Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Seventh Commandment

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Seventh Commandment

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 066

Dictation Name: RR171AJ66

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him, He also will hear their cry and save them. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, saith the Lord Jesus, there am I in the midst of them. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy blessings of the week past. We thank thee, our father, that thy mercies are new every morning, that thou hast made us for thy purpose, and thy purpose shall not fail. We thank thee that all weather is good weather when we walk with thee, because all things accomplish thy holy purpose. Teach us by thy word and by thy spirit, and grant that we grow in grace. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture text is Exodus 20:14. our subject: The Seventh Commandment. Exodus 20:14. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

The history towards attitudes toward adultery is one of amazing extremes. At time in history, it has been regarded as no importance, whether or not a man or a woman were adulterists. In the court of Louis XV, for example, and in other courts throughout Europe at that time, a husband who objected to his wife’s adulteries would have been regarded as a fool. In Louis XVth’s court, one man had to retreat to his estate because they became aware of his regard for his wife, that in itself was unforgiveable, and his hatred for her adulteries. In other cultures, at times, the penalties have been severe. They have included the disfigurement of the woman, such as cutting of her nose, or the emasculation of the man and death, often by very tortured ways. I know that when I was on the Indian reservation, while U.S. law had gradually prevented some of these things from taking place, there was still a woman who had had her nose cut off. This was an ironic kind of thing. The man could kill the other man and cut off the woman’s nose, but then he had the problem of having to look at her all the time and that was not a very pretty sight. So, it was a kind of a self-defeating thing.

How adultery and other sexual offenses is regarded in a culture depends on its view of the family. If the family is seen as the basic institution, then adultery is treason in that society, as it is in biblical law. If the state is central to a culture, then treason is a crime against the state, and sexual acts increasingly become a matter of choice rather than governed by public necessity. Over and over again in history, this has been the case. When the society is moved from a familistic culture to a statist one, then increasingly, sexual offenses cease to be anything but a matter of personal choice, or taste. Every society protects its core, its life center. If this is faith in the God of scripture and the biblically-governed family, then protection of the faith and the family becomes a matter of public necessity, and that’s the key.

What is public necessity to a society? The life of society then depends on respect for the faith and the family, if the culture is biblically-oriented. If, however, the core of a society is the humanistic state, then everything centers on the defense of the state as public necessity, until finally it becomes illegal even to defend yourself, if the state chooses to attack you. The family and sexual conduct then, are relegated by the statist culture to the status of private choice. There is a progressive denial of the public consequences of private acts, as they are called, and family life and sexuality are seen as belonging to a realm of private choices which are irrelevant to society.

In scripture, the purpose of punishment is to protect God’s order, to give protection and justice to the righteous and to suppress evil. However, as H.B. Clark, a law editor, pointed out, and I quote, “In the modern view, the aims of law are justice, liberty, and peace, and the happiness and welfare of the people. Primarily, it is the purpose of law, as always, to maintain peace and order, or it has been said, to ensure domestic tranquility. Justice and law, as words, have no necessary connection. Let me repeat that. Justice and law, as words, have no necessary connection, nor is the law necessarily an instrument by which justice is obtained.” Clark footnotes this statement with a number of decisions in American law. One of them, and I quote, “The triumph of the law is not in always ending conflicts rightly, but in ending them peaceably, and we may be certain that we do less injustice by the worst processes of the law than would be done by the best use of violence.” That footnote is a quote from Robert H. Jackson who was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Then again, and this is extensively footnoted by citations, this statement from various legal authorities, “The law is, after all, a method of social control.” Now, that is significant. Not justice, but social control in every modern state is the goal of the law.

Now, the nature of God is inseparable from His being. God is, by nature, totally just, true, good, and holy. The state, however, has no given nature except that its existence depends on the exercise of power. As a result, the state becomes more and more an expression of accumulated powers, and less and less the exponent of professed virtues and liberties. This can be documented from legal decisions extensively. The state, as it accumulates power, becomes less happy with powers in the family, the church, the business world, farming, the community, and all other spheres. It seeks a monopoly of power. It accordingly diminishes liberties and increases license.

To illustrate, the family today is so heavily taxes, that its ownership of property is becoming nominal. To spank a child is to be guilty of child abuse. Families homeschooling their children in many of the American states, and in countries abroad are found guilty by the courts regularly. Children are encouraged by some state school counselors to rebellion against their parents, and much, much more can be said. At the same time that these liberties on the part of the people are being curtailed, license is increased. Abortion and homosexuality are now legal, and our attempts at legalizing incest and child molestation, not only here but in country after country abroad. There can be no prayer nor Bible reading in state schools, but sexual license can be taught.

Within the past year, the ACLU objected to one bill in the California legislature which would have required sex ed courses in state schools to say a good word about monogamy and faithfulness, and the ACLU objected to it as an establishment of religion. Thus, we have seen in the twentieth century, a dramatic shift is what constitutes public necessity. The rise of statism has been central to that shift. In Proverbs 6:27-29, adultery is described as playing with fire. It is declared to be personally destructive.

In Exodus 20:14, our text, the law is given as a covenantal law, and as basic to the life of the people. It is covenantal and social in its implications, according to the Ten Commandments, and this is uppermost. In Proverbs 6:27-29, the counsel is addressed to a young man and is therefore, personal. In our era, the personal aspect is often alone stressed by Christians, and sexual immorality is seen in its personal, rather than social dimensions, but both need to be stressed.

In Leviticus 18, we have a list of sexual offenses which are prefaced by these sentences, verses 4 and 5. “Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.” Verse 4 and the first part of 5 give us an order from God: “Ye shall do.” Ye shall do what I tell you, God says, because I am the Lord, you must obey irrespective of you want or think.” Then, to this fiat command is added this statement, “which if a man do, he shall live in them.” The Berkeley version rendered this: “Whoever practices them enjoys life through them.” Life means God’s law and grace.

God, having created all things, has ordained the conditions of life and of happiness. This is why God’s law provides us with the only valid public necessities, but man has always, throughout history, tried to reorder the nature of public necessities. When the state plays god, it therefore redefines what constitutes public necessities in its own image, and it relegates God and His law to the realm of private choices. Now, private choice, in its clearest and truest meaning, means for example, that I am free to choose between vanilla and strawberry ice creams. That’s what a private choice is about. It has no social implications. The choice of neither or the rejection of both has no social consequences for God or man. This is what private choice means. It’s irrelevant. To relegate faith in God and His law, the family and sexual conduct to the realm of private choices is a decision of momentous consequences for man and society. It constitutes history’s major revolution, yet we are asked to believe that this is freedom. They tell us that by making all of this a matter of private choice, we are saying how personal and important it is, and unhappily, the church has too often bought that argument.

There can, however, be no return to God’s law in this sphere without a return to biblical faith and a reestablishment of the priority of the family and its life. A culture is the expression of a people’s life, and life is now seen in statist terms, and there cannot be anything in the way of a reversal of priorities without us again becoming God-centered and under Him, family-centered.

Statism believes in social change by statist coercion, not by the Holy Spirit working in the life of man. This is why we increasingly have a coercive society, because it is a matter of public necessity, given the premises of our culture.

One of the more influential books on the family in the modern era was Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society, published first in 1877. And while some of its theses are now abandoned, it still continues to be influential because its basic premises were adopted. It was a thoroughly evolutionary study. Morgan saw the family as developing out of a primitive promiscuity. For him, the family was a stage in the development of civil government, and he very confidently concluded his book with these words, “The foregoing sequence may require modification, and perhaps essential change in some of its members, but it affords both a rational and a satisfactory explanation of the facts of human experience so far as they are known, and of the course of human progress and developing the idea of the family and of government in the tribes of mankind.”

Today, as I indicated at many points, Morgan’s thesis has been set aside, but in its essential aspects, Morgan’s view still stands in that, scholars accept as valid that an evolutionary and natural origin for the family must be found, and the family is a stage in human evolution towards another form of social organization, and therefore, the family must be superseded in time. Huxley, in his Brave New World, gave a vision of the future. Test tube babies, and so on, in terms of that thesis. It has not been abandoned.

The Bible declares that man, sexuality, marriage, and law are all God’s creation and ordination and therefore, totally under His government. A naturalistic determination in this sphere is a violation of God’s government, and it is anti-God, and therefore, anti-life. God’s order and not man’s sinful will must prevail. The doctrine of public necessities and private choices, which governs us at our age, is at the heart of our problem, and until we have a different vision of what constitutes public necessity, we will see the increasing drift into totalitarianism. It will not be reversed by fighting on issues alone, though we must fight there also, but by questioning the whole concept of what constitutes a public necessity.

It is interesting that one of the things that, in scripture, is a public necessity is what was formulated in a sentence by James Otis: The man’s house is his castle. It is his private domain which cannot be transgressed, but the introduction, after Otis’s time, of property taxes nullified, the biblical doctrine, because, in scripture, there is no property tax. It is a man’s domain under God.

As a result of this kind of thinking, biblical law, Margaret Thatcher has introduced a measure to abolish the property tax and replace it with a head or poll tax, and it is interesting that scarcely a week goes by when, either in the press or in some periodical, there is not a hewen{?} cry against her for having brought that up, and the reason is, it strikes at the core of the modern faith, its doctrine of public necessity. Let us pray.

Our Father, make us thine instruments to reorder the priorities of our world, to be a witness in all that we say and do to the order which is of thee. We thank thee, our Father, for those who are moving in that direction. We pray for thy blessing for those in Britain, and in Washington who are so working. Grant, oh Lord, that by thy grace, we see a new doctrine of public necessity in our time. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Is the situation in Europe, I’ve heard that their morality is lower than in the United States, is it getting better or worse, or, do you have any information on that?

[Rushdoony] The continent of Europe is very much under the influence of the French Revolution, and as a result, the ideas which came out of the French Revolution governed the world of the intellectuals. As a result, in the area of the family, the urban culture is very emphatically anti-Christian. But it is interesting that in the celebration there of the French Revolution, this year, a sizable number of peasants, especially those who are descendents of the Vende’e{?}, the rebellion, the peasants, have come out saying, “This is nothing to celebrate about, it should be a year of mourning.” There was only a note or two in the press about it, but the fact that it even got mentioned in this country indicates that, hopefully, there are signs of another direction. Yes?

[Audience] The secularized intellectuals, is the scholar really, secularized scholar, in their arguments against the faith, were then were imitated by the intellectuals, who then were imitated by the politicians, brought about the changes that you’re discussing, and will not be overcome excepting on an intellectual level.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and that’s what Chalcedon is about. We are working to provide the thinking for a Christian turn-around, and a different concept of public necessity. Yes?

[Audience] You stated before that the U.S. Constitution will not save this country. It seems that for all of this century, because of the courts’ liberal interpretation of the Constitution that they’re using it against the people. Do you foresee a time in the future when the people might disavow the Constitution as a means of evading government tyranny?

[Rushdoony] Well, the Constitution is a procedural document. In other words, you don’t have anything stated in it except procedures for the maintenance of a civil government and a union of a variety of civil governments, the constituent states. Now, the reason for that was, they looked to the Bible for their basic government. As Ehrlich, who is not a Christian, a prominent attorney in San Francisco of a few years back, pointed out in his book, for many, many decades, a couple generations after the Constitution, the law book in the courtrooms was the Bible, so that the Constitution provided procedures and the Bible provided the actual law. What happened, as with the Unitarian influence and the rise of abolitionism, there began a hostility to the Constitution as simply a procedural document, and so they began to work to alter this country and to alter the nature of the Constitution. As a result, since then, all kinds of substantive law has been read into one phrase or another of the Constitution, especially the general welfare clause of the Preamble. So, interpretations read into the Constitution have replaced the Bible as fundamental law, so we’ve had a major legal revolution. Now, that legal revolution will be undone and the Constitution returned to telling you just the terms of office of congressmen and of the president, and a lot of details like that, when the people again have a strong Christian faith, and see their law as coming from God not the state. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] Do you happen to know when that bill from Margaret Thatcher is going to come up for a vote, or whatever their equivalent is over there?

[Rushdoony] The bill that the ACLU…

[Audience] Margaret Thatcher….

[Rushdoony] I don’t believe it’s out of committee yet, but it’s certainly stirring up hostility.

[Audience] Do you think that would ever get pass through, ever be a chance of something like happening here, or would they just laugh at it, or ignore it completely?

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] We still take our cue from Europe and from Britain, if they do it then it becomes possible to conceive of it here. If they don’t do it, it’s not possible for the Americans to conceive of it.

[Rushdoony] If it catches on, it will have an overwhelming appeal to the people. Nobody enjoys paying their property tax.

[Audience] Just the people don’t send their kids to public school.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] You know, it seems a lot like not one Christian in a hundred understands this concept of public necessity, and they look at it, public schools, and abortion, and so on, as part of public necessity, and they, not so much abortion but the school system, and it seems a lot like that the Christian community is offering very little opposition to the state’s control, just continuing on and on in more and more areas, taking dominance over what should be the Christian position.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and it’s because of the very naïve nature of so many people. When many years ago, I began to speak about public schools, I’d be denounced, and also against humanism, and the routine argument is, “Well, the public schools are not saying anything against the Bible or against the church.” Of course not, why stir up opposition? They were very quietly destroying both. And the same about humanism. The humanists are not attacking us, why not leave them alone? Let ‘em do what they want to do and we’ll do what we do. But meanwhile, they were establishing humanism as the religion of this country. I think there is a steady awakening to all these issues, a growing one. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

[Audience] You have one more, Rush, over there.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes?

[Audience] I just had one question. It seems as though the conflict between good and evil is getting more emphatic on both sides, with the situation in China, with an awakening of these things that you’ve been mentioning today. It seems as though communism is being threatened by the people who live under their own systems. Do you have any predictions, or do you see what the world is going to be like in say, the next fifteen to twenty years? It looks as though everything is coming to a head.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, to borrow Dr. Cornelius Van Til’s terminology, as you come to a time of judgment, epistemological self-consciousness that’s in. In other words, good and evil become more self-consciously what they are, and before the Last Judgment, there will be a full self-consciousness on both sides. So, there is an epistemological self-consciousness setting in. It will not be reversed, and it will push to a time of resolution, and we have to say as the Bible does, “All they that hate me love death,” and as Shafarevich, the Russian scientist, has said, “Marxism has a death wish.” This will manifest itself, and there will be a time of judgment. How long that will be we don’t know, but without that, there is no future for us. So, we will face grim days and are living in grim days, but our hope is in the fact that these people will push progressively to their own destruction. Now, any day the same kind of thing that happened in China can break out again in China, and also in the Soviet Union. Well, let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, it is good for us to be here. Thy word is truth, and thy word reorders our priorities and our lives. Give us grace daily to walk in faithfulness to thee, and joy at being thy people, and confidence that, whatever the day of adversity may be, thy triumph is assured and ours in thee. 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.