Quoted from a book called Truth and Transformation by Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi. I couldn’t have said it better (except my comments in parentheses):

“Only where the freedom is understood as the rule of law is there some freedom for the governed. A people are free only to the degree to which the powers of their government are limited by law. There is only one test of political freedom: are the rulers under the law or above the law? If any of the human rulers are above the law, then that is rule of rulers, not the rule of law. Potentially that is a dictatorship, not a free country.

Rule of the human rulers is not freedom. Rule of law is. This raises the fundamental question: is the ultimate source of law human or divine? If the law is entirely human, then those who have the power to make the law have the power to change it too, and thus they are above the law. Genuine freedom is impossible in societies that have only human law.

Only if absolute law comes from beyond man, can it be binding on all men. Only before a transcendent law can there be a genuine equality of all men. Kings and prisoners alike can be equal before the law if the law itself is above the king. Transcendent law presupposes a transcendent Lawgiver. If there is no just Ruler above the kings of the earth, if he has not given his law to men, then political freedom or rule of law is a sheer illusion, a mirage that is impossible to attain. Man is condemned forever to live under the rule of “might is right” (since all law is ultimately backed up by physical or military force), whether the might be of a few or of the majority. The concept of the rule of law becomes a superstition without faith in a just Ruler above the human rulers.

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Proclaiming Jesus as “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (as Paul did many times), was and is the only genuine way of establishing politically free societies. In this sense, evangelism does not overthrow the existing political kingdoms, but by bringing kings under a transcendental law, it curtails the arbitrary freedom of the kings and thereby increases the political freedom of the ruled.

Political freedom is determined not primarily by whether or not the king himself is Christian, but by whether or not he is under the law of God. Political freedom will increase in proportion to the submission of the rulers to the transcendent law in their public lives.

Was Paul fighting a corrupt political establishment? No, if fighting is generally understood militarily, but yes, if it is understood evangelically. He was witnessing uncompromisingly that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord. Christ chose Paul precisely for such political evangelism. God said to Ananias, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings” (Acts 9:15). For Paul evangelism results in socio-political transformation, because it brings the kings of this world under the authority of Christ. Bringing totalitarian human rulers under the authority of a transcendent law is the highest definition of political freedom that history has seen.

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From this perspective, the doctrines of the second coming and the final judgment do not give us the right to assume that the world will go from bad to worse, making reform impossible. On the contrary, these doctrines demand that our evangelism results in curtailing the oppressive totalitarian powers of the human rulers. The kings, presidents, and prime ministers of the earth should be brought under the rule of Christ. That is evangelism, and that is also political freedom: curtailing and limiting the power of the state over the individual, demanding that the laws of the state be just in light of the justice and righteousness of God.”