Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Eighth Commandment

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Eighth Commandment

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 067

Dictation Name: RR171AK67

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 will 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.

Oh Lord, our God, we come to thee in a troubled time, knowing that thou art He who hast ordained all things for thy purpose, and that all things shall serve thee, and even the wrath of man shall praise thee. Give us grace so to walk day by day, that in the face of all the adversities of our times, we may be mindful that thou art He who hast ordained all things, who shall destroy the powers of darkness and shall cause thy kingdom to stand forth in all its majesty and power. Bless us, in thy service, we beseech thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 20:15. The Eighth Commandment. The Eighth Commandment. Exodus 20:15. “Thou shalt not steal.”

There is scarcely a culture anywhere in the world without a law in some for against theft. In some way or another people saying, “Keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off what’s mine.” But all these laws the world over, however, have a very different character from the biblical legislation. According to J.A. McCulloch{?}, in various societies, and I quote, “Again we generally meet with the idea that the weight of the crime varies both according to the rank, and often the age and sex of the offender, and according to that of the victim. Chiefs, or men of rank, may commit crimes with impunity or with slight punishment, but crime committed against them is generally punished more severely than that against lesser men.” In our time, we see that taking place, various penalties for various people, and some people immune to penalties. The U.S. Congress regularly exempts itself from laws it passes to control others. If Oliver North had done what several prominent members of congress have been doing, no names mentioned, he would have been locked up for the rest of his life.

This kind of exemption has been a common fact in history. This problem arises out of the nature of sovereignty to a very great degree. The sovereign is the source of law but is not under the law, but with the God of scripture, we have a difference. He is the Lord, the sovereign. He is the source of law, and His law is the expression of His being and nature. You cannot say that the law, “Thou shalt not steal,” expresses the nature of any legislature in the United States. It is not a part of the nature of those men who make laws. But God’s law is the expression of His nature.

God does more than require justice of us. He is in all His being, justice. All His ways are in perfect righteousness or justice, and holiness. God cannot be other than just because He is justice, but this is emphatically not true of all human would-be sovereigns nor of judges, nor of any man. Human authorities, by setting themselves up as the sources of law and justice, free themselves from God’s justice, and that becomes a license to become evil.

As a result, while laws against theft are routine around the world, they do not bind their human sources. This means that the rulers or states which issued or issue laws against stealing, see no restraint against theft on their part. That’s simply the power of sovereignty and eminent domain on the part of the state. Non-biblical laws against stealing are all, ultimately, humanistic, and they bind the people, not the rulers. This means that the state, the world over, is free to steal, whereas the people are not. Because we in the United States have abandoned God’s law for the state’s, the state is now free to steal from us because it rejects any law higher than itself. Some of the results of this are the property tax, the income tax, and a variety of forms of confiscation of property. If the state, as the central power of society, is not under the restraint of God’s law, and if the state is free to expropriate by law whatever it chooses, and it’s a logical conclusion that freedom will not long endure, and we are seeing it disappear. In this century, we have seen the rapid decline of man’s freedom as the power of the state has increased.

The implications of this commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” should be clear. It is central to the doctrine of the limitation of all human powers. It includes emphatically the powers of church and state, of the family, of all human agencies. The state is not the ultimate source of this law, “Thou shalt not steal.” God is.

This means also that the state is not the source of property, and if the state says, “Thou shalt not steal,” rather than God, the state says, in effect, “We are the ones who lay down the laws of property, because all property comes from our fiat will.” In the Lockian tradition of John Locke, property is the creation of the state, or the state was a social compact which was established to ensure the private ownership of property. In either form, control of property is by social contract placed in the hands of the state, and the state is the source of law and of ownership. The Lockian world has moved very logically from private ownership to ownership by the state as the trustee of the people. If justice has its origins in the state, then whatever the state does is therefore just, because the state is the source of justice.

There is a distinction in civil law between public crimes and private crimes. The whole world of public and private goes in our day unexamined, but in one area after another, we find this distinction a deadly one. Public crimes are offenses which affect the whole community, whereas private crimes are seen as, and I’m quoting from a well-respected source, “Murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, perjury, and the like.” Murder is a private crime, it’s not as important as cheating the IRS. According to Psalm 21:1, “The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”

Crimes against fruit trees, for example, are religious in nature in scripture, and war could not justify damage to fruit trees. But now crimes against trees, or waters, or pollution, all crimes against God in the Bible, are seen as offenses against the state, and such crimes include accidental oil spills. In some instances, murder has been treated more lightly now than an environmental offense. The reason is that murder is now a private crime, as are adultery and theft where persons are involved, and perjury is similarly private. Public crimes, however, are treated with increasing severity. If you rob Uncle Sam, you’re in deep trouble. The IRS will make sure you pay, or whatever agency it is. But if you are robbed, the police will file a record of the crime. That is, in most cases, all that happens.

Many crimes have been shifted from one sphere to another, from public to private. In Ancient Greece, debasing the coinage was a crime punishable by death, but now this penalty has been altered somewhat. It was then the fact that private agencies often issued coins, but the whole public was affected when they were defaced. Now it is a public crime only because the state issues the coins, and it does not apply when the state debases the currency.

Now in the Bible, there is no word for crime. What we call “crime,” is, in scripture, a sin. It is a form of evil. In terms of biblical law, a power state is not possible, because it is a rebellion against God and against His law. It is a denial of the limitation of all earthly powers mandated by God’s word. It is therefore, warfare against God, and it is a revolution with devastating consequences for man.

In 1 Samuel 8, we have Samuel’s statement that God warns us that any departure from His government to man’s creates a radical dislocation in society. It means that then, the state feels free to use man, to draft the people’s sons and daughters for compulsory state service. It leads to a confiscation of the people’s lands and monies, and to heavy taxation. In time, Samuel says, “The people will complain against all these things, and will cry out to God, but God declares, 1 Samuel 8:18, “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.” Very serious statement, and relevant to our time.

The solution to our problem today, as many people see it, is stricter law enforcement. But the answer is, we are getting stricter law enforcement, of public crimes. Of crimes against the state and its agencies. Every agency in Washington is giving us more and more stricter enforcement. Whether it is the IRS, or the securities commission, or the drug administration, and the same is true of state property taxes and all taxes on all levels. Private crimes, being of lesser importance in modern law, are given a much lower priority, and any time you demand stricter law enforcement, you will get it, for public crimes, because that has the priority in modern criminology.

Where law comes from God, as in the Bible, all His laws require strict enforcement on everybody. We are very clearly told, in Deuteronomy 1:16-17, “And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God's: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.”

When the state defines justice, justice then becomes the will of the state. In modern legal theories, the state is the definer, and there is no justice beyond the state. In biblical law, restitution is mandatory to the offended person and to God. In modern law, restitution to the state is required, but not to private persons. Although, in recent years, some states have restored restitution to persons, and Chalcedon is, to a large degree, responsible for that. Roman law, under the Republic in theory, treated all citizens as equal before the law, but not many were citizens. Under the Empire, in time, all free men, who were in the Empire were granted citizenship, but the higher groups had certain immunities, so that the change was superficial, not substantial. And you can go through history and you find that, while there may be a pretense of equal justice for all, as under Rome, it ultimately is the same. People connected with the state, or are very powerful and important, had a different kind of treatment under the law.

This distinction between public and private crimes, which no one in our time questions, is one which has strengthened the power of the state and has enabled every state the world over to play God. It has been used to destroy the people’s freedom. As long as the state is the source of law, this problem will remain. Many a reformer, in one country after another, has gained power politically with the desire to help the people but has failed miserably because they have not understood the nature of law, that it’s legitimate source is God alone, and they have not understood the fallacy of the distinction between public and private law. Every where that you have that distinction, you and I are the losers, the people are the losers. If law is not God’s law, it will be a form of subjugating private man, the people. There can never be a solution to unrecognized problems, and because men will not take God’s law seriously, they do not recognize the cancer of our time, which is destroying society the world over. Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that we have thy law, and thy law will prevail, and thy law will deliver us from the hands of men. We thank thee that Jesus Christ has come to make us the people of His kingdom, or His law, of His covenant and mercy. Make us strong in Him and in thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I’m always puzzled though with the statement on our currency, U.S. currency. It says it’s to be used for all payment, public and private. I’ve always wondered why they differentiate.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It means you can pay your taxes with it and you can pay debts to individuals with it. Of course, at any time they have the fiat time to require something else in payment for taxes, but you’re still bound by it, and at any time they can declare that that money is no longer good and issue a new currency. One of the most vivid recollections I have is of a statement by a man who is on our mailing list who was in Shanghai after World War 2 when the currency was suddenly, overnight, rendered null and void, and a new currency issued, and everyone was caught by surprise, and people were sitting, crying in front of banks, with piles of paper money around them. All worthless, and he said no one would even accept U.S. paper. A silver dollar alone had any value, and he said people who had been very wealthy were wiped out. Well, the state can do that because the state is the source of law. It cannot be bound by any law it issues, so that whenever Congress binds the Federal Government by saying this or that, we’ll restrain this or that agency, when it comes to a legal test, the Supreme Court throws that out. You cannot bind the source of law, it binds us. And their money binds us but it does not, in a pinch, bind them. Yes?

[Audience] What’s the relationship between restitution and atonement? What’s the difference then, does one follow the other?

[Rushdoony] Two different words for the same thing. Atonement is restitution to God for our sins, which we cannot make but Christ makes for us, and restitution is a word used when we make restitution to some man for an offense. So, they deal with the same fact. Yes?

[Audience] I was talking to a friend of mine and, in California, and he was talking about the fact that, Oliver North, in the spirit of the law, was innocent but in the letter of the law, was guilty. Now, was this discussed in the trial? Or where does this come from? Is there a semblance of that in the secular world?

[Rushdoony] As far as I know, it wasn’t. Let us say he was guilty in every respect as the liberals believed him to be. The fact is, there are no like penalties for members of Congress, and what he was convicted for is, however true it might be, little by comparison to the crimes of some members of Congress. What we are seeing increasingly is the law being used politically, as a punitive thing, to punish anyone who acts independently. And if you’re an underling, you take the wrath. So, that’s the situation. He did what presidents have done in the past, but he paid a price for it. At issue is this, since Watergate, a sovereign is above the law, but who is the sovereign now? There are three agencies in Washington fighting for sovereignty. Congress has said, by law, they are above the laws that they pass. The White House previously has said, “We are above the law, and we can carry on negotiations and operations that require secrecy without regard for the law. And the Supreme Court, by declaring itself capable of legislation, in effect, says, “We are the source of law, we are above both the Administration and Congress.” So, you have the three branches of the federal government, each claiming sovereignty, and in the process, there are some casualties. Yes?

[Audience] I read recently, apparently in Islamic countries, since they don’t believe in sin or repentance thereof, they’re cutting off people’s hands who steal.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, in the Muslim countries where they do cut off people’s hands for stealing, the result is that any European or American there is robbed blind, because he hires a native worker, they steal from him, he reports it, and the next he sees of his servant is that he’s got a stump instead of a hand, and it’s all wrapped up, and he is so horrified and feels so personally guilty for it that the thief knows at the cost of a hand, he now has license to steal, and he can support all his relatives, and does, because the last thing the European or the American can take is to see that servant lose both hands. Yes?

[Audience] Back to the question she asked, oftentimes when we see people now brought before Congress and their immorality exposed, you see a lot of Christians very happy about it now because God’s law is being upheld, yet they barely see that’s it’s being used politically. However, where do you start in terms of trying to bring reason back? A lot of people say, “Well, at least they’re applying it to this situation.” Where’s the balance?

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, you’re not going to bring it back apart from re-Christianizing the people, and second, what they do not understand is that what Congress does in these hearings is totally against the Constitutional law. If the state were not sovereign now it could not be done, because you’re compelled to testify against yourself. You cannot take the fifth amendment. If they grant you immunity for testifying, they can, as in the Oliver North case, then waive that immunity afterwards, they can withdraw it and say, “We told you you could testify with immunity, but now we’re saying we withdraw the immunity.” They’re lawless, so that anyone who rejoices over that, whether it’s a Mafia member testifying on those circumstances, or anyone of us. It is a destruction of our freedom. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thy word enables us to see our times and the world we live in in thy light, and only in thy light can we walk with safety. Only in thy light can we be preserved from the time of judgment. Give us grace day by day to see more and more clearly the things that are of thee and of thy kingdom, so that, in the day of adversity we can stand. 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.