Living by Faith - Romans

Newness of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 19-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 019

Dictation Name: RR311J19

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Let us go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass which the Lord hath made known unto us. For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called: Wonderful, counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Let us pray. All glory, praise and honor be unto thee, oh Father almighty, who hast given unto us thy only begotten son Jesus Christ, that through Him we might live; that we might be heirs of all things, and kings of creation in Christ. We praise Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and we rejoice in this blessed season that the government is not upon the shoulders of men, but upon the shoulders of Jesus Christ. We thank Thee our God that we can face all things in the blessed assurance that He that is with us and in us is greater than he that is in the world. empower us by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, that we may serve Thee in joy and in thanksgiving, and might become more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the 6th chapter of Romans, verses 1-4. Romans 6:1-4. Our subject: Newness of Life.

“6 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

As we have seen, Paul draws an analogy between Adam and Christ. Each is the head of a new humanity; each represents a special creation, a miraculous creation by God. In some respects, the creation of Adam was even more miraculous, he was totally the creation of God; but our Lords creation by the virgin birth was also miraculous, each in his own way was the head a new humanity. Moreover, Paul in this particular passage continues that analogy and draws a conclusion, so that we have to say contrary to some who say: “The only reference to the virgin birth, to the Christmas event is in Matthew and Luke” that on the contrary it is referred to and presupposed over and over again in scripture.

Paul here speaks of Adam and of Christ, and of the fact that we are reborn in Christ to a new life, to newness of life. Moreover, the boldest analogy is made by the apostle John, who in the first chapter of his gospel verses 11-14, declares of Christ: “11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

Now there are some scholars who say that this must have meant originally, directly, Jesus Christ; who was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. In other words, a reference to the virgin birth. But what John is saying that even as the birth of Jesus Christ was miraculous, born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, so too all who are believers, as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name; which were born, he says, miraculously. So what is he doing? He is talking about the virgin birth, a unique miracle, but he is saying while it is a unique miracle, it is the pattern of our life; so that we are no longer governed by Adam, and our blood of Adam, or of the will of our old nature, or our own will; we now have a purpose, a life, which comes from God through Christ. And so we have now a calling to walk, says Paul, in newness of life.

Take away the virgin birth and this text disappears, its meaning is gone. So much of what Paul is developing here points up to this, a new calling, the new creation, the newness of life.

Adams sons, the old humanity, inherit sin and death; Christ’s new humanity, life justice and dominion, they reign.

Now Paul says in the section that we have begun, out of our justification sanctification must flow. The one must follow the other. Those that are justified will be sanctified, and the way of sanctification is the law. Antinomianism is thus precluded.

In verse 1 Paul asks: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” How dare we assume that grace can give any excuse to linger in sin? The assumption of antinomianism is that grace is triggered, is released by sin. ‘Go ahead and sin, forgiveness will flow. Therefore continue in sin.’ Say these antinomians, or Paul says, ‘This is the logic of their thinking: continue in sin that grace may abound.’ In other words, the more you sin the more saintly you are going to be.

Now this kind of thinking has been pursued in the past and in the present to its logical conclusions. Old Russia had a number of groups that held to this kind of thinking, and one person who is well known and was a leader in this movement was Rasputin. It was the kind of thinking that said: “The more you sin, the holier you will be, because sin triggers grace.” But Paul is emphatic. Sin does not bring forth God’s grace, but His wrath and His judgement, it is only Gods sovereign grace without reference to what we are that leads to His mercy and His forgiveness.

It is thus evil to see God obligated to forgive man; but it is a very common assumption. Remember the dying words of Heine who said and I quote: “The good God will pardon me, for that is his job.” In such a view, sin turns on the tap of grace.

Paul says: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” the word continue means remain or abide. Shall we see salvation, in other words, without any resulting good works or sanctification? Our salvation is an act of sovereign grace, but this does not mean that our salvation does not produce good works. To assume so, is as Paul makes clear, blasphemy. And Hodge commented on this: “The act which in its nature was a dying to sin was our accepting of Christ as our savior. That act involves in it not only a separation from sin, but a deadness to it. no man can apply to Christ to be delivered from sin in order that he may live in it. How can a Christian which is but another name for a holy man, live any longer in sin?”

Paul says the redeemed man must be now redefined in terms of Jesus Christ, because in Him we are a new creation. Hence he says in verse 2: “God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”

Our lives now have a new motive and a new direction; we are dead to sin in that in Christ’s death we are judicially dead, we have received the death penalty for our rebellion. We are also dead to sin because it is no longer the governing force in our lives, our lives have a new direction, a direction given by Christ, and we are finally dead to sin by virtue of our coming resurrection from the dead. So our death to sin is juridical, it is personal, and it is eschatological.

As Calvin said and I quote: “The state of the case is really this: that the faithful are never reconciled to God without the gift of regeneration. Nay, we are for this end justified, that we may afterwards serve God in holiness of life. Christ indeed does not cleanse us by His blood, nor render God propitious to us by His expiation in any other way than by making us partakers of His Spirit, who renews us to a holy life. It would then be a most strange inversion of the work of God were sin to gather strength on account of the grace which is offered to us in Christ; for medicine is not a feeder of the disease which it destroys.”

Then Paul goes on to say: “Know ye not, that so many of us as were (or are) baptized into Jesus Christ were (or are) baptized into his death?”

So that we now have a changed existence. We go through a dying and a rebirth; we die to Adam in Christ, and we are born again in Christ. As Hodge says very, very tellingly, and I quote again: “In this baptism has special reference to the death of Christ; we are baptized unto His death, that is, we are united to Him in death. His death becomes ours, ours as an expiation for sin, as the means for reconciliation with God, and consequently is the means of our sanctification. Although justification is the primary object of the death of Christ, yet justification is in order to sanctification. He died that He might purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. If such is the intimate connection between justification and sanctification in the purpose of God in giving His Son to die for us, there must be a like intimate connection between them and the experience of the believer. The very act of faith by which we receive Christ as the propitiation for sin is spiritually a death to sin. It is in its very nature a renunciation of everything which it was the design of Christ’s death to destroy. Every believer therefore is a saint. He renounces sin in accepting Christ.”

Thus we can say by way of summation: Good works do not save us, but if good works are separated from salvation, we have neither salvation nor good works. The just are saved by faith, and they live and work by faith. As Paul says in Galatians 3:27 “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” We are now clothed with Christ, so that inwardly and outwardly we are a new being, a new creation. We are His family members, we take on His character. Our old status is now null and void, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.

Then in verse four Paul continues: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

Paul stresses our radical break with the old humanity. We have a new birth and newness of life. It is only comparable, he says, to death and rebirth; to death and resurrection. So that the pattern of our lives is set by Christ, miraculously born. We are a people whose lives are now miraculous; we are members of Christ, of His kingdom; we have a calling from God; we have a destiny appointed by God; the whole of our lives now moves in another direction. So we are those who are born not of the will of man or of the flesh, nor of anything that is humanistic. We are miracle born for Gods purpose, and hence we should walk in newness of life.

We are not only given newness of life, but we are Gods chosen people. Baptism thus means more than death in Christ, it means more than our cleansing; it means that we who were dead in Christ become new creatures with a new life and a new calling, a calling to justice and dominion. So that Paul makes Christ our pattern, and we have a transition from a fellowship in death to a fellowship in life.

Let me say in passing that Paul’s purpose here as he speaks of baptism is not to say that because of the analogy to burial this necessitates immersion, that this specifies a form of baptism any more than in verse five when he says that ‘if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection’ he refers to any literal planting of our bodies or of our lives. It is an analogy. Paul’s concern is not with form, but that we recognize that sanctification must follow justification, that Christ was virgin born to perform Gods work; that we are by God’s grace made a new creation in order to serve Him. This is the focal point: works must follow faith.

To quote Hodge again: “Justification is in order to sanctification, the two are inseparable. There can be no participation in Christ’s life without a participation in His death, and we cannot enjoy the benefits of His death unless we are partakers of the power of His life. We must be reconciled to God in order to be holy, and we cannot be reconciled without thereby becoming holy. Antinomianism or the doctrine that the benefits of the atonement can be enjoyed without experiencing the renewing of the Holy Ghost is therefore contrary to the very nature and design of redemption.”

Paul uses every image, and he pushes all of them to the limits, because none can convey in full the reality he speaks of. Baptism does not convey entirely the newness of life, the reality is greater than all the images. Moreover, the word that Paul uses here that is translated ‘life’ is an interesting one. There are two words that are commonly used, one is ‘bios’ biology, which speaks of the life that is lived every day. We eat, we go to sleep, we walk around, we do a number of things; all of this refers to the life, bios, in that sense. The biology of our day is the record of the humdrum activities, our pulse, our heartbeat. That is the biology of our life. But the word he uses in the Greek, ‘Zoe’ ZOE has reference to life in itself, to the quality, to the essence of life; so that Paul speaks of the fact that we should walk in newness of life. There is a new quality, a new essence, so he is using two words here to convey a meaning which is beyond analogy, beyond any image he can use.

‘Newness’. Here again the word he uses a unique word, because there is more than one word in the Greek for new, or newness. The one he uses means: ‘of a different character’. Now, we can speak of it this way. In a few days it will be New Year’s day. But, New Year’s day is another day, like all days. You and I will not be any different on New Year’s day than the day before, only one day older. That is not the word Paul uses. The word he uses for new conveys something that has come into fresh existence, with a quality that represents something new, something different. So that we are created a new race, a new person; just as we can say that a baby born is born of his parents so that there is a continuity, but there is a difference; he is someone in his own right, there is a newness, a new life, a new person has come into existence, and that new person cannot be reduced to the father or the mother. We are, all of us, products of our parents; born of them; but we are different, we cannot be reduced to what they were. So Paul is saying we are new, we have a newness, and our life itself is now of the essence.

All this Paul builds on the foundation of Jesus Christ as the second Adam. The unique man., like the first Adam a special creation, but one who is victorious over the powers of sin and death, and therefore on the basis of his miraculous birth, his victory over sin and death, he calls us to newness of life; to be a new race appointed to reign in justice and with dominion. Newness of life therefore requires us to bring our whole life and our world into conformity to the life and law of our covenant king, Jesus Christ.

The foundation of all of this in Paul is precisely what we celebrate today, the virgin birth of the king of kings. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou hast called us to newness of life in Christ. We know oh Lord that all around us the world seeks to overwhelm Thy true church, to overwhelm Thy people and to reduce them to the old, ever repetitive life. But we thank Thee that through Jesus Christ we have the victory; that the gates of hell cannot hold out against Thy church, Thy kingdom. We thank Thee that in Him we who are born not of the will of man, nor of the flesh, nor of anything that is humanistic, have been called to establish Thy righteousness, or justice, Thy dominion, from pole to pole. We praise Thee our Father. The joy has come into this world, because our King was born, and His reign shall only grow in and through us. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any question snow, about our lesson?

[Audience Member] The connection, Rush, between sanctification and justification, in that one verse “I would that all men be saved” we talked about that once before, it is not talking about salvation in the spirit there, it is talking about safe in their persons and possessions and property, etc; I guess that it was last year that we talked about that. In the absence of, and I am thinking now about the humanist perspective, without Gods justification there must be self justification, which leads back to self sanctification and self redemption; the connection there?

[Rushdoony] It is to use the word in the Pauline sense, what he is saying is that it is a biological connection that exists between justification and sanctification; that when we have this newness of life, the one thing flows out of the other, just as sin and death flow out of the sons and Adam, justice and dominion, godly dominion, flow out of those who are justified by Jesus Christ. So that it is a matter of life, it is a biological thing. Just as Christ by His miracle, His miraculous birth, is a different being. So we are now a different being, having been born again of Him, and all this flows out of us. If there is no sanctification, there is no justification.

[Audience Member] And no redemption in the flesh either.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes?

[Audience Member] What does Paul mean by ‘dead to sin’? What does it mean to be dead to sin?

[Rushdoony] We are dead to sin three ways, as I pointed out. One: by virtue of Christ’s death and our membership in Christ, our faith in Christ, we are juridically dead, we have been legally condemned to death and Christ has paid the penalty for us. So in terms of the law we are dead men, so the law has no claim against us, no indictment. The indictment is null and void because we are dead in Christ. Now that’s death in a judicial sense.

Then, in a personal sense, our life now has a new focus. It does not mean that we are incapable of sinning, because we do; but it means that now the basic direction of our life is not in terms of the sin, the sin is an aberration. Our basic direction is to do Gods will.

Then third, we are dead to sin in the eschatological sense, in that in time to come we will be perfectly sanctified in the new creation, and with the resurrection of the body enter into the fullness of our death to sin and our life now of total righteousness or justice. So in a triple sense we are dead to sin. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience Member] But that does not mean that the believer is above sin; as you say it is an aberration?

[Rushdoony] It is an aberration, it is not the basic direction and thrust of his life.

Let’s put it this way, perhaps again not a good analogy, but one that might convey something of the idea. Pavarotti is a marvelous singer. I am sure at times he sings a little flat, he doesn’t always, every time he opens his mouth, sing perfectly. But those are aberrations. What comes out of his mouth basically is beautiful song. Now, some of us can only croak when we try to sing, so that if we hit the note right, that is the aberration…

[Audience Member] Do you have anyone in particular in mind? [laughter]

[Rushdoony] I don’t have to look beyond myself. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us bow our heads in prayer. All glory be to Thee oh God our Father; we give praise unto Thee for Christ our Lord, and we thank Thee that Thou hast called us to live in Him. we confess that very often we complain about our problems and our hardships, and forget that our lives are now not only miracle born, but miracle led and guided; that Thy providential care surrounds us all the days of our life. Give us joyful and grateful hearts in this blessed season.

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.