not Know It?” at http://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/could-you-be-a-disciple-of-baal-and-not-know-it/.