Expositional Lectures

Meaning of Salvation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 5-12

Genre: Speech

Track: 075

Dictation Name: RR119A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the privileges and opportunities that are ours in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that all Thy promises to us in Him are a aye and amen. And in this confidence and in this faith we come to Thee, according to Thy Word. Open wide our mouth that Thou mightest fill them. To open our hearts, that Thou mightest enter them. In Jesus name, Amen.

Our Scripture is from the 8th chapter of Romans, verses 18 through 25. The meaning of salvation. The meaning of salvation. Romans 8:18-25.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (19) For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. (20) For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, (21) Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (22) For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. (23) And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (24) For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? (25) But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Words very often change in the course of time in their meaning. The word may come to have a more restricted, or more often, a broader meaning, or it may come to mean something radically different from its original sense.

Thus the word farmer, a few years ago, or rather a few centuries ago, in English meant tax collector. A Farmer now is definitely not a tax collector. Then too, not to many generations ago, if a man introduced his spouse as my silly wife, he was speaking of her as his beloved, his darling wife. Such an introduction today might get a husband in very serious trouble. Words do change in their meaning. Thus to understand the Bible we need to understand the words therein, in the intended sense. Our concern today is with the meaning of salvation. Of the word savior. To save. What does it mean? Today, we find that certain evangelists very strictly and narrowly define the word salvation as being born again. Certainly salvation does involve this, and it is central to salvation. But to limit the meaning of the word to what these evangelists say, is to narrow and severely limit the meaning of the biblical word. On the other hand, we have modernists who insist that salvation is in essence equivalent with socialism. And this of course constitutes a perversion of the word. The word salvation in the Old Testament is translated by a number of words, so that we find it in various forms in the English, which are designed to convey something of the breadth of the meaning of the original word. And the stem, in Hebrew, means, literally, to be broad, to be spacious. So that the concept of salvation has in it the idea of something broad and spacious, but the root idea in the word salvation is deliverance. Deliverance.

We find, for example, as we go through the Old Testament, that the successful military leaders of Israel are repeatedly called deliverers or saviors, depending upon the version. Thus, we find such a term in Judges 3:9 and 15, Nehemiah 9:27, we find Gideon, again in Judges, spoken of as a savior or a deliverer of Israel. And he is required to reduce his forces to 300 men, lest Israel should say mine own hand has saved me. Thus military deliverance is very definitely an aspect of salvation. And the Bible maintains, whether the deliverance be military or otherwise, that all deliverance comes from God. So that God is almost spoken of as the savior. In Isaiah 43:3 and 11, Isaiah 45:15 and 21, and many another passage. Supremely, of course, the word savior is applied to Jesus Christ. And all the deliverers of the Old Testament are types, forerunners of Jesus Christ. However, this is not the only sense in which salvation is used. The word salvation is used in both the New Testament and in the Old Testament, in the wider sense of deliverance from every kind of trouble. From every kind of oppression. From every burden and heartache. And also from sickness, from disease. In fact, the English word salvation comes from the Latin, salveo, meaning health. And we have the cognate word, salve. And a salve is a healing ointment. Salvation, therefore, in the English, does mean, literally, fullness of health.

This definitely is a part of the biblical idea. For example, in the New Testament, in James 5:15, we are told that the prayer of faith is for the saving of the sick. And it shall save the sick one. There, very obviously, the word salvation, to save, is cognate with physical healing.

The great act of salvation, in the Old Testament of course, is the deliverance from Egypt. Israel was in slavery. When God delivered them from the slavery of Egypt, from Pharaoh’s hosts, and led then to the Promised Land. And this entire work of God is called His salvation of His people Israel. So that we see how great a scope salvation has in the Bible. And this great act in Exodus is made a type of salvation. To give us something of the concept in its fullness of breadth. Thus, salvation means deliverance from trouble, deliverance from our enemies, from all calamities and distress, it means also, healing. It means security and prosperity. Thus we find in Psalm 34:6, the psalm is saying that this poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and delivered me out of all my troubles. Delivered, or saved me, out of all my troubles. again in Psalm 118:25 we read, say now we beseech Thee Oh Lord, O Lord send now prosperity. So that we see clearly that salvation also involves the prosperity of the saints. Again in Psalm 106:4-5, Oh visit me with Thy salvation, that I may see the prosperity of Thy chosen. Thus we find prosperity also involves salvation, and is an aspect of true salvation.

The word salvation is also translated in various places and in various versions as welfare, safety or security, and a host of other meanings. Supremely, of course, salvation is associated with our regeneration. With our salvation from the power and penalty of sin and death. And this is the starting point, the essence of salvation. But we cannot, as we have seen, limit salvation to our salvation from the power of sin. It is also salvation from the power of death, but far broader than that, it involves our total deliverance, material and spiritual. And it culminates in the resurrection of the dead, and the glorious life in the New Kingdom. Salvation then, is a very broad and significant concept in Scripture. This broad meaning is not, by any means, limited to the Old Testament, in fact it is under girded and reinforced by the New. And it is used to signify physical healing in our Lord’s ministry. For example, Mark 3:4, in Luke 6:9, Luke 18:42 and many another passage. In the New Testament salvation becomes the word which sums up all the blessings brought by the Gospel, all the blessings bestowed by God upon those whom Jesus Christ saves from the power of sin and death. As a result, to understand the meaning of salvation, we must recognize that it is deliverance in the broadest sense of the word. That its starting point is indeed salvation from sin and death, but it includes total deliverance, temporal and spiritual, in time and in eternity. St. Paul, in the passage which was read earlier, tells us something of the fullness, of the scope of salvation. He declares that it is cosmic, it is universal, and he declares that there is a great glory to be revealed in us. In the future world.

In the eternal kingdom of God. And the earnest expectation of the creation, of every creature of God and the term includes not living only, but inanimate creations of God, waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. And the whole creation, we are told, groans and travails, waiting to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Thus St. Paul declares that the very ground beneath our feet, the animal and plant life around us, has one powerful impulse, urge, in it. The salvation which is to be ours in its fullness, in the eternal kingdom of God. Now some people will immediately react negatively to this and say that this is nonsense, to talk about the very ground beneath our feet and the plant life having an impulse that drives them, moves them, toward this glorious event, towards the fulfillment of salvation in us. But is it so absurd? After all, do not the plants and the earth beneath us respond to certain things in the universe? Put a flower near the window, a potted plant, it’s your plant and you want to enjoy it, but the flower turns from you and looks at the sun. Every impulse in every plant is to move towards the light, towards the sun. And the ground beneath our feet, does it not move in terms of the law of gravity? And do not all the heavenly bodies move in terms of certain basic laws of their being, so that they are constantly impelled and driven in terms of that law? And since God created all things, the great law of all things is that they move towards that destined end and purpose of God, so that this fullness of salvation we can speak of as the great sun which draws every living thin, the great center towards which all things gravitate.

So that Paul declares, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting to be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Groaneth and travaileth. The word travail, of course, means is having birth pains. And the whole of the universe is, as it were, not fully and proper born. It is looking forward to its true birth or rebirth. And the recreation of all things in the world to come. Thus salvation is universal, cosmic, as well as personal. It is social as well as particular. It is for time as well as eternity. For the present and for the future. The extent of salvation thus is vast, it is deliverance for us from the day we call upon Christ as our Savior, and it is the fullness of deliverance in the eternal kingdom of God. In relationship to salvation we are passive. It is God’s work, and the Scripture declares over and over and over again that we are the recipients of the divine grace and mercy. By grace have ye been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, Paul declares in Ephesians 2:8. On the human side our response to salvation is repentance, faith and obedience. Thus as we sum up the meaning of salvation we must say that it is, in the broad sense of the term, deliverance.

This deliverance is military, economic, personal, social, national and international, it is physical, that is it has reference to health, it is spiritual, it is our deliverance from sin and from death, and it is cosmic, universal. The duty of the Church therefore is to proclaim the wholeness of salvation. The total doctrine. The centrality of salvation is our deliverance from sin and death. And this is basic to this wholeness. All else flows from this. With this in mind, therefore the Church must proclaim deliverance in every area as God’s sovereign purpose. And the totality of the extent of salvation is not only present, but future. For time and eternity.

And finally, we must declare that salvation is to enjoyed. A miserable Christian is a contradiction in terms. It is deliverance from trouble. God is our Savior, and His eternal purpose is the fullness of salvation for us. And hence it is that Paul calls upon the redeemed of God, the saved ones, to rejoice. And again I say unto you, rejoice.

Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy sovereign word. We thank Thee that Thou art our Savior, that Thou dost deliver us out of all troubles, and that Thy purpose for us is deliverance. Salvation. Our God how great Thou art. We thank Thee and praise Thee, in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. They are related to it in that the more we grow in grace, the more we develop in terms of our salvation, our regeneration, the more we are going to have health in our personal life, total health. And the more we are going to be a principle of health in social life. Now, the old saying, you can’t make a good omelet with bad eggs, brings this out. You cannot have a good society with bad men. So that when you have persona salvation it is going to have social results. And the true Christian is going to work to bring about the captivity of every realm to Jesus Christ, so that the economic, and every other realm, will be under the sovereignty of Christ and His salvation will be their manifest. Now, when we restrict salvation therefore to the purely spiritual aspect, we are limiting the biblical concept. Now, the fallacy of some people who have, in one area alone, expanded the doctrine of salvation, is this. These are the people who say, you’re not saved if you’re sick. The healers. They make healing a part of the atonement. Well, this is deadly. Because if you say that a person is only saved if he is in perfect health, and make that an aspect of the atonement, of justification, what you are then saying is that anyone who gets sick and dies is not saved. Well this is fantastic. But when you say regeneration is one thing, justification in other words is one thing, and sanctification is our growth in the basic principles of salvation, our application of it to various areas of our life, then it’s a different matter. Then you can point out that as you have more and more men who are saved and are growing in terms of that, being sanctified, then you find progressive health in every area. But since no man is perfectly sanctified in this life, you’re never going to have the perfection of anything in this life.

But it is true that you do have better health where you do have saved people. Because it does have an affect on the body.

[Audience] So then these other attributes of salvation aren’t instantaneously available to us..

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] but only to the degree in which our finite mind and our sinful nature can make {?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. As we grow in grace and our sanctification. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, I did write on the Bill of Rights. I haven’t seen some of the teachers workbooks and things that go with that book, but someone is going to try in Northern California to get a copy of it when it comes off the presses for me. Both the textbook and the workbook that goes with it.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. You have to have faith. Now, when you get into the area of understanding there are two terms that we must distinguish between. One is knowledge and the other is learning. A person who is learning has a great deal of information about something. And our world today is full of learned men, our universities are full of learned men. But learned men do not necessarily have knowledge. Because knowledge involves insight as well.

Now, as Christians we must say that a person can be very learned about the faith but he will have no knowledge of it without faith. So that the precondition is faith. He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Now none of us are going to have perfect peace in this world, so when we deal with the matter of peace, we’ve got to recognize this perfect peace is not necessarily a desireful thing. And we are told that our Lord was troubled in spirit in the garden of Gethsemane. There would have been something wrong with Him if He had not been. It was no sin on His part to be troubled. So that peace must be a godly peace. A great many people are at peace today in America who have no business being at peace. However, it is not a sign of faith to be troubling ourselves about things that we can do nothing about. Now if grief or tragedy or trouble strikes us, it is going to upset us. That’s normal, natural. And God understands that and we would be monsters if it did not. But our reaction then has to be to put our confidence and our trust in God. To commit it to Him in prayer, as Paul said, casting all your cares upon Him, knowing that He careth for you. So that we have recognize, as our Lord said, that by much thinking, by much troubling of our minds we cannot add one cubit to our stature. And we cannot change tomorrow by worrying about it. So we have to move in terms of faith.

Now, what is the aspect of knowledge that characterizes faith? To get to the heart of your question. Well, we are told we have to be like little children in this respect.

Now, this is does not mean we are to know nothing. Children know this. You may worry, or may have worried at some time or other about how you were going to make a living, how you were going to make ends meet and how you were going to eat. Many a parent has faced such a crisis in difficult times. But the child never worries. Why? The child knows that mother and father love him or her, and so they know they’re loved, and they know their parents are going to provide for them and do everything possible to care for them. So no child goes to bed wondering, am I going to eat tomorrow, am I going to be cared for tomorrow. Mother and father know these things and they’re going to provide. And our Lord said that this should be the pattern of faith for us. Your Heavenly Father knoweth these things. So in this confidence, in this faith, in this knowledge, that He is our Father in Heaven, and He knows far more than we know, so that we are worrying in terms of our ignorance, He sees the end from the beginning. With this knowledge that He is our Father in Heaven we cast our every care upon Him.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. He wants learning about something, information.

[Audience]…{?}….

[Dr. Rushdoony] We misuse the word knowledge very often. There is an encyclopedia entitled ‘The Book of Knowledge’. It is more properly The Book of Information. It doesn’t give knowledge, it doesn’t have knowledge. It’s incapable of knowing, but it’s full of information. And information is what our modern world gears us to look for. But information doesn’t answer the basic questions of life. Knowledge does, because knowledge is premised on faith. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. The word first there is not in terms of a sequence of time, it is simply speaking in, it is a logical sequence. These are the things that are going to happen simultaneously but it does not have reference to any sequence of events. It’s all simultaneous.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] It’s the end of the world. It’s all simultaneous.

[Audience] And the people who believe in The Rapture believe this will come before the millennium, right?

[Dr. Rushdoony] Before the end of the world, and before the millennium, yes.

While we’re waiting for another question I’d like to read just a few passages from a very interesting article in the December 28, 1966 Presbyterian Journal. And the title of the article is ‘One Man With God’. It was reprinted from a publication in New Zealand. And it is the experience of a missionary who lived through seven purges in Communist China. And it is anonymous, it describes his arrest and his imprisonment, and the treatment of the various missionaries, the priests and nuns and others that were prisoners. And their whole purpose was to torture them, to break them down mentally then to make a public display of them and ask them all kinds of questions, about what they believed, about their moral conduct, to get them confused when their minds were sluggish or confused from the punishment so that they would make a fool of themselves as these rapid fire questions were asked.

Now to quote from this.

“The People’s Court in the center of the town had witnessed the mass execution of recalcitrants. The children were daily leading the counter-revolutionaries from the prison to their death, chanting their blood songs and dancing their way to the scene of the execution. Now another indoctrination class was assembling. Several occupations and professions were represented by the thirty or forty men who filed in. But most of the present company were of various religious orders including a Jewish doctor, a Protestant missionary and two catholic priests. The classroom was at the back of a Buddhist temple and was used as a store for the district’s supply of fertilizer. This fodder was not of the hygienic powdered or liquid varieties common in western countries but was a maggot infested sludge of human excreta. The storage pits containing this evil smelling smile were in two rows with a narrow path between. During the present session three men were buried alive in these foul cess pits. The class was assembled each morning at 6:00, and apart from a midday break for a meal of rice and vegetables from a communal bowl or a drink from a bucket of water with a single cup, it continued until 10 at night. Two circles were drawn on the blackboard. These represented the body and the mind. Control of the latter and the body will follow in obedience, having no soul these men needed no god. This whole approach was not just an attack on Christianity, but on the basic god of the spiritual appetite in man. The lecture dealt with the facts of conscious and sub-conscious mind and with the reactions to moral choice as they are governed by sub-conscious habit and background education and culture. This background forming as it does the Communists chief enemy, was the biggest target. A man was placed on the tiny dais and questioned about confessed habits. These would range from the lowest forms of sexual immorality to the highest acts of religious exercise. And of course they would put the priests and missionaries on after torturing them to make them collapse because their mind would become dulled and they would be unable to answer the questions and would be confused and answer improperly. “The missionary was questioned as to his reading of the Bible and habit of prayer. How could he prove there was a God or that he was heard for his asking. Past answers to prayer were insufficient evidence for the demanding atheist, who with foaming lips and screaming voice demanded an immediate demonstration. At such a time no prayer book platitudes will suffice. The soul that does not know his God perishes with the test. Oh Lord, stammered the missionary finally, give this man an understanding in someway, even if it is necessary to make him blind.

In the hush that followed, the arrogant oppressor blinked, but saw only the redness of sightless eyes. He was blind. Led away by his comrades, he became violently sick and days later sent for the prisoner. There on their knees, Christian and Communist sought a nonexistent God to save the Communist’s nonexistent soul. It was not long before the missionary was to witness this new convert seal his testimony with his life, as on the platform of the People’s Court sharpened chopsticks were driven up his nostrils into his brain.” And so on. And it describes the various ordeals and they that various ones were subjected to and killed, and then the final ordeal as they subjected him to punishment and torture by a series of men. Mental blackouts were his salvation from complete destruction. Upon regaining consciousness, he would assailed again and again. All the time his mind was throw back the answers, often in the words of Scripture. A knife was place before him, he was tempted to take his life, but back came the answer, my times are in Thy hands. The screaming voice of the interrogator demanded to know where the words came from and he threw a Bible before his victim. The sacred volume fell open at Psalm 31, and as the missionary read aloud each verse, the tension rose to breaking point in that hellish atmosphere. Here was a description of a present situation in detail. Here was the cry of the prisoner to his God for deliverance, and last of all, here was the very verse previously quoted. This was to much for the still superstitious inquisitor, who fled from the room. And what did he read in Psalm 31? Here are some of the verses. Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me, for Thou art my strength. I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbors and a fear to mine acquaintances. They that did see me without fled from me, for I have heard the slander of many, fear was on every side while they took council together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in Thee O Lord, I said Thou art my God, my times are in Thy hand. Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies and from them that persecute me. Let the lying lips be put to silence which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. O love the Lord all ye his saints, for the Lord preserveth the faithful and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

At the end of this final ordeal, the prisoner was carried in, almost lifeless, to the steps of the mission house, deposited there in the early hours of the morning and left. Inside, colleagues were coming to an end of an night of prayer for his deliverance, and when he finally awake in the arms of his wife he was carried indoors. This could not have been the end of the story as it must be for us. He was not yet to leave China. Many in that very town were to find Christ in the seven long months before exit permits were finally granted. And they left behind their Christian home and that Communist hell.

Are there any further questions now?

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] That all depends, it’s hard to say. We know that the responsibilities always grate on everyone. But we also know that very often we don’t see God’s appointed men until the right time, because they won’t hear them until they are desperate. So God may have any number of men that He’s prepared for the future.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] A good question. Let’s analyze the impact of Luther and Calvin. We can go back through the centuries and analyze the impact of a great many of the great Christians, but those two, since they’ve been mentioned.

Now, if it had remained a matter of the preaching of Luther, the movement would have died very soon. Because while it did create a stir and temporarily there was a political break, that break would have been healed in no time at all. And things would have continued as they had. What was it that made the work permanent and not something that, like the work of Hauss{?} and many others before, failed to produce reform. Well it was this. In a very short period of years Luther trained 20,000 young men, and that’s what changed the map of Europe. And men came from all over, in some cases just for a matter of a few weeks, to sit under Calvin. And John Knox was one of those for a brief period of time. Not to brief, but not a long period of study. Again, this was the thing that did it. So that we do not see the Reformation properly unless we understand that it was a move in education. To change the entire nature of education. And this is precisely what the counter-reformation was also. Because the counter-reformation would never have gotten off the ground if Ignatius Loyola had not gone into education. And created schools. First one and then two, but through them, ultimately, to command the Catholic Church. And to prevent it from being a total wreck. So that the Reformation was first of all an education movement and we have lost sight of that. The politics of it could not have kept it alive.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Was the boy at fault playing with it, or what happened?

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very good. Then there’s Romans 8:28. For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, them who are the called according His purpose. Romans 8:28. Now what that says is that if we move in terms of faith, the worst things that happen, and we have to face the fact they are bad, God can make work together for good.

To return to your question, you see, we already have an indication of one answer that God is giving this generation. It’s the Christian school movement. Because this is a major thing. And this is laying the ground work so that the first step, the grade schools, has been taken, and is growing. The second step, the high schools, 10% of the children in America now are in it, the independent and Christian high school. The third step is to rebuild the institutions of higher learning.

We have time possibly for one more question. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. A good question. Now, the environmentalists believes that man is a product of his environment. So that he is created by the environment, the environment is properly his God. So that he is passive in relationship to the environment. For the Christian, man is a creature of God, having been created by God, he is passive in his relationship towards God, but active in his relationship to the environment. Whereas for the environmentalists, man is active in his relationship to God because God didn’t make him. He can be very high and mighty if there’s any trace of environmentalism in him, he can demand that God stay out of his way if he believes in God, and he isn’t going to accept predestination and he’s not going to believe a lot of these things that are in the Bible because, well, they make for difficulties.

He wants his independence. So environmentalism means passivity to the environment, towards nature, activity towards God. But Christian faith means passivity towards God, since he made us, and activity in relationship to the environment. So that indeed the environment sometimes has an affect on us, but basically we are here to exercise dominion over that environment. It is sin when we do not. It’s an aspect of the Fall. So that man’s calling is to bring that environment under the dominion of God, and it’s only when he is in sin that he cannot do it.

Well, with that we stand dismissed.