Living by Faith - Romans

The Alternatives

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 22-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 022

Dictation Name: RR311K22

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. If thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find Him if thou seek him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.

Let us pray. Oh Lord our God, who of Thy mercy has made all things, and blessed them with life, care, and providential guidance; we come to thee mindful that we have followed not Thy law, but our ways; and the whole world is out of joint, and we wander like blind men in darkness. Give us grace oh Lord to be faithful unto Thee, to be obedient, to be bold and courageous in Thy service to the end that the kingdoms of this world might be brought under the dominion of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Grant as we hear Thy word we might hear it with obedient ears, with ears eager to serve, to put into practice that which Thou dost require of us. Guide us we beseech Thee, bless and prosper us, and make us strong in Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from the 6th chapter of Romans. Romans 6:15-23, our subject: The Alternatives. Romans 6:15-23

“15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.

18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.

20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.

21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.

22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In this passage, we repeatedly encounter the word ‘servants’ and the word translated as servants is ‘Doulos’, it means slave or a bond servant. All men, Paul says, are without exception bond servants; either to sin or to justice. Paul is emphatic on this point. Men are not Gods, they are not autonomous, they are not free to establish the conditions of the universe. They enter into a world which is already given, they live in terms of two alternatives, either as bondservants of sin, or the bondservants of righteousness or justice. They serve something because they are creatures: as our Lord said, “No man can serve two masters.” So men will either serve sin, lawlessness, or they will serve justice.

The implications of this must be faced by all men. Too many men see life as a kind of buffet table, where men can pick and choose what he wants out of this world. Too many people approach the faith in the same way. A woman of national prominence, off and on TV, a very superior entertainer, professes to believe the Bible from cover to cover; at the same time she affirms her belief in a great many things such as reincarnation. She is a woman of impeccable sexual morality, kindly and gracious, but a woman who assumes that her choice is determinative. If she likes an idea, she picks it up. Many people, when challenged concerning some anti-Christian article of faith that they hold will answer: “Well, I like it, and I believe it.” As though this makes for reality.

The artist (Renwar?) was a very lovable man, and a particular favorite of mine; but his religious ideas were quite mishmash. He hated atheism, he believed firmly in the virgin birth; he saw the world as divided between those who rejoiced in the creators work, and those who sought to overthrow it. But at the same time, he still saw no reason why Hindus should not go to heaven.

Behind all such attitudes is Genesis 3:5. Ye shall be as God, every man his own God, determining for himself what is good and evil, establishing for himself laws and the conditions of life. Many churchmen believe the bible from cover to cover, but this belief is still no incentive to action. I may believe every word in my insurance policy, in fact, that is why I pay the premiums, I take their word to be the truth. But my insurance policy does not lead me to any kind of action. So I can believe every word of the policy, and it produces no action.

Now, if we regard Christianity as simply a source of insurance, we are glad to have it, but it leads to no action. It is not for us a governing principal, a governing faith. For all such people, God, Christ, and heaven are solid facts, but merely facts. Not the central governing fact which determines all things. For such people God is real in the same way that the stock exchange and their labor union is real. But none of these things, however real they are, bother people when they are away from the stock exchange, or away from their job; and this is the way too many people approach their faith, as pagans. Because the essence of pagan religion was that you went to the temple, and made and offering, a gift, to buy insurance for a particular thing; and each of the several gods offered a particular type of protection.

The book of Romans is a long assault on such religion. That is why Paul begins with the statement: “The just shall live by faith.” Not merely be saved by faith, not merely have insurance by faith; they shall live by faith.

Now in verse 15 Paul makes it clear that Christ did not save us to give us freedom to sin. The penalty of the law, its death sentence, is that which is abrogated; not the law itself. Calvin said the only thing removed is the curse of the law, its death penalty against us. Quoting from Calvin’s comment on verse 15: “As the wisdom of the flesh is ever clamorous against the mysteries of God, it was necessary for the apostle to subjoin what might anticipate an objection; for since the law is the rule of life and has been given to guide men, we think that when it is removed, all discipline immediately falls to the ground, that restraint are taken away, in a word; that there remains no distinction or difference between good and evil. But we are much deceived if we think that the righteousness which God approves in His law is abolished when the law is abrogated. For the abrogation is by no means to be applied to the precepts which teach the right way of living, as Christ confirms and sanctions these and does not abrogate them. But the right view is that nothing is taken away but the curse; to which all men without grace are subject. But though Paul does not distinctly express this, yet he indirectly intimates it.”

Nothing is taken away except the curse. Christian freedom consists not in freedom to sin, but in freedom from sin, as Sanday and Headlam observed.

In verse 16, Paul strikes out at the notion of man as a free agent without a master. It is a delusion he says, for men to believe in their autonomous freedom, this is sin, it reproduces the pattern of Genesis 3:5 “Know ye not,” He says, “that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”

What Paul says is that first the power which men obey is the power which holds them as servants, and second he says that we have only two alternatives, to be slaves of sin or lawlessness, or justice.

Now it is interesting that Paul does not say that the contrast is between being servants of Satan and servants of God; he never says that here. This is true in the ultimate sense, but man moves in history. We view things therefore historically; so when men do wrong they don’t say: “Go to now, I am going to do what Satan would have me do.” No, he says :”I want to do this, and therefore I am going to do it.” Man moves historically, and if he is moved by God he moves to fulfill righteousness or justice.

As a result, the contrast is not between God and Satan, but the historical one, the very present one that Paul makes.

Now, the interesting thing is too, that as Paul spells out this contrast, he says that slavery to lawlessness or sin is death; but the servants of obedience produce justice. Thus, although as Paul continues the contrast becomes between lawlessness or sin and justice, when Paul begins it, it is between sin, lawlessness, and obedience, obedience to the law of God. And he says obedience leads to justice.

Now in verse 17 Paul turns to the Romans, to whom he was writing in particular: “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.”

They had obeyed from the heart, they had obeyed instructions, a form of doctrine, therefore the logic of life asserted itself, and this logic Paul calls attention to in 18: “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.” (Or justice.)

When you abandoned lawlessness, ‘my will be done, I shall be my own God’ you then became the servants of justice. There are no other alternatives. Life is not full of options in the moral sphere, just two. And so Paul says, ‘you have now been freed from sin and become servants of justice. You are now in the hands of a greater power.’

Paul uses the fact of bond service and slavery which was familiar to everyone in the Greco Roman world to make his point. Then in verse 19 he says that he uses this human analogy to drive home the truth to their weak nature, which is prone to evade truth. Because, he said: “ I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”

The word iniquity there is ‘anomia’ lawlessness; and what Paul is saying is that sin, falling short of the mark, not being interested in doing things the right way, leads to lawlessness, and they have been servants of lawlessness or iniquity. But the reverse is now true, they are servants of justice to holiness, since it is lawlessness they began with, Paul stresses obedience in verse 16.

Then he says ‘Because ye were servants of sin, this means you were free from justice.’ The sociological implications of this are obvious. A society of antinomians is an unjust society. The antinomian churches have a very great responsibility for our current lawlessness. Although men are not honest enough to admit it, when they are in bondage to sin, they prefer and foster an unjust society. Men may be resentful of lawlessness when it threatens them, but fallen men commonly prefer such injustice because it agrees with their lifestyle.

Back in the forties and fifties I was acquainted with a man in law enforcement, a police chief who was highly unsuccessful because he never held a job very long. He was usually called in to clean up a city, and then quickly discharged. In one city (because he was an officer as far as I recall in three states) in one city in California of better than average size, he was brought in when conditions were so bad that it was beginning to affect the community, the business community and the home, the residential community. And he had been recommended as an officer, a chief who would clean up things. Well, before long he had cleaned up that city, thoroughly; he had it squeaky clean and they fired him. As one of the counsel men told him in some irritation: “We didn’t want it that clean!”

Freedom from justice is a priority of every ungodly society. They don’t want justice, because it indicts them. They don’t like the consequences of injustice as it affects them, but they are not averse to injustice in principle. The USSR, the Soviet Union is an unjust society, and to report corruption there is criminal, because you are complaining against a party member, against someone who is a part of the nomenclature, the bureaucracy.

Then Paul goes on to say in verse 21 that the results of service to sin is shame; they can only look back with dismay on their old course, which they know now would have led only to death.

But Paul goes on in verse 22: “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”

Now free from sin, you are in Gods service, you are consecrated to Him, and you have a new conclusion to your life, eternity, eternal life. The wages of sin are always death, to any man who follows the course of lawlessness.

But God’s gift through Christ, Paul concludes in verse 23, is eternal life. Paul here closes the door on human autonomy. On the idea that man has all kinds of alternatives morally from which to choose, or that these alternatives will not lead to their God-declared conclusions. The delusion of autonomy is born of the fall, it is a product of the temptation to be one’s own God, and that temptation says that man can determine the nature, the conditions, the rewards, and the conclusion of life. Religion in such a view is a support system, not a command system, and there is a world of difference between the two.

Christianity, if we view it as a support system, is seen as good if it makes life more livable, and provides support; but such a view is anathema to Paul, and this is what he is hammering against throughout this letter and his other letters. To him it is paganism. The Romans saw religion as social cement, they were ready to license any and all religions, because they felt: “If it does something for somebody, it is good.” That was the only test. They were basically cynical of all religion, but if it does something for you it is good, it provides social cement. And since the health of the people is the highest law, the basic principle of Roman law, then whatever is conducive to your health, whether it is true or not, is good for you and good for society; as long as it is governed by the state.

But in scripture men are to be governed in every area of life and thought by Gods law word. There can be no compromise between the two ways, between the two faiths. The early church had many weaknesses, but one thing it stressed, and we find it in some of the first writings, very primitive writings written by simple people without much grasp of doctrine, but what they did see was: there are two ways, and they stressed this over and over again, two ways, and only two. The premise of the fall is the autonomy of man, that he is his own God and law maker; but this is not an alternative, it is only a delusion, and a very deadly one.

Let us pray. Thy word, oh Lord, is truth; and Thy word sets forth for us the way, the truth and the life, and the alternative, our way and death. Make us, oh Lord, servants of justice; make us mindful that we are not to view the way as simply one alternative, or as simply an insurance policy, or as anything other than marching orders for the king of kings. Give us grace to hear, to obey, and to march in Thy service; in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] When you take the Christians in the fundamental camps that have been raised in their particular seminaries and indoctrinated right from the beginning, and if you take some of those people which we know to be, some of them are Christians, and we compare their life view with what they teach, that they haven’t read any of your work, let’s say; would it be accurate to say that when they read the Bible, they read the same Bible that you do, that they are holding that down in unbelief?

[Rushdoony] They read the Bible, to use an illustration I cited earlier, like an insurance policy. Not as marching orders.

[Audience Member] But take the believers, now every time they read the Bible, isn’t some of this going to come through to them, I mean, they can’t hold it…

[Rushdoony] Yes, but Paul accuses some of the believers of his day of being babes in Christ.

[Audience Member] Well, in other words, was he talking to people that would be like the Reformed and the Premills, you know, in his day; that he had people that were comparable to the variety of Christians today, or…

[Rushdoony] No, he was talking to people who had come to the faith, out of a world of incredible depravity. There were people who were, as he says, servants of sin, and he cites some of the things they practiced habitually before their faith in other places. It was a time when all the depravity we see today, without any who oppose that, prevailing. It was a time of great corruption, great depravity. So as these people are saved out of it, they are people with very sordid backgrounds. Now some of them were very young people; we know from some of the first records of martyrdom that one type who was very often converted would be a young mother or a young couple, but especially young mothers, because suddenly as they became pregnant and thought of bringing a child to birth in a world where they were surrounded with every kind of depravity and perversion, taken for granted; it so horrified them that they were ready to go to these secret meeting where people taught The Way as it was called.

So, you had both those who came out of the depravity, and those who were young and were horrified at the thought of starting a family and repeating the cycle they had seen. Now, they brought all kinds of pagan notions with them, and superstitions and what not; and this had to be dealt with in the early church. One of the things that very few people realize is this: one of the big businesses in antiquity was selling amulets, and all kinds of charms for people to wear to protect them from evil spirits. This was so common place that even sophisticated people with a philosophical background, because they believed in a world of chance and of luck, felt that maybe these things would make them lucky. As against that, very, very early, the Christian leaders said: “We cannot indulge in that, we do not believe it. The cross redeems us from our dependence on all such things, and therefore whenever you feel fearful or a bit naked without your charms and your amulets, remember the cross and cross yourself.” Now that is how making the sign of the cross over oneself originated, it was to remind oneself that there is nothing else one can trust in except Christ’s redemption, and all these other things are ineffectual. So these were people who were in a cesspool, which is what Roman culture had become. They didn’t have the luxury of the average fundamentalist or Calvinistic, or any other kind of believer of our time; our believers of today may have more in the way of education and awareness of what is there, but less dependence upon it; for those people it was a matter of life and death, they were going to be overwhelmed by the sewer that Rome had become. Yes?

[Audience Member] How does our culture today compare with that period in Roman history?

[Rushdoony] We are doing everything to reproduce the same kind of paganism, and to glory in it. However we do have a strong witness against it, and a growing witness within the Christian community. What we are seeing is a steady polarization, and the comfortable Christian who is going to go to church and continue is his pietistic ways treating his faith as life and fir insurance, is going to be less and less comfortable because his position is not a tenable one.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Born into a culture like you are talking about in this Roman day, the individual perceives this; and would this be prevenient grace, that they would say: “This isn’t what I want, there must be something better.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, it was prevenient grace, and it led to the rise of many cults, because people wanted an easy answer; and so every kind of foreign cult was pouring into the empire, and there was enthusiasm for them. They were in touch with all the various cults in India, and Hindu religious ideas, reincarnation, the transmigration of souls, were pouring in. There wasn’t an idea religiously that they didn’t grab at, because Rome was beginning to get shaky, its prosperity was beginning to prove to be an empty one; and then as the prosperity ended subsequently and Rome went into a long depression, and economic ills for a couple of centuries until it collapsed, they became all the more frenzied in their search for some kind of answer; anything but God, of course.

But meanwhile, the church grew in strength and became more and more the real government within Rome.

Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee for Thy grace unto us. We Thank Thee that underneath all the experiences of life are Thy everlasting arms; and so we come to Thee, rejoicing in Thy word, rejoicing that all our yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows, are in Thine omnipotent hand. Give us grace so to walk that we may take hands off our lives and commit them into Thy keeping, that we may know that Thy purpose for us is all-holy, all-righteous, all-good, and all-loving. We thank Thee our Father, that Thou art better to us than we can be to ourselves; more loving of us than anyone can love us. How great Thou art, and we thank Thee. 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.