Salvation and Godly Rule

Sanctification

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Sanctification

Genre: Speech

Track: 43

Dictation Name: RR136X43

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the book of the prophet, Zechariah 14:20-21, the next to the last book of the Old Testament. Now our subject is Sanctification. Next week we shall deal with the incarnation of our Lord, his birth. “In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness Unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.”

These verses are very great important in telling us about the kingdom of God. They say nothing about the retention or ending of the Mosaic law, or the sacrificial system, but they use the temple and the vessels thereof as symbols whereby the future holiness is declared in terms of contemporary standards.

The words “Holiness Before the Lord” whereupon the dress of the high priest, and we are now told that that which was reserved of the most holy of garments shall now be upon the bells of the horses. What once belonged to the temple alone, and to the altar, shall now characterize every pot in Jerusalem and Judah. Thus, the symbols of holiness, once reserved for the high priest and the altar will characterize everything in the nation. What is the significance of this statement?

Before the fall of man, everything was holy and sacred. There was nothing profane. The word profane is a very important and a very revealing word. Profane means that which is outside the temple or outside of God, not a part of God and his existence, his realm, his government. The distinction between the sacred and the profane was potential before the fall. That is, in the world of the Garden of Eden, there was no actual distinction between the sacred and the profane. Everything was holy. Everything was sacred. There was potentially, theoretically, such a distinction. God had said to them that if they disobeyed him, they would be outside his will. They would be disobedient. They would then be profane. With the fall of man, the potential distinction between the sacred and the profane became an actual distinction.

Since then, the great struggle in history has been to abolish that distinction. The goal of God is to establish the sole supremacy and the sole existence of holiness, to eliminate all actual profanity. The goal of Satan, of fallen man, and of the kingdom of man is similar: to abolish the distinction, to eliminate entirely that which is holy, or sacred, to make everything under the sun profane, outside of God. This is the goal of modern politics. We are told that nothing should be considered religiously and theologically, but purely in terms of humanistic considerations. This is the goal, for example, and a great deal of the debate today in medicine: Should moral and theological distinctions be brought in to matters like abortion?, and we are told that it should be purely a medical problem, that is, purely profane, outside of God. The same is true in any and every area of modern life. There is an attempt to abolish the sacred, to reduce all reality as far as actuality is concerned, to the profane. This, too, is the goal in modern theology. The theologians like Harvey Cox at Harvard Divinity School, who has written a key book in this area, The Secular City, has aimed at destroying this distinction. Everything must be profane.

Now, Cox would not be that bald. He wants to call it all sacred perhaps in terms of humanism, but the idea is to destroy the old God-given distinction between the sacred, or holy, and the profane, that which is under God and that which denies God’s existence and his love.

God, however, in his sovereign purpose, allows the two to dwell together to sharpen our epistemological self-consciousness in the distinction. He is forcing man to see that there is a distinction, and so he has work, first by calling for a family, Abraham. Then a people, Israel. Then the church, and now summoning men and nations, the entire world, to stand in terms of the savior, and prior to the Fall, everything Adam did was holiness to the Lord. It was in service to the kingdom of God. Whatever he did in the Garden of Eden to till or cultivate, and tend or dress the garden, whether it was with a hoe or rake or pruning shears, those instruments were holiness to the Lord. They were sacred in that they and everything was dedicated to the Lord’s work, and so it is in the kingdom of God. Wherever God’s people are, everything, their homes, their talents, the utensils of their home, because they are used by God’s people for godly purposes, to further their work under God, are holiness to the Lord. They are sacred. They are set apart to the use of the people of God.

However, with the Fall, a profane world has apparently been in power. Its goal indeed is to put everything beyond holiness and beyond good and evil, beyond God. Certainly, the attempt now is intensified. They are attempting to destroy the actual division between the holy and the profane.

But God also is at work, and God’s workings are more thorough and more realistic, as well as omnipotent and sovereign. God allows evil to destroy that which has already been profaned. The kingdom of man is dedicated to a profane world, but God has so ordered reality that the profane destroy the profane. A century ago, a very brilliant German Old Testament scholar, Hengstenberg, in writing on Jeremiah 31:38-40, spoke of this fact there, and he said, “This inward victory must, according to divine necessity, be followed by the outward one. The covenant people, which inwardly had submitted to the world which, by its own guilt, had profaned itself, was outwardly also given up to the world and was profaned in judgment, and this profanation inflicted upon it as a punishment, again manifested itself just at that place where the profanation by the guilt had chiefly manifested itself in the holy city and in the holy temple. It is with a view to deform {?} manifestation of the victory of the world over the kingdom of God, that here the victory of the kingdom of God is described, and the imagery is just simple imagery. To the outward holiness of the city and of the temple, the outward unholiness of the places around Jerusalem is opposed. While the victory of the world over the kingdom of God had been manifested by the profanation of these places, the victory of the kingdom of God now appears unto the image of the sanctification of these formerly unholy places.” Now, that’s very concentrated, but its meaning is this. Where there is an inward profanation, whereas outwardly there is still holiness, God allows an outward profanation to ensue, and the profane to destroy the profane. Where there is an inward holiness that develops, God soon orders an outward holiness to come about.

Looking at the world today, what must we then say? {?} the underground church grows in the Soviet Union and the paper justice {?} indicated that it is growing and becoming a major problem to the communists. There will ensue by the providence of God an outward holiness, an overthrowing and a destruction of the profane. That if in other countries such as ours there is an inward profanation, there will follow an outward profanation until an inward holiness develops. Now, this is what God is talking about. The profane, in other words, cannot obtain their goal. Inward profanation is always followed by outward profanation, so that instead of gaining the kingdom of man a utopia, they gain a lawlessness of which they themselves are the victims. They destroy themselves. The profane society is a suicidal society.

There was a grimly amusing note to the Newsweek feature story of this week entitled “Living With Crime.” Crime is beginning to concern everyone right and left. As a matter of fact, the mayor of Philadelphia remarked, “You know what a conservative is? That’s a liberal who got mugged the night before.” What the article points out is that the problem of crime is becoming so immense that in some cities, such as Detroit and San Francisco, the number of private police now outnumber the city police and the sheriff’s department, and they still cannot cope with it. They cite one police chief as saying, “What would happen if we could catch all the criminals and put them in jail?” Last year, with full statistics in California, 1970, and the figures are about the same across the nation, there was less than 1% conviction for the crimes committed to that year, the major crimes against persons and property, less than 1%. If they’re anything like a major portion of convictions, the jails could not hold the people, and this belief, the police chief said, “They would all have to be paroled. They would be back on the street, and it wouldn’t be any different.” In other words, the problem is beyond law enforcement now. The moral breakdown is so far that there are too many criminals for our law forces to cope with. The result is a profanation of society.

The more profane a society is, the less the community. The ultimate is profanation, of course, is Hell where there is no community. This is why a total profane society is impossible on earth. It destroys itself. It commits suicide. On the other hand, the more people grow in holiness, the more they grow as individuals and as a community.

Now what Zechariah is here telling us is this: that in time to come, after our Lord’s coming, men and nations will be so holy that the very bells of the horses shall be holiness unto the Lord. Every pot shall be holiness, and there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Host. This is a very interesting point because the House of the Lord of Host, the temple was, in ancient Israel not only the religious center, it was the governmental center. It was the center of all authority, and therefore, to say that there would be no Canaanite in the House of the Lord, hence simply that there will be no one in any position of authority in the kingdom of God, in time to come before the end of the world. No one who is a Canaanite, that is, ungodly, all men in all places of authority will be godly. All authority, therefore, shall be in the hands of the people of God. This is the plain prediction of scripture concerning time to come.

We are summoned therefore, to sanctify ourselves, to obey God’s law, and to work towards that end. Holiness is total in its extent. It is the dedication of man and his world to God then, as separation to him. Scripture makes it clear that inanimate objects can be holy if dedicated to a holy use. Sanctification means that our life is defined in terms of God. This is important to realize. Sanctification does involve our relationships to one another, as husband and wife, worker and employer, children and parents, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, that it is essentially to be defined in terms of God. Our whole life must be defined in terms of God, and this is why the modern attitude is so very, very wrong and humanistic when people feel, “Well, my life is ended. My children are gone now,” or “My husband is gone,” or “My wife is gone,” or something is gone. We can never define our lives in terms of anything short of God, for to do so is to sin. Nothing can be unrelated to God. Nothing is too trifling to be omitted from the requirement of sanctification.

One of the great churchmen of a century ago here in America was Thomas V. Moore, and Moore, in commenting on these verses in Zechariah, declared, “The bells of the horses were those bells that were fastened to them partly for ornament, and partly to make them easily found if they strayed away at night. They were not necessary parts of the harness and trifling in value. When therefore, it is said that even they, the bells of the horses should have the inscription that was engraved on the breastplate of the high priest, this declared the fact that even the most trifling things in this future state should be consecrated to God, equally, with the highest and holiest.” That states it very well. The bells of the horses shall be pulling us to the Lord.

Some of you may recall a time when the harness of horses had bells. I do, and it was very enjoyable to hear the tinkling of the bells on the harness when, on a crisp, cold, snow-covered terrain, the sleighs would come in from a distance, and you could follow the progress of the team, miles and miles away because there’s nothing that carries sound better than deep snow with a good thick frost on it. Now, those bells were on the harness for ornamentation, and they were beautiful. In a minor way, they were a delight. Now, even such trifling things, God says, shall all be holiness to the Lord. The most trifling thing in the way of being a delight to us in the kingdom of God is sacred and holy. There is no area of neutrality. Everything is to his glory and to our enjoyment in him.

The means of holiness, our sanctification, is the law of God. Sanctification is both definitive and progressive. This is important for us to recognize. There are three or four verses in scripture which speak of sanctification in the believer as an accomplished fact. These few verses have been taken by the holiness and Pentecostal people and used to the exclusion of our other passages. For example, in 1 Corinthians 1:2, St. Paul speaks of believers as sanctified in Christ Jesus, the sanctification as an accomplished fact. Again, in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “Ye are washed. Ye are sanctified, Ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” This is definitive sanctification. It means that when we are justified, we are also set apart, made holy, dedicated to the Lord’s use. Now, our sanctification is far from perfect. It then requires {?}, and so there is the continual appeal from one end of the scripture to the other to seek holiness without which no man can see the Lord. The goal of sanctification is to bring all things under the dominion of Jesus Christ, as king of creation.

To quote again from T.V. Moore, Moore writing in the last century said, “When there shall be universal holiness, there shall be universal happiness.” In interpreting our scripture, Moore said, “All shall be happy because all shall be holy. Sorrow shall cease because sin shall cease. The growing earth shall be {?} with joy because the trail of the serpent shall be gone, and the Eden of the future makes us cease to look back with longing at the Eden of the past. If the man would have the beginning of Heaven, it must be by this absolute consecration of everything to God on earth.” When we read men like Moore, we can understand why the tradition he represented made this country what it was. They were concerned with bringing all things into captivity to Jesus Christ, making all things holy and separated unto God and unto his service, and because God’s word had declared that all things shall be holiness unto the Lord, it never occurred to them that they could fail.

Sanctification today has ceased to have any real meaning. The charismatic movement is a profane nation of the idea. We need again, therefore, to heed the call of our God, “Be ye holy even as I am holy.” We need to separate ourselves unto him, and to dedicate everything, our work, our lives, our pleasures to holiness unto the Lord. We have God’s assurance that the goal of all things is the abolition of the profane and the delight of his people in his holiness and in an earth and then in a new creation, entirely holy to him. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us to holiness, and thou hast given us so glorious a vision of the holiness of this world in the days ahead and of the glory of the new creation throughout all eternity. Strengthen our hearts in this blessed and joyful season, that we might work knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. In Jesus name. Amen. Are there any questions now, first of all, on our lesson?

Well, if there are no questions, I’d like to share something with you. Periodically, I get a letter from someone who received the Chalcedon Report, and whenever I see a letter coming from this particular person, I look forward to reading it with considerable delight, because every letter is remarkable. It comes from a Mrs. Hester Rule{?}, a woman, I believe in her mid-80’s if I recall what she said in one of her letters, who’s most remarkable. I‘m going to read a portion of her letter that just arrived.

She writes, “The {?} from year to year seems to pick up more and more speed the older one goes. One says with the psalmist, ‘we spend our years as a tale that is told.’ Psalm 90:9. I remember hearing my father quote this from time to time in his sermons, especially in his later years. He quoted it in German, a language with which I grew up since my parents were in Germany. The German rendition of this, Luther’s translation, gives a word which means ‘tittle-tattle,’ a garrulity for tale. Tittle-tattle, to me, is more pithy and expressive and colorful, than the pale English word “tale,” which can mean almost anything. How true it is that the world, its people, its airwaves, its literature, are saturated with tittle-tattle. The faster the pace of living, the heavier and more suffocating the tittle-tattle, till one’s mental ears rebel against the sound and {?}. How wonderful that into such a world the feasts of the story of Christ’s birth comes, {?} benediction upon the hearts of those who love and adore him as their savior. How silently, How silently the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.”

Now I think that is beautiful, and I think Luther’s rendition is very good. The word that is translated as tale can mean tittle-tattle, or a sigh, or a whisper, something ephemeral, something that is here today and gone tomorrow. Now, what the psalmist said is not that life is nothing but a breath or a tittle-tattle, but we spend our years as a tittle-tattle that is told, and she is so right. Our whole world, television, papers, is surrounded, overwhelmed with nothing but tittle-tattle today. Yes?

[Audience] Now, do you find that the Christian {?}

[Rushdoony] 1 John 3:9. Yes, I think I know what it is. “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” Now, I don’t have a Greek testament here, but John, in this letter, makes several statements. First, in the first chapter through the second chapter he says, “He that says he has not sinned is a liar, and God’s word is not in him,” and then he says that, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.” Now first of all, there are two words for sin that are used in John’s epistle. Our language has just the one word. The two words are hamartia, and anomia. Hamartia refers to specific sins. Anomia is the principle of lawlessness. Now the Christian cannot commit lawlessness as a principle. He may commit Hamartia, specific sin, that of weakness, but not because he denies the principle of law. He knows he is committing a sin. He is not dedicated to the principle of profanity, that God and moral law have nothing to do with anything. Now, that’s one distinction.

Then sometimes, when it says the Christian cannot commit sin, or does not sin, the word is hamartia, but the tense is does not continually abide in sin. In other words, it doesn’t say he doesn’t commit a specific act of sin, but sin is not his normal, continuous condition. There’s a great deal of confusion over that precisely because we simply lack the adequate means of translation there.

Are there any other questions of comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads then 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.