Living by Faith - Romans

Our Victorious Peace in Christ

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 15-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 015

Dictation Name: RR311H15

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, who has given us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put upon ourselves the armor of light, grant that we in faithfulness to Thee may all the days of our life serve Thee with joy and with thanksgiving, that we may be mindful how rich we are in Jesus Christ, that we may ever be mindful that we are heirs of all things in Him. Give us therefore a holy boldness, make us joyful unto victory, and grant that the ends of the earth may know that Thou art God. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from the letter of Paul to the Romans, the Fifth chapter, verses 1-10. Our subject, Our Victorious Peace in Christ. Romans 5:1-10.

“5 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.

8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

This is surely one of the more moving and beautiful passages of scripture; one rich in comfort, and great in its power to strengthen us. I can never read it without thinking of my Father who would always tell people that this should be one of the first passages, Romans 5:1-10 for a Christian to commit to heart and to turn to.

What Paul is here telling us is that faith has consequences. He is going to tell us very soon that all who are in Christ are going to face the hostility of the ungodly, and the enmity of the world. That our life here is not an easy one, that as we grow we find fresh problems, indeed; but that we should glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation worketh patience, patience experience, and experience hope. A hope that maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

What Paul tells us in these 10 verses is that our justification by Gods sovereign grace through Jesus Christ means first peace with God; second it means we enjoy His present favor, and have assurance of a future glory in Him. Third, it means that our afflictions, our burdens, instead of being inconsistent with God’s love, God’s favor, are made to work together for good and confirm our hope; to strengthen us in that hope in our lives. Our lives here are indeed a brief thing, as against the centuries and then against all eternity they are brief. But they are all important because they are a preparation for the shaping of our lives for eternal joy and service. So we are asked to bear the afflictions with hope, knowing we have an eternal glory in Christ.

Then fourth, Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit expresses in us Gods love and favor. Because God is at peace with us, we can gain inward peace. Peace not as the world gives, peace not because of outward circumstances, but because of Christ who tells us: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

The creation fell under the curse because of man’s sin. After the flood, the curse deepened and mans life expectancy declined; but God is working to undo all these things, and is teaching us in the process, Paul tells us. A new creation began with Christ; and in the 8th chapter he tells us: “All things groan and travail, the very ground beneath our feet waiting for the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”

With the new creation in Christ the way is opened for the restoration of all things. We are told that we are to work for that restoration. Scripture tells us that justice or righteousness causes a land to flourish; in Proverbs 11:19 we are told: “righteousness tendeth to life:” or brings life. Proverbs 12:28 says: “in the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof is no death.” To seek justice is to seek life. This is something the church must recognize. To seek righteousness or justice is to seek life, because it seeks to establish Gods will upon earth, and Gods way of life. He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honor; Proverbs 21:21 tells us.

Thus all things must be brought into captivity to Christ, be under Gods justice; and our justification is Gods mighty act for the restoration of justice on earth.

In this chapter, having laid the foundation in the previous chapters, Paul begins a new subject: peace with God. Not a humanistic, not a pietistic peace; it has reference to the end of Gods death sentence against us, and the fact that now we are restored to peace in Christ, and to our dominion mandate, to our calling to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. All in Christ, must like Christ, do the work of the Father as our Lord makes clear in John 9:14, and 14:12. Our peace is to serve Him in faithfulness to His word. The peace of which Paul speaks here is first of all the objective peace with God; the death penalty against us is cancelled, we are now heirs of life and heirs of all creation.

Then, secondarily, we have a subjective peace as we grow in Him; and we have that peace in its perfection in the world to come. Being justified, we Christians must now enter in upon our privileges. We are members in a new humanity, we are called to be in terms of that the workers of a new world; this new membership brings fresh problems. It means war with the old humanity, our Lord says that His coming meant that there was now a sharp division in the world that would divide husband and wife, fathers and children, brothers and sisters, in terms of Himself, in terms of righteousness.

But he says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ in the first verse. That peace means warfare with others, but we have a standing and joy in hope of the glory of God, we are then told in verse 2. The reason for this amazing fact is our justification in Jesus Christ. A good many years ago I heard a cynical observation, no doubt by no means original with the man who made it, that: “Life brings an ever increasing accumulation of problems, so that each phase of life brings more and more problems until you’re glad you are going to be dead before long.” Well, Paul tells us something else. He tells us that we are going to have tribulation, and no doubt as we grow, because what this person was saying was: “You have your problems as a child, and then when you are an adolescent they are greater, when you are married they increase, and when you have children they increase, and with each stage of life they accumulate and they seem to get bigger and bigger and more overwhelming.” What Paul is saying is not that you have no problems and peace in a sense of the absence of problems, the disappearance of problems, no. He says: “We glory in tribulations.”

Now he is saying that this is our calling, to glory in tribulations. I have to be honest and start off by saying, beginning right here, I don’t particularly enjoy tribulations. I know I am supposed to glory in them, but I do my share of complaining and whining about them. But Paul says: “This is our calling to glory in tribulation, knowing” (We know it because God says so.) “tribulation worketh patience.” Well, years and years and years ago, Dorothy said that after conversion she felt the need for patience, and prayed to the Lord for patience, and the Lord sent her everything under the sun to try her patience! Well, that is an answer to prayer. Tribulations, what do they do? They work patience, and patience experience. We begin to learn more and more about the realities of life. We begin to understand what people are, we begin to know the realities of what is in the human heart, and how people love weakness, and they love sin, and they love cowardice, even though they will deny those things; and they will cling to them with a passion and an intensity that is horrifying.

We learn experience by our patience, and experience strengthens our hope.

Now the ungodly, seeing all these things, will say as this observer did, that “Life is simply an ever-increasing accumulation of problems until you are glad it’s over.” But we have to say is, they do often increase, but they increase because we have grown, and we see problems that the world doesn’t see; the kind of problems they see are not problems for us any more. Our problems are the problems of seeing the division in terms of Christ, in seeing what it is that God requires of us, of knowing the grief God feels over mans sin. Jesus, after all, loved His land and His people. He was a Judean, a Jew. When on Palm Sunday He came into Jerusalem for the last major entry, having only gone out to the suburbs once thereafter, He wept. He was filled with grief because He knew what was going to happen, to a city and a people He loved, who, with regard to His humanity, were many of them His kinfolk. Consider that fact. We are told of some of the relatives of our Lord, of His immediate family who were in the faith; but we are not told of all those who may have been very close to Him, the scripture doesn’t bother to tell us, who died in the fall of Jerusalem, in the Jewish Roman war.

“Tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope. And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”

We grow, in hurts; but also in grace and in power. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” That is our foundation. We know that, and knowing that we know that He who loved us unto death, will care for us.

So Paul tells us that we are to glory in our problems. Luther said of this, and certainly he was as bad tempered in his complaining as anyone; believe me, Luther was an expert at complaining to God; and I quote: “Those people talk nonsense who attribute their bad temper or their impatience to that which causes them offense or suffering. For suffering does not make a person impatient, but merely shows that he has been or is still impatient.”

Justification, Paul tells us, has remarkable consequences and privileges. We learn that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. It also means a reordering of their whole lives, and that is never easy; to uproot ourselves, to break ties and to recognize he can only be reestablished in Christ. As Hodge said and I quote: “Since our relation to Christ is changed, the relationship of all things to us is changed.”

In due time, Paul tells us, Christ died for the ungodly. In due time means at the right time, at the exact moment in history, God came. Paul stresses this fact over and over again in his epistles. I think Paul stresses it, because perhaps more than any of the other apostles he suffered. The catalog of his major persecutions and arrests and stoning and shipwreck, is quite a recital. And Paul is the one who does get emotional, of all the writers of the New Testament. He feels things intensely, personally, and grievously. And this is why he stresses, for us, because it is what he came to know; the perfection of Gods timing. How God brings things to pass, takes things away, and then returns or gives us things in the perfections of His timing.

As God Himself says through Isaiah in Isaiah 28:16 “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”

He that believeth shall not make haste, because our tribulation works patience. And God sends us these things because He is preparing us for an eternity of service, and an eternity of joy; and He is expanding our capacity to serve and to enjoy. And so, only the men of God, finally, can afford to wait; because they are taught the meaning of waiting.

We have a new life, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

In the Puritan era, a poet, Thomas Washbourne, whose dates are 1606 to 1687, wrote a poem on this passage, a magnificent one. I have tried to find something about him since I read that poem of his 40 years or so ago, and have never been able to find anything more about Thomas Washbourne; but this poem is a memorable one. It reads:

“Come, heavy souls, oppressed that are 

With doubts, and fears, and carking care.

Lay all your burthens down, and see 

Where’s One that carried once a tree

Upon His back, and which is more, 

A heavier weight, your sins, He bore. 

Think then how easily He can 

Your sorrows bear that’s God and Man; 

Think, too, how willing He’s to take 

Your care on Him, who for your sake

Sweat bloody drops, prayed, fasted, cried, 

Was bound, scourged, mocked and crucified.

He that so much for you did do, 

Will do yet more and care for you.”

He that so much for you did do, will do yet more, and care for you. For this reason, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. This is not simply an inner experience; it is an outgoing power. We are saved, Paul says, from the wrath of God. Not the wrath to come, but His present wrath. Our present and our future are therefore both secure, and now all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. God having reconciled us to Himself while we were yet enemies, showed in the supremacy of that sacrifice the beginning of His care for us. Hence, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life, saved by His life. A very striking phrase. By His death we have redemption from sin and guilt. By His life we have an intercessor and a mediator at the right hand of God the Father.

And so James tells us we have not, because we ask not. More, we are told, we also joy in our God for our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement. The atonement is our emancipation proclamation; it declares that we are heirs of all creation, and that we have a victorious peace with God in Christ; that we are both now in boot camp and on the front lines; and that we are being trained by tribulation, by patience and by experience, at the same time that we are engaged in a battle, Christ’s war for Christ’s kingdom.

We have a victory in Christ, who has done so much for us, so that it is nothing for Him now to do yet more and care for us. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, give us grace to look not at the circumstances that surround us, but our Lord and savior Jesus Christ; to know that underneath all the experiences of life are Thine everlasting arms, that Thou who hast done so much for us, having given Thy only begotten Son to die for us, will do yet more and care for us. Make us thankful Lord, and make us ever joyful in Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson? Yes.

[Audience Member] This doesn’t bare directly on this particular lesson, but we read so much of Paul, he wrote so much, and yet it is Peter that the church was to be built on, and we hear the Peter was the rock of the church, how is this? Could you comment on that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a good point, and the best statement about that, I think I have it in my Foundations of Social Order, by one of the great bishops of the early Middle Ages, (Alfric?) and (Alfric?) in commenting on that called attention to the fact that when our Lord said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Now, the word Peter, Petros, and rock, are virtually identical, they are the same words really, so Peter is a name meaning rock, except it means ‘belonging to the rock’. So that, when Peter answered our Lord when He asked him: “Whom say ye that I am?” and said: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered unto him and said: “Blessed art thou Simon Bar Jonas, Simon son of John, for flesh has not revealed it unto Thee, but my Father which is in heaven, and I say also unto thee: Thou art Petros, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail or hold out against it.” He said: “You are Peter, the one who belongs to the rock.”

Now, throughout the Bible with one exception, whenever ‘rock’ is used symbolically, it refers to God. The one exception is in the Old Testament when the statement is made that ‘their rocks are not like unto our rock.’ So Peter belongs to the rock, but it is upon the rock, the confession that Christ is the Son of the living God, Christ is our God incarnate, that the church is built; and the importance of Peter is that he was the one that made that confession, the first of the disciples, and therefore he is Petros, belonging to the rock.

Any other questions or comments? Yes.

[Audience Member] When we sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit, and as you mentioned, Christ was grieved over the coming direction of Jerusalem. Does God the Father grieve also, and if He does, what does the scripture say about God grieving in light of His predestinating will?

[Rushdoony] Yes, now that is a question that has been fought back and forth in the history of theology, especially in the early church. The Bible speaks of Gods anger; it speaks of God the Spirit grieving. Now, according to the Greeks, God was beyond emotion, and therefore they said it was heretical, the Greek thinkers who became churchmen, it was heretical to say that God grieves. This was just language in accommodation to human understanding, that they call ‘patripassianism’ that is, assuming that God the Father grieves. Now, how they got around the fact that the Holy Spirit grieves they never did explain, but the basis of their thinking was the belief that mind and body are two different substances, and mind is divine and a part of God, so that we are both divine and earthy. The two are brought together, and it is the material aspect of us that feels, whereas mind is pure reason and above passions. So that is the background of it.

Now, I would say that we have to recognize that this hostility that was manifested by some of the Greek fathers was based on Greek thinking; but for us to try and probe the feelings of God is presumptuous. We take the language of scripture, and say: “God’s wrath as is manifested” has to be His wrath because He says so. The Holy Spirit grieves. Well, that is not poetry, the Holy Spirit grieves. But what that tells us is just what it tells us, and we are not to probe further. In other words, we are not to do what one person tried to do, a psychological profile of Jesus Christ, or a psychological profile of God as the scripture manifested; I think this is the grossest kind of presumption.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I was asked at a Bible study, why did God create Adam last in the 6 day creation; now was that part of that same thing, in other words we shouldn’t delve into that, we should just accept the fact that creation was done step by step the way the Bible says?

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is comparable to the question that was asked of Augustine: “What was God doing before He created the world?” and he said: “Preparing a hell for people who ask senseless and needless questions.”

There is so much we need to know, that to ask questions that are not going to contribute anything to our growth in Christ are meaningless. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer. Oh Lord our God whose word is truth, and whose ways are altogether righteous, we thank Thee that Thou hast called us, hast made us Thine own, and that now Thou art schooling us through our tribulations and our experiences, to prepare us for Thy service and an eternal glory. Give us grace to know Godly patience, to wait on Thee, to serve Thee, and to rejoice in Thee; and to know that we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.