"A Law Unto Themselves" Used to Mean the Opposite

You've met this person. The driver who treats the turn signal like it's optional. The coworker who's never once followed the dress code. The teenager who has decided curfew is more of a suggestion. And you shake your head and say, "That one's a law unto himself."

We mean he makes up his own rules and ignores everybody else's. Here's the surprise: when the apostle Paul first wrote those words, he meant almost exactly the opposite.

Paul's argument

Turn with me to Romans 2. Paul is building a case, and the case is that everybody needs the gospel. In chapter 1 he deals with the pagan world that turned away from God. In chapter 2 he turns to the religious folks, the ones who had the law of Moses and figured that made them better than everybody else.

Then he says something that probably made some of them squirm:

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. (Romans 2:14)

These Gentiles never got the Ten Commandments delivered to them on Mount Sinai. But they still know stealing is wrong. They still know you ought to honor your mother and daddy. They still feel guilty when they lie. How? Paul tells us in the next verse:

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (Romans 2:15)

So when Paul says they're "a law to themselves," he doesn't mean they're lawless. He means God has written his moral law on the human heart, and even people who have never read a Bible carry it around inside them. Their conscience goes with them everywhere like a little courtroom.

How the phrase flipped

The familiar wording comes from William Tyndale's New Testament, which said these Gentiles were "a law unto themselves." The King James kept it. And over time, English speakers took that phrase and ran the other way with it. "A law unto himself" came to mean somebody who answers to nobody, who's his own authority.

Isn't that something? Paul's phrase was evidence that nobody gets to be their own authority. God's law is stamped on all of us. We turned it into a description of people who think they're the exception.

Why this matters for you

Here's where Paul is going, and it's not where we'd like him to go. If God's law is written on every heart, then nobody gets to say, "I didn't know." The religious person who has the Bible is accountable. The irreligious person who never cracked one is accountable too, because his own conscience has been testifying all along. Paul lands it a chapter later:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23)

All of us. The church kid and the outlaw. The one who keeps the rules and the one who's "a law unto himself."

Now let me ask you a question, and be honest. When was the last time your conscience accused you? When was the last time you changed your mind because God's word confronted you? Some of us have gotten real good at arguing with that inner courtroom, real good at excusing instead of confessing. But you can't out-argue the law God wrote on your heart, and you sure can't justify yourself.

The good news Paul is setting up

Paul isn't trying to crush you. He's clearing the ground so you'll see the only way out. Listen to how he finishes the thought:

and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (Romans 3:24)

Justified as a gift. Not earned or argued for. Given.

And here's the best part. Long before Paul, God promised through Jeremiah that he would do more than leave a trace of his law on our hearts: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33). In Jesus, God doesn't just accuse us with the law written on our hearts. He forgives us, changes us, and gives us a new heart that wants to obey him.

You weren't made to be a law unto yourself. You were made to belong to Somebody. Stop arguing with the courtroom inside. Take the verdict to Jesus and let him pay it.