Living by Faith - Romans

The Promise

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 13-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 013

Dictation Name: RR311G13

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

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

Oh Lord our God, who has made us rich with Thy gifts, and surrounded us daily with Thy mercies, and Thy tender care; we thank Thee that Thou art ever faithful to Thy word, to Thy promises, that while earth remaineth, seed time and harvest shall not fail. We bless Thee for the kindly fruits of the earth which Thou hast given us; we praise Thee our Father that Thou hast given unto us Thy mercy and Thy grace, the opportunity to serve thee, the joy of salvation, and the assurance that we are heirs of all things in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that in a world of hunger Thou hast fed and clothed us, and given us that true bread from heaven which is Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with Thee and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, world without end, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Romans 4:9-17, our subject: The Promise. Romans 4:9-17.

“9 Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.

10 How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.

11 And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:

12 And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.

13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.”

Saint Paul is the major writer of the New Testament. All the major doctrinal themes come to focus in his letters. The church, however, has usually been uneasy about Paul, even as they have honored him; and non-Christians have slandered Paul very freely. No other writer in the New Testament is more Jewish than is Paul, but both Jewish and Christian writers have tended to misinterpret what he says, and even to see him as anti-Jewish, when Paul was a passionate and dedicated Jew.

What Paul does is to strike out against the institutionalization of the faith. As a result he was at odds with the old Israel, with the temple and the synagogue, because men of the Old Testament era institutionalized the faith, and made it virtually identical with an institution, and the people who belonged to it. Paul is also at odds with the New Israel, the church. Again for the same reason, because the institutionalization of the faith. Because the faith is so often reduced to the dimensions of a particular church or body.

Now, the question he raises in verse 9 is this: “Cometh this blessedness then on the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.” We can simplify the question thus: ‘is circumcision necessary for justification?’ or, ‘is baptism necessary for justification or salvation?’

Now, Paul respects the God ordained rites; he is opposed to the belief that they were necessary conditions of justification. When Abraham, as we are told in Genesis 15:6 is declared righteous by God, he was not yet circumcised. As a matter of fact, his circumcision came 29 years later. Thus, Paul says, we cannot identify justification with a rite. We cannot say that a man is now right with God because he is circumcised or baptized, but only because he is right with God in terms of Gods standards.

Paul hits at ecclesiasticism, whether Jewish or Christian. As Walter (Luthie?) said with respect to this passage: “With all respect to circumcision, baptism, communion, and preaching of the word, God founded both synagogue and church so that we should use them; but we are misusing them when we and the church impose conditions for salvation. Circumcision follows after like a seal that confirms salvation, and so baptism and communion are not conditions of salvation, but subsequent confirmation, and a seal of the certainty of salvation.”

Obviously, circumcision on the 8th day for a male child preceded salvation in time, but not in the order of salvation. Calvin also called attention to the false use of circumcision, stating and I quote: “We must ever bear in mind that circumcision is here mentioned as the initial work, so to speak; of the righteousness of the law, for the Jews gloried not in it as the symbol of Gods favor, but a meritorious observance of the law.”

Now this is the fallacy of ecclesiasticism, both in the Old Testament era and in the New Testament era. It gives priority to what man does rather than to what God does. It associates salvation with circumcision or baptism, or going forward at a revival meeting, and so on and on. The church, or man, then bind God by their act, whereas the true order in our rites is to acknowledge what God has done or requires. The rite cannot take priority, but must be faithful to God and His word. This is why the church has always been uneasy with Paul; Paul is so emphatic about the priority of God, and of all that God is, says, and does.

We can put it in these terms: there is a faith foundation to all things, rather than a ritual foundation. A faith foundation means that man’s strength comes from God, not from rites performed in the name of God. Moral and religious power is at work in society because of Gods act of grace and blessing, not because the church as inaugurated something.

The faithfulness of a church is an aspect of God’s grace and power, of his mercy at work, the priority is always with God, not with what the church does. By analogy, in a Republic, elections are very important, they are necessary to the life of a Republic. But they are not the salvation of the Republic. A corrupt electorate will produce corrupt leaders; the faith, character, and intelligence of a people predetermines the nature of an election, also of the candidates and the issues. The faith foundation, not the electoral one, is the key. But this does not invalidate the necessity of the electoral element in a republic.

Now this is what Paul is talking about in verse 9, when he asks: “Is circumcision or baptism necessary for justification?” his answer is: “Faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.” Abraham said amen to God, he trusted in God’s justice, and in Gods covenant mercy.

But the rites required by God are all the same necessary, they came later. Whether they come first or last, the priority belongs to God. We must give Him the priority, but we cannot depreciate or deny the validity of the rites. To do so is to depreciate history, and what God requires be done in history. We cannot place faith in man’s work for salvation, but this does not mean we invalidate the works of men. We simply give them a place in sanctification.

Salvation is not terribly spiritual, it involves our whole being; it culminates in the resurrection of the body. Now in verse 11, Paul calls circumcision a sign or seal of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had being yet uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe; though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also.

A sign or seal, an identifying mark, is what the word means. In the Synagogue it was called an ordinance or a seal, as in the prayer at the circumcision of a boy: “Blessed be he who sanctified his beloved from the womb, and put his ordinance upon his flesh, and sealed his offspring with the sign of a holy covenant.”’

Again, in earlier eras, the synagogue or the Old Testament faith, recognized that the true descendants of Abraham were not so much those who imitated his circumcision, but those who imitated his faith, that is, all believing Jews and Gentiles. God delayed Abrahams circumcision to give priority to faith, and to make Abraham a father of all them that believe, whether Jew or Gentile.

God justified Abraham before he was circumcised, first to make clear, Paul says, the universality of salvation to all peoples, and resting on Gods act, not on mans.

This is true in every field. Whether we turn to politics, education, economics or anything else, there must be a faith foundation to human action. Man must live by faith, in every field. We use the analogy earlier of a Republic. Elections alone do not a Republic make. Nor does education make a people a good, capable people. One of the great and destructive fallacies that has marked the world since World War 2, is that if we only go into every place among primitive people so called, but backwards peoples, and demand that they have elections, immediately all the good things will follow that have happened in the best of Republics; and the result is that we have created worldwide disaster, because we have not recognized the necessity of a faith foundation.

It was a faith foundation that made our country, and now as we are replacing that faith foundation with a Rite foundation, R I T E, a ritual foundation, a belief in elections and in the forms; we are seeing this country turn to barbarism, committing suicide.

Thus, the faith foundation must precede in every area. A mechanical or naturalistic solution in any field can lead to disaster. But second, Paul is telling us, that Abrahams circumcision was important; it is necessary to transmit faith in history, to be the father of circumcision to the seed after him, that we have a duty of transmission, that we have a calling to institutionalize our faith.

To be a father of circumcision meant that Abraham had to have a long term view; that he could not think just of his salvation, but that of his children and his children’s children. Now this requires a mature faith, and this is the kind of thing that is often lacking when there is an immaturity, whether we are young or whether we are old. Very often where there are good parents, children because children are prone to the short term view raise questions: “Why do I have to do this?” or: “Why are you always on my back about this or that?” because, the short term view is basic to immaturity.

But the meaning of Baptism, the meaning of circumcision before it, is that we have to have a long term view. We baptize our children because we commit them unto the Lord, we give them to Him, and we pledge that they are to be reared in His nurture and admonition. We believe that we have a commitment, by our faith, to the future; and we want our children then to have a commitment to the future, and not just the present. When we forget that this is the meaning of baptism, we deny the meaning of the baptism of infants, and turn it, I believe, into an objectionable rite.

Thus, there is the obligation of transmission. Children in the Old Testament were circumcised on the 8th day; in the early church children were baptized on the 8th day in terms of that, and the duty of transmission was stressed.

Then in verse 13, Paul goes on to speak now of the promise. “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” The promise was a promise that his seed after him would inherit the earth. The promise is in the law, but it comes through the righteousness of faith. The law promises curses and blessing for disobedience and obedience, but the law does not deliver any of these, God does. The law is not a person, nor a machine that produces anything mechanically. It expresses Gods being.

Now the pagan view of the world, and that of modern scientism is that of a non-personal machine. Things happen because that is the way they are, not because this is the mind of God from all eternity, that not a sparrow falls apart from our Father. It is a fallacy that the Pharisees tended to the same view concerning law, and that too many churchmen have tended to the same view of the law, and the same view of the universe, a non-Christian view.

But Paul tells us the promise is a personal promise. Not something that is automatic or just built in, not like a punching bag, if you hit it, it is going to bounce back. That is the view of reality most people have, that the whole universe is like that, a Newtonian view. You hit something, one atom hits another, and it creates repercussions. Of course they are beginning to realize now that it is not that way in the physical world, that it is in fact a non-mechanistic, a non-material world.

The righteousness of faith is not impersonal; it has a reference to Christ’s atonement, and the justification that we gain, and then the regenerating power of God and the work that it unleashes in the world, the consequences; and we symbolize those consequences in various rites, circumcision and then baptism, to indicate that there is a transmission, that things must have a continuity that is personal; and the faith that Paul speaks of here is not easy-believism. As James tells us, the devils also believe, and tremble; but they are not saved.

In verse 14 Paul tells us: “For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:”

The promise, he says, is made to faith. The law seen here as primarily circumcision, the two are identified here. But the emphasis is on human transmission versus Gods justifying grace.

“The law” Paul says, “worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.” Verse 15.

Now, the law says there are both blessings and curses. Does Paul deny this? On the contrary, Paul is fully aware that the law has blessings in it, he cites them more than once, as for example in Ephesians 6:1-3, he says: “6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”

So that the law is with promise, both of life and of death. So, when Paul says the law worketh wrath to transgressors, he does not deny its promise to covenant keepers, he is dealing here with the law in relationship to transgressors, for them it works wrath. The law tells us what must be done, but it does not supply the strength to keep it. When Paul adds: “For where there is no law there is no transgression” he does not say that before Moses there was no sin, rather he has already said and will repeat: “All men have sinned.” Rather, he says that because there is universal transgression, all men know the law, hence all are without excuse.

Then in verse 16: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,”

Paul here links faith, grace, and promise; not in opposition to Gods law, but in distinction from it as the way of salvation. He tells us then in verse 17, that Abrahams faith rested on two examples of divine power. Abraham believed first in the power of God to raise someone from the dead, and second in the power of God to call non-existent things into being. Paul is telling us something that scholars today tend to deny, that the Old Testament faith from the beginning believed in the resurrection of the dead. He is emphatic on this, as is the Old Testament.

Moreover, he tells us, as does God in the old Testament, that God did not tell Abraham: ‘I will make thee the father of many nations’ but: “I have made thee.” It is an accomplished fact. Known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world. We experience history as something that is a becoming, a happening, but in the sight of God it is an accomplished fact, so He can say to Abraham: “From all eternity I have made thee the heir of the world, the father of many nations.”

This is a reference to what Paul will deal with later, the predestined plan of God. All things are present to God. The promise of inheriting the world, thus cannot be separated from the promise of blessings for faithfulness to Gods law. When he speaks of the promise, he speaks of the blessedness, of the dominion mandate, of the obligation to bring all things into captivity, to inherit the earth; to go forth and to occupy. And he says justification is the necessary prerequisite to any attainment of this promise; it is the prerequisite. The law has nothing to do with our salvation, it has much to do with our sanctification.

What is Paul doing? He is clearing the ground, so that no man can boast before God. He says it is not circumcision, it is not baptism, it is not being born of the line of Abraham or being born in a Christian family, it is not how faithful you are to the Ten Commandments; it is none of these things. It is the work of God in Christ. Then within that context, these things have their place. It is a blessing to be born in a Christian family, it is a blessing to be baptized and to be reared in the nurture and admonition of the Lord as baptism requires, it is a blessing to keep the Law and a requirement. But these things follow after our salvation.

Thus, Paul strikes out clearly and strongly against ecclesiasticism; against the idea that anything that man is or does, even at Gods commandment can take priority over God, and over Gods work. To God alone belongs dominion, and God alone is the Lord and savior. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, whose word is truth, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast saved us through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, that Thou hast in Thy word made clear those things which we are to do, when Thou hast saved us; with our children, with our lives, with our responsibilities. Give us grace therefore in all these things to be faithful, instant, and ever joyful in Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson?

[Audience Member] …difference between statute and ordinances…

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience Member] You mentioned ordinance as a seal, is there a difference between, say, a law statute and ordinances? Ordinances are essentially for the Christian, things that are done to remind us of certain things; but they have nothing to do with salvation, we understand that, is that close?

[Rushdoony] Well, yes and no, the terms: ‘statutes and ordinances’ has varying meanings, in Paul ordinance is like a brand or sign, a seal; a visible mark, and circumcision is such a thing. In the Old Testament it has a different meaning; and there statutes and ordinances have reference to the laws and patterns and forms established by God for His people. So we have to see it in terms of the particular context, and whether it is Moses or Paul or someone in between who is using it.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] In Galatians 3:24

[Rushdoony] Galatians… Yes. Galatians 3:24 “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Now…

[Audience Member] Why do they refer to the law as the schoolmaster, and then the next one, we are no longer under a schoolmaster--- do you like that rendering, schoolmaster?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is an accurate rendering. Now, what Paul is here saying is that the purpose of the law when we are not Christian is to convict us. So that we have a function, one kind of relationship to the law, before we are converted. It tells us we are sinners, it reminds us every time we do something: “Well, this is not what God requires in His law word.” So by convicting us of sin, it continually brings home to us what we are.

Well, it no longer has that task when we are saved. We don’t need conviction any longer. So, what is it for us after that? It is a light. Paul also speaks of the law, before conversion, as a handwriting of ordinances. As an indictment from God.

[Audience Member] How does that relate to a schoolmaster? A schoolmaster is what, a teacher?

[Rushdoony] The schoolmaster is someone who corrects. Now the kind of schoolmaster he has is the Greco-Roman Schoolmaster, and the Old Hebrew schoolmaster, who was there with a rod. And you got things letter perfect, or whack! You got it. So, both as an indictment and as a schoolmaster, the law is there before our conversion to whack our conscience every time we are out of line, and sometimes, with the police man, to penalize us.

Now, once we are saved, we are no longer under the law in that sense, we are not under indictment; we are dead to the law. It isn’t that the law is dead, Paul doesn’t say that, we are dead to the law as an indictment because Christ has paid the death penalty for us. So now we are alive as a new person, and what is the law? It is a light, it says: “This is the way, walk ye in it.” It is now written on the tables of our hearts, so it is now our new nature, and we have a totally different relationship. It is no longer something outside of us, whacking us, saying: “Thou art the man.” but, now, our nature. So it is a totally different relationship.

Yes?

[Audience Member] So if it is our new nature, why are the Christians so able to say we are under grace not law? How are they able to do that in conscience?

[Rushdoony] Well, they don’t do it in faithfulness, and they do it by a kind of a sleight of hand; they don’t say (I in most cases?) there have been some who have pushed it to this extreme, who have said: “Now because I am no longer under the law I am not bound.” And somehow they go for this first of all to any one woman; and there was in colonial America one prominent preacher who went overboard on this, so he was insistent that faithfulness was living under the law, sexual faithfulness.

Now, most people aren’t that logical, for which I am grateful. What they do is to say: “Well, we are under grace, not under law; but we don’t steal or kill or commit adultery, and we do it because we are grateful to God.” And somehow they sneak the law back in, but refuse to call it law. So if you ask them: “Which of the ten commandments do you feel that you no longer are bound to obey?” “Well, I don’t obey them, but I do this and that, I don’t break them.”

So, it is an intellectual game, it stultifies their growth, it clouds their mind, and it hinders their faith.

Any other questions or comments? Yes.

[Audience Member] Well, that old school Rush, that placed under law thing, they try to focus a lot on the ten commandments, and they don’t try to look on the rest of the law in the Old Testament, they look just on the Ten commandments, and they say: “We don’t break the Ten Commandments” and the reason why they don’t look at the rest of the law, is because they don’t see the Ten Commandments as a summary of the whole law, and they don’t look at the rest of the law, because that part they are breaking and violating regularly, with usury and indebtedness, and all the other things that Christians engage in willfully; and that is the part of the law they don’t want to obey.

[Rushdoony] Well, of course in many cases they refuse to use the Ten Commandments in church. I know in Southern California when I was living there, this episcopal rector who eliminated from the book of Common Prayer as he used it, any repetition of the commandments before Communion for example; because he was so insistent that it was no longer valid. And I have known of churches where anyone talking about the Ten Commandments in Sunday school was rebuked. Yes?

[Audience Member] In that same chapter, Galatians 3:19, it says: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.” It seems in any case that the law had two purposes, it changed after Christ’s coming.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We will leave some of these questions until later, because we shall be coming to Galatians subsequently. Well, if there are no further questions, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God, great are Thy ways, and marvelous, and Thy truth, the joy to our hearts and the light to our feet. We thank Thee for Thy plain speaking, and for the majesty of Thy word and Thy salvation. Bless us day by day in Thy service.

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.