Corporations and Man’s Laws

Corporations, as they stand in our day, are not the fruit of godly cooperation but creations of human legislation, propped up by laws that defy the justice of God. These entities enjoy privileges you and I could never claim—limited liability, tax exemptions, and legal protections that shield them from accountability. Such advantages, born of man’s rebellion, empower corporate powers to oppress the local producer, the shopkeeper, the farmer, all who seek to fulfill God’s mandate for dominion. The solution is plain: abolish the legislature, that fountain of iniquity, and corporations, as we know them, will cease to stand. Their artificial supports will crumble, restoring influence to those who labor under God’s design. This is not to end cooperation among men but to cast down the idols of human law that exalt man’s folly above God’s perfect statutes.

What are these corporations, if not the offspring of a system at war with God’s Law? They are not merely men united for a common purpose, as some suppose. Rather, they are state-crafted entities, endowed with immunities that God’s justice does not grant. Consider a policeman shielded by qualified immunity: cloaked in man’s law, he acts without fear of consequence. Remove that shield, and he faces the weight of his deeds. So it is with corporations. Laws like limited liability or corporate personhood free them to sow discord and crush competitors while reaping profit unhindered. God’s Law declares that a man shall bear the fruit of his actions (Galatians 6:7), yet human legislation builds a fortress around these corporate transgressors, defying the righteousness of God’s commands (Exodus 22:1-3).

Or ponder the shoplifters in San Francisco, bold in their theft because man’s laws restrain the righteous. Under God’s Law, a storekeeper could defend his property, even with force if necessary (Exodus 22:2). Shoplifting thrives where human laws protect the wicked; corporate dominance thrives for the same cause. Tax exemptions, subsidies, and regulations, forged by lawmakers and their lobbyists, raise barriers that choke small enterprises and entrench corporate might. This is not liberty, but cronyism, a perversion of God’s order, birthed by a legislature that dares to usurp God’s authority as sole Lawgiver (Deuteronomy 4:2; James 4:12). Abolish this source of man-made laws, and the local producer, the godly entrepreneur, regains his rightful place, no longer crushed by statutes that favor the mighty.

Recall the year 1765, when the colonists resisted the Stamp Act. Did they bow before a legislature, pleading for new laws? Nay, they rejected Britain’s decrees with one accord, nullifying injustice as a people under God’s authority. As the colonists’ defiance broke an oppressive yoke, so abolishing the legislature today would shatter the legal foundations upholding corporate powers, freeing the market to reflect God’s justice. Why, then, do Christians tolerate this system? Why do we uphold a legislature that spews laws contrary to God’s Word, as if righteousness could spring from those who “do not understand justice” (Proverbs 28:5)?

As I have written in The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, “No nation with a legislative body can be free.” Every law not rooted in Scripture is an assault on our calling to take dominion and proclaim the gospel. Politicians and legislators, bought by corporate lobbyists, create burdens with one hand and offer themselves as saviors with the other, much like the Pharisees condemned by Christ (Matthew 23:13-15). Evil men flourish in a system that scorns God’s closed canon of justice (1 Timothy 1:8), peddling tyranny under the guise of progress. Yet God’s government, as seen in the book of Judges, denies such wickedness a foothold. There, no man could claim necessity apart from God’s Law (Exodus 18:16). A theocracy, with Christ as King, ensures that justice and mercy are joined (Micah 6:8), protecting the humble and judging the guilty without the shields that guard corporate folly.

Let us cast down these false altars. Cooperation among men is pleasing to God (Psalm 133:1), but corporations, as creations of human law, must lose their unjust privileges. Without a legislature to uphold them, they stand accountable under God’s Law, as any man. The result is a market where the righteous prosper, the wicked are restrained, and the local producer thrives. Reject the legislature and its corporate offspring.