Law and Life

Community and Morality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 19 of 39

Track: 130

Dictation Name: RR156K19

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture this morning is from the gospel of John, the 14th chapter, verses 15 and 21 to 24. John 14, verse 15 and then 21 through 24, and our subject Community and Morality. Verse 15, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Verses 21 following, “’He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.’ Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, ‘Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings: and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me.’”

Not too long ago, a doctor in New York City was on the staff of the VD Clinic, received a very severe reprimand from the administration. The reason was this, the doctor, Basile Yanovsky, had a seventeen year old girl come to him, the second time in five months, he told her to report back in two weeks for the finals on the tests, and then looking at this seventeen year old girl in a VD Clinic with pity he said, “and meanwhile behave.” Three words. He was reprimanded for violating the privacy of the girl by suggesting, however mildly, moral behavior on her part. Now New York City is a city well known for the rapes, murders, corruption, the criminal judges and politicians, all of which are tolerated, but the slightest moral suggestion on the part of a doctor to a seventeen year old girl was a violation of privacy, for which he was severely reprimanded. This indeed is a sign of our times. We dream of having community. The goal of modern politics is, after Dewey and our politicians, the great society, the great community. But we imagine that it is possible without morality. To me, the whole of the frenzy over Watergate in the past year or so has been hypocrisy personified. What in the world can we expect when we have banned Biblical faith and morality from the schools and from the courts? When we have worked to produce immorality, how dare we as a nation condemn it?

Moreover, the churches have worked to produce it. For example, during the 40’s and 50’s, one of the most important figures on the theological scene was Donald Grey Barnhouse. And yet Barnhouse wrote in his book God and Freedom, and I quote, “It was a tragic hour when the Reformation churches wrote the Ten Commandments into their creeds and catechisms and sought to bring Gentile believers into bondage to Jewish law, which was never intended either for the Gentile nations or for the church.” Such opinions are very common. A recent issue of an Evangelical magazine said the same thing, that the Ten Commandments were irrelevant to the Christian, that it was a mistake to have anything to do with them. In many churches, it is regarded the height of apostasy of some sort if you even read the Ten Commandments. As a result, morality is abolished from the church by many Christians, and it is commonly said that the law is dead and the Christian has nothing to do with it. But nowhere in Scripture, as I think all of you recognize by this time, are we told that the law is dead. All we are told is we are dead to the law as a death sentence to us when we die with Christ and we are alive to it as the righteousness of God. But, a vast segment of the church is vehemently anti-law; antinomian. Thus, Hal Lindsey, perhaps the most popular religious writer of our time, has said and I quote, “Now then, what has God done about the law and the believer’s relationship to it? He has taken us out from under the jurisdiction of the law and placed us under His grace. The law is still there but we’re not under it. The law just doesn’t speak to us anymore as a basis of operation in the Christian life. When Christ died, was buried, rose, and ascended, we died with Him to the law and its power over us. Law and grace are mutually exclusive. It is imperative that we realize that law and grace are complete systems in themselves. They are mutually exclusive. To mix these principles rob the law of its bona fide terror and grace of its creative freeness.” Unquote.

Now this is quite a hodgepodge theologically because first of all, it confuse the law as the indictment against sinners and the law as the righteousness of God for the redeemed, their way of life, their way of sanctification. It confuses also the use of the law by Pharisees for justification, which Paul condemns over and over again, and its legitimate use for sanctification. Moreover, it declares that there was a way of salvation by law once, and now it is by grace. Well this is dispensationalism, whoever may hold it, because it says that God has a changing plan of salvation, that men could once be justified by law, which nowhere in Scripture are we ever told. Salvation was always by the sovereign grace of God, and sanctification, in terms of what Scripture teaches, was always by means of the law. And so, these teachings simply confuse Phariseeism with Scripture, and by breaking with Scripture, they break thereby with God. Moreover, it is Arminianism, this anti-nomian faith, because as I indicated, it assumed that man could once save himself by works of the law. This is stated by all of these writings. Well that’s Arminianism. It denies that only the sovereign electing grace of God through Jesus Christ can redeem any man in any age. Moreover, as Pastor E.W. Johnson has said, Arminianism is libertinism.

I had the privilege of hearing at the international Sovereign Grace conference this last week where I was one of the speakers, Pastor E.W. Johnson. The title of his address was Arminianism is a Hard Doctrine, and he went on to demonstrate why it is a hard doctrine; it’s a violation of everything in Scripture, everything in common sense, and he said with regard to its libertinism, and I quote, “If the forgiving grace of God does not lie ultimately in the will of God, but in that of man, what is to keep us from sinning? Then having said a little prayer, go in sin some more. A minister came to us from an Arminian group having been convinced of Calvinism. He told me how that in his previous connections, he had attended trials of ministers accused of adultery, and how these ministers had presented this defense to their official board, ‘I told the woman, if you are as tempted as I am, why don’t we just go ahead and ask God to forgive us.’ But the grace of God is not like a water faucet, you cannot turn it on any time you want to. If you think otherwise, I would recommend that you take another look at the fifty-first Psalm.”

Forgiveness, in such a context, is reduced to feeling; to a humanistic act of saying I forgive you, or to a humanistic plea, and the whole legal framework of the doctrine of forgiveness is dropped. Forgiveness means charges dropped because satisfaction or restitution has been rendered. It can mean, in certain instances, charges deferred for the time being, the word on the cross, “Father forgive them”; Father defer the charges for the time being, for they know not what they do. Every other instance in Scripture it means charges dropped because satisfaction, restitution has been rendered. This is not a matter of feeling. It means that forgiveness is not ours to dispense according to our wishes. It can only be given in terms of the Word of God.

Now, basic to all of this is a false doctrine of man. Pagan dualism undergirds it. There is a difference between man in his mind and man in his body, and therefore the two are not linked together. If your mind is right with the Lord (This is Hellenic thought; the gods they would have said) then what your body does doesn’t matter. And so in Greek thought you have the kind of thing that Socrates represented; discoursing on virtue while being engaged in homosexuality. And this type of dualistic thinking entered the church in neo-Platonism. But God is one, and therefore man is one. God is a unity, therefore man is a unity and all creation is a unity. The fallen man is totally depraved. The redeemed man is totally justified, he is not totally sanctified, but the direction of his life is now clear cut. The very words for sin in the Bible make that clear. Original sin, or total depravity, are unredeemed. Sin is anomia, that is anti-law, lawlessness, every man his own god. Whereas the word for sin which the Christian commits or can commit, is hamartia; off target. You’re moving in the right direction but you stumble and you fall. But there is a direction; a unity of direction, you are headed for that high calling in Jesus Christ.

Now, we are often told, well look at the sins of some of the saints in Scripture, they are evidence that there is no great unity of nature. The example of Lot is often cited. There were two serious incidents in the life of Lot. First there was the choice of the well-watered plain of Jordan along Sodom. Now clearly, he took the choice because it involved the better grazing land. It had a costly price in that it involved in the light of Sodom. The second fearful incident was the incident with his daughters in the cave, and there was the extenuating circumstances. He, the grief stricken old man did not know what was happening. But what we are told in addition to that about Lot is that he was a godly man who sat in the gate of Sodom as a judge or a councilman, the term can apply to either, that he was resented by the people of Sodom because of his righteousness, because of his standards. In 2 Peter 2, verses 7 and 8, we are emphatically told that God’s verdict on Lot was that he was a righteous man, a just man; so that the totality of his life apart from these two incidents was a very, very godly one. Or take David. We must look at the totality of his life also. Indeed he was guilty of both adultery and murder, but God’s verdict concerning the life of David is emphatic. The critics of David have never equaled him in his virtue, in his faith, in his service of the Lord. So there is a basic unity in the life of these men, a moving towards the mark, a stumbling, being off target, falling, but a basic unity. Our Lord emphasizes this unity of man. He declares in Matthew 7, verses 16 through 20, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” Now, this is very, very clear. We are emphatically told, without any question, that there is a unity in the life of man. Their fruits reveal what they are; the totality of their life, their fruit bearing. Moreover, in our Scripture, our Lord makes this same point emphatically.

Now the 15th verse, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” is not correctly rendered here. It should be, if ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments. In other words, it isn’t asking us to keep the commandments, what it does is to declare that if we love God, of necessity we will keep His commandments, no question about it. We cannot say we love God and disobey Him. There is an impossibility. The Greek reading here declares a necessary connection between loving God and obeying His commandments. Moreover, if ye love me, the word “love” here is very important again because it is a word that we encounter repeatedly in Scripture. We encounter it, for example, in the first epistle of John, “We love Him because He first loved us.” It is agape. Now the word agape is a very, very difficult word, and while it is translated as love in the English it is almost untranslatable. There are three words in Greek which are translated as love. One is eros; erotic love, philio; human brotherly love, and then agape, which can be translated in part as love and when it speaks of God as His grace, or the love that is born of grace, so that it is unmerited. We do not deserve it. But God in His grace loves us and we respond with that grace which is in us and that love of God which is in us to the love in Him. We love Him because He first loved us. And so, when it says if ye love Me, if you have in your life the grace of God, if the love of God unto salvation has been manifested to you, you will of necessity keep My commandments. Moreover, in the 21st verse, “he that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me.” So, where is there love? Where there is obedience. He takes the same statements “if ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments”, now “he that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” The Father and I are one, if you love Me, you love the Father and the Father will manifest His continuing love to you.

Then in the 23rd verse, Jesus declares, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words” or more literally, word; logon, it refers to the whole of Scripture, all its words. It’s all one word, so what our Lord is here saying is the whole of the Word, all the words thereof are one word, and it is My Word. “And My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings: and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me.” The identity of the Father and the Son, the identity of the word of the Father and the word of the Son, so that to say that Jesus is asking us to keep just the things that are put into His mouth in the words of Scripture is wrong, it’s all His word from one end to the other. Not only the words He spoke in His incarnation, but before His incarnation. The words He spoke after his ascension though Peter, Paul, Jude, all of the apostles, it is one word. All Scripture is one word. Our Lord makes it clear then to reject His word is to reject the word of God, and to deny this connection means the destruction of the gospel. To deny the unity of the faith between faith, love, obedience, is to say that God is only the creator of the mind, which is the old pagan Greek point of view, so if your mind is right with the Lord then it doesn’t matter what you do in the flesh. And this was a problem the early church had when it was trying to speak to the Greek mentality. The Greek could accept the gospel mentally. Wonderful, I believe that, but what do you mean I have to quit fornicating? What’s wrong with fornicating? That has nothing to do with my mind. Now that was the Greek attitude. And that mentality has been put into a pseudo-Christian guise too often by false doctrines, by a denial of the law, by an arminian anti-nomian view of grace.

Now one of the things that distresses me on every trip I take is I so often have people coming to me, or if they hear I’m in that city telephoning me from nearby, and asking me about a problem which is always a product of this kind of anti-nomianism. Let me cite two examples; one an older one, and one a very recent one. A woman has a husband who is flagrantly adulterous and alcoholic. For some years now, twenty years this has been the pattern, almost since their marriage. He has been involved in adultery, so many times it probably runs close to one hundred, and his alcoholism is a very deeply imbedded thing. But every time he sobers up after a bad binge and finds that his wife has just had it, he breaks down and cries, he goes to a minister, and the wife is “read the Riot Act” by the pastor, that she is hard and unforgiving, and since he has repented she must take him back. She has been providing for herself and her son all these years through her work. Finally, she got a legal separation. She was afraid to get a divorce because of all the ranting by some of these pastors. Incidentally, her husband is an ordained minister. At present, he is for the umpteenth time in a sanatorium being dried out after a particularly prolonged binge. He’s very sorry for himself and weepy and has repented, and the chaplain has called up the wife and told her that she is sinning if she does not take that man back. Is that godly? Or take another incident from this state. The officer in a church, an ultra-evangelical church, has repeatedly molested little girls in that church. And every time he is caught he is brought before the church board and he weeps and cries and repents and thanks God that he’s been forgiven, and he continues in his office, and the parents of the children are told that they are sinful and unforgiving for demanding his ouster.

Now this is anti-nomianism; it is anti-Christian. The word repentance in Scripture does not refer to words, the word for repentance in Scripture means a reversal of direction; a change of life. It means someone is going in one direction and when they repent they turn around and go in the other direction. It means a change of life, not a mouthing of words. No one has repented just because they weep and say I’m sorry. That’s a repentance unto death according to Scripture; it’s meaningless. Repentance is a change of life; a change of direction. It means a reversal. {?} was used in Ancient Greece, and at the time of our Lord, if you started out for Santa Barbara and half way up there you realized you had to return for some reason, and you turned your car around and headed back, the word repentance, metanoia, could be used. It meant that complete reversal. But today we have a humanistic, a pagan doctrine. Which, as with the Greeks, applies only to the mind. The mind says something, it concludes something, but not even in the mind is it real. It’s a toying with words. And forgiveness, again a matter of words, not of life. No restitution, no satisfaction. To reduce God’s call for repentance to a muttering of words is to offend God. To make forgiveness a matter of words, of feeling, is to deny God’s righteousness and law, and such an anti-nomian society will soon crumble. There is no reconstruction apart from the sovereign grace of God which produces faith, love, obedience, and power because of the faith and obedience.

In Isaiah 29:13, and again cited by our Lord in Matthew 15:8, we read, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.” And this indeed is the truth today. A powerless Christian is a contradiction in terms. He is not a Christian. There cannot be a powerless Christian society or church. Today with forty-five or forty at the minimum ostensibly Bible-believing Christians, the church is still powerless, which means that it is teaching humanism; Ancient Greek dualism. It has reduced the doctrines of God to a matter of words and feelings. Now next week we shall be discussing the significance of repentance and regeneration in a community, and how a godly society is to be rebuilt. We have dealt with this at length in Biblical law, but now we shall deal with some of the answers that have been given in the modern era by various groups; Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Congregational, and Baptist. Very significant answers. And it is important for us to know these answers that they have attempted over various generations, wherein they failed, and how as we think in terms of the future, we can access the weaknesses of these answers and also their faithfulness to the Word and how we as Christians should think and act. Because it is important that we draw nigh unto God with all our heart, mind, and being, in thought and action, and that those thoughts and actions be in conformity to the Word of God, so that we can accomplish His purpose, so that we can attain a godly reconstruction of every area of life. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy Word. We thank Thee, our Father, that Thy Word is truth. We thank Thee for Thy love, wherewith Thou loved us and redeemed us by the blood of Jesus Christ. O Lord, our God, make us ever strong in our faith, love, and obedience, that we might be Thine instruments in this generation to the shaking of the things which are, so that only the unshakable may remain. Bless us in Thy service, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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

[Audience member] There are several references in Scriptures that the Lord repented {?}, so could you explain those?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, what it means is that the Lord changed the direction of his action. He was moving say to judgment of Nineveh, but then when Nineveh repented and changed its course, the Lord changed the course of His action with regard to Nineveh.

[Audience member] {?} He changed His mind {?}

[Rushdoony] No. No, because the Lord’s mind was not altered in that His judgment upon sin remained the same, but His grace unto those who obeyed Him remained the same. In other words, it was Nineveh in that particular instance in the book of Jonah that changed, and so when they moved from the realm of apostasy, unbelief, rebellion, to obedience to the Word of God, then God’s attitude towards them changed, but not the mind of God with regard to sin, not the mind of God with respect to apostasy, unrighteousness, lawlessness.

[Audience member] But didn’t it say that the Lord {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The Lord repented when He made man, and the question of course the use of the word repent with regard to God. He changed His direction in dealing with man, and then altered the circumstances of man’s life; changed it from the paradise like conditions before the flood to the life after the flood, so that in a sense He altered, changed the direction of life, so that man now lived in a different kind of world after the flood. Any other questions now? Yes?

[Audience member] {?} is on television.

[Rushdoony] Is what? Oh.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Let me get that. Hal Lindsey, on television, said the rapture is the great snatch and the ultimate trip.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] I hope he said it was a better “trip” than LSD.

[Audience laughter]

[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience member] In Matthew Henry’s discussion of Biblical law on eating of animals, he says that God {?} certain animals, including {?} pagan use the example for sacrifice of animals, that God was forbidding those animals, the Jews could not be associated with those animals, and was that a sufficient reason?

[Rushdoony] There might be some truth in Matthew Henry’s comment about the pagan use of the non-kosher animals in Old Testament times, some of them definitely had such use. The pig was used extensively for sacrifice in some cultures. But the basic reason is precisely what Scripture says, ye shall be holy because I am holy. Now holiness is both physical and spiritual. The whole of our being is to be holy, and therefore God is concerned that we be holy with respect to health; mental and spiritual. The fullness of our salvation is the resurrection of the body, perfect life throughout all eternity. Therefore the laws of diet as God gives them in the Old Testament are aimed at providing us with that which enables us to live best, to live in the most healthy, godly manner. And it is interesting that over and over again the studies have tended to confirm, never to disprove, the validity of the Biblical laws of diet, that when we follow them we are healthier for it. That, for example, as a carrier of at least two hundred diseases, which cooking in some cases cannot totally obliterate. That the shellfish and other things are scavengers and therefore they do have aspects to their meat which are not altogether healthy for the individual and so on. So I think that God had in mind our welfare and that He was not looking simply at what pagans were doing, but what was best for His people. Yes?

[Audience member] A couple of weeks ago, I heard an occultist on the radio saying the Bible says seek ye first the kingdom within and all these things will be added unto you. Is the natural version of the Bible a translation that {?} or did he just make this up?

[Rushdoony] The statement by this occultist, seek ye first the kingdom within, is not Scriptural. It’s seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. In other words, it takes us out of ourselves and focuses us on God and His righteousness.

[Audience member] I wondered if there was a different version.

[Rushdoony] No, no, nothing. That occultist made up that verse. Any other questions? Well if there are no more, I’ll just record very briefly on my trip the past eight or nine days. I went to Florida, first of all, to speak at a church there that, although established is, an Arminian dispensational church two or three years ago, has become very strongly Reformed and is moving in that direction, they have started a Christian school and they are doing remarkable things. It was a marvelous group and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them, really outstanding people, and enjoyed seeing that part of Florida in the West Coast on the Gulf. The weather was surprisingly pleasant everywhere on this trip, not as good as California’s though, but it was not the heat I expected.

In Memphis, Tennessee I was at the International Sovereign Grace conference, and that was a tremendous experience. There were four or five hundred people there, closer to five hundred I believe, and the speakers included myself and John Reisinger and the Reverend E.W. Johnson whom I quoted, the Reverend T.R. Ingrim, the Reverend Doctor David Estrada of Barcelona, Spain, the Reverend Al Martin, the Reverend Bill Clark of France, the Reverend {?}Earle Halse{?} from England, Doctor Greg Singer, Reverend Peter Conley of England, and Doctor Earl Griswold who of course is one of the people I like most of all anywhere, anytime, and he was superb. He was the last speaker and they saved the best for the last with reason. If you can get the tape you should, he was tremendous. It was all outstanding and it was a thorough delight to be there. When the International Sovereign Grace conferences started just a few years ago there were only a handful of people present. Now there were four hundred and fifty, five hundred who attended and I think that it was remarkable. They came from every area, Florida to California, to Memphis, Tennessee for the meetings. It was a delight from every perspective; the people who were there, the fellowship, as well as the speakers.

And of course there’s one thing that has to be said about the South, the worst and the best preachers are in the South. The Southerner likes old fashioned eloquence and in the hands of arminians it’s pure pathos, it’s horrible. In the hands of men of faith it is magnificent. So it’s a real privilege to sit part of the time and listen to some of these Southern speakers, especially Earl Griswold. John Reisinger was excellent too. I was delighted, by the way, with one of the stories, we had {?}Earle Halse{?} from England speak on the life of Spurgeon, and he had a great many very important comments to make as well as delightful incidents, but one that was told by someone else I must pass on because I was so tickled by it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was once invited to speak to a group that apparently had made up its mind beforehand that they weren’t going to like him, were going to hear him only out of necessity. So when it came time for the offering the plates had been ditched. They didn’t want to give anything to him, but Spurgeon had his hat underneath the chair so he gave it to the ushers to pass around. When they brought it back he looked in the hat and there wasn’t a thing. And so he said “Let us pray” and he said “Lord I thank Thee that these tightwads gave me my hat back.”

[Laughter]

[Rushdoony] Well, next week we shall go on to deal with some very important aspects with how, in the practical aspects you create a theologically oriented state. This is the problem that in the modern age at the very beginning the various churches foundered on; their answers gave some unhappy results, and as a result it is an imperative question for us to face. Let us bow now 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]