A Fresh and Radical Newness in Family Law?

As part of a family law governing body with the Virginia State Bar I received an email last week from a judge which ended with this encouragement:

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think. Then you will learn from your own experience how HIS ways will really satisfy you. -------Romans 12:2

What great advice to any Christian attorney, law student or legal professional. The Apostle Paul’s admonition to the believers of Rome is just as vibrant and relevant today as it was two millennia ago. As a family lawyer and law professor whose worldview emanates from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, nearly everything I teach and counsel and publish is radical to our culture today. And in fact, that’s a very good thing.

Practicing law, and particularly family law, from a biblical perspective is a cutting edge uncompromising call. When governments flounder to discern the meaning and purpose of marriage, the call to believers is to “be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think.” In fact, the broken state of the family in culture opens up incredible opportunities for the body of Christ to offer new hope to a struggling world. That begins with our own lives, and our own families.


Romans 12:2 sheds light on an understanding of the desperate need for Christian lawyers and for those lawyers to be healers of human conflict. Scripture releases an understanding of what is happening with the breakdown of the family from a biblical and legal perspective, helping lawyers to discern what can be done, both personally and legally, to restore the family to that complete design God originally intended. Wherever you are, be a new and different person… experiencing how His ways will really satisfy you.

~ Prof. Lynne Marie Kohm, Regent University School of Law