In order to do what you want, you must disobey what God wants. His laws are declared according to His will, so accomplishing HIs will for our lives requires obedience to His commands. This presents a problem for people who want to lord over their own destiny, and it also stands in the way of Satan’s efforts to build his ideal, earthly kingdom—to build Babylon. Therefore, individuals and groups driven by their own way must circumvent the law of God. Naturally, the bible calls this lawlessness.
1 John 3:4 says sin is lawlessness, so anyone that doesn’t obey the commandments of Jesus is acting lawlessly. It is important to recognize that spiritually lawless behavior is not always the same as physically Illegal behavior. One can act in lawlessness to God before breaking man’s established laws.
The law of God and the laws of man are not one in the same.
So what is lawlessness exactly? Individually, it is simply the intent to pursue one’s own will without restriction or regulation. Within a collective body of individuals, it is defined as a state of disorder due to a disregard of the law. In its worst state, those with selfish or evil intentions do as they please without consequence or repercussion. In its initial and more subtle form, lawlessness is exhibited by those who seek out loopholes within legislation to be technically compliant to the letter (written form) of the law while avoiding the spirit of law. Put another way, the lawless consider how a legal system can be cheated and manipulated to serve their own interests.
Lawlessness is an issue of the heart. It describes intent rather than action, but intention is impossible to determine or govern without insight into the heart. As a result, pervasive lawlessness requires endless adjustments and additions to legislation to avert the unrelenting exploitation of apparent loopholes. The spirit or essence of good legislation is designed to produce and preserve an environment of safety, equality and justice, but written forms of law can only accomplish so much. This is the reason why the laws of the old testament grew from ten to several hundred, and it is also why laws are continuously amended and modified today—the persistent and unruly ways of men.
Additionally, our world is growing increasingly favorable towards subjective realities, and this diminishes the effectiveness of written legislation. People have learned that by avoiding labels or creating their own, they can manipulate legal boundaries and avoid the law to the advantage of their own will. For example, if blue shoes were declared illegal, people would wear turquoise and challenge lawmakers to be more specific in their definition of blue. Then, if legislators were to amend the written law to include turquoise within the definition of blue, people would invent a new name for their color to avoid the law, still. Issues of gender and abortion are glaring examples of lawlessness in action as people work to blur or relocate the lines that define and distinguish human beings. There is a great consequence for destroying the definition of humanity.
When people destroy the attributes that make them human, they become more animalistic.
With the passing of time, the lawless find new ways to commit evil, and behavior eventually devolves into the unthinkable. All of this is described in scripture.
Leviticus 22:23
23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.
Romans 1:28-30 (AMPC)
“28 And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome, 29 Until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice. [They were] full of envy and jealousy, murder, strife, deceit and treachery, ill will and cruel ways. [They were] secret backbiters and gossipers, 30 Slanderers, hateful to and hating God, full of insolence, arrogance, [and] boasting; inventors of new forms of evil…”
Genesis 6:5-7
“5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;…”
Sadly this has become the perspective of far too many. If the things people want to do aren’t explicitly prohibited by the law, then they use that as an excuse to do them anyway. For many professing Christians, if their carnal desires aren’t plainly forbidden, they will perform them even if their conscience tells them they are working against the spirit of the Lord’s will. The Bible calls these people “inventors of evil things”, because they search out sinful pleasures that aren’t exactly written in the the letter of the law. In the end, lawlessness has consequences, and they are also declared in scripture.
Matthew 24:12 (AMPC)
“12 And the love of the great body of people will grow cold because of the multiplied lawlessness and iniquity,”
The consequence of lawlessness is the erosion of love. First, consider what love is. God is love, and love is the virtue by which we are saved. It is defined by sacrifice and given in hope that it will be returned. In the most perfect example, God sent His Son, Jesus, into the earth in hope that He would lovingly give His life. Since Jesus is a part of the Godhead, God’s hope and love was perfectly placed in one who was certain to return it. Therefore, a mutual trust exists within the Godhead that allows love to be eternally reciprocated.
God also loves us in hope that it will be returned to Him, and we love others with the same hopeful expectation. Therefore, the regeneration of love creates the trust that brings unity in God’s kingdom, and we have an open invitation to be a part of that union.
Lawlessness is cancer to a body connected by love. People realize that love without trust is destructive, and they understand that giving with no return renders the giver completely spent. So, the selfish behavior of the majority slowly suffocates the continuation of love in the rest, and that is the grave consequence of lawlessness; It fosters competition and contention and eventually develops into widespread chaos and confusion. Lawlessness is the spiritual condition that causes societies to literally self-destruct.
The consequence of pervasive lawlessness is pandemic chaos and confusion.
As the old saying goes, people want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to live lawlessly without being labeled or recognized as such. People want subjective realities and limited legislation while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of a unified and peaceful society. In their eagerness to circumvent the laws of God, people still crave the inner peace that comes with human fulfillment. They refuse to refrain from sin while still wanting organization, unity and peace, and Satan is happy to manufacture an inferior version. This desire for peace is a strong driving force among all nations, individuals and groups, but we determine its success and our destinies by how we choose to discover it. In the end, peace without God is the grand premise for building Babylon.
