The law of God commands us to love our neighbours—even our enemies. In the negative, it forbids hatred. Yet the entire Old Testament stands as vivid proof that the law alone cannot restrain humanity’s sinful tendency to hate. It can restrain evil, but it cannot remove it.

Having rejected the authority of Scripture, the Australian government is now repeating the same mistake—attempting to police an arbitrary definition of “hate.” But how can a government police hate without first clearly defining what constitutes love?

God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), yet the government’s absurd commitment to religious pluralism and moral relativism prevents it from affirming that truth. This makes every attempt to police hate inherently arbitrary. In reality, these efforts seem designed to keep the law flexible enough to prosecute anyone for saying anything.

But in essence, the state is attempting to force Australians to love their neighbours, whatever their elastic definition of love might be. But love cannot be legislated. It cannot be threatened into existence by fines, surveillance, or imprisonment. The Bible makes this clear: love cannot be coerced. Peace with our enemies is the by-product of peace with God.

There is only one remedy Scripture offers—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The repeated failures of Israel under the Old Covenant all point us toward something greater: the transforming power of grace through the Gospel.

By rejecting that Gospel, our nation has forfeited its long-proven, civilising influence on society. We now live in an increasingly anti-Christian culture, unanchored from any higher moral authority and driven largely by base desires. Having cast aside the cure for hate, the government now attempts to police its symptoms.

But law cannot make men good. Only the Gospel can. And the more the state tries to enforce love and cohesion by the sword, the more it will breed resentment, not unity.