God has instituted different governments for the different spheres of life, namely the governments of family, church and state. Plenty of Christians decry the removal of the Ten Commandments from courtrooms, yet surveys reveal that they do not know them themselves, much less teach them to their children. Many parents bemoan the absence of prayer in public schools, but fail to pray regularly with their own children. It is ironic, but not coincidental, I fear, that the age in which Christians seem to have entered into politics with greater vigor than ever before is also an age in which the institution of the Christian family is in tatters. They continue to speak out against their pet sins, generally homosexuality and abortion, even as they implicitly belittle the reality of sin in their headlong pursuit of a legislative agenda to right all wrongs.
Good laws are better than bad laws.
But no law can breath life back into men who are dead in sin. We would do well to remember that it is sin that necessitates the institution of the civil magistrate to punish wrongdoing and to coerce compliance with the law, thereby restraining its evil effects. Finally, it is a recognition that sin is the ultimate problem confronting every man, woman and child, and that government is powerless to provide an ultimate remedy that should provide impetus for Christians to work to limit the scope of politics. While all of life is to be governed by the inerrant revelation of God in Scripture, we must remember that not all of life is fully defined by the Scriptures. His positions there included clerking in the Office of General Counsel and the Criminal Division.