45. Anarchists Have No Right to Liberty

Anarchists Have No Right to Liberty In the governments of men, the anarchist has no right to the liberties and blessings of the government he seeks to destroy. The one thing he deserves is separation from its privileges and its people. And this is deportation from among the law-abiding citizens of the government which he hates, and is the only punishment that in justice will meet the situation. No right thinking person will disagree with that.

Deportation from among heaven’s law-abiding citizens, or rather, refusal of entrance among them, is therefore the just desert of every moral anarchist under God’s government. There is no escape from that conclusion. But the deportation of anarchists requires a guard-house. And again we are compelled to acknowledge that it was the only thing God could do when He prepared hell as the eternal prison of all who go out of this life forever fixed in the choice of their own wills.

Once more, therefore, we find that reason cannot escape from the testimony of Scripture. “She that liveth in pleasure (in pleasing herself) is dead while she liveth” (1 Timothy 5:6). “These shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and punishment and prison belong together.

Hell is an unspeakable reality! And yet there are always those who refuse to believe in the justice of hell. It is only those, however, in whose hearts there is the spirit of criminals against God’s government. And it is a matter of common observation that no criminal is fit to judge of the justice of the law he has broken, for he is always prejudiced in his own favor. Self is above every other consideration in any man’s rebellion against the law of God, and so he can make no just estimate on how he should be treated. God alone can do that, for “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). He can do nothing else!

Almost every one in prison blames everything and everybody else but himself for his plight, for he is incapable of a just estimate on his own conduct. But God’s judgment on sin is that the unrepentant sinner’s doom in hell is certain, and reason confirms it, because of the two-fold demand of the natural results and the moral ill-deserts of sin.

Justice must condemn committed sin by the execution of the full penalty. There can be no escape. For then only will be destroyed the possibility that sin will rule over God, and then only can be established the eternal certainty that’ God will rule over sin, and be Sovereign over His own universe forever. But how can the penalty on sin be executed, and the sinner rescued from that penalty at the same time? How can God carry out His love measure for the sinner and meet the demands of mercy, without setting aside His love measure for the sinless, and thus failing to meet the demands of justice? That brings on the next phase of the problem of salvation.