Living by Faith - Romans

The Rhythm of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 34-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 034

Dictation Name: RR311R34

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth; this is the confidence 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.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou who art in heaven in all glory art also with us; that Thou hast made us Thy dwelling place and Thy temple, and has given us such great and marvelous promises in Thy word. Give us grace day by day so to walk that we may always be fit dwellings, fit habitations, for Thy Spirit. Give us joy in Thy service, make us strong and zealous in our calling, and make us ever mindful that we are more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is from Romans 8:31-39, our subject: The Rhythm of Life. Romans 8:31-39, The Rhythm of Life.

“31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.

34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To interpret scripture is a humbling and frightening task, because to interpret wrongly is to misrepresent God. The term ‘Apocrypha’ is used to describe fraudulent books of the Bible, books that pretend to be canonical, but are not; books that pretend to be revelation from God, but are not. The word apocrypha comes from the Greek, apo, away, and crypto, as in cryptogram, conceal. And any false interpretation becomes apocrypha because it conceals rather than reveals the truth of God.

In this passage in particular we come to the climax of Paul’s magnificent statement of the working of the Spirit, the providential government of God, and the fact that all things do work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

In verse 31 Paul begins in this passage: “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Paul here sums up his previous discussion. Neither we nor our enemies, he says, are stronger than God; and God has declared that all things work together for good to them that love Him. Therefore neither we nor our enemies nor anything else can prevent that good from being accomplished.

Luther’s comment on this is especially good. He said and I quote: “If God be for us, who is the judge of all and whose omnipotence calls into being all things, no one can be against us. Since everything that He has created must be subject to the creator, so also the converse is true. If God be against us, no one can be for us.”

We should remember that the words ‘for us’ and ‘against us’ here as Leenhardt has pointed out, has reference to a court of law; and we shall see subsequently that some legal terminology is included, so that no one, Paul says, can be our accuser, no one can do us harm, in any ultimate sense. God is our redeemer and our defender.

We are therefore to have complete assurance. This does not mean that we do not have struggles, that we do not have our share of grief’s and tribulations; the world is not yet transformed into paradise. But, if God makes all things work together for good to those who love Him, it is by leading them, as Leenhardt said, to the victory of faith, not in sparing in their trials. So that God uses the very things the world sends to destroy us to build us up. And we are to remember in the face of all these difficulties, these problems, that God does make them work together for good.

Then in verse 32 Paul continues: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”

This is a magnificent statement. Paul says that God having given His only Son to die for us, anything else that we need is small by comparison, that our daily problems and our burdens, our difficulties are nothing as compared with what He has already done for us. Therefore, the greatest thing having been done for us already, the rest is little by comparison.

The term ‘all things’ cannot be limited as some people today try to, to spiritual things. All things means all things, physical and spiritual, every kind of thing God makes work together for good, and therefore He also freely gives us all things.

Hodge’s statement here is excellent; Romans 8, by the way, has a habit of bringing out the best in any good commentator, so that some very eloquent passages, among the most eloquent in all the literature of exegesis, come from comments on the 8th chapter of Romans. And Hodge says and I quote: “If God has done the greater, He will not leave the less undone. The gift of Christ includes all other gifts. If God so loved us as to give His Son for us, He will certainly give the Holy Spirit to render that gift effectual. This is presented as the ground of confidence. The believer is assured of salvation, not because he is assured of his own constancy, but simply because he is assured of the immutability of the divine love, and he is assured of its immutability because he is assured of its greatness. Infinite love cannot change; the love that spared not the eternal Son of God but freely gave Him up cannot fail of its object.”

Thus this passage among other things teaches us Christian assurance, or as the Catholics term it, Christian confidence. It is ironic incidentally that they do criticize the doctrine of Christian assurance, but they have one, the doctrine of Christian confidence. So much of the argument between churches is sometimes over a matter of words.

In verse 33 Paul asks: Who can question God? “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.”

If God has justified us, how can anyone in heaven or hell or on earth question Gods choice? Satan is by indirection referred to, he is the great accuser. He denies the fact of our election, and insists that we are vulnerable to his power and charge. This, Paul says, is nonsense. Gods chosen, Gods elect, we are secure; because we are Gods work and choice, not our own, not that of any man.

Paul here echoes Isaiah 50:8-9, which read: “He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.”

These verses command us to walk in holy boldness because God is our security. We must remember that while our election includes our eternal security in heaven, it begins with our calling to serve and obey God here. The word ‘elect’ which Paul uses is the Greek ‘eklektos’ from ‘ek’, from, and ‘lego’ ‘to pick out’. The word originates in military vocabulary, so again Paul is referring to military language. We have been drafted by God, we have been chosen by Him. The word subsequently began to refer to political campaigns and election, but in its origin and central meaning it refers to a draft. God drafts us to serve Him and to live with Him eternally.

The word: Who shall lay anything to the ‘charge’ of Gods elect, is accuse, or egkaleo, to call to account, accuse, or file a charge. It refers to Gods court of law, so that again we have the legal terminology, legal and military. Paul is not talking mere pietism, he is talking about a government, the government of God, its draft of us, its court of law, and how that court of law deals with the charges against us, so that Paul says: With God as our defender and redeemer, how can anyone bring an accusation to court against us?

Then in verse 34 Paul says: “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”

No one has a right to condemn us except God Himself, and He is our redeemer, having given His Son as our substitute to die for us and to free us from the sentence of the law. God has created us, He has created us for His purpose, and no one can say that we are to suit their purpose, and criticize us for failing to meet their grounds. We can only be criticized on Gods terms, and God says: ‘You are acquitted. You are declared righteous, you are justified through my Son.’

Sanford Mills expressed it beautifully when he said and I quote: “The believer is so situated and protected in the plan and program of God, that nothing can alter this position. God is the planner, He is the keeper, and He alone will consummate this plan and program for every believer. All this is unalterable, because it is in the sovereign hands of God.”

Here is a magnificent fact, and commentator after commentator finds here their most glorious expression. Sanday and Headlam, usually very pedestrian and technical commentators, broke into these magnificent words when they said: “It is not a dead Christ on whom we depend, but a living. It is not only living Christ, but a Christ enthroned, a Christ empowered; it is not only a Christ in power, but a Christ of ever-active sympathy, constantly, if we may so speak, at the Fathers ear; and constantly pouring in intercessions for His struggling people on earth.”

Christ, in other words, is our advocate and our intercessor. Christ died for us, for our sins. He is risen for our justification, He is at the right hand of God, He makes intercession for us. Our Lord says in John 11:42, speaking to the Father: “Thou hearest me always.” We therefore know that Christ’s intercessions for us are always heard at the throne of God. Not only is God for us, but Christ is for us, and the Holy Spirit prays within us. And this is why we cannot lose, all things work together for good to them that love Him, and that are the called according to his purpose.

So Paul can say: “Who is he that condemns us?” Condemnation here is a legal term that involves death. Who would dare to condemn those for whom Christ has already died, and has resurrected from the death of sin into the life of righteousness, and has promised them eternal life? If anyone demands a victim for what we have done, the victim has already been provided, it is Jesus Christ. He has undergone the condemnation and the penalty, and has destroyed the power of death; and this conqueror over death now sits on the tribunal of heaven at the right hand of the supreme judge, and now He is our advocate, and as the accuser seeks to overwhelm us, we see him overwhelmed. Christ at the right hand of God is now associated with God the Father in His universal dominion.

And so, Paul can say in verse 35: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

Tribulation refers to every kind of trouble, distress to our inner feelings of grief, of depression, of being overwhelmed with things around us; persecution refers to tyrannical violence against us. And Paul says none of these things can separate us from the love of Christ. Neither these, nor famine, nor nakedness, or peril, or sword. The love of God the Father, the redemption of God the Son, and the indwelling of God the Spirit make us inseparable from the triune God.

Then in verse 36: “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

We are defined by our Lord, and so when the world sees us, it instinctively strikes at Christ. Whether they be people near to us or far from us, it is Christ in us that is the offense. We have our problems, we have our sins and our shortcomings, our quirks, we may not do enough or we may come on too strong, there are any number of things that can be said about us as individuals, but Paul says ‘it is for Thy sake that we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ It is for His sake that the world strikes at us. Since it cannot strike at Christ when they are hostile to the Lord, whether they admit it or not they strike at us, and use our sins and our shortcomings, our little quirks and foibles as an excuse. We must see the heart of the problem, and we must see where the offense is, it is at the essential point.

In verse 37 Paul continues: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”

A magnificent verse. Paul is referring to the Roman conquerors, who came into Rome with a triumphal entry, and with a great arch erected for them, bringing captive kings and generals. Paul refers to this image as being greater than a conqueror, again in Ephesians 4:8. We are, he says, in Christ, in the face of all these problems, in the face of our inner distress that sometimes blinds us to the wealth and strength of our position, more than conquerors; greater than the most powerful imperial rulers.

And so he concludes in verses 38 and 39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing can separate us. Our relation to God is established and unchangeable. Paul here celebrates the total providence, the total gracious government of God. He is talking and continues in the 9th chapter, about predestination; to deny it leads to a meaningless world of chance.

There are only two alternatives, logically; predestination and chance. Philosophers explain how you can reconcile human responsibility and predestination, and how in fact you cannot separate the two, they go together; but we are simply asked to believe, by faith.

To believe in predestination is to oppose statist predestination. There has to be order in the world, an established order, and either God establishes it, or man through the state does. So whenever belief in predestination wanes, statism arises in power and begins to crush the church. This happened at the end of the Middle Ages and is happening again.

The state is not created in God’s image, man is; the state is not commanded to increase and multiply, man is. As Augustine said so profoundly and wisely: “To weaken predestination is to weaken grace.” And we can add: to weaken predestination is also to weaken freedom, because it creates the tyrant state, the predestinating power of state.

I said earlier, and I quoted several commentators to demonstrate it, that commentators wax eloquent when they come to this passage of Paul in particular, and many another. It is interesting that when Paul speaks about the providential power of God and about the predestination of God he becomes so lyrical; it reaches the status of the greatest poetry and surpasses it. Why? Paul is not an armchair theologian. Paul wrote out of a background of very great suffering, of tremendous persecution. He himself recounts it, and it is worthwhile to read his summary in 2 Corinthians 11:23-33.

He says: “23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.

24 Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.

25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;

26 In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;

27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.

29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?

30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.

31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.

32 In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me:

33 And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.”

Paul gives us an account of numerous beatings, three times shipwrecked, stoned, in prison often, and so on. Not an arm chair theologian. But when he speaks about the predestination of God which led to all these things, he waxes eloquent and lyrical, because he says: Here is the meaning of life. In a world which is not yet ready to be righteous and holy, God takes everything, the worst things that happen to me and to you, and he makes them work out into a magnificent symphony.

This brings to mind of course that great verse, John 7:38, where our Lord says: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Rivers of living water, that is, the Holy Spirit will flow out of us, out of our innermost being, and we shall be servants of God.

Now the word ‘flow’ in Greek is a form of the word ‘rheo;’ another form of the word is ‘rythmos’ which we have in English as ‘rhythm.’ Out of us, out of our innermost being, because of the Holy Spirit, Paul says, shall flow out the rhythm of life, if we believe in Jesus Christ. Then we have got the rhythm! We are in the Spirit, all things work together for good when we believe and obey God, when we know His predestinating power, then the Holy Spirit works powerfully and freely in us, and we have the rhythm of life; and Paul is talking here about that rhythm, about how it works to make everything work for good; and it is our calling therefore to allow Gods rhythm of life to go forth and to govern our total life in the world around us.

Predestination cannot be made mechanical without denying it. It is inseparable from the doctrine of the Spirit. To believe in predestination as Paul teaches it is to hear the music of creation, of Gods plan for our lives, and to know that we are His, and the rhythm of creation works in us and through us to accomplish His holy purpose. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, how great and marvelous Thou art, and Thy ways altogether glorious. Give us grace day by day to rejoice in the indwelling Spirit, to know the rhythm of life, to serve Thee with all our heart, mind and being, and to know that Thou art He who dost make all things work together for good to them that love thee, to them who are the called according to Thy purpose. Our God we thank Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

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

[John] Ah, well, first, there were several people that came in that didn’t get a chance to sign the birthday card for Dr. Van Til over here on (?) desk, I would like everyone to sign it.

The other thing was, it is interesting that all the legal terms, the governmental concepts and ideas that are always used, and it seems to me like what Paul is describing is the government of the New Jerusalem from the spiritual perspective.

[Rushdoony] A very good point. Yes.

In a sense we can say that this is the only true libertarian philosophy, in that the Holy Spirit totally commanding us, makes everything work together for good, and when we are perfectly sanctified with perfect freedom, we serve eternally.

[John] It seems like predestination also is a necessary presupposition for a postmillennial eschatology.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very true. Any other questions or comments? Yes.

[Audience Member] I heard a parent recently say that she was having a great deal of trouble with her 17 year old daughter, because she was misbehaving, and then she would say to her mother: “Now don’t worry, I know I am saved, and I can’t lose my salvation, so don’t worry about the naughty things I do, I will still go to heaven.”

[Rushdoony] I think the daughter was abusing the faith. She should be the one who worried most about her sins. So she was taking advantage of her mother at that point. Yes?

[Audience Member] How common today is it, the attitude that you can lose your salvation based upon your own choice, obviously the scriptures today teach against that.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the denial of eternal security has been in this century very common. I would say however, it is a waning belief, with the growing reawakening of faith all over the world, there is again a recognition of the doctrine of eternal security. Yes?

[Audience Member] Is it only logical that if a person takes an Arminian point of view that automatically would come the lack of eternal security?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] Because if it is their decision to receive Christ then it could be their decision to un-receive Christ.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, and it is interesting that the break down of Arminian theology begins at the point of eternal security. When they begin to recognize that doctrine, then step by step the rest of their theology crumbles. This is why some of the Arminian (and be sure that you don’t confuse it with Armenian because it comes from a Dutchman named Arminius) it is at this point that there has been a dramatic shift in the past 15-20 years on the doctrine of eternal security.

[Audience Member] Another point, isn’t it a fact that humanistically, human reasoning would never come to the conclusion of predestination, that it is by election and it isn’t by our choice, and no matter how the doctrine… and that is why I think so many of them who eventually come to eternal security and still hold on to the free will, you know, they accept both positions because the Bible says so, but they can’t understand it; humanistically they have to because it says so, and yet they don’t accept it completely because it is a compromise.

[Rushdoony] Yes, if it is approached rationalistically, people do try to accept only that which they can comprehend, which…

[Audience Member] Only the Holy Spirit gives the understanding or the assurance that this is true, isn’t that right?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and it is ultimately a matter of faith, not of understanding.

[Audience Member] And that faith is the gift of God, it is not in the human being himself.

[Rushdoony] If we only operated in terms of what we understand, most of us could never use electricity.

Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads for the benediction. Oh Lord our God, whose ways are past our finding out, and whose ways are altogether glorious and gracious, we rejoice in our salvation, in Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the strength and comfort of the indwelling Spirit. Make us more than conquerors in all things we beseech 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.