In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25 ESV)

Judges 19-21 are probably the of the most disturbing passages in the Bible. It starts with a man getting partying with his father-in-law for a week straight. Then as the man leaves and is headed back home with his wife, he is shunned from a town and the men of that town try to rape him. However, instead of being raped himself, his wife is raped all night long by the people of that town. She becomes unresponsive and dies in the morning. Her husband then cuts her up and sends twelve pieces of her body through the entire country as a symbolic gesture of the wrong that his wife endured. Then there is a war with the city that committed the atrocity. Soon thereafter a genocide of the people. Finally, there is oatha being made and stealing of daughters and so forth to make right what went wrong by doing wrong.

Read it in detail if you are interested in a crazy story, but take this away with you: that is the story of our lives if there is no King over us. We get drunk, get raped, kill, and do more evil than intended because we all believe that we deserve ours and ours first because we believe we matter more. You can take any perspective in the story but everybody is a villain except the victim, who is dead. When we have a king in our lives, and his name is Jesus, we cease to subject ourselves to this type of asinine self righteousness that acts on what we subjectively believe is right. Rather we defer to what our King believes is right.

We need a king to govern our lives. We need a king to save us from killing ourselves, and dishonoring our members. We need a king to lead us safely through. This King is Jesus who even rescues us so we don’t die at dawn. Jesus rescues us from correcting our wrongs with more wrong. Jesus loves us without regret and remorse because he is the great King whose perspective is eternal, unchanging, and righteous.