Slaying Leviathan
Biblical truth about our rights and liberty.
When rulers command what God forbids, or forbid what God commands, obedience to God comes first. Resistance then is not rebellion against rightful authority, it is faithfulness to higher authority when lesser rulers become tyrants.
Today’s article is inspired by insights from the Slaying Leviathan conference (see video below) with historian Glenn Sunshine — a timely call to remember the biblical roots of civil freedom and lawful resistance. Sunshine reminds us that when the State grows into a Leviathan, consuming what belongs to family, church, and conscience, Christians must recover the historic truths that restrained tyranny for centuries.
One such truth is Protestant Resistance Theory, forged in the fires of the Reformation. Emerging in the 16th century, it declared that when civil magistrates violate God’s law or overstep their God-given sphere of authority, lesser magistrates —and, if necessary, the people themselves, not only may resist but must resist, under the higher authority of God.
Reformers like John Calvin argued magistrates must restrain tyranny (Institutes IV.20). The Magdeburg Confession (1550) declared that lesser magistrates can resist a higher power if it becomes a “terror to good works.” The Huguenot treatise Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579) affirmed the people’s right to resist rulers who violate the covenant with God and the people. Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex (1644) summarized the principle: the law is king, not the king above the law. This legacy stands as a guardrail against the totalizing State — a Leviathan that must be restrained to protect the pre-political spheres of family, worship, work, and conscience that God alone governs.
Sphere Sovereignty teaches that God alone defines the rightful boundaries of family, church, State, work, and culture — and justice depends on keeping those boundaries intact.
⚖️ The Sphere of Sovereignty
Sphere Sovereignty (or the “Sphere of Sovereignty”) is a biblical principle, most clearly articulated by the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). It teaches that God created multiple distinct spheres or domains of human life — such as family, church, civil government, work, education, and the arts — each with its own God-given tasks, responsibilities, and limits.
Each sphere is directly accountable to God — not subordinate to the State or any other sphere. This means no sphere should tyrannize or absorb another. When one sphere overreaches its God-assigned authority, it commits injustice and distorts God’s design for society.
Kuyper’s insight is rooted in the created order seen in Genesis 1–2:
Family: Adam and Eve form a household and raise children (Genesis 1:28).
Work/Economics: Adam must “work and keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15).
Knowledge/Science: Adam names the animals — studying and classifying creation (Genesis 2:19–20).
Worship: They walk with God — spiritual life is direct and personal (Genesis 3).
These responsibilities existed before any human State. Thus, civil government is not the source of authority for family, church, or culture. It exists to protect these spheres — not absorb or dictate them.
The health of any free and just society depends on the proper operation of powers meaning each sphere stays in its lane under God’s higher law.
Parents, not the State, are responsible for raising and educating children (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
The Church preaches the gospel and exercises discipline (Matthew 16:19). The State does not define doctrine.
The State’s duty is limited: punish evil, protect the innocent, reward good (Romans 13). It must not usurp the family, the pulpit, or the marketplace.
⚠️ When the Spheres Collapse
When the distinct spheres collapse into each other, especially when the State swallows them up, the result is tyranny. This is Leviathan: the all-consuming State that dictates worship, seizes children, licenses speech, and controls work, science, and property.
Why It Matters
It guards liberty of conscience: only God is Lord of the soul.
It protects family authority: parents answer to God for their children, not the State.
It keeps the State limited: civil rulers must serve justice — not replace church, family, or business.
It preserves true freedom under Christ: each sphere flourishes under God’s moral law, not lawless autonomy.
⚠️ Government’s Proper Boundary — and Its Modern Violation
Biblical liberty is not invented by man, granted by the State, or licensed by culture. It is bestowed by God alone. Our rights to life, conscience, and stewardship flow directly from His design, not government permission. Any ruler who claims total power over worship, family, education, or truth trespasses on what belongs to God alone. The State is not god — Christ is.
True liberty is freedom to obey God’s good law, not license to rebel against Him. To stand fast in that freedom is the Christian’s holy duty.
Romans 13 is clear: government’s God-given task is limited — reward good, punish evil, protect society. When the State steps into education, dictates parental rights, claims ownership over children, censors truth in science, funds vice while punishing virtue — it has become Leviathan.
In 2025, we see this violation daily: the State inserts itself between parents and children, rewrites biology, controls speech, confiscates labor, and demands the worship of its secular ideologies.
✅ Biblical Reality
Before there was a throne or flag, there was family.
Before there was a tax or mandate, there was work and property.
Before there was an empire, there was worship.
Before there was a State, there was science and art.
These spheres belong to God and He entrusts them first to families, churches, communities — not to Caesar.
✊ The Duty Now
When the government overreaches, the Church must remember:
Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s — but never what belongs to God. (Mark 12:17)
Parents must defend the garden — their home, their children, their labor, their worship.
Truth must be named again — like Adam named the animals — not silenced by Leviathan’s lies.
This is biblical resistance: clear, truthful, rooted in creation order and the King of kings — Jesus Christ, who alone holds final authority over every sphere of life.
Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men.”
Romans 13: Government is ordained by God to punish evil and reward good — not to redefine good and evil.
Daniel 3 & 6: Examples of civil disobedience by God’s people when rulers demand what God forbids.
True Authority: God Alone Grants and Defines Rights
Human rights and liberty are not invented by men or granted by the State — they are bestowed by God, rooted in His design and commandments. God alone creates life, defines justice, and gives moral law. Any true human right flows from His authority — not man’s opinion or government power.
“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” (Psalm 24:1)
“He has shown you, O man, what is good…” (Micah 6:8)
“There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 13:1)
God alone is Creator and Lawgiver (James 4:12). Therefore, no human government creates true rights; it can only recognize or violate what God has decreed.
Liberty is Not License — It is Freedom Within God’s Boundaries
Biblical liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want (license), but freedom to do what is good and true within God’s law. Biblical liberty means freedom within God’s boundaries. Freedom without moral truth is lawlessness (license).
“You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)
“So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty.” (James 2:12)
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
Unalienable Rights: Life, Liberty, and Property in Creation
From Genesis, humans receive life, moral responsibility, and dominion. These are the roots of life, liberty, and property — rights that cannot be taken or surrendered because they do not originate with man.
• Life: Genesis 1:27; Genesis 9:6 — Made in God’s image — only God gives it and takes it, life is sacred because humans bear God’s image.
• Liberty: Genesis 2:16–17 — Adam and Eve were given liberty with moral limits, Adam and Eve had freedom to obey within limits.
• Property/Dominion: Genesis 1:28–29 — humans are stewards of the earth and its fruit. Stewardship begins in Eden; “You shall not steal” guards it. “You shall not steal.” Exodus 20:15 — property rights flow directly from God’s moral law.
The Role of Government: Servant, Not Savior
The State is not god. Its God-ordained role is limited: punish evil, reward good, protect the innocent.
“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… for he is God’s servant for your good.” (Romans 13:3–4).
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21).
When government crosses its bounds — seizing what belongs to God (the soul, conscience, family, worship) — it becomes tyrannical (Psalm 2).
Liberty of Conscience: Worship Must Be Free
No ruler can compel true worship. Faith offered under force is false. Conscience belongs to God alone. Worship must be voluntary. Forced worship is false worship.
“Each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:12)
“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
The Christian’s Duty: Resist Tyranny, Submit to Christ
We are called to submit to lawful authority, but never to idolatry. When Caesar claims what belongs to God, we obey God rather than men.
The State’s Role is Limited. Our Duty: Stand Fast in Christ’s Liberty. Government must reward good, punish evil, and protect the innocent, nothing more.
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)
When rulers claim what belongs to God (soul, conscience, worship), they become tyrants.“Stand firm therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1).
“Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:17) But fear God first.
“Stand firm… in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” (Galatians 5:1)
The true King alone holds all authority — not Leviathan.
In Short
Biblical rights are not man-made.
Liberty is not license.
Conscience belongs to God alone.
Government is limited and accountable.
Christians stand fast, speak truth, and resist tyranny lawfully and faithfully — because all authority in heaven and earth belongs to Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18).
Biblical freedom is never mere freedom from restraint but freedom for obedience to God’s law. Without virtue — the moral self-government that comes from submission to Christ — a society’s so-called freedom decays into license and chaos. Glenn Sunshine’s work reminds us that the Reformers understood this well: a people unwilling to govern themselves by God’s Word will inevitably be governed by tyrants. Negative freedom — freedom without virtue — is no freedom at all; it is a slow slide into bondage, corruption, and ever-expanding state control to contain the moral disorder.
Put simply:
No virtue → no self-government → no true freedom.
The biblical truth is that freedom without virtue inevitably degenerates into license, chaos, or tyranny.
Biblical freedom is not mere “freedom from restraint” (negative freedom) but rather “freedom for obedience” to God’s law. True liberty is ordered liberty: it depends on a people’s willingness to restrain sin and practice virtue (Romans 6:16–18; Galatians 5:13).
The Founders and Reformed thinkers like Samuel Rutherford (Lex, Rex) understood this well: civil freedom presupposes moral self-government. If the people are not ruled by God’s law internally, they must be ruled by tyrants externally.
Glenn Sunshine shows how Protestant Resistance Theory emphasized this: lawful resistance to tyranny only makes sense if the people themselves are virtuous and fear God more than man. Without virtue, rebellion simply swaps one tyrant for another.
When a society rejects virtue (the fruit of faith and submission to God’s Word), the result is not greater freedom but negative freedom — a freedom to sin without limits — which always collapses into bondage to vice, addiction, corruption, and finally, an oppressive state that must step in to “manage” the chaos.
The Founders who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights understood the reality of original sin and the need to restrain it through checks and balances grounded in divine law. They knew that only a virtuous people could remain free, and that true freedom of conscience must rest on the recognition that rights come from God, not government. As Christians, we do not seek an earthly theocracy but a society that honors this truth: liberty flourishes where Christ rules hearts freely, not by coercion but by grace.
If you are not in Christ today I pray you seek Him while He may still be found.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” - Jesus Christ
Soli Deo Gloria.
Summer Black, Director, Armor of Truth
Protestant Resistance Theory • Magdeburg Confession • Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos • Samuel Rutherford Lex Rex • John Calvin resistance tyranny • biblical resistance to tyranny • lesser magistrates doctrine • Christian resistance to tyranny • Reformation political theology • Glenn Sunshine Slaying Leviathan • Slaying Leviathan conference • law is king not the king • resisting ungodly rulers • original sin and freedom • virtue and liberty • American founding divine law • freedom of conscience biblical • Christian view of theocracy • church and state biblical view • Constitution and original sin • Founding Fathers divine law • virtue and the Constitution
The concern here for those who know it deeply is the 7-mountain mandate used by Dominionists - not an accusation, just an observation and to be honest, realization as to its "miraculous vision-based creation".
Thank you for the article!