Salvation and Godly Rule

Works

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Change

Genre: Speech

Track: 22

Dictation Name: RR136L22

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Not unto us, O Lord. Not unto us but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth’s sake. Help us, O God of our salvation for the glory of thy name and deliver us, and purge away our sins for thy namesake. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, maker of heaven and earth and all things therein, we thank thee that thou who art Lord of all things art also mindful of us, that there is nothing too great nor too small for thee, that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and so, our Father, in this confidence in thy grace and government we come into thy presence to commit unto thee all our hopes, our cares, our burdens, our joys, and our sorrows, all our todays, and all our tomorrows, rejoicing in thy grace and in thy mercy. Bless us now by thy word and by thy spirit, and grace us thy peace. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Ephesians 2:8-10, and our subject: Works. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

This morning we shall be studying the meaning of the word “works.” Definitions are very important. There are many words that we understand, but unfortunately, because our understanding has not been clarified by a careful analysis of the word and its implications, the meaning we ascribe to it is a minimal meaning. Thus, one of the most important words in scripture is justice. Mishpah. The word has been subjected to some very interesting interpretations. People see justice in terms of what they are interested in. Thus, those whose religion has been pietistic and individualistic have tended to see justice in terms of the individual. Those who have been advocates of the social gospel have analyzed the prophets, Amos in particular, and have read Mishpah, justice, in terms of their ideas of social justice, but in reality, justice has reference to God’s order and the restoration, the fulfillment, the putting into force of God’s order, so that it is more than individual and more than social in its reference.

Now the same kind of misunderstanding appears with regard to the word works. When scripture talks about works, we have a grasp of something of its meaning, but too often, our grasp of it is minimal, and thus, we merely touch the surface of scripture. It is interesting that, checking five or six of the major Bible encyclopedias, I found nothing listed under “works.” A little bit in a few under “good works.” This is surprising, when there are so many references to works. St. Paul, in our texts, emphatically says that salvation is not by works but by grace through faith. It is important for us to understand what works means. The term “good works” is never used in scripture for anything done by unbelievers, and in our passage, we have a distinction between these two terms. “Not of works lest any man should boast.” Then we are told that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Clearly, there is a difference between the two. Works has something to do with the unregenerate, and good works is the product of regeneration.

Then, as we analyze other passages, such as Romans 9:32, and Ephesians 2:9, which we have studied, we find that by comparing these two, we find that St. Paul also includes works of the law, under the condemnation. Thus, we see a second aspect of the meaning of works. First, it is to be distinguished from good works, and then it can be, and sometimes is, spoken of as works of the law, attempts to use the law for justification.

Galatians 2:16 declares that, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Thus, while the law is central with respect to sanctification, it has no place with regard to justification. On the other hand, we must then recognize, as we study further, that the fallen man does not normally obey God’s law. Neither does he recognize God’s law as bindign on him. Thus, when there is a superficial obedience to God’s law, it is not because it is God’s law. Thus, if a man does not murder, who is not a Christian, it is not because he is obeying God, but because for social reasons. He does not find it advisible to commit murder. There are consequences, there are problems. There can be a lack of courage. There are various other restraints, so that his obedience is not unto God.

Moreover, our Lord said, with regard to those who most profess to obey the law, the Pharisees, the Pharisees who declare that salvation was by works of the law, ”Ye have made commandment of God of none effect by your tradition, ye hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; but in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’”

Now, Mofat in his version, renders the one sentence, “So ye hath repealed the law of God to suit your tradition,” and that’s well put. It’s exactly what our Lord was saying. Even as you profess to obey God’s law and to find your salvation therein, you have repealed God’s law by your tradition, and you have replaced God’s law with tradition. This was the indictment of the Pharisees. It can very well be the indictment of most of the church, because the church so often is prone to place its tradition, its rules and regulations, above the word of God. In a very great sentence, Tertullian declared, “Our Lord Jesus Christ did not say ‘I am the conventions,’ but ‘I am the truth.’”

Clearly, our Lord, in this passage, in Matthew 15:6-9, declares that the works of the unregenerate even when they claim to be works of God’s law, involve a repeal of the law of God. We see, therefore, another aspect of works. They are anti-God and antenomian, anti-law. Works therefore, aim at repealing God’s law and replacing it with man’s law, man’s tradition, man’s way. The Pharisees commanded obedience to their traditions, the commandments of men. This is the direction of history since the Tower of Babel. Salvation is seen by men in terms of works, political, intellectual, educational, religious, scientific, and other works. They believe passionately that they have a plan, a program, whereby mankind will be saved.

I’ve referred more than once to Horace Mann’s program, because I find it so grimly amusing. Horace Mann, as you recall, believed and advocated in the early 1830’s state control of education and said that a century of state control of education would abolish ignorance, crime, poverty, and all social problems in America, and the only prisons that would be left a century later would be those that were retained as museums, so the twentieth century Americans would see how barborously nineteenth century Americans lived. Well, of course, the ratio of criminals to every thousand Americans has dramatically increased since Horace Mann’s day. Horace Mann, you see, was propounding works, a belief that something outside of God could save man, and of course, all our political candidates are very eloquent now a days in propounding their particular variety of works whereby they will save man. They are, very clearly, messianic in their politics; educatoin, politics, science; B.F. Skinner, for example. Wherever you turn now a days, you have an area of messianic pretentions, a program of works advocated by one area of life after another as ostensibly the way of salvation. These are the things that are meant when scripture speaks of works.

I heard recently a statement by one educator when I was in Sacramento last month, in which he talked about a budget cut as though it meant a threat to the salvation of man. If his particular department were tampered with, why, the hope of mankind was gone. We’re all prone to such thinking. Our particular variety of works, where we think we’re going to do something outside of God, to us, has messianic qualities. This is the meaning of works.

Scripture defines man’s works as dead works when they are outside of God, when they are apart from Christ, and we have two very eloquent statements of this in Hebrews. First, Hebrews 6:1, “Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentence from dead works and a faith toward God,” and then Hebrews 9:14, “How much more shall the blood of Christ who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God. Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

Now, the first of these passages, in Mofat’s rendering, we are summoned to quote, “Pass on then to what is mature, leaving elementary Christian doctrine behind, instead of laying the foundation over again. This is a very plain statement. This is an indictment of most church services in fundamentalist churches where it’s an endless preaching on John 3:16. St. Paul says, We must mature, we must grow up. We don’t study the A-B-C’s endlessly in every grade. We begin with the A-B-C’s, we begin the phonics, we begin with those things which are basic to education, but to major in A-B-C’s clear on through graduate school? It’s absurd, and for church endlessly to confine itself to the A-B-C’s is again absurd. So, let us go on to perfection, to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and a faith to our God.

St. Paul is indulging there in a little bit of humor. To go on building a foundation endlessly and not a structure on the foundation is ridicules. You can cut up the landscape with foundations and never have a building, and so St. Paul says, Go on from there to maturity, to good works. Then again, he declares, “The blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself without spot to God, shall purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

Thus, what Christ does for us is to purge us from dead works, futile activities, activity apart from God. We are given the cultural mandate to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it under God. This is good works, and we are purged in our conscience. We repent, we are cleansed, we know that we have forgiveness, and so we don’t endlessly go over and over again the fact that I am a miserable sinner. So what? We are sinners, yes, but we are saved sinners, and now we have a job to do, not to weep and mourn endlessly over the past. The whole point of salvation is the restoration of man to a covenantal relationship with God, as God’s faithful and obedient man, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. To exercise dominion and to subdue the earth, to bring every area of life and thought to captivity to Christ, to develop Christian education, Christian political theory, the biblical implications in economics, in science, in every area of life and activity, and to bring every area under the dominion of Christ.

The point of works, St. Paul says, is that man should boast, “not of works, lest any man should boast.” What is his meaning there? Well, again and again, St. Paul makes it clear that man’s work can never put God in man’s debt. Salvation is by grace. Good works are the response of the redeemed, but those who attempt to find salvation through works try to put God in their debt. God owes them something. They have done thus and so and therefore, God should give them this and that, and of course, they have a bookkeeping account. They’ve piled up so much credit, and therefore, God owes them something, even owes them, I have found in the past, in my pastoral experience, the right to sin. I’ve actually had, in counseling sessions, men and women tell me, when confronted with a particular sin, “Well, when you think of all I’ve done for the Lord, I’m entitled to something like this once in awhile.” Now, that’s the whole psychology of debt. God is in debt to them because they have put their nickel in the plate, and therefore, they’re entitled to something now and then, and if God doesn’t give it, they’re going to take it out in sin, you see. “Not of works, lest any man should boast,” lest any man feels he has a claim against God.

All such works represent a revolt against God’s grace. All such works claim to be a demand note on God. The covenant-breaker sees an inherent efficacy in his own works, and of course, he thereby reveals his original sin. To be as God, knowing, determining for oneself, what is good and evil, and to be as God is to be creator, and man then feels that his word is a creative word, and his works are creative works, and naturally, the goal of his creative works is the city of man, a city whose builder and maker is man, a realm in which man has his own god develops his own program of salvation, and remakes the world after his own image. This, today, is the program of men and of nations.

But St. James said, in his epistle, 2:26, “For as the body without the spirit (that is, the breath of life) is dead, so faith without works is dead.” Where there is faith there are good works, and the goal of those good works is the city of God, the kingdom of God, bringing every area of life under the dominion of God in Christ, establishing homes, societies, institutions, nations, a world order in which the word of God reigns, the law of God is the law of all things, for all things meet not a pietistic standard of justice, not a social standard of justice, but God’s standard of justice, which transcends both men and nations.

We are, therefore, saved by grace through faith, and it is the gift of God. We had been created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that we have been creted in Christ for good works, and we pray, our Father, that by thy grace, we may ever be zealous in thy service, ready in every area of life to assert the crown rights of King Jesus, to subdue every discipline, every area of knowledge, every area of life unto thee in terms of thy law word. We thank thee, our Father, for so great a calling. We thank thee that thou hast called us in Christ to be kings, priests, and prophets unto thee, and has declared that where in obedience to thee, we step, there where our souls tread, there we shall be lords unto thee. Bless and prosper us to this purpose. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. To understand this, we have to get back to the point we made some time ago, with regard to causality. God is the ultimate cause, the only first cause in the universe. Therefore, God can and rightly say that He creates all things, that there is nothing that happens apart from him. Moreover, we must say that God is more than a first cause, or the first cause. God is also a person, the supreme person in the universe, three persons one God, but our position is not determinism. It is predestination. In determinism, there is only a single cause. Everything else is an effect. Thus, in strict naturalistic determinism, as for example, the late Dr. Woodward of Columbia, he could not allow for persons. Thus, he would not speak of the consciousness of man, nor even of the mind of man. The two occasions, I believe, in his study of man, his psychology where he first {?} the man or to man’s consciousness, he speaks of it as epi-phenominon.

B.F. Skinner thinks along the same lines, at Harvard today. There’s only one single cause someone in remote Antiquity, or pre-Antiquity, and only endless effects from that single cause. But for us, the first cause is also the triune God, personal. He has created persons in His image, so that we are indeed effects, to a degree, but we are also second causes. We are persons. Thus, while God is ultimately the cause of all things, we are secondarily the cause of all things. We have, therefore, responsibility, not ultimacy, but responsibility.

Now, this is difficult to understand, but the alternative to it is impossible to understand. So you have your choice. Either everything is meaninglessness; there is a first cause and everything is an effect, or there first causes and second causes. There is the absolute person or persons of the godhead, and then the created person, such as us. Philosophically, those are the only alternatives. Yes?

[Audience] Would you discuss the differences between {?} some time ago {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Words have a habit of changing, and the word “created” today is very loosely used. There was a time, centuries ago, when the word “create” and “creative” were never used for man. It was an attribute for God alone, but with the Renaissance, there rose a new theory of art. It has since become the dominant theory. Prior to that, the artist was, strictly speaking, an artisan. He was a businessman who happened to be in painting or in architecture, or in sculpture, or what have you, or in writing. There has been, in recent years, a very, very significant attempt to revive that Medieval concept, and I think a very notable one. Igor Stravinsky, he was, for many years, a resident not too far from here, in the Santa Monica area, and he finally left the area in disgust for Paris, because he found the Los Angeles Symphony so hostile to his thinking. Zubin Mehta, Henry Timianka, a very marvelous man, but very hostile to what Stravinsky represented, and that’s another story and a very interesting one, but he was trying to revive that concept, an anti-artist concept, of the composer as an artisan, a businessman in music. With the Renaissance, the conception of the artist as a creator, a divinely inspired man, as a prophet of a new kind of truth, in effect of a new religion, became current in Western civilization. The artist, therefore, because he had this inspiration, had to have, like the Greek writers of old, enthusiasm, an theos, to be God-possessed, the divine madness, so he began to play the role of a Bohemian, and since then, of course, this has become so routine that even in high schools, they now have courses in creative writing, which I consider an abomination. But it’s the tail end, as it were, of this now dying type of new word, new inspiration from up.

What has happened, of course, is that it has become increasingly a mind out thing. As long as it had the backlog of Christendom, it could produce something with meaning, but of course, it’s been pop art, op art, and so on, increasingly some new word has to come out of this divine and inspired {?}, the artist, and it’s difficult now to come up with something new. We are in the last days of the modern age, in the mind out {?} which appears increasingly in the arts, in philosophy where philosophy now is nothing but logical analysis and other beggarly elements of what was once philosophy, and so on. So, the word “creative” belongs properly to God. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and to fulfill God’s purposes for us in this world, to establish that world order, the kingdom of God, dominion. It is for us, yes, for us and God. God doesn’t need it. If there are no further questions, just a brief report on our seminar for Christian schools, this week, Monday and Tuesday, we had between eighty and ninety persons present from a good many states. I said we had them from Florida to Okinawa, in that Mr. Wade was with us from Okinawa on his way back to Virginia. We had them from Texas, from Nebraska, Utah, Arizona, quite a few states, and a very excellent seminar from beginning to end. This is, of course, important in the area of our discussion today; good works, dominion, because here is the area of life where as one newspaper recently said, The quiet revolution is taking place. So many new schools are being established every year, that the leadership in education is rapidly passing into the hands of the Christian schools. This is where the pioneering work is being done. There will be some new schools started as a result of our seminar. There will be improvements in some of the existing schools. We hope, next year, to have not only a Christian school seminar, but the following two days to have a seminar for teachers, laymen, ministers, students, any and everyone interesting, in which we will have lectures on economics, philosophy, and a political science, in various areas, from a biblical perspective, and we hope to have several scholars from all over the country present to lecture at both seminars. So, I think we’re accomplishing a great deal.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Thoburn, on his way, had a two-day seminar in Milwaukee with the Reverend Mr. John Voga{?} who came into contact with him through our Chalcedon Reports, and we hope soon to have other seminars going in other parts of the country to further the Christian school movement.

Our time is up, now. 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