Living by Faith - Romans

The Spirit and God’s Order

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 33-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 033

Dictation Name: RR311R33

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing, enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name; for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou who dost inhabit eternity, whose name is holy, who dost occupy all things in heaven and earth, has declared in Thy word that Thou art very near, that Thou hast made of Thy people Thy temple, that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say: “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me.” And so our God, we thank Thee. We rejoice in Thy presence, in the certainty that it is Thy kingdom, Thy purpose that shall prevail. Bless us as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, that we may behold wonderous things out of Thy law, and be empowered by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, to be more than conquerors through Christ Jesus our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Romans 8:28-30. Romans 8:28-30, and our subject: The Spirit and God’s Order. Last time we dealt with Romans 8:28, the greatest verse, many believe, in the Bible, and the pivotal verse for the second half of Romans.

“28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

Paul’s style of writing has been called by many the most difficult in the whole of the Bible; however while it is a highly involved and difficult style of writing which takes patience to read and to understand, it regularly leads to a magnificent summation which comes out like a peal of an organ, and leads to the most majestic passages in all of scripture. Certainly this chapter, beginning with verse 28 is one such section.

In verse 28, which we considered last time, and must begin with this time, Paul says that if we are the Lords we cannot lose. God makes all things work together for good for them that love Him. He has made all things, all things visible and invisible. And whatever men may do to mess up their lives, and whatever evil does in this world, if we are the Lords, He takes those things and makes them work together for good for us, in time or in eternity. We cannot see the outcome nor understand the meaning.

Luther said at one point that when we look at our lives and look at history, it is like type being set; and of course, type in those days was set by hand, backwards, so that as you look at the typeset, it is not readable, it is backwards, and incomprehensible. But, when it is completed and printed, it is totally understandable. And so, said Luther, are our lives and our history. Much in them is beyond us now, but it all becomes plain at the end.

Then in verse 29 Paul goes on to say: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

A great many people shy away from Romans because of passages like this; they don’t like the subject of predestination, and they feel that they have got to go through and prove that it doesn’t exist, because the Bible also talks about our responsibility, and how can we be responsible, make our decisions and choices and bear the burden of them if we are wrong; and still at the same time be totally predestined by God?

Well, the answer is, we don’t know. And we are not asked to understand this, we would have to have the mind of God to understand everything in the Bible. So it is wrong to choose between human responsibility and predestination, and say: “I believe in this” and fight with those who believe in the other. We are told to believe both, we don’t understand, but we know it is true, God says so.

Some philosophers who have wrestled with it have come up with answers that tell us the two have to go together. Well, we don’t have to worry about the philosophical background, about contingency and first causes and the predetermination of causes producing the freedom of secondary causes and so on; that is not necessary. God says it, we must believe it; that is it. So we believe that we are responsible. I am not being compelled to do the things I am, and yet God totally predestines me. That is it.

Paul tells us that man was created in Gods image and is redefined by Adam when he submits to the temptation to be his own God. So that, man says: “I am independent of God, and I can be my own God, and determine, know for myself, what is good and evil; be my own law maker.” Do it yourself universe, do it yourself law, do it yourself morality.

But Christ, Paul says, comes along and redefines us again as God originally defined us, created in His image, in knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that we are redefined by Him and regenerated by Him, to be conformed to the image of His Son. So what is He doing? You can say: “Christ is remaking us so that we can know our new definition of what we are.” And what we are we find by looking at Jesus. We are to be conformed to the image of His Son.

The god of this world, Paul says, hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine in them. Moreover, in Colossians 1:15-16, Paul tells us that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. He is the first born, and we are born after Him as a result of His regenerating power, to be conformed to His image, to be like Him; our problem is that in Adam we tried to redefine ourselves in terms of our own ideas. Now we have to forsake our own thinking about who we are and what we are, and redefine ourselves by the Holy Spirit in terms of Jesus Christ.

Some years ago, I think it was shortly after the war, they came upon a simple test, which was with three questions the best determiner of the mental health and stability of people; the trouble with it was that it was so simple once you knew about it, it would be easy to fake it. But they found that this test was to ask people: “Who are you?” and they could say three things: “I am Joe Doakes, and I am a mechanic, and this is what I do.” But they found those who were the stablest began by saying: “I am a child of God,” and then defined themselves in terms of their calling and family; God, their calling, the family; were the stablest people they encountered. It was a foolproof test, except it was too easy to fake once it was known.

Well, this is what we are to do, to conform ourselves, to redefine ourselves, in terms of the image of Gods Son. All things were made by Him, including ourselves, and to be conformed to Christ is to be conformed to the perfect image of God, to Gods original, final purpose for man. This means, Paul tells us in Colossians 3:8-10

“8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:”

Now, in this verse, 29, Paul uses the word ‘foreknow.’ Well, it is really the word ‘know’ with before, or for, added to it. To know has special meanings in the Bible different from what we have in the English. If I know something it is because I have studied it and understand it, but in the Bible it has a deeper connotation. For example, we are told that Adam ‘knew’ Eve his wife. So it has relationship to an intimacy, a life together. Again we are told in Psalm 1:6, “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous.” In Amos 3:2 God says: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” In Matthew 7:23 our Lord says: “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

‘Know’ in the Biblical sense means to fix a special concern and intention and purpose on something; so that when Adam knew Eve, it meant that there was a special relationship. When God says: “I knew you, only, Israel, out of all the peoples of the earth, you only I gave my special favor to.” It can be used in a bad sense, too; God can say “I know your ways and how evil they are.” It means a special concentration on, fixing a purpose on; and when it goes with ‘fore’ foreknow, it means that God from all eternity has a special concern, a special purpose, for those whom He foreknows.

Now, there is a distinction between foreknowledge and predestination, and God says that whom He foreknew He also did predestinate, to be conformed to Christ. We know Him, the Bible tells us, because He first loved us.

But we are not chosen simply to be saved and to sit back and to relax, that is a serious error. “Now I am saved, I can sit back; I have got the question of heaven settled.” That is evidence that they don’t know the Lord, we are saved to serve.

Our Lord tells us in John 15:16 “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” We have a purpose, we have been chosen by God, we have been saved, that we should go and bring forth fruit; if we are saved God expects results, in a changed life. We are not therefore the end of salvation. The whole purpose of salvation is not so that we can sit back and relax and say: “We have got fire insurance now, we don’t have to worry. We have got life and fire insurance because of our salvation.”

No, our salvation is to serve God. It restores us to that purpose for which man was created, to occupy the earth and subdue it, to make it Gods realm, Gods kingdom. So, the focus of Predestination is that we conformed to Jesus Christ.

So, Gods purpose for us and for all whom He chooses, is that we serve Him, that we be glorified finally, so that we are eternally like Christ, our elder brother, the first fruit.

One of the old scholars of many generations ago, Godet, Frederic Louis Godet, made this statement and I quote: “But how are we, sinful men, to be brought to this sublime state? Such a work cannot be accomplished as it were by the wave of a magicians wand, a complete moral transformation required to be wrought in us, paving the way for our glorification, and hence God, after fixing the end and pronouncing the decree in eternity, set His hand to the work in time to realize it. He beheld them at their haven, all these foreknown ones, before launching them on the sea; and once He launched, He acted. Such is the meaning of verse 30.”

So, there is no escaping the fact the Bible teaches us predestination, it teaches us our responsibility, and we are not asked to understand this mystery, but to believe in it. Augustine, centuries ago dealt with this and stated it powerfully, and I am going to quote him because I think he said it very well. Augustine said and I quote: “Moreover that which I said, That the salvation of this religion has never been lacking to him who was worthy of it, and that he to whom it was lacking was not worthy, if it be discussed and it be asked whence any man can be worthy there are not wanting those who say ‘by human will’. But we say, by divine grace or predestination. Further, between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself. When, therefore the apostle says, “Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works,” it is grace; but what follows—“which God hath prepared that we should walk in them”--is predestination, which cannot exist without foreknowledge, although foreknowledge may exist without predestination; because God foreknew by predestination those things which He was about to do, whence it was said, “He made those things that shall be.”

Thus, if you weaken the doctrine of predestination, you weaken the doctrine of grace. Now, in verse 29 Paul has spoken of Gods eternal council. In verse 30 he goes on to deal with the realization of Gods eternal council in time. In our predestination verse 30 tells us, there are three divine acts called, justified, and finally, glorified, called. Justified and Glorified. He is here speaking about the redeemed.

Now the word ‘called’ is the Greek ‘kaleo.’ It means two things, vocation and destination; and Paul uses them in both senses, so that many of the older writers would say that the three stages are vocation, justification, and glorification. In other words, when we are the Called of God we have a calling, we have a vocation. God says: “Now you are my servant. And you are going to serve me all the days of your life, you are going to be faithful to me and obedient to me, you have a calling, a vocation, and throughout all eternity you have this vocation, to be mine and to serve me. And you have this because of my justification, and the culmination is your glorification.” Now some people will say: “Where is sanctification in this?” Why, it is in the calling, the vocation. That is how we are sanctified.

The context of what Paul says here is important, the old saying: “text without a context is a pretext.” Now what is the context here? Immediately before this passage Paul has been speaking at length about the Holy Spirit, His work in our life, His work in the whole of creation; in the beginning the Spirit of God moved upon the face of creation, and now that creation is fallen, the Spirit is at work again in all things, and at work in our hearts. He is now remaking all things. The Triune God is at work, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, and God the Spirit is the integrating force, the purpose in all of creation, working to bring us to our duty. And we are told: “Grieve not the Spirit of God” because He identifies with us, He lives in us, prays in us with groaning’s which cannot be uttered. As we saw last time, Paul is saying that before we know what to pray for, the Holy Spirit is praying in us for those things; and the Holy Spirit is shaping the direction of our lives. If we have a weak doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we are weak in power and in purpose. The Holy Spirit is the integrating force in our lives, and if we have a weak emphasis on the Spirit we fall into humanism.

Now, life has to have an integrating force, there has to be a focus. Men have to act in terms of: “This I believe, this I want to do, this is the purpose of life and of history;” and what happens when you choose a purpose that is of this world, that is humanistic? It can be something very good; consider for example our peaceniks. They are demonstrating regularly all over the western world. Now, we can agree, peace is good; war is something to be fearful of, because war in the modern age has become revolution, and whenever we have war it is used by politicians to effect a social revolution, to take away our freedom. But, when you make something other than God the focal point, you warp life; so when you say ‘peace is the supreme virtue, and everything must be done in terms of peace’ you turn peace into an evil, you turn it into a surrender to evil, and you destroy everything that you profess to work for.

So the peaceniks are really destroying peace, because they are exalting peace to the place of God.

Or, you might take the warniks, those who believe in a strong stand against everything: ‘we need a war on crime, a war on poverty, or a war against Marxism’ and so on, as though war, fighting, taking a strong position, is the answer to everything. Well, we can say there is certainly a great deal of truth to that position, but as long as men are sinners, you can go on executing them by the tens of thousands, and there will be more reared by our schools and our families which are outside of Christ. So what is the use? They are being born every day. The only way you can obliterate the problem is by obliterating the human race.

So if you maintain that war or a strong battle against evil is the answer, you have again taken something humanistic, something of this world, and made it the cure-all. And that is why all humanistic solutions, no matter how noble the purpose, wind up in trouble; because the integrating force, the moving force cannot be anything of this world, it must be of God, it must be God and His word; and the power that effectuates these things, that puts them into operation, is the Holy Spirit working in us. Of this worldly integrating premise, like war, or peace, or whatever you want to make it, gives a warped view of reality, and it leads to trouble.

It takes one virtue, whether it be peace or anything else, and exalts it into the status of God. But it is the Lord God who is the judge of all the world and of war and peace, and it is God the Spirit who works in us, to make us fulfill our vocation, our calling, and either God the Spirit and His regenerating and integrating power govern us, or something humanistic will. Apart from the Spirit, moreover, we must say that any doctrine of predestination becomes mechanical and stupid; but when we believe in the Spirit we believe that there is a living power that brings the power of eternity into our lives, to direct us in the way which we should go, and we are directed to Gods work as His word specifies, and in time and eternity we are the Lords, we have the Spirit, we are conformed to His purpose, and we have the joy of knowing that all things work together for good to them that love God, them who are the called according to His purpose.

This is why in Romans 8 Paul stresses so heavily the doctrine of the Spirit as fundamental to the creation of Gods order in time and in eternity. Let us pray.

Thy word oh Lord is true, and we thank Thee that Thy Spirit is at work in the world and in us, to make all things work together for good, to consummate Thy purpose, so that the earth may be filled with Thy righteousness or justice as the waters cover the sea. Give us joy in our calling, and make us triumphant in Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions? Yes.

[Otto Scott] I have a comment on the surface contradiction between free will and predestination, that it seems to me that it fits the definition of a paradox, which is always an illusion; you run into contradictory facts, the facts are not removed by being contradictory, what is involved is our inability to see the over-all connection between the facts, because a paradox cannot exist.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is a paradox because we are not God and we cannot see the totality of things as He can. Yes John?

[John] Does that relate to Van Til’s apparent contradiction?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it does. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience Member] Why would you say that there is such a hostile temperament toward the doctrine of predestination as we understand it in Christendom? Certainly I wouldn’t think it was for want of being adequately described by those who hold to an orthodox Calvinistic tradition, is it a great rock of offense to those who ostensibly are Christians?

[Rushdoony] I think one of the problems has been that almost every church group that has its pet doctrine, whether it is predestination or free will, or its view of the sacraments, or of baptism as one of the sacraments, likes to use their particular doctrine to clobber other people with. So, instead of seeing it as something joyful to share, they are out proving to other people how poor Christians they are because they don’t agree with them, and the result is instead of doing the Lord honor with their witness they are insulting as far as doing justice to the faith is concerned. Yes?

[Audience Member] There is one other thing about predestination that always angers people I think, I think that it really challenges the autonomy of reason, that lays hidden in a lot of Christian thinking today, and I notice the opposition when they attack that position in our particular theology, they always try to label it as mechanistic, just exactly like you said, because they want to preserve the autonomy of their own reason, and we commonly in every day vernacular we see itself worked out in people who say: “I chose Jesus Christ.” etc, when the scripture says exactly the opposite. And so, I think what it really is that the hostility toward predestination is the same hostility that was in the Garden, and that the principle reason for it is that man wants to preserve his own autonomy, he wants to believe that he makes the decisions, that he is sovereign, really.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I have said this before, but I think it is well to repeat it, because I think it is so apropos to any discussion of the subject. Calvin made it clear when he wrote about predestination that this was a doctrine not for disputation, but for the comfort of the saints. I never understood what that meant until in the forties when I went to the Indian reservation as a missionary, and I was the only pastor within a hundred miles in any direction; so I had a great many dying people on the reservation and off the reservation to minister to, and I believed in predestination but I wasn’t comfortable with it, it was something that I found difficult to discuss with anybody, so I just steered clear of it and believed it.

Well, when I was calling on people who were dying and were often in great pain, I found they were asking questions as to the why of things that led directly to the question of predestination, so I had to answer it, and I did it by reading scripture, and in particular reading from Romans. And the thing that amazed me and thrilled me too was that this brought joy to dying people. Because what it said was, all that they had experienced and the suffering that they were in was not meaningless and senseless, it was a part of Gods plan and it was going to bring greater good to them, that all things do work together for good; it meant that there was a cosmic purpose that went into every atom of their being, and their joy over it was very remarkable and very humbling to me, because here I was hesitant about talking about it, and they were making me, and the Holy Spirit was bringing joy into their hearts because of it. And these, some of them, were people who were just being converted. Yes?

[Audience Member] Is it possible that in John the 6th chapter would be the reason why all of his disciples left him, and therefore it is a hard saying, who can believe it? Because Jesus said that they had nothing to do with their salvation.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very, very true, an excellent comment. People insist on having a God they can understand, which means a God equal to themselves or smaller than themselves, but precisely because God is God He is always going to be beyond our capacity to understand; but… yes, but we know that God is consistent to Himself, so that what we know of God tells us how marvelous He is, and to all that we cannot understand of him, is consistent with what we do.

[Audience Member] Would you say that, I think you alluded to this, that those who are (rabid bewildered?) suspect to their understanding of salvation?

[Rushdoony] Yes, because they are saying: “I save myself.” Now sometimes their faith may be better than their reasoning but… yes.

[Audience Member] Well, it is what they have been taught, isn’t it; a lot of times you know, you tell a child and they will accept what you say, and it is infant spiritually, if you say ‘this is what happened’ I can see that it happened for years in my life, but this is what it is, and that is scripture and you aren’t going to refuse scripture, so you go along until all of sudden the Spirit, God opens your eyes to the scriptures in other ways.

[Rushdoony] Exactly. I would say the same thing is true of those who go around trying to clobber people with the doctrine of predestination. You see, these things are for our comfort and strengthening, not for disputation.

[Audience Member] That would be the antinomianism type of situation, wouldn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Yes, Yes. Well, I think our time is just about up, let us bow our heads for the benediction. Oh Lord our God, how marvelous are Thy ways. We thank Thee that by Thy sovereign grace we have been made Thine, that we have been given the joy of salvation and have the sure and certain knowledge that all things work together for good, because Thou hast loved us, and Thou hast ordained every hair of our head, every atom of our being, in terms of thy glorious purpose. Bless us ever to Thy service.

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.