Living by Faith - Romans

Ordained to Death

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 26-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 026

Dictation Name: RR311N26

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. The day goeth away, for the shadows of the day are stretched out. This is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His son cleanseth us from all sin. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, grant that as we come to Thee in prayer we be ever confident in Thy power, in Thy grace, and in Thy mercy; and that we come with out mouths wide open, that Thou mightiest fill them, that we come knowing that Thou art He who dost meet the hunger of our souls, who dost minister to our every need, and who alone art our sufficiency. Give us grace therefore to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. Open the eyes of our understanding that we may hear Thy word and rejoice in it, and be strong and courageous because of it. We cast our hopes upon Thee, our fears, our loved ones. In Thy wisdom, minister to our needs and to our hopes; in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is Romans 7:13-20, Romans 7:13-20, and our subject: Ordained to Death.

“13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.

15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.

16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.

17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”

It should be apparent by now that Paul has been very, very seriously misrepresented. This misrepresentation however is common to all the Bible. Hellenistic categories are applied across the board to the scripture; for example as we have seen our Lord made clear that He had come to renew the covenant and to reestablish the law of the covenant, yet both He and Paul are seen as anti law… [tape skips]

… of man, his mind and body equally. So we cannot say one is good and the other bad, as I have said so often, Satan is a purely spiritual being, and totally evil. In other words, dialectical thinking sees the conflict between two forms of substance or being, a metaphysical, not a moral conflict. When you re-read the Bible in terms of such thinking, you falsify everything in the Bible, in the Old and the New Testaments alike.

Now, since the early years of the last century, the 19th century, this problem has been made worse by the influence of the German philosopher Hegel. Hegel went back to ancient dialectical thinking to develop his own philosophy. Hans Conzelmann has said without disapproval that the pioneer of modern Biblical scholarship, F. C. Baur, read Paul in terms of Hegel; and Conzelmann was right. What this means is that people have been reading Paul in terms of a metaphysical or a dialectical antithesis, flesh against spirit, mind against matter, law against grace, love against justice, and so on.

Well, the idea that any aspect of Gods being can be against any other aspect of Gods being is to assume that God is schizophrenic. If Gods law is opposed to Gods grace, if Gods love is opposed to Gods justice, and so on down the line, then God is at war with Himself; and this is exactly what modern scholarship assumes. Its idea of God is totally devoid of any Biblical remnant of truth, because for God to be at war with Himself is unthinkable and the idea blasphemous.

Paul sees no such tension or division. For him, all things are made by God, and all men as we saw in Romans 1 have an inescapable knowledge of God, which they suppress in unrighteousness, seeking to be their own Gods; and rebelling against God men do two things, as Conzelmann himself saw: first, they pervert worship, they worship the creature instead of the creator, and second their morality becomes corrupt, reflecting their false, manmade religion.

Now it is interesting in Romans 1, where Paul says men who suppress the knowledge of God in unrighteousness, in injustice, then go on to be certain things, the culmination of which is homosexuality. Well, Paul does not call man’s immorality and perversion sin, although he sees it as sin, but he sees it more as punishment for perverting the worship of God, of suppressing the knowledge of God; so that what Paul says in Romans 1 is that if you deny God, then these things, the immorality that follows, is Gods punishment upon you. The logic of your unbelief pushes you further and further into the abyss of immorality.

As we have seen, Paul has already absolved the law as the cause of sin. He opposes now the belief that the law is the cause of death. The law pronounces the penalty he says, but the cause of death is sin. Men want to blame God for their moral predicament, and Paul’s concern is to indict sin, to indict man’s rebellion against God.

Men seek to blame Gods law or Gods justice, because being in sin they are not content to be in sin, but they must turn their evil into good, or God into evil.

But Paul says, beginning in verse 13, God uses man’s sin to vindicate His law, and to overthrow sin completely. Not the law but sin, as Calvin noted, converts life into death.

“Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”

In other words, the law keeps telling me: “The problem is your sin.” The law forces self knowledge upon man, because it is Gods will that man see himself in terms of the searchlight of the law.

Then in verse 14 he says: “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.”

The law is spiritual, Paul says, the word is ‘pneumatikos’, whereas men, he says, are carnal, ‘sarkikos’. Our word for spiritual gives us a very false connotation of what spiritual means. For us it means something ethereal, or airy, or vague; but in the Bible the connotation, and this is true in the Greek, is power. To speak of something beging spiritual means to be filled with power, the power of God , a tremendous force.

So when Paul says: “We know the law is spiritual’ he is saying it has power behind it, the power of God, the convicting power of the spirit, and he says “but I and all men are carnal, sold under sin.”

The word carnal means physical, limited, flesh and blood, frail and corruptible. In Adam we are all corrupted. And so what Paul is doing in verse 14 is contrasting the power of Gods law which penetrates into the total being of every man with its judgement, with a sickly weakness of sinful man.

Then in verses 15 and 16 he goes on to say: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.”

At this point of course, the Hellenizers have a field day. ‘Aha, here we have Paul, he is talking about the dialectical nature of man!’ But this is to import a meaning that is not here. Paul is not saying that there are two warring beings or substances in man. All men, remember, Paul makes clear, are created by God and are revelational of God in all their being. Every atom in our being is God’s creation; when man therefore is in sin, he is therefore at war with himself. Paul is not giving his autobiography here, as some would have it; he is giving us anthropology.

What he says is that mans sin and conflict confirms Gods law. What he is saying is, that if you try against the law of God, you are going to feel the tension in your being, your own being is going to witness against you, so that you are the loser; and this conflict witnesses that man is Gods creation, that everything in man confirms Gods law, that Gods justice cries out against man in all his being, and this conflict, guilt and misery witness to the fact that the law is good, and that sin leads to death.

Gifford called attention a century ago to the fact that a great many Roman writers such as Plautus, Petronius, Seneca, and Pindar, witnessed to this conflict of man, doing that which they knew was wrong, and being in moral conflict; but none of them had any solution for this.

Paul continues in verse 17 to say: “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”

He is not diminishing the responsibility of man, rather what he is saying is that sin diminishes man. Sin depersonalizes a person when it gains dominion over him. Tolstoy began his book Anna Karenina with a very famous sentence, he said and I quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I recall many years ago as a student a professor lecturing on this sentence, it was his theme, and his whole point was that literature had to absorb itself, concentrate, on evil; because that was where individuality was best expressed. What he was in effect saying is that man is most man when he sins.

Now this is the premise of the fall! ‘God doesn’t want you to be yourself. If you sin, then you truly express yourself.’ Paul is saying the reverse. Paul is saying that sin depersonalizes you.

Now, when he says ‘it is not I that do it, but in me’ what he is talking about is something that anyone who deals with a problem of addiction is familiar with. A person who has become an alcoholic or an addict to some drug, after a while loses the ability to control himself, because his addiction, his sin begins to rule him. And he will tell you: “I know I need to quit drinking” or “I know I need to get off of drugs” but as Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups have found out, no man can break with an addiction unless he also says: “I cannot defeat it, I need a power greater than myself to do it.”

A good many years ago, I first encountered this with someone who was connected with Alcoholics Anonymous, I was talking to a man who, and they will not talk to them unless they are sober or off the drugs, because everybody while under the influence is full of self pity and ready to mend his ways, until he is sober or until he is off the drug. But this man was; but when he said: “I can do it, I can lick it and I am going to.” The man who was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous got up and left. He said: “No you are not, not if you try it alone.” He wasn’t going to waste any more time on that person, and rightly so. He proved to be right.

To assume that man is most truly human in revolt against God is what the world around us assumes; but sin, Paul says, diminishes a man. It reduces him, to use problems common to our day, to an addict or an alcoholic. They are all alike, sinners are alike; a happy people are unique, those who are realizing themselves under God, then they develop their particular potentiality, then they move in the freedom of Gods law.

In verse 18, Paul goes on to say: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”

Paul says that in my human nature, as a fallen person, there is no good thing. In myself under any circumstances, there is no good thing. Man is not autonomous, and he cannot be an autonomous good. He can only be good in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, in faithfulness to the covenant law; as Gods creature man knows inescapably what is good, but he cannot perform it on his own nature, he needs a power greater than himself.

Not even those who imagine a humanistic good and are humanist can perform it. The record of humanists seeking to achieve their non-Christian, imagined good, is one of disaster also. When man is at war with God he frustrates himself whatever course of action he takes, he is perpetual schizophrenia, self frustration.

To be a sinner in other words, is to be a failure in Gods universe, there is no escaping that fact. No man can succeed on any terms in revolt against God. Thus Paul in verse 18 is not excusing man, quite the contrary. He is calling attention to mans helplessness apart from God. Because of sin, the sinner is no longer in control of himself. Sin is a… [Tape Skips]

“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

Man in revolt against God is in revolt against himself. As a result, to go against God is to go against the very order of being, against the very order of our lives.

Then Paul concludes in verse 20: “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”

What a sad conclusion. Man hopes by revolt to be his own God, and to govern by his own word, to create his own universe, his own law; to make the world conform to his imagination. Instead he is ruled by sin, he is governed by sin and death.

Now, as we have seen, Romans 1:17-20 sets forth the theme of the book of Romans, it presupposes all that follows: The just can only live by faith. Sin is ordained to death, it is in self contradiction, and Paul then proceeds to tell us what the implications of this position are, what it does for the nature of man to be in sin, and what the possibilities of man are in Christ.

To discuss Romans without remembering that Paul has laid a foundation, and that all that follows is to be built upon it, is nonsense. And this is why studies of Romans that do not continuously remind us that this is Paul’s foundation, Romans 1:17-20, wind up wandering all over the landscape and misinterpreting what Paul has to say.

Paul is clear; sin ordains us to death, Christ ordains us to life. And the implications of this he develops. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for the plain speaking of Thy word. Grant that by Thy Spirit we read Thy word always in terms of Thee, not in terms of ancient and modern categories of thought. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now, about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] Both in verse 17 and in verse 20, the casual reading of that would seem to make sin an abstract, and divorce it from man; do those who develop the idea of the carnal Christian and the idea of loving the sinner but hating the sin, do they seek support in the interpretation of those verses in that fashion?

[Rushdoony] Some do, but what Paul does here is to say that sin is a power, it is a force; he has spoken of the law as being spiritual, pneumatikos, a power; and we cannot understand what Paul is talking about when he speaks about being spiritual, unless we realize he means that we are then in Christ, in the Spirit, in the law of God, in His justice, and therefore we are powerful.

Now, here is another counterforce that is destructively powerful, one is powerful for life, but sin is a force, it separates us from God into the world of death, so it has a destructive, disintegrating force. Well, when a man is in sin we cannot say that somehow he is lovable, or should be loved, and the sin is not; because Paul is saying quite contrary to this type of statement that the man now is possessed by this; he is governed by it. This is the governing force in his life, sin, so it is taking him to death. And he is marked therefore, as Proverbs 8:36 tells us, by the love of death. “All they that hate me, love death.”

Yes?

[Audience Member] Then Paul in his anthropology is saying that man does have two natures, but the true human nature is the one in Christ, but the Adamic nature is the one that he has inherited. Is that his…?

[Rushdoony] No, nature is not the right word, it would lead us back to Hellenistic thinking. Man has, as Thomas Boston said, a fourfold estate. He is in the state or condition of innocence in the Garden of Eden of the possibility of falling, then in the state of total depravity with the fall, the state of grace with which he is now ordained good but still has the possibility of sinning, and the state of glory when he no longer sins or is capable of it.

Now, it isn’t that he has two natures, he is one person, but these are possibilities. [Tape Skips]

…when it first learns to walk has the capacity of stumbling and falling flat on his or her face, it doesn’t mean that there are two natures there, just that the child is learning and is stumbling; or if the child is incapable of walking it doesn’t mean that there are two natures, even though it may want to walk. Yes?

[Otto Scott] It strikes me that psychiatry or psychoanalysis which convinces the individual first to accept the sin, but then to blame the parents of somebody else for it, is very similar to Marxism, to blame your circumstances on somebody else.

[Rushdoony] A very good analogy.

[Otto Scott] Probably responsible for the societal difficulties we are having.

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point Otto, and one of the things we need to remember is, Greek thinking spoke of either the two natures of man, or the tripartite nature, Body soul and spirit, or body mind and spirit and various forms of it; and both the dualistic and tripartite doctrines have entered the church, and you can find all kinds of arguments between the two groups as two which is the correct opinion.

Now, it is significant that you had a dualistic form in Marxism, to blame everything on a certain class of people, and you had a tripartite doctrine in Freud; there is first the Id, the will to pleasure, which is responsible for everything in man, and which man cannot control, and then there is the Ego which is the reality principle which is the will to death, and tries to put a break on the Id; and then there is the Super Ego which is the real problem, which creates the conflict and the conscience, and guilt; and that is the teaching of our culture, our parents, our church, and so on. So for Freud there is nothing you can do about your Id and your Ego, so there is no blame there; there may be a guilt feeling, but that is ridiculous. It is your Super Ego that is responsible for your problems, and the one thing you can change; and you are not responsible for your Super Ego, your parents or your church, your school or your society is.

So man is absolved of responsibilities, and psychoanalysis becomes then in psychiatric counseling not a way of moral change, but of understanding why you did what you did. As Freud wrote in a famous letter to a mother who was upset about her sons homosexuality, he rebuked her for wanting her son changed and said that he won’t be changed but ‘we will enable him to understand why he does what he does.’ Yes?

[Audience Member] When we are spoken of as being born again and therefore being a new creation, a new creature in Christ; then if we in fact do not have two natures but are one nature, is that now a change to that nature and in that change we continually become; that is, while we are in that state, the third state I guess you could say of grace, we then are becoming more sanctified as we live in terms of God law?

[Rushdoony] When we are made a new creation we are not changed in our being, in our substance; we are still the same person that we were the day before. But we are morally renewed, God says: “I will create a new heart in them.” Heart representing the essence of their being is now transformed morally from an orientation to sin, to an orientation to God. And then, like babes, we learn to grow in terms of that new nature. We were growing in terms of the old nature, growing in our depravity; now we grow in our grace which is our sanctification. So it is a moral change. We have the same name, we have the same body, the same age, but we are morally a different person.

[Audience Member] So it is an ethical rebirth.

[Rushdoony] Ethical rebirth.

[Audience Member] Not metaphysical.

[Rushdoony] Not metaphysical. Any other questions or comments now?

Well, if not, let us bow our heads now for the benediction. And now go in grace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be with you, now and forever more, amen.