Salvation and Godly Rule

The Holy Spirit & The Redeemed Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: The Holy Spirit & The Redeemed Man

Genre: Speech

Track: 49

Dictation Name: RR136AA49

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the Gospel According to St. John 20:19-23, and our subject: The Holy Spirit & the Redeemed Man. “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

We have, in the last few weeks, studied the doctrine of indwelling. We’ve also analyzed the significance of godly giving by the indwelled man of the principle of hilarity, for the Lord loveth a cheerful, or hilarious, giver.

Now, let us turn ourselves to the Holy Spirit and the redeemed man. The redeemed man is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. What does this mean, specifically? To understand the meaning of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, let us begin simply by analyzing the word spirit. The word spirit, apart from holy, just as it exists in scripture, and is there used. We encounter it first in Genesis 1 where we are told that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep, and that God breathed, or spirited man. The word for Spirit, very literally, in scripture is rea{?}, which is translated very often as wind, air in motion, or breath.

A British doctor and student of Hebrew, Dr. James Peer{?} Howard, has written on the subject: “Any unusual manifestation of power or energy could be described as having or showing more spirit. This is often used in relation to God-given vitality for some special purpose. What is important to know that in every instance to be filled with spirit implies action. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that to be filled with the spirit and not engaged in some activity, not performing some action, is a contradiction in terms.” Now how much more this is the case with the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is well known in the Old Testament. The prophets spoke of the fulness of his manifestation, however, as in the future in the time of the Messiah. Before his death and resurrection, our Lord said to his disciples at the Last Supper concerning the Spirit, “Ye know him where he abideth with you and shall be in you.” After the resurrection, the gift of the Spirit was given to the assembled disciples and described in our scripture reading. Subsequently, the gifts of the Spirit were given at Pentecost.

Now, in our scripture, our Lord tells the disciples, “Peace be unto you as my father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them (or it could be translated, “he blew”), and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Now, what was he doing here? Very, very clearly, this is a reenactment of the creation of man. We are told in Genesis 2:7 that the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breathe of life, and man became a living soul. God breathed, he spirited into man the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living soul.

Now, the Greek word that is here used is empasaro{?} which is the word which the Septuagint, the Greek translation of scripture used in Genesis 2:7, very, very emphatically. What we have here is a deliberate reenactment of the creation of man in Genesis 2:7. Christ, in effect, is saying that the re-creation of man as the new Adam, in Christ, is my word{?}, and whereas before it was simply Spirit, the breath of life, now it is the Holy Spirit that indwells man and sets him apart from the unredeemed man.

The Holy Spirit thus indwells, the mind, the soul, or spirit of the believer, as do the essential life, as his motivating purpose. The Holy Spirit is the breath, the wind, or as it can be rendered, the rushing energy, the motivating purpose of the new man, and yet at the same time, he is the third person of the Trinity reigning in all eternity. Our Lord deliberately echoed Genesis 2:7. He re-created man, and he sent man forth saying, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” It is now your purpose to re-create even as you have been re-created, to reorder all things in terms of my sovereign law word.

In Genesis [John] 14:12, our Lord after he had spoken about the Holy Spirit, declared unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” Now, some people have chosen to interpret that in terms of the works, the miracles, the disciples did. They did raise the dead. They did heal the sick and cause the blind to see. They did perform great and marvelous miracles, but the time of miracles ended with the Fall of Jerusalem, and our Lord did not say that these greater works were the works of the disciples, but of he that believeth on me, all of them. What he had reference to was this remaking of all things, of the whole world in terms of Christ and his words. This is our calling{?}. God sent Christ into the world to give his life a ransom for many, and to regenerate his people, his elect, and now Christ sends us into the world to regenerate, the remake the whole world, and to bring it into conformity to his words.

And yet, as we read in the scriptures, we find that Cleophas{?} and the other disciple as they, left Jerusalem, and our Lord walked with them and in their grief and sorrow, their eyes blinded, could not recognize him, spoke of Jesus as a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all his people. In Matthew 13:24, we read that it was said of our Lord, “Whence hast this man this wisdom, these mighty works?” Now this expression, “mighty in deed and word,” is echoed throughout the Old Testament, throughout the scriptures of the Spirit-filled man so that the mark of the new man in Jesus Christ is the same. To have the indwelling of the Spirit is to be marked by wisdom, by energy, and by power. It is the mark of the believer.

When we examine the United States, we find that across the 120 million of the 200 million are church members. Of these 120 million, 40 million claim to be Bible believing Christians. Are they right in their claim? Scripture gives us grounds for judgment. “By their fruits shall ye known them.” It tells us that the Spirit means energy, power. Can we call those 40 million men who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit? I do not see how we can. The test is in the fruit. When a handful of communists and Fabian socialists can exercise more power in the United States than 40 million evangelicals, you have to say that the Spirit is absent there. There is no energy rushing forth, power working in them. We have a form of godliness as St. Paul said. They lack the power thereof.

Remember Dr. Howard’s words which I quoted earlier. His words based on an analysis of the meaning of the word Spirit. He said, “To be filled with Spirit implied action. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that to be filled with the Spirit and not engaged in some activity, not performing some action, is a contradiction in terms.” The idea of impotent Christians, therefore, is nonsense. It is an impossibility. It is a contradiction in terms. A Christian is one who has the indwelling Spirit. He is thence energized. He is motivated, and whether his lot be a humble one of a great one, wherever he is, there is a difference. The power of the Christian is tied to the Spirit and to the work. He breathed on them. Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

Now it is very interesting how the scripture makes a play on the meaning of the word Spirit, because it can also mean wind. The first Psalm gives us such a play on the word, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. Ye shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, that his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever ye doeth shall prosper.”

The picture of the godly man, therefore, is a man of some stubbornness, godly stubbornness. He does not drift with the crowd. He resists the trend of the times. He delights in the law of the Lord. He is like a tree; he has roots. Thus, the psalmist then says, “The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” Very interesting. The ungodly are driven by the wind, driven by the spirit, just as chaff, dead leaves are blown and carried hither and yon by the wind, so are the ungodly, but not the godly. The Spirit, the wind, the energy, the driving force is no longer outside them, but in them. They are not driven. They drive. They are the motivating force, not the ones who are pushed and carried with the tide.

Then, our Lord went on to say, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” The gift of the Spirit is ministerial also, a declarative power to bind and to loose. We touched on this a few weeks ago, but it is important and bears repetition. A ministerial or declarative power is one which does not originate with us, but is given to us to administer, so that when unfaithfulness to the law of God, we declare to a man, “Because you have fulfilled the conditions of God’s word, your sins are remitted. What we do on earth is that which is done in heaven. Our word has a binding power and a loosing power,” and we tell a man because he has not fulfilled God’s conditions, “Your sins are bound unto you. They are bound in heaven because God is faithful to his word.” It means, therefore, when the man who is indwelled by the Spirit, who knows the word of God and moves in terms of it, knows that his actions are consonant with the power of heaven, and he can move in the certainty of that ministerial, declarative power.

The Holy Spirit, thus, makes us a new man, a new Adam in Christ, and the significance of the indwelling of the Spirit is that now we have the work of Adam to do, greater work, to reconquer the whole earth for Christ, to declare his word, to show forth the majesty of his power, the greatness of his salvation and in all things to declare him king of kings, and Lord of Lords. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit, thus, means that energy, power has been unloosed in the world. It is within us, we are the driving force, and we are to move in terms of the certainty that the Spirit is faithful to his word. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that Jesus Christ has redeemed us and remade us, and breathed into us thy Holy Spirit. Now the Spirit of life, the third person of the Trinity indwells in us, to guide, to govern, and to rule us, and to establish thy dominion in and through us. Make us therefore, zealous in thy Spirit, constant in our work, and faithful to thy word, that we may be more than conquerors through him that loved us, even Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, our Lord treated them as regenerate. This did not mean they were mature or had a full grasp of the implications of his teaching until after the resurrection, but they were regenerate. Yes?

[Audience] {?} point in time {?} presupposition {?}

[Rushdoony] He comes before our conversion at the point of regeneration, and it is he who guides us into accepting Christ and, step by step, throughout our growth and our development.

[Audience] {?} the apostles changed so radically from before to after, I’ve always thought that because the {?} rather than become supernatural {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, certainly there was growth, but it was also that now our Lord breathed into them the Holy Spirit. They were given special powers as well, and we do know that they were divinely inspired, some of them, to write scripture, so that there was a supernatural factor there above and beyond the supernatural factor that is important in the lives of all of us, because our conversion is supernatural, the indwelling of the Spirit is supernatural, but there was even more in the case of the disciples. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, for the miracle to work?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all, as we study the history of miracles, we have to recognize there is a marked difference between the miracles in the apostolic age. In the apostolic age, the miracles are the variety that have never since been duplicated. There’s a good book on this, incidentally, by Warfield, Miracles, is the title, True and Counterfeit, or something like that. Now, the miracles that were performed from Pentecost to the Fall of Jerusalem have never been duplicated; the dead rising, the blind being healed, and so on. There are very remarkable healings that have taken place through the centuries and in our time, which are a product of faith. Now, faith healers are fully aware of this aspect, and they indulge in more than a little charlatanism here, because they weed out the type of person that won’t respond to faith healing. There is no question that we have naturally some remarkable recuperative {?}. Thus, it’s been demonstrated that there is a difference when a man is hypnotized between his normal strength and the strength that the hypnotist tell him he has when he is told, “You are the strongest man in the world.” He will do things that normally he could never do, and this is tested on machines such as gripping machines, and other things, or when he tells him he is the weakest man in the world, so that we have tremendous power{?} in this respect. There is no question, furthermore, that what the hypnotist does thoroughly past{?} the surface in that when a man is a believer, he again has greater resources, the resources of faith, of trust in God, of prayer. In Europe, a few years back, in this century, some time about twenty years ago, some studies were conducted in a hospital. It was impossible to make it precise because this was not an area where any two ailments would be duplicates of each other, but a test was run in the rate of recovery from the same type of surgery for Christians and non-Christians. First of all, the survival rate of Christians in any given type of surgery was greater, and second, the recovery rate was far more rapid so there was no question there was a very definite difference.

Now, when any Christian, whether by going as Christians have through the centuries, to pilgrimages to certain places, or by prayer in his home, commits himself to God, there’s no question that very, very often there are startling healings that take place. For example, I am told of one missionary who has been serving in East Pakistan{?} and went through the whole of the Civil War there and had some very fearful tales to tell of it, who was just here and returned recently, who had leukemia, and on his return, collapsed from it in Japan, had to have transfusions again, and it was the fifteenth time he had to have transfusions, and his veins collapsed while he was in the hospital in Japan, and he was in a very critical condition, and another missionary was there with him when he collapsed, and knowing the work with the man and how greatly and desperately he was needed, he prayed intensely and earnestly for the man, and the man went into unconsciousness and then a deep sleep, and three days later got out of bed and has had no further problems with leukemia. Now these things happen, and what we do have to say is that while the miracles that take place now are different, and in a sense, supernormal rather than supernatural in the old sense, they definitely manifest the grace and mercy of God. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Was the question, Could I relate superstitution to miracles?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, no, because the type and in a sense, you can say yes, but there are certain types of healings that take place that are of an emotional character. Thus, many of these faith healers are able to give what seems to be a healing because they tend to specialize in emotional disorders, or psychosomatic ailments that are a product of an emotional {?}, and as a result, very, very often they seem to do very remarkable things. A person who is very much crippled by a type of arthritis that is a product of an emotional {?} or disorder, sometimes able to walk away from a platform without the crutches they were using. Now, hypnotists are able to do the same thing. There is a very serious problem connected with this type of healing. You eliminate one thing but you don’t eliminate the root problem. If there was a spiritual problem, a mental problem that is leading to this kind of thing, then the one disorder goes away and something more serious appears. This is why, not too many years ago, some doctors who began to experiment and some psychiatrists in particular, with hypnotism found that they were curing certain conditions, clearing them up, when they were emotionally, psychologically induced, but very quickly another condition would appear which would often be far more serious. So, there is no real feeling there. It’s just that the ailment has changed its face. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good. Right. Yes?

[Audience] {?} What scriptures do you have in the Old Testament that show{?}. I know the ones about Job, I know {?}

SOMEBODY SHUT THAT DOG UP!!!

[Rushdoony] Yes, first of all, the idea that the Old Testament did not teach eternal life or that it did not teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and some of these other things, is something that has grown up in the Christian era. The best answer to that is the New Testament, because the whole effectiveness of the preaching in the apostolic age was that everything that our Lord referred to in the Old Testament is being fulfilled in himself and everything that the apostolic preaching referred to was what the Jews believed. In other words, all the interpretations of scripture up to the end of the first century are very definitely that the messiah was going to come, that he would be virgin born, that he would be born in Bethlehem, that he would come in terms of Isaiah 51 to give his life as a ransom for many, and so on. This is all known. In fact, their thinking was Trinitarian. They knew that there was God the Father, the wisdom of logos, or word, and then God the Holy Spirit. Now, it was precisely because the Jews everywhere believed this that the apostolic preaching was so telling among them. All the apostles did was to go throughout the Empire and they would go, you remember from the book of Acts, the synagogue, first of all, and they’d always win a portion of them as converts, and half the synagogue of Rome by the time of St. Paul’s death, had become Christian, were Christian synagogues.

Now, it was precisely because all they had to do was to say, “Look, here is what we’ve always believed about the Messiah, about eternal life, about all these things, and here’s Jesus. He fits the bill perfectly, does he not?” and they would have to say, “Of course he does, of course he does.” And they would either accept Christ or rise up in wrath against them and throw them out, they couldn’t answer. Now, it was because there was this problem that after the Fall of Jerusalem, the rabbis began to feel that “What we must do is to change the meaning, reinterpret the Old Testament scriptures, so that they can no longer make use of them, because the Christians are taking all the scriptures and applying them to Christ, so we will take a new attitude and say, ‘These things mean something else,’” and it was then that they began the emphasis on, “Well, we believe purely in a political order. Our concern is not with the hereafter. These ideas of the messiah referred to a political figure or to the Jewish race as a whole.” All these things came after the Fall of Jerusalem. So there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the case. In fact, the whole presupposition of the Old Testament was exactly what we as Christians believe, and over and over again throughout the Psalms, the assumption is, twenty-third Psalm, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” you see. This is just assumed, and the modern opinion, of course, is not {?}

It is interesting that, to this day, you have not only this kind of thing, but an assertion that well, Israel believes in freewill and so on. Well, before the service, I was reading this mourner’s {?} or manual, for a Jewish service, and it’s interesting, here they deny freewill and they’re still using a traditional ritual which goes back to the early centuries of the Christian era which still asserts predestination. So every time they have a funeral, they’re denying what they’re teaching all the time. They still recite the Hebrew prayers which affirm predestination, but they deny it officially.

[Audience] {?} dispensationalists are taking over the {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they have, and they’re opinions are highly modern in many areas, not only the gap theory with regard to Genesis 1 which has been a product of evolutionary thinking, but the whole idea of the rapture originated in the Edward Irving circles of the early 1800’s, about 1830, 40, thereabout, in early England where you had speaking in tongues, and it was among some of these tongues people that the idea of the rapture originated. It was never known in Christendom until then, totally new idea, and now it’s one of the basic aspects of the dispensationalists’ faith{?} and premillennialists’ faith{?}. Are there any other questions? Well, if not, let us bow our heads for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape