Natural Law

God created more than just substance. He created powers, order, meaning and purpose. We see God in more than just things, but in motion and structure. With reasoning man looks at nature and sees and understands God not only in the visible, physical and natural, but the invisible, intangible, and supernatural as well.

The natural order of all things is God and His law at work. Nature is created by God. This natural law is inherent in everything created, including man. But God gave man something that is unique to him. God not only gave him his natural order, which is inscribed upon his heart, God also gave man the ability to reason. This enables man to deduce and conclude God in all things. Not only does he see God in creation, but also sees God in the natural order and movement of things.

Man knows that nothing becomes without a becomer. Nothing moves without a mover. The unregenerated man can deduce this. Often times it is God’s law in nature itself that opens the eyes of man to God.

“In attestation of his wondrous wisdom, both the heavens and the earth present us with innumerable proofs not only those more recondite proofs which astronomy, medicine, and all the natural sciences, are designed to illustrate, but proofs which force themselves on the notice of the most illiterate peasant, who cannot open his eyes without beholding them…..No man, however, though he be ignorant of these, is incapacitated for discerning such proofs of creative wisdom as may well cause him to break forth in admiration of the Creator..….none who have the use of their eyes can be ignorant of the divine skill manifested so conspicuously in the endless variety, yet distinct and well ordered array, of the heavenly host; and, therefore, it is plain that the Lord has furnished every man with abundant proofs of his wisdom.” - John Calvin/ Institutes of the Christian Religion/Chapter 5

God created more than substantive things. God didn’t make earth, stars, moon and man and leave them be. God also created things such as powers, order and purpose that work in concert with these materially created things.

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16-17).

Man sees God in and through His creation both visible (nature) and invisible (God’s law).

God is in nature making plain His word in truth.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).

“Sun and moon and stars change not their order; so do ye also change not the law of God in the disorderliness of your doings. The Gentiles went astray, and forsook the Lord, and changed their order, and obeyed stocks and stones, spirits of deceit. But ye shall not be so, my children, recognizing in the firmament, in the earth, and in the sea, and in all created things, the Lord who made all things, that ye become not as Sodom, which changed the order of nature. In like manner the Watchers also changed the order of their nature, whom the Lord cursed at the flood, on whose account He made the earth without inhabitants and fruitless.” (The Testament of Naphtali 3:2-5)

Anything that is not of God, substantively or otherwise (power, order, will) is sin.

God created everything and is in everything, both visible and invisible. This includes nature and the natural workings of things. Man sees both. The man of God understands this. But even the unregenerated man through reasoning can deduce God in all things.

“Surley vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the workmaster; But deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods; let them know how much better the Lord of them is: for the first author of beauty hath created them. But if they were astonished at their power and virtue, let them understand by them, how much mightier he is that made them. For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen” (Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-5).

Understanding that all things come from God now uncovers the workings of man. Often times we discover that man’s workings are not, in fact, the workings of man at all but rather the workings of God.

Look into the foundation of man’s morality and his government. It was created and founded of God. Example, the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all of man’s morality. Government came through God’s Judges which taught, instituted, and heard God’s law. Later, it came through the institution of “higher powers” (Romans 13) to maintain God’s way, peace, order and civility. 

Bill Hitchcock