The Gospel of John

The Credulity of the Ungodly

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 34- 70

Genre:

Track: 034

Dictation Name: RR197T36

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Praise ye the Lord, praise God in His sanctuary, praise Him for His mighty acts. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord, let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Fat her we come according to Thy word to praise Thee. We thank Thee that Thou art ever ready to hear us whose lips are more full of complaint than praise. Teach us oh Lord to see Thy hand in all things, to rejoice in Thy government, to know that Thou art ever able to accomplish that which Thou hast purposed and Thy purpose is the triumph of Thy kingdom and of us in Thee. Bless us as we worship Thee, bless us as we praise Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is John 10:17-21. John 10:17-21, our subject: The Credulity of the Ungodly.

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

19 There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings.

20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?

21 Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?”

Our Lord in these words speaks of His messianic calling. He is God incarnate, the good shepherd, He is come to make atonement for sin. In Acts 2:22-36 Peter speaks of Christ’s voluntary acceptance of His part as the atonement while at the same time declaring it to be the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God. God’s absolute predestination and the willing free response of Jesus are both stressed by Peter and by our Lord in this passage. For this is the plain emphasis of verses seventeen and eighteen. Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. To bring about the restoration of man into God’s grace, kingdom and purpose, God the Son offers Himself as the atonement. Therefore the Father’s love of the Son. Jesus Christ lays down His life that He may take it again. In verse eighteen we are told no man taketh it from me but I lay it down of myself. We are told thus in verses seventeen and eighteen of the perfect coincidence of God’s predestination and Christ’s course of action. There is no compulsion, only complete agreement. Jesus was Judicially murdered but this is not the point made by the gospels which all stress His readiness to submit to what had eternal implications. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. As Hendricks noted this is a unique power. No one has a right to lay down his life but Jesus had that right. He had the right both to lay it down and to take it again.

The word translated as right can also be rendered as authority, freedom or power. Jesus says I have power or right or authority or freedom to lay it down and I have power, authority, freedom or right to take it again. It is a clear statement of Christ’s divine power and authority, His right and freedom. The word is an apt one because Jesus reveals here His authority and His freedom. Then he adds this commandment have I received of my Father. By His obedience He opens up eternal light for His people. A new human race is created by His atoning sacrifice and the world now has a new direction. The result of His sayings was a division again among the peoples. The opinion of some was that He was demon possessed or at least mad, others objected saying these are not the words of him that hath a devil, can a devil open the eyes of the blind? This argument about the nature of Jesus still continues on different levels but with one and the same purpose always of denying Jesus His deity. According to one scholar, J.H.C. Macgregor and I quote:

“Both cross and resurrection are a part of the father’s commission to the Son. The Son’s freedom consists in spontaneously obeying the Father’s commandment. I am and my Father are one but note this, what He says next, the unity here claimed is ethical rather than metaphysical. A unity of will rather than of essence and personalities, a mystical unity implying two separate personalities. As in verse thirty eight below and chapter 1:1 the word was with God. He doesn’t add what John adds, that the word was God. Christ never clings even in this gospel to be in essence with God. The unity with the Father which He does claim is a similar unity of will and purpose to that which He prays may exist between Christian and Christian. An indivisible unity of nature in Father and Son is not implied as Jesus Himself makes clear when in verse thirty six He interprets His present claim as meaning not I am God but I am God’s Son.” Unquote.

Now, if Macgregor is right and he is not, then there can be no atonement because Jesus was like us totally human. Macgregor simply overlooks the conclusion of John 1:1, the word was with God. There is for Macgregor no incarnation, no virgin birth, simply a moral union between a man named Jesus and God and all of us are capable of affecting such a union. Everybody can be their own Christ he implies. All can also become God’s sons not by the adoption of grace through Christ but by our own mystical unity with God. Now this is not biblical religion but ancient paganism masquerading as Christianity. Everything is set aside that makes clear the supernatural origin, power and person of Jesus Christ. Now Macgregor’s commentary was an important one, a part of a series of studies in the Moffat New Testament commentary. But so called scholarship was brought into warfare here and elsewhere against historic Christianity and orthodox Christianity was undermined. An entire series now being published by Catholic and Protestant scholars together at every point undermines everything that is supernatural, undermines everything about Jesus that points to His deity and undermines all the miracles. But any honest reading of the New Testament tells us that Jesus Christ is revealed to us as God incarnate, as truly God and truly man. Scholars encourage us to discount the biblical accounts on the grounds of the popular credulity of that era.

Well there was popular credulity then and now, there has been popular credulity in every age on the top and bottom of society. If you doubt that there’s a great deal of credulity now just look at the tabloids at your grocery checkout counter. We have millions of credulous people around us who can believe almost anything. Similarly there are skeptics now and there were skeptics then. So unbelief as well as credulity is not a new problem. To discount the evidence of the New Testament on the ground of first century credulity is an evasion of the facts and it rests on the presupposition that facts are only facts if certain men declare them so to be. In effect what they do is to say you are not a fact until we say so. The problem faced by Jews and Gentiles when confronted by the New Testament and the claims thereof was one of accommodation. How could they fit the New Testament history into their idea of history? Moreover if Jesus Christ were what He and the New Testament set forth then the whole of their world view was radically wrong. So thinkers from the very beginning began to reshape Jesus into an acceptable form. Of course they waited until the first generation died because there were too many who could say I was there, I saw the miracle, I saw the crucifixion, I witnessed the resurrection, the evidence was too great. So they waited until the first generation was dead before they invented their cynical stories. However much shunned by intellectual leaders century after century Jesus shattered all the worldviews of antiquity and of the centuries that followed.

He was both God and man in a unique and non-repeatable incarnation. His atonement for sins was beyond the capacity of any other person to reproduce or to repeat. Here was a force without equal, a threat then as now to the world’s systems. As a result while many rejected Him many sought also to fit Him into their fallen world systems. This effort is still with us and Macgregor’s pathetic solution is one of many. Modernism is a form of ancient paganism’s efforts in order to revive the march of the human spirit towards its self-divinization. As verse twenty one makes clear there were those present when this episode occurred who realized that madness cannot be matched with miracles. How can you say, well a miracle took place but this man is mad or he is demon possessed. How could such a one perform a miracle? The effort to make such a connection was illustrious of the credulity of the ungodly. When people refused to believe the plain statement of the word of God they must resort to every kind of credulity such as separating the miracle Jesus performed from His person. But to deny God is to be credulous and a fool. If a man refuses to believe in the triune God of scripture there will be no limit to His credulity because then He affirms the universal reign of chance. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. We thank Thee that by Thy sovereign grace Thou hast spoken to us, given us grace to hear and to believe and to obey. How great Thou art our Father and we praise Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes very good point. And the New Testament word is very important because it gives us both in one word. It is as though the Greek language was prepared to receive the New Testament. There are so many unusual coincidences like that. One of the most amazing is the word ‘agape’. There are three words in the New Testament or in the New Testament Greek I should say for love, eros, for erotic love, phileo, as in Philadelphia of brotherly love, for routine human love, good love, but a natural kind of phenomena and then agape, a word that existed in Greek but had almost no use which is an interesting fact. And it means in effect a love which is pure grace. There’s no cause for it except that God out of His grace give us His love. So here was a word prepared to receive what the Gospel writers had to say. And of course there is as we shall see a very important usage of the differences between agape and phileo in the last chapter of John. Any other questions or comments?

We have in this chapter a preparation for chapter eleven which gives us the culminating sign or miracle, the resurrection of Lazarus, so that you can see our Lord is preparing both those who believe in Him and those who doubt Him for the great challenge, He is going to resurrect Lazarus, the third resurrection He performed but in this instance one who had been dead and buried. So it’s a remarkable episode and everything we have here is preparing the way. He is confronting them with the monstrosity that their unbelief is so that before it is over they are going to know whether they like it or not what they are when they condemn Jesus. Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee for its plain speaking, we thank Thee that in Thy word we have a certainty such as the world does not know. How great Thou art and how great Thy grace unto us that Thou hast made us Thine and given us hearts willing to believe. Our God we thank 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.