Living by Faith - Romans

The Life of Faithfulness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 6-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 006

Dictation Name: RR311C6

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning oh Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee, that He who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty. May Thy mercy, grace and peace, shadow us all the days of our life, that we may walk in the assurance of Thy government and care, might fight all our battles in the certainty that Thou art He who dost make all things work together for good, and that we might be in all things more thank conquerors, in Christ Jesus our Lord, in His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Romans 2:17-24. The Life of Faithfulness. Romans 2:17-24.

“17 Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,

18 And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law;

19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,

20 An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

21 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

22 Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?

23 Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?

24 For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.”

Paul here sets up two groups of facts: first, he lists facts and claims about the Jews, their privileged status in the covenant. Then second, he files certain charges against them.

Now he begins by citing their central privilege: “Thou art called a Jew.” This was a name of privilege, a name of honor, in virtue of God’s grace given to them. Even when many of the Jews in the early church days became Christians, they still clung to the added name. Since most of the converts in the first century were Jews, these Christians therefore constituted not only a considerable group, but a very superior group within the church. They not only prided themselves upon being Jewish Christians, but had that fact engraved on their tombstones. They rejoiced in having two great names, Jew and Christian.

Their essential point of excellence was their covenantal relationship with God; this gave them, humanly speaking, great advantages. They were, as we saw last time, the most literate people of antiquity. The most literate people in all of history until our time, and perhaps if we had the data, they would still come out ahead. They were also the most disciplined people of the ancient world. These things were resented because men do resent superiority in others; especially when they show it. But at the same time an obvious superiority can be corrupting to that people.

In the earlier centuries of the Old Testament era there was a respect for the Jews. But after the captivity and with the rise of Phariseeism, there was also resentment and hatred, precisely because Phariseeism led to this sense of superiority.

Now Paul here speaks as a Jew with a deep love and a respect for his own people. He is writing half sarcastically and half sadly, with over tones that seem to indicate it is true, and yet it adds to the indictment.

The claims concerning the Jews are an impressive list. Paul intends it to be so, because it adds weight to the indictment. The more responsibility given to a man, the greater the guilt if he abuses that responsibility. He says they rely on God’s law, and are taught from it. They pride themselves in God, not in national glory. They know God’s will, and seek to be a light to the people in darkness, and to be a guide to the blind. They know, he says, the vital things of the faith, and are instructors to the foolish and to babes. They hold to a form of knowledge, and they know the truth of the law. They teach others, and are proud of their heritage of law. They are against such sins as theft, adultery, and idolatry which mark the pagans.

But then in the indictment which follows, Paul says that they are guilty of hypocrisy; of teaching others what they themselves will not do. They are the people to whom God has spoken, and they cloud that message as it goes out to the world, even as we must say that the church too often does today.

They are, he says also thieves, adulterers, and sacrilegious, and generally law breakers. They dishonor God and are the cause of the Gentiles dishonoring God. This last charge echoes Isaiah 52:5.

What did Paul mean by the charges that they are guilty of being thieves, adulterers, and sacrilegious? There was, we must say, less theft and less adultery, and less sacrilege in Judea than in any other place at that time. But remember, Paul says the just must live by faith. They are therefore required to manifest in the totality of their being the confidence in Gods way as the way of life; not as a burden placed upon man to make life more difficult.

There are two ways of looking at Gods law, at Gods moral requirements of us. “It is a way of making life more difficult. I would be a lot easier if I could steal, commit adultery, and whatever else I choose to do. But God wants me to do it, so I will make a stab at it.”

Now, such a perspective is anti Godly. God gives the law as the way of life, the way of the redeemed, so that it is not given to be a burden, but given as a privilege; to teach us: This is the way to live, this is the way to prosper, to be blessed, to rejoice and be happy. The just must live by faith, by applying their faith.

Our Lord gives us an example, the good Samaritan. The Priest and the Levite went by confessing all the right things, and doing nothing to help the man who was robbed and wounded and lying there by the road side; and the Samaritan came, and our Lord said: “who is the good neighbor? Who is the one who obeys Gods commandment?” and it was obvious what the answer was.

Asaph in Psalm 50:16-21 indicts faith without works, which is falsehood, saying:

“16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.

18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.

21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.”

Asaph is here talking about the covenant people; he says they are the wicked precisely because they declare Gods laws, His statutes, take His covenant in their mouth, and then forget about the law and despise it.

But this is not all, our Lord makes it clear that the law is to be kept in the fullest sense. As he says in the Sermon on the Mount: “21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Ye shall not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

So the whole point of the law is that it is the way of life, and it is to be kept in word, thought, and deed. But it is not a burden, but a blessing. Our Lord used adultery as an example; He was there reproducing what the Old Testament had said, and simply summing it up and driving it home. After all, we read in Proverbs 8:26 “Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?” speaking of adultery in particular, but applicable to every sin.

What Paul says here concerning the Jews he says concerning the covenant people, which means that it is applicable to the covenant people of our time, the Christians. The Jews were a superior people, humanly speaking; the Christians today are a superior people humanly speaking. The problem lies not in the human status, but in the relationship to God. Our Lords purpose in the Sermon on the Mount was not to make life more trying and more difficult by calling attention point after point all that the law of God required and implied; He set forth the far reaches of the meaning of the law not to impose a burden upon us, but to show us the way of life.

The reason why it has been difficult for so many churchmen to obey the law is that they see it as a burden, “It is the price I have to pay for being saved. Since God has saved me and I now have an insurance policy that protects me from hell, fire insurance, gives me the assurance of heaven, well then I have got to pay some premiums, which is, I have got to watch my lying and stealing and committing adultery; I have to keep those things in check. Of course I hate premiums, I hate it every time the insurance premium comes around, or the IRS sends its bill, or God faces me with a situation where I have to keep the law. But we have to do those things, it is a part of the premium, the necessity of getting what I want.”

Now that is the perspective towards the law, which if men were open about it, would mark most churchmen; and it is false. The whole point of our Lords purpose in the Sermon on the Mount was not to make life more trying and more difficult for the covenant people, but to make life and dominion easier. To make them easier for us, so that if we put it baldly we could say: “If you want to live hard, start sinning.” Our Lord sums it up with the parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount of the two foundations. A man who builds his house on sand, on himself, as against the man who builds, and unfortunately it is rendered: ‘upon a rock’. It is literally in the Greek: “The Rock”, Jesus Christ Himself. The Rock, whenever it is used symbolically in scripture applies to God.

The man who builds his house upon the Rock stands against the storms. He is the man of dominion, the man whose life is an easy one, he can look out at the storm and enjoy it, instead of wondering: “The house is beginning to move, it is being destroyed by the storm, it is going to be carried away because it has no real foundation.”

The covenant calls us to a great task; the law shows us how to do it and be strong for it. To be superior in respect to other men is not enough, in history the Jews and Christians have been superior peoples; God set Judea aside and destroyed Jerusalem. And God can set the Christian nations and churches of our time aside and call out as He told Israel, the Ethiopians. And He said: “I can call them forth, and make them my chosen people tomorrow.” God is issuing the same warning to the world of our time. “I can bypass your country, and your country, and yours; and call another people.” And sometimes you wonder if that isn’t going to come to pass… not that I believe it. But sometimes you are inclined to wonder as in reading a couple of days ago about the English novelist Graham Green on I believe his 80th birthday, or some like birthday celebration, how many that if he had his choice between living in California, and a Soviet slave labor camp, a Gulag, he would choose the Gulag. But of course he made clear where he was coming from when he criticized the pope by saying: “He doesn’t understand the kinship between spiritual Catholics and spiritual Communists” or the women for peace whom John Lofton about ten days ago interviewed in Washington, with all their insanities, despising the blessings of God.

God said that He had called us to a privilege, the privilege begins with the law. It is the way of life, of the Redeemed, of the covenant people; so that having saved us He says: “Look, here is the way to be a dominion man, to rule yourself and the nations in Christ.”

You know the Bible uses the word in the New Testament again and again to describe the unlearned, the ignorant, the believer who isn’t ready to grow. The word in the Greek is ‘Idiotis’; our English word idiot. The believer who remains unlearned in the word, unlearned in the things of the faith, and the responsibilities of the faith. It is one who remains an idiot, incapable of dominion.

An idiot is someone incapable of growing, of maturing as far as the mental capacities are concerned. But the church member who is an idiot has sold his birthright for the status of something worse than a fool. The sad fact is, all of the churches are full of idiots; even worse they are contented idiots. They see nothing wrong with being ignorant and unlearned, of getting by with the minimum payment on their insurance policy.

But we are called not to idiocy, nor to talk about superiority over other men, but to exercise dominion for the Lord; to live by faith mandates establishing Gods justice and Gods dominion.

One final fact. In verse 17 Paul speaks of the Jews resting or we can say in terms of a more modern implication of that word, because resting has tended to lose some of its older meaning, he speaks of the Jews relying on the Law. The Jews were aware of their privileged position, the law was covenant law, and they relied on the covenant and the law. It was the glory of Israel, and the sign of Gods covenant and grace. But what happened was that grace went out. The law and the covenant became everything, and grace began to disappear from the system. So much so that they no longer paid much attention to the atonement, and the temple sacrifices while rigidly adhered to had become meaningless, because the doctrine of atonement had disappeared from the thinking. When the temple ended they felt no need for any continuation, in any form except the outward ritualistic one, because atonement was gone from their thinking.

The church, what about its position? It has had the greater privilege, it has retained the emphasis on grace and the atonement, but it has forgotten about the covenant and the law. So it too represents a deformation, and hence all the judgement of Paul here applies equally to the church of our time.

Paul is here appealing to the Jews of his day to turn and to believe, to become in the full sense of the world as he interpreted it, a Jew; that is, to become a Christian. And we must say a very large percentage did. Far more than is generally recognized. We need to hope, pray and work that the church of our time turn and repentant; and believe the whole word of God, and recognize the meaning of the covenant and the covenant law, and the atonement and the grace of God as a unity, and work as the privileged people by the grace of God, an aristocracy of grace, to establish the Lords dominion. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee for Thy word and Thy truth. And we pray our Father that the church of our time may rouse itself from its slumber, and become a living church; a church strong in Thy word, in Thy law, Thy Covenant, Thy Grace; to establish Thy dominion to the ends of the earth. Guide us towards this purpose we beseech Thee in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now concerning our lesson? Yes.

[Otto Scott] Paul is a very difficult figure for me, he sounds harsh and it brings up the whole question of… your comments bring up the whole question of the Jewish-Christian relationships. What can we say about the Jews after Jesus who didn’t convert?

[Rushdoony] They separated themselves from the covenant, so that they in effect renounced the covenant. They chose to glory in a heritage rather than a living faith. Thus today you have many segments of Judaism which when you read their writings, and I read several books a year, contemporary works in Judaistic studies, the emphasis is humanistic. It is on what man can do, rather than what God has done and is doing. Unhappily the same emphasis is coming into the church, which has become humanistic also. Yes?

[Otto Scott] Well, I too have read some of their writings, and I am continually unpleasantly struck by their inability to admit error at any time in any area, to any degree.

[Rushdoony] That is true, but it also true of your Liberal churches. Yes, that is the characteristic of sin. Sin wants to parade as righteousness, and that is why Phariseeism was not only the logical development of covenant breaking in Israel, but of covenant breaking today. You and I both know our share of the liberal clergy, and what Pharisees they are to deal with. They are absolutely convinced that we are anti-intellectual, we are idiots, we don’t know anything, and it would be better for us to shut up and go away. And after all an institute has been set up, and well, its president has written a book about The Naked Public Square, in which he admits that we who take the Bible seriously and believe it, are being deprived of some of our freedom; and he is all for granting us freedom if we in return will really surrender the leadership to liberal churchmen like himself, so that they can chart the way and we become humble, simple followers. It is one of the most arrogant expressions of Phariseeism that I have ever read, and it is written with such a sweet reasonableness.

Now, I have read a great deal of the Talmud, I have read a great deal of great writers of the Jews, Maimonides and others, and I think The Naked Public Square is a classic of Phariseeism. One of the all-time classics. So, we have got that problem wherever we have people who have had a privilege, and have not seen it as grace, but as the fact that they themselves are superior.

As Job said concerning his rather strange friends: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom was born with you.” Yes?

[Audience Member] It is too bad we no longer have the divine right of kings as a predominant motif, because that is what seems to fit everything that Otto is talking about, except that here we are talking about divine right of being born into… it is by virtue of the fact that you are born into a particular family, in one case Jewish or what have you, or by virtue of the fact that you are simply allied with a particular church, that automatically places you in a position of omniscience and everything else.

[Rushdoony] The divine right of elite intellectuals. That is what we face. Yes?

[Audience Member] I’m not entirely sure where the boundaries are of Phariseeism, would you say that in the Mormon faith there were Pharisees?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] Very much? I mean, is that a predominant or entirely…?

[Rushdoony] Theoretically they are all Pharisees. Personally no, but theoretically it is a form of Phariseeism. Yes?

[Audience Member] Today we deny that they break the covenant, but doesn’t the strongest point in their denial, doesn’t it become… the evident thing is that they deny our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, faith with a passion so great that if you hear them on the radio… it is with a hatred…

[Rushdoony] You are talking about the Jews? Alright, let’s take Orthodox Jews, those who are most faithful to the law. What about the whole of sacrificial system? If they take the law literally there is no atonement, there is no acceptance before God without atonement, which means sacrifice; the typical sacrifice, which of course was ended with Christ, who came representing all that had gone before as the sacrifice for sin. So in that sense they are law breakers.

Because before the covenant was accepted by the people there was the shedding of blood, and you remember the great ritual; the law was read, and two basins of blood, one poured on the altar and one sprinkled over the people, to indicate their status in the law came with atonement, with the acceptance that someone had died for their sins, made atonement for it, paid the death penalty.

So you see, there is that problem, there isn’t faithfulness at the critical point; and with churches you can go to a great many churches and never hear the word covenant from one end of the year to the other. Now that is monstrous, the Bible is a covenant book from beginning to end.

[Audience Member] The one thing about the modern era is the fact that humanism so dominates the era, that Jews and humanists and Gentiles can attack incessantly the Christian religion and Christians, and never be branded as anti-Christian; but if a Christian comes out and says anything against any other group, they are branded as either anti-Semitic, or anti-intellectual, or whatever, and that is supposed to automatically close the discussion in terms of guilt or innocence in the accusations; and the only way a Christian is ever going to get a fair hearing is when the Christian world view becomes dominant again, because it seems to me like you have two strikes against you every time you go into a debate with anyone on these questions; and I think of course that we don’t have anybody to blame but ourselves, but it is very very strange.

I remember the first time Otto said something about a statement, made a comment about a statement someone said, and Otto’s reply was: “Well, that is anti-Christian”. You know, and that one statement right there summed it all up for me, Christians alone are allowed to be attacked incessantly, and no one else is allowed to be criticized without being vilified, and ruled out of the court.

[Rushdoony] Well, this should not surprise us, and we shouldn’t waste any time worry about it, any more than you should expect the Liberal media to be favorable to your candidacy… that’s believing in fairy tales! Now, the simple fact is you don’t pay any attention to that. From the beginning I have never tried to make Chalcedon acceptable to the Liberal media, or to Liberal religionists of whatever name, I have just done what I felt had to be done. I haven’t bothered to send review copies to any of these self-styled pontiffs of human reason, and we have gotten the word out, and it is going forth all over the world. You just walk around them.

Our Lord said: “Let the dead bury the dead.” And they are the living dead, they have no future under God. So sometimes they are going to be a road block and it is going to take us time, we are going to have to back up and take another direction, but we are going to get ahead. They are not getting anywhere, they have got a hole in the ground as their destiny.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …give me a definition of what the cross means to you.

[Rushdoony] The cross means salvation. It means that we who are sinners before God, who have not kept the law, now have atonement. The death penalty is paid by Christ and we have freedom, and now we also have at the same time as a part of the gift of grace and of His regenerating power, the power to live in terms of His law word. It is now our way of life, so that we can say with Christ: “7Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God.”

[Audience Member] You hear it so many times and they say: ‘You must bear the cross’, and Calvin preached of that a lot, you must bear the cross, obedience, and fighting your evil nature.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is used in a number of ways in the New Testament, bearing the shame of the cross or the reproach of the cross, because the world is going to be hostile; bearing the cross in the fact that we are not perfected in this world, and there is still enough of the old nature in us so that that is a burden, it has a variety of meanings. It also means that it is the standard we carry. So bearing the cross is used in a variety of senses.

[Audience Member] Do you believe the Christian is more attacked by evil temptation because of Christ?

[Rushdoony] No I don’t, no I believe it is easier. The more you grow in Christ the easier it becomes.

[Audience Member] That would be different from Calvin.

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t think so…

[Audience Member] The evil attacks the good, they don’t care about those who are going along, they attack those, and weaken the good, which is a great strategy.

[Rushdoony] Alright, I see the sense in which you mean it. Yes, naturally, just as the Liberal attacks the Conservative, and the Conservative attacks the Liberals, so evil attacks good. But that does not mean that because now there is an attack it is a witness to anything other than strength.

In other words, where there is a position of strength and power accumulating, an enemy has to deal with that fact; so that the attack may grow, but it’s because we are getting stronger, and it is less relevant because our strength is increasing.

Well, our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer. Oh Lord our God, great and marvelous are Thy ways, and certain Thy government and Thy grace and Thy victory. Make us ever strong in Thee, to the end that we may be more than conquerors.

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.