Living by Faith - Romans

Ordained to Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 25-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 025

Dictation Name: RR311N25

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 unto whom all flesh shall come, we pray that Thy judgement may go forth in this generation, to confound the powers of humanistic statism, to overthrow those who seek to destroy Thy saints and Thy kingdom. We pray for those who are oppressed the world over. We pray our Father for their deliverance and their triumph. We thank Thee that according to Thy word the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and give us a taste of that victory in our time oh Lord. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Romans 7:7-12, our subject: Ordained to Life. Romans 7:7-12.

“7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”

Again, to understand this passage, the meaning of at least one word is very essential. Previously we saw that the word translated into English as ‘Lust’ has changed its meaning. It means ‘desire’ whether good or bad, the context reveals the meaning. Now, in this passage we have a word again lust, and concupiscence, and covet. All three are in Greek the one and the same word!

Now, how are we to determine the meaning of the word? Well, we know clearly from the seventh verse: “law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” This is a quotation from the tenth commandment. Moreover, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was current and in use in Paul’s day, this same Greek word translated as Concupiscence and Lust and Covet, is used for covet: “Thou shalt not covet.” Thou shalt not desire thy neighbor’s wife, thy neighbor’s house, servant, ass, ox, everything.

So when Paul is using in this particular passage the word ‘lust’ and ‘concupiscence’, it means covet. This is important, because too many people have misinterpreted the whole book of Romans, whether using the King James or modern translations, because as they have approached this word ‘desire’ they have reduced it to a sexual connotation exclusively. It has that meaning at times, it has at times a positive, a favorable meaning; other times an unfavorable one. But the word, ‘Epithumeo’ here means what the ten commandments say, to desire something in a lawless way.

Thus, the whole meaning of Romans can be warped, and a lawless antinomian view propagated, if we read a false meaning into the word.

Now to analyze what Paul says. In verse 7: “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust,” (or covetousness) “except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”

What Paul says here is that sin dwells in us, not the law. The law is like a flood light which reveals us to ourselves, because the law is the justice of God. The law gives us knowledge of sin, our sin and sin in general, and also knowledge of God and of God’s justice.

Gifford wrote and I quote: “Throughout this passage Saint Paul’s purpose is to vindicate the law of Moses.” This is how a commentator of a century ago saw this text. An even older commentator, Mayer, declared that it is the law which makes us to know sin as sin, because without the law we insist on seeing sin as our ‘self-expression’, our realization of our freedom, as doing our own thing.

To quote Mayer, “The Hamartia, sin, is sin as an active principle in man, with which I have become experimentally acquainted only through the law, so that without the intervention of the law, it would have remained for me an unknown power, because in that case it would not have become active in me through the excitement of desires, after what is forbidden, in contrast to the law.”

In other words, what Paul is saying and what Gifford and Mayer are calling attention to, is that we do not sin out of weakness, but out of a desire to play God; to exercise lawless power. And our confrontation with the law of God aggravates and incites our will to power.

Sin is man’s desire to be as God, to make his own law, to do his own thing. It is not a weakness that leads us to sin, but a determined hostility and resistance to God and His word.

In verse 8 Paul goes on: “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.”

Paul says here that man is a perverse creature when he is a fallen creature. As Solomon said in Proverbs 9:17 “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” Just as faith without works is dead, so sin without the law is dead, because the essence of sin is to transgress the law of God, to break it; to violate it. Adam and Eve sinned against Gods plain commandment, they lacked nothing in Eden. They had everything, but they deliberately broke Gods word, not out of any weakness, not out of any lack, for they lacked nothing. Sin is the self conscious affirmation of autonomy.

Two or three days ago as I was driving home from the airport, I turned on the radio to look for some news, and a song that was announced caught my attention. It was a woman singing that she had left the man she loved to seek promiscuous sex, because as she repeated again and again: “I had to be free, I had to be free.” And she went on to say that she had to “Find my place in the sun.” But all the while saying that she really loved only him, if he only would realize it. It reminded me of a poem by one of the Edwardians which had the refrain: “I have been true to thee, Sinera, after my fashion.” The same kind of absurdity.

Now, it is of this that Paul speaks in saying that without the law, sin is dead. [tape skips]

…sin presupposes revolt against Gods law order. The sinner is out to break Gods order, and this is why a man like Henry Miller for example, felt that he had to apologize because he did not practice homosexuality, and he had to make it clear that it was not on moral grounds that he refrained from it, it was not his thing; but he felt duty bound to apologize lest anyone assume that he had hang-ups.

So Paul says without the law sin is dead, because sin presupposes revolt against Gods law order. Now, Gods law places limits on our lives which are designed not to inhibit life, but to enhance life; to preserve our freedom. Man’s revolt against God is against the conditions of life, and those conditions are Gods law, Gods covenant law. hence: “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul, all they that hate me, love death.” For the sinner however, the law provides the dynamics of sin; because sin is the attempt to negate the law of God as the condition of life.

Then in verse 9 Paul goes on: “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”

Paul was saying that ‘I was living without the law at one time’ that is, ‘I was living without a true knowledge of the law.’ But when the commandment came, when it began to be truly understood, it showed me as it shows all men, how much depravity we have in us; and therefore it slew him as it slays all men.

As Calvin said and I quote: “Sins death is man’s life; conversely, sins life is man’s death.” The law made Paul aware of Gods death penalty, thus while the law is ordained to life it becomes death to the man in sin.

As Hodge says with regard to this verse and I quote: “The law was designed and adapted to secure life, but became in fact a cause of death. Life and death are here opposed, and are figurative terms; life includes the ideas of happiness and holiness. The law was designed to make men happy and holy. Death on the other hand includes the ideas of misery and sin. The law became through no fault of its own the means of rendering the apostle miserable and sinful. How vain therefore is it to expect salvation from the law, since all the law does in its operation on the un-renewed heart is to condemn and to awaken opposition; it cannot change the nature of man.”

The commandment to the redeemed man is ordained to life because it is the way of justice. For the unjust it is death. The law was not given to Adam in Genesis 2:16 and following as the way of salvation, but as a means of protecting and furthering Adams life in God. For us it is protection in life and the way of blessing.

Then Paul goes on to say, having said in verse 10 that “the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.”

It is sin, he says, not the law, which kills us. Sin uses the law as a means of attacking God by breaking His law. Our willful violation is our attempt to substitute for Gods order a man-made order. Man as his own law.

Quoting Mayer again: “Sin has by means of the commandment which has for its direct aim my life, deceived me; in as much as it used it for the provocation of desire.” The desire is to supplant God and His law with our way.

And Calvin said here and I quote: “He thus defends the law against every charge of blame, that no one should ascribe to it what is contrary to goodness, justice, and holiness.”

Paul’s conclusion in verse 12 is: “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” Gods commandments are righteous and just altogether, because they both require just conduct among men, and they bear witness to Gods justice.

The law thus as a whole is marked by holiness, Paul says. It is Gods justice, Gods will. It is given to us that we may live in freedom and in prosperity; it is as verse 10 declares “ordained to life.”

Man’s problem is not the law, but his sin. Man covets Gods place, then that which is his neighbors. He has a lust for power which is basic to all men who are unredeemed, and it leads to the society of Adam. The goal is to play God, and to exercise power over others, and society then has a will to death. It is a murderous and a suicidal realm.

This is why whenever we encounter people who have a will to power, a will to exercise lawless power over anyone around them, anyone who comes within the framework of their life, we know that they are unregenerate, whatever else they may claim to be. And when such unregenerate men take power, their professed idealism adds up to one thing: murder. In the French Revolution, (Maroilles?) talked of taking a million heads, and he declared that the hungry had the right to eat the well fed. If (Maroilles?) had had his way, cannibalism would have been the just conclusion of his dreams.

Igor Shafarevich within the Soviet Union today has said that socialism is war against freedom, property, religion, marriage, man, and life itself, and he said that the triumph of socialism will be the withering away of mankind, and its death.

Any and all attempts to build society apart from God and His law are invitations to assured judgement and death. The just cannot live by faith apart from Gods justice, Gods law. In Christ we are brought into life, and in His law we are ordained to life and to blessing.

Let us pray. Oh Lord our God, Thy word is truth, and we thank Thee for the plain speaking of Thy word. Grant oh Lord that our times may see Thy justice manifest, the powers of darkness confounded and destroyed, and Thy kingdom prosper and grow. Bless us to this end we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] This is somewhat related to the lesson, but I am back in Genesis 3:3, and there is, this is more of a comment than a question, but maybe you have something to add to it. The last part of that where God hath said ‘ye shall not eat of it’, but for some reason I had missed the fact, ‘neither shall ye touch it.’ In other words, had they just touched the fruit the same thing would have happened, and that is how absolute His law was.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, you don’t even play with the idea of sin.

[Audience Member] In other words, if she stuck out her little finger just to see what it felt like, that was forbidden.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, God says it is off limits in every respect, and that is why our Lord in terms of that aspect of the law said that if you have lust in your heart for someone else you have committed adultery with them, but if you want them dead lawlessly, and you hate them, that is you hate them and wish they were dead, you have committed murder; and so on. He went on to make clear what this verse says, that the law is not only external compliance, it is a total compliance with all our heart, mind, and being. Yes?

[Audience Member] Do you feel like the Alcoholics Anonymous, that some people cannot break these habits except through prayer, or appealing to the higher power as Alcoholics Anonymous said when you have a strong nature?

[Rushdoony] Well, no one else has succeeded with Alcoholics on any real basis, except by declaring that there has to be an appeal to God.

One of the things that has marked this modern age from the enlightenment to the present has been the separation of religion and morality. George Washington was aware of this trend, and spoke out sharply against it in his farewell address, and called it an illusion that men could separate religion and ethics, or religion and morality. But this is what the modern liberal is dedicated to, in fact when I was in Washington D.C. the previous week, one of the points insisted upon by one of the leaders at the New Republic was precisely that; that the great thinkers had said there was no connection between religion and ethics, that the two could be separated. And so, since the Enlightenment men have said: ‘We will create a good society, we will create good people, without religion; because ethics can be detached from religion and made to function. And so, through public education which we will strip from anything but humanism, we will make a more righteous generation than the world has ever seen.’

Horace Mann said that prisons would be abolished within a hundred years, by the 1930’s. Crime and poverty would be things of the past, because by separating morality from Christianity, which was what he specifically was interested in, a humanistic ethical premise could reform society.

Well, it is an illusion. Every religion produces its own ethical or moral behavior, and the attempt, (and untold millions have been spent in trying to rehabilitate alcoholics with a religious basis) is on the whole a failure. It has had minimal results. Men have to turn to a power greater than themselves, and this is why the Skid Row missions that work are Christian.

[Audience Member] Salvation …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes Otto?

[Otto Scott] Well, the modern argument is that the natural man is inherently good, and therefore that emotions are innocent; and one of the corollaries is that people are not taught that emotion like thought is subject to the will. I mean, you can censure your mind, and you can censure your emotions. If you don’t learn to do that you are not really an adult.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They have found, but they don’t like to talk about it, that you can in many cases; not too many but in a number of cases, you can take someone and cure him of alcoholism or drug addiction, but you have not dealt with the basic will to death that marks the ungodly. So you take one form of this will to death, an addiction, and a stronger expression of it then emerges. So that the results are not good, the cure is not good; because the cure does not get to the root problem. There is a will to death in all unredeemed men, and this will to death is manifesting itself in drugs or alcohol, but by changing the addiction from one thing to another you haven’t solved any problems.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Going back to the concept of trying to separate religion from morality, I believe that is what we were talking about before, I think it was Aldous Huxley, or one of the Huxley’s, that wrote a book called Religion Without Morality, I believe that was the title; but what was amusing to me, first of all it was beneath the man’s intelligence, it was a very foolish book; but it shows that they still have a feeling… They are concerned with a humanistic morality, but they are concerned with religion too; but because of their particular humanistic thinking they cannot join the two together.

[Rushdoony] This ties in with a very important point Otto made, that all these efforts at separating the two rest on the premise that man is naturally good; therefore it is the environment, not he himself that is the source of the problem. Therefore, you have got to separate religion and morality, because then you say: ‘the thing in his environment that has been the most damaging to him is religion.’

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

Oh Lord our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy word establishes the conditions for life, the conditions for joy, peace, and prosperity in Thee. Give us grace day by day to be faithful to those conditions. 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.