Living by Faith - Romans

Suppressing the Truth

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 3-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 003

Dictation Name: RR311B3

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall seek me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God in whom we live and move, and have our being, we thank Thee that the environment of our lives is Thy government, Thy grace, Thy mercy, and Thy covenant. Give us grace therefore so to walk in the confidence that Thou art on the Throne; that we may face all things as victors in Christ, as more than conquerors. Give us grace to know that it is Thy word that shall prevail, and to give ourselves to the study of the things that are of Thee, the things that are of victory; that in Jesus Christ, we may prevail, have dominion, and govern all things in Him. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the first chapter of Romans, verses 18-21. Romans 1:18-21, Suppressing the Truth.

“18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

We have seen as we have started studying Romans, that the key verse is: “The just shall live by faith.” That this is commonly misinterpreted, so that it is most commonly assumed that what Paul says is: “The Just shall be saved by faith.” And certainly they are, but this is severely to restrict the meaning of the text, because it does indeed include being saved by faith, but it is far more inclusive; it declares that the just shall live by faith. We saw too that this a quotation from Habakkuk, the fourth verse of the second chapter. The speaker there in Habakkuk 2:4 is God Himself.

Now, the word faith in Hebrew means stability, faithfulness, steadfastness. And the word used in the Greek of Romans 1:17, the Greek ‘Pisteos’ as we have seen previously, has the same meaning. To live by faith means to live by faithfulness to God and His covenant, His covenant law and covenant grace. This is an important and a basic fact.

Now as we continue our study in Romans, what we must realize is this, and in our text today Paul brings this out. When we think of faith and what is the opposite of faith we think of unbelief or atheism. And that is not scriptural. To assume that is to take atheism, unbelief, seriously; which the Bible refuses to do. In Psalm 14:1 we are told: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” So that Atheists are classified as fools who are trying to kid themselves, and the reason why they do we are then told, is because ‘corrupt are they’. The Bible refuses therefore to treat Atheism as a serious position, as an intellectual stand of any repute. The same thing is stated in Psalm 53.

We are told in both these Psalms that Atheism is not only a fools opinion to hide his corruption, but that these corrupt fools are an abomination. They are, in other words, filth. And it comes out of the filth of their imagination. Psalm 10:4 makes the same statement saying, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.”

In other words, what Paul is here telling us is that the knowledge of God is inescapable knowledge. Men hold the truth, or men hold it down, they suppress it, in unrighteousness. In other words, there is not an atheist of any honest character, anyone who holds that opinion honestly, from day one of creation to the end of time. And that is the Biblical position. It is a product of a corrupt imagination which is trying to suppress the truth in unrighteousness or injustice.

So, the Bible says, Atheism is a fraud. The man who holds it is a fool, he is deluding himself; and he pretends to have an intellectual problem when in reality he has a moral problem.

Moreover, Paul says, these unthankful fools, unfaithful fools, were not thankful. They were vain or useless in their imaginations or speculation. (Berkile?) renders the verse in these words: “Instead of praising God they indulged in their useless speculations, until their foolish minds were darkened.” Verse 21.

In other words, they prefer to be self-blinded, they prefer any opinion, any position, anything but the truth. So Paul says, the wrath of God from heaven is manifested against all such men. History is a continual judgement of the fools, and the end of history culminates the judgement. Gods anger is against all men who wage war against His law or justice. A comment from the confraternity notes to the translation reads, and I quote: “Wickedness is a force opposed to truth, which if unrestrained, would expand injustice.”

In other words, Gods truth, if unrestrained by unfaithfulness and rebellion would expand into not only justice, but we can add also, dominion. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans. In the first chapter the 5th verse he says that he is an ambassador, that is, he has an apostleship; to the end that there be an obedience to the faith among all nations.

Now the word that is used by Paul in verse 18 when he says “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” is ‘Asebia’, impiety, wickedness, lawlessness. And it refers both to acts and to mental outlooks. The word is to be contrasted with ‘Eusebia’, godliness, consistency of life with God and His covenant.

Moreover it is important to understand what the Bible teaches about sin, so very briefly to touch on that which we dealt with a year or two ago. In 1 John 3:4 the apostle defines sin for us. “Whoseover committeth sin transgresseth also the law. For sin is the transgression of the law.”

Now, that is the Bible. The Bible says when you sin you are breaking Gods law. Moreover, the words used here for sin, there are two words. whoever committeth or, habitually practices sin, hamartia, missing the mark, falling short of the law, is practicing not incompetence in obeying the law, but anomea, lawlessness; and such habitual practice of any sin, hamartia, is lawlessness, anomea. Habitual failure to keep a law, thus, is declared to be lawlessness, and it is a product of man’s imagination, his dream of being his own God.

Now basic to faith in God is Gods covenant law and grace. We are called to live in faith, that is faithfulness. Thankfulness. Obeying Gods covenant law and thanking Him for His grace. And as we have seen, the opposite of faith is to be unfaithful, to despise God’s grace, God’s law, God’s person; and to suppress the knowledge of God in injustice. Here is the problem.

So Paul refers to atheism not as the problem it pretends to be, but as a moral evil. It is not a problem of epistemology but of ethics.

Now at this point we have to beware of a misunderstanding of this passage by some who see in it an affirmation of natural law, law inherent in nature. Psalm 19:1 declares: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” But what we are told here is that the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. We are not told that they are seen within nature, but from the beginning of the creation; so that God is crying out and thundering in every man’s being from day one of creation that they suppress this truth in unrighteousness, and will continue to do so. They will not recognize any law, because they are in war against God. So when they talk about a law, other than Gods law, they are inventing things to evade Gods law. At a conference recently, one theologian was talking about natural law, which he said was different in content from Biblical law, but he could not and would not tell anyone what the content was. And when two men, both in politics challenged him again and again, and finally said point blank: “Does this law you are talking about say “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, “Thou shalt not fornicate” or anything like that?” He said: “That’s irrelevant.”

So, we are told here that it is from the creation of the world, not by the creation of the world, that Gods knowledge and witness has been made manifest. Men are willfully ignorant. Instead of saying they know God, they know His law, but they reject it in unrighteousness, in injustice. Instead they say: “Know thyself.” And the premise is of course, Genesis 3:5.

If man is his own God and the ultimate creature or person, then knowledge of man is the most important thing of all, not the knowledge of God. This is why psychology is so popular today, but not theology. This is why if you have any problems, Anne Landers or Abigail Van Buren will tell you to go to a psychologist, not a theologian, because the ultimate knowledge is to know thyself.

There is a moral suppression of true knowledge, and an insistence upon a false one.

Now it should be very clear by now that when the Bible talk about faith, it is not talking about easy-believism. The easy-believism of the modern church; saying yes to God, going forward and then sitting in the pew as a perpetual mummy, mummified to do nothing from thereon out, is to believe in something that is not scriptural.

What the Bible means by faith is (?), steadfastness, in the Lord in obedience and in action, and in a daily walk in terms of His covenant word.

The Bible uses the same word that is used here in the Greek, Pistis for faith, for ‘believe’ on the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Bible tells us that if we have faith like a grain of mustard seed we can move mountains, or we can tell this tree to be uprooted here and to be planted elsewhere, and nothing shall be impossible unto you; it is using a statement made of God in many ways and in Matthew 19:26 in these words: “With God all things are possible.”

What does it mean? When we are told that with faith nothing shall be impossible unto you, it does not tell us that we are deified, but that when there is a concurrence of purpose with the purpose of God, all the power of God comes to focus in what we are doing; so that we are to have faith, even as much as a grain of mustard seed. Which is not easy believe-ism, which does not say: “Lord, I believe, now you do what I want you to do.” But a faith which seeks a concurrence with the purposes of God, and is then in concurrence with the wonder-working power of God.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation, victory, and dominion to all who believe, to all who live by faith. So that what Paul is telling us here is that the faith we have is like a tremendous crescendo of a symphony. It resounds through all of creation; it thunders out. It is all around us and in us, and only the dead cannot hear it. This is why, Paul tells us a little later, that those who are not in Christ are dead in sins and trespasses. They make themselves dead to all of this, this tremendous testimony; so they cannot hear, they cannot see, they blind themselves, they deafen themselves, so that nothing will penetrate, and they do this because they are corrupt and they are fools.

It is significant that the high point of atheism reached a decade or so ago in the death of God school movement, did not, as I have said before, claim there is no God. They said: “For us God is dead, He is irrelevant, and the question of whether He lives or not is not a question we are interested in. As far as He is related to us, we consider Him dead, we want nothing to do with Him. So we declare Him to be dead for us, and the question of His existence an irrelevant one.”

This is the logical conclusion of foolishness. You might say it is a form of glorified Christian science. There is no God because we choose to say He does not exist, or that we don’t want Him to exist, and therefore He cannot. It is to believe that thinking makes it so, and it is a kind of trust that modern philosophy has in itself, ‘the rational is the real’; and because I define myself as reason, a ’la Hegel, it therefore follows that I find God irrational, myself rational, and therefore I exist and God does not exist.

Thus when we encounter an atheist we are not to try to reason with him, we are playing his game. We are to tell him instead that he is a corrupt fool, that he is running away from the truth, and the Bible forbids us to take his position seriously. It is an evil and an ugly joke, it is folly; and for us who believe and who live by faith, and our thinking and our acting and all our being, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation, victory and dominion. For we believe we live by faith. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, give us grace day by day to live by faith. To know that Thy truth, thy government, Thy covenant governs all of creation; that we have been called to be Thy people, and to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ. Give us joy in this calling, and bless us in our service. We thank Thee that Thy judgement is at work in history against all fools, against folly in its every form. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes John.

[John] Correspondence and coherence then are composed of faith.

[Rushdoony] What was that again?

[John] Correspondence and coherence is, as Van Til talks about, are then composed of true faith.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It means there is a consistency in your life, and this is what easy-believism denies. As one very prominent pastor in Houston has insisted in advocating easy-believism, “If you go forward in an evangelistic service and say yes, you can walk out and become a drunkard, and atheist, an adulterer, a murderer, but you are still going to heaven because you have got Jesus Christ tied to a contract.”

Now that is not Biblical faith; that is a monstrosity. Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Otto Scott] I’ve never heard the phrase easy-believism before, I like it.

[Rushdoony] You’ve moved in the right theological circles, that is why; where easy-believism has not been prevalent, or you would have coined it yourself.

[Otto Scott] But I have met it a lot, and I am of the opinion that if you block out something that you know, and decide that henceforth you will ignore it, that you are thereafter unable to think clearly on any subject.

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is a consistency in man, and if you begin with a false premise in one area, before long you will be operating on a false premise in every area and can no longer think clearly. And that is why the Bible says of such people: “Their foolish minds were darkened.” They blind themselves across the board. You don’t blind yourself in one area, you are soon blind in every area. Yes?

[Audience Member] You mentioned a theologian in a recent conference that held to a distinction between natural law and Gods law?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] I understand that that is a pretty common thing, and that there is within theological circles those who confess orthodoxy who are very much antinomian in their perspective. Would we have to say that a person like that is a fool? Or is he merely a heretic?

[Rushdoony] Well, this we know. If you begin by affirming these kinds of concepts of natural law, you wind up as an Arminian and an Antinomian. This is a logical development. Yes?

[Audience Member] It’s just a form of (Thomism?) isn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Worse, worse. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not, let us bow our heads now for the benediction. Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that Thou hast called us, and given us the joy of salvation. Give us grace to bear its responsibilities, and know that we are privileged to be workers in Thy kingdom.

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.