Standing before Magna Carta: A document that changed history

It’s not often that you get to see a document that changed history, but such was my privilege a few years ago in England. While I was teaching a doctoral seminar for Dallas Baptist University at Oxford University, we took a day trip to Salisbury Cathedral, a magnificent structure whose construction began in 1220.

At one point, I saw a long line waiting to enter a side room. Assuming something worth viewing was there, I got in line. Before long, I found myself before one of the only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta (Latin for “Great Charter”).

On June 15, 1215, King John affixed his seal to a document protecting the rights and property of forty barons who were rebelling against his authority. For example, it contained this pledge signed by the king: “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised [deprived of land unlawfully], outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Magna Carta inspired America’s Founders, leading the colonists to believe they were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen, rights guaranteed by the document. Our Fifth Amendment, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” comes directly from Magna Carta’s guarantee of proceedings according to the “law of the land.”

Two other copies of Magna Carta are at the British Library, with a fourth at Lincoln Cathedral (150 miles north of London). Now, it turns out we don’t have to go to England to see it.

A copy bought by Harvard University for $27 in the 1940s turns out to be an original worth $21 million. A new analysis found that the handwriting, sizing, and elongated letters are all consistent with the original.

David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, said: “This is a fantastic discovery. Harvard’s Magna Carta deserves celebration, not as some mere copy, stained and faded, but as an original of one of the most significant documents in world constitutional history, a cornerstone of freedoms past, present, and yet to be won.”

Turning the Bible into a cafeteria

One of the ways Magna Carta was so revolutionary was that it guaranteed that the nation’s laws would apply to all of its people all of the time. There would not be one set of standards for the king and another for his subjects. The laws governing the land would prevail every moment of every day for every person in the nation.

This is how laws work when they work best. Imagine a world in which speed limits applied on Sunday but not on Monday, when criminals could lawfully steal your property every Tuesday and Thursday, when the laws against murder didn’t apply on weekends.

The holistic nature of such regulations is especially true of God’s laws, as the psalmist noted: “Righteous are you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and right are your rules” (Psalm 119:137). Because God is “righteous” (the Hebrew word means one who “acts uprightly and justly at all times”), the “rules” or laws he has given us are “right” as well.

Here’s the problem: our culture and our enemy daily tempt us to partial obedience to God’s unconditional truth.

The ancient Greeks and Romans separated the soul from the body and religion from the “real world.” They had a transactional relationship with their deities, giving them the worship they required in exchange for the gods’ help with their needs and wants. But no one sought a personal, intimate relationship with Zeus and his cohort. Religion was a means to an end; its rules relevant only to the religious parts of their bifurcated culture.

You and I are tempted to approach God’s word and will in the same way, choosing which parts of Scripture to obey in a cafeteria-style buffet. Our culture makes us consumers of all things, including biblical truth. When we are tempted by sins that do not seem to lead to negative outcomes (which is a lie), we all too often believe we can do what we want without consequences.

Why I needed back surgery

By contrast, Paul applauded the Christians in Rome for being “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14, my emphasis). Note the order: personal integrity and then spiritual knowledge enabled them to “instruct” others (the word means to admonish, warn, reprove). Then Christ worked through them to bring others to biblical obedience (v. 18).

The more holistically we love and serve our Lord, the more holistically he can bless and use us to change the culture. It was because the early Christians loved and served Jesus so fully that they were used to “turn the world upside down” so effectively (Acts 17:6).

Now it’s our turn.

Scripture calls us the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Your body is only healthy when every part works in coordination with every other part for a unified purpose. When my back stopped functioning properly, surgery was required to stabilize it and bring it back into its proper role in my physical health. So it is with every member of our bodies, every moment of our days.

On my good days, I recognize this need for holistic holiness. I understand that the cost of such spirituality is more than repaid by God’s gracious provision. I know that refusing temptation and choosing obedience is best for me and for everyone I influence. I recognize that when I wear Jesus’ “yoke,” I experience his perfect will and guidance in ways that lead to the abundant life he alone can provide (Matthew 11:29; John 10:10).

On my bad days, I segregate my soul from my body and God’s will from my own in the belief that what I want is best for me, regardless of what God says. On those days, I have learned that a renewed focus on Jesus’ atoning grace can empower a renewed focus on obedience.

Bitten by snakes 200 times

Tim Friede has allowed himself to be bitten by venomous snakes more than two hundred times. As a result, his body has developed antibodies that are being used to develop new antivenom treatments.

Now, consider what Jesus allowed the Romans to do to his body so he could atone for our sins. Remember the scourging, the crown of scalp-piercing thorns, the nails in his wrists and feet, the spear in his side. And remember that he chose all of this for you.

St. Ephrem, a Syrian theologian who died in AD 373, wrote regarding the cross:

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. . . .

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. . . .

Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. . . .

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

The pastor and writer Paul Powell said it well: “Thy will, O God, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.”

Do you agree?