Living by Faith - Romans

Natural Privilege and Creation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 39-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 039

Dictation Name: RR311U39

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Seeing we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Let us pray. We praise Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and we give thanks unto Thee that all things are in Thy hands, and that Thou doest all things well. We come to Thee therefore in a world where the ungodly take counsel against Thee, against Thine anointed, against Thy true church, and seek to destroy Thy kingdom and people. We thank Thee our Father 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; and that Thou shalt overrule the counsel of the ungodly, and make it fruitful and effectual for the establishment of the things that are of Thy kingdom. Strengthen us this day by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, and make us ever joyful in Thy kingdom, in Thy grace and mercy, and in the certainty of Thy government. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Romans 9:19-23; our subject is Natural Privilege and Creation. Natural Privilege and Creation, Romans 9:19-23.

“19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,”

As we have seen, Paul in Romans 8 sets forth the doctrine of predestination. He tells us that God ordained all things, not only did he ordain them, but he predestined them; whom He foreknew He predestinated, and He did this in terms of His absolute perfection, making all things work together for good to them that love Him, in terms of His calling and of His kingdom.

Then in Romans 9 Paul goes on to defend the doctrine of predestination against the critics, and he does it by taking the objections that they would have, and nailing them for their ungodliness and implicit evil.

We saw last time how he dealt with the objection that predestination is unrighteous, unjust; and the point he makes emphatically: “How can there by injustice or unrighteousness in God?” We are Christians, we do not believe in abstract principles of goodness and righteousness, justice or truth, apart from God. That is Greek philosophical thinking. For us, God is love and God is justice and God is mercy, God is wrath, and there is nothing whereby we can judge God; God is the judge, and His nature expresses all whereby any man can judge anything. Having settled that, and pointed out that for us to dream of an idea of justice is to say that what we say is justice, and we are God over God.

Now in this section, 19-23 he goes on to another objection: “Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?”

Now he says, the objectors say: “This is coercion, God is coercing me, He is not allowing me free will.” Paul has already knocked on the head any idea that predestination is based on foreknowledge. Predestination, Gods eternal plan, is prior.

Now he deals with this matter of coercion, God coercing us, and therefore how can God find fault? For who hath resisted His will? “If I am exactly what God created me to be, and therefore I commit all kinds of sins, then how can God blame me? I have been coerced, I have been made to do these things by God.”

Now Paul sees all these objections as mans underhanded desire to be his own God in terms of Genesis 3:5. To be his own God, and to determine good and evil for himself, to say: ‘this is right and this is wrong, this is just and unjust, true or not true, because I say so.’ But just as justice is not an independent, neutral norm, but God Himself, and God cannot be judged by Himself, He is the Lord; so too God’s will, and the word means in Greek His ‘deliberate decreed purpose,’ cannot be resisted by mans will or whim. No creature can resist God. There is no cause nor justice higher than God and no determination apart from Him.

Now, Paul has previously said: ‘God determines all things.’ He has also said we are responsible, that we are sinners, and we cannot blame God for our sin. We are required to believe both, not to choose.

Now people insist that this is very difficult to believe. Well, in a sense there is an ultimate mystery about it, but on the other hand, to believe in the coincidence of Gods absolute predestinating causality and man’s responsibility as a cause, should not be very difficult. The coincidence of causes is something we accept every day. The old Newtonian idea of a single causality is exploded. We know that in every event there are a multiplicity of causes that come to focus, that in us there are thousands of genes, and all kinds of causes that came to focus in our birth; that every time someone goes down a highway, there are a multiplicity of causes that determine why he is one that road. And we are all determined by a vast number of things around us. We get up in the morning because our work requires us to, and because our parental training taught us we must be responsible. We get up at work in the morning because we have to make a living, and so on and so forth, a 101 reasons go into the determination of everything we do, a coincidence of reasons. That is no problem, but when it comes to saying what is philosophically sound, that the contingency of secondary causes, us, is only possible by the predetermination of the primary cause, God; in other words, that there is only human responsibility because there is divine predestination, then our mind boggles at it because we are sons of Adam. We make no problem with things in the natural world, scientific things that are beyond our understanding, but when Gods determination comes in, “Why, that is coercion.” And men object because God is involved, and because God is the Lord.

Then in verse 20, Paul turns as in 21, to a very familiar Old Testament image, the potter and the clay: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?”

This is a familiar image in the Old Testament. Mans relationship to God says Paul, is of a creature to a creator, of clay to a potter, and the potter makes the vessel whatever he wants it to be. When men ask: “Why hast Thou made me thus?” They are in effect asking: “Why am I a creature? Why am I not God? Why should I not predestine things, instead of God doing it? Why am I not autonomous, and my own God?”

Now, when the Old Testament used the image of the potter and the clay, it knew that this image was hateful to men. It tells us we are the pots, and God is the potter. Now some of us tend to go to pot, but we don’t like to be called potty in any sense. But Paul says, ‘God is the creator, we are the clay.’ God makes clear that there is a hierarchy of being. But He also makes clear that though we are His creation we have been made in His image, and we are in Psalm 8:5-8 described as a little lower than God. But men want more. The only meaning however in our lives, is God given. There is no independent meaning, no independent purpose possible in the universe, and we only find ourselves and realize our own power and potentiality in terms of God and His meaning.

Paul says in verse 21: “Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?” God can create one vessel unto honor, and another to dishonor, because God is the Lord. He can use man for His own purpose.

More than a century ago, Godet, a great commentator on Romans said concerning this verse and I quote: “The lump, therefore, represents the whole of humanity; not humanity as God creates it, but in the state in which He finds it every moment when He puts it to the service of His kingdom. This state includes for each individual the whole series of predeterminations which have gone to make him what he is. Let not Israel therefore say to God: “Thou hast no right to make of me anything else than a vessel of honor, and Thou hast no right to make of that other body, the gentiles, anything else than a base vessel. It belongs to God Himself to decide according to His wisdom the part that He will assign to every human being. The words of a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor in 2 Timothy 2:20-21 show clearly the truth of the standpoint which we have just expounded.”

Now, what is Godet saying? He is saying that we can for a time be made a vessel of honor, and then a vessel of dishonor. That God in His infinite mercy and grace can do with us as He chooses. So that in our lives we find that at one point we see a church, a group of people being used a vessel of honor, and then God uses them as a vessel of dishonor. They change, and God’s will manifests itself, His predestinating will; they are now vessels of dishonor.

So, what Paul is saying, because he is talking especially to Jews as well as Christians, and he is going to deal in the next chapter with Gods counsel, His eternal decree concerning Israel; for a time a vessel of honor, then a vessel of dishonor. So Paul is saying: ‘Don’t think you are standing just because you are now, take heed lest you fall. Remember, always, that you stand in the grace of God, and must be faithful in His service.’

You see, God in His predestination is not a deistic God, who predestines all things from eternity and then sat back. No, He not only did so, but He is active every moment in the historical process; and what God is governs everything that God does, and God is all righteous.

But man objects to Gods sovereignty because he wants autonomy and sovereignty. At the same time, ironically, those who object to predestination want a free claim on Gods mercy and grace whensoever man wills. In other words, they are going to be the determining factor: “God can’t determine me, but when I choose God has to give me His free grace and free mercy.” How arrogant. It turns the decree of predestination on its head, and says: “When I choose God, then God gives me His grace, because I determine all things.” The Arminian’s do not deny predestination, they secretly insist on man determining God.

Now, in verses 22 and 23 Paul strikes hard against this: “What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,”

Then in the 24th verse, which we will deal with more next time, he makes clear that this applies to Jews and Gentiles, even us whom He hath called, and not of the Jews only, but also the Gentiles. God, he says is long suffering and patient. Men imagine a vain thing, they demand the benefits of Gods lordship, while insisting on their own autonomy, their freedom to be their own God. But God is patient, and He has His glorious purpose afore prepared for His own.

Now the goal of natural privilege, the idea that man has certain rights, and that man can say: “I have my rights and God has to honor them.” The goal of natural privilege is to convert God into a natural resource that man can use. Now that is what happens with all though that is anti-Calvinistic, that is Arminian. It says: “Let God be there as a great resource, that when I want Him I can use Him; and when I need Him He will be there to answer me; but the rest of the time I can go my own way, I can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to God. But when I say what I want, God must say yes to me.” That is predestination by man.

For such people, God is only a human resource, and God as Lord is anathema; for God is Lord undercuts man’s natural rights, man’s natural privilege. But the only real world is God’s world, and Peter tells us that life itself is a grace from God, so that we are all born with the grace of life, so that from our first breath, we live by grace. And if God is the creator, we cannot live apart from Him, or choose the terms of our lives.

Psalm 47:4, a great verse declares: “He shall choose our inheritance for us.” we are made to His specifications, and for His purpose. But men want to find fault with God, but they cannot step outside of Gods world; there is no independence from God. As Proverbs 8:36 declares: “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me, love death.”

We are told in Proverbs 20:2 that if the fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion, whoso provoketh him into anger sinneth against his own soul, then how much more deadly is it to provoke God the Lord? But natural privilege, man’s assertion of human rights against God, makes claims against God and justifies itself.

We meet with it more than once in the Bible, as when God said to Jonah: “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said: ‘I do well to be angry, even unto death.’” Jonah was asserting his natural rights, his human rights, against God.

The issue, Paul says, raised by those claimants to natural privilege or human rights against God, is coercion. God’s order, they say, leads to coercion. And these people insist that they are for freedom. They are ready to allow man freedom, to do anything as long as it is between consenting adults; but the world has always lived under man-made coercion. The empires and states of the Old Testament, Rome, all the states since the Soviet Union, and the United States too; which of us paid our income tax with joy and thanksgiving, and said: “If it were abolished I would still pay it!” we are all coerced, but man objects to God, his creator, the only one who has ever been gracious to him in any true sense, who has given him the grace of life, and is long suffering with us. To that coercion, his eternal council, man objects.

Never has civilization from the days of Adam until now, been more coercive than ours. But of course our thinkers don’t see that, because since the modern philosophers began to destroy reason, reason has been identified with the state. The state is, in philosophy, from Locke and the others to the present day, especially since Hegel, the voice of reason incarnate. So the state, whether it butchers millions and puts them in slave labor camps, or whether it takes three missionaries on a ship of mercy off the coast of Greece and puts them in prison for giving a Greek New Testament to a Greek youth, or whether the state as in this country imprisons ministers for starting Christian schools and arrests parents for trying to educate their own children, it is the voice of reason, by definition.

And I have seen again and again in courtrooms, judges faced with evidence that in the local school children are not learning how to read, and the Christian parents on trial have their children so far in advance that there is no comparison with anything the public schools have; but what is the problem? They have disobeyed the voice of reason, the state.

The Marxists say that any resistance to the state is counter revolutionary violence, because if you resist reason which is the state incarnate, you are a violent person, you are irrational; and this is why the dissident leaders today are put into psychiatric hospitals, to be given shock therapy, and to be drugged. They are irrational according to the Soviet Union.

Paul as he writes works to stop every mouth, and to make all the world guilty before God of trying to play God. In Romans 3:19 he declares: “Let God be true, but every man a liar.”

God creates us, He does not coerce us. The humanist state is not our creator, it is the great coercer of the ages, seeking to establish its own plan of predestination, whereby all men can be governed by the new God walking on earth, the modern state. Paul exposes what men are trying to do. They are trying to take the ultimate power out of the hands of God, and put it into the hands of men; and this he says is blasphemy. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, Thy word is truth, and Thy word speaks to our every condition, and exposes all the pretensions of the human heart apart from Thee. Give us grace to love Thy word, to submit to Thy word, to rejoice n Thy word, and to obey it in every area of life and thought. We give thanks unto Thee that the government is upon Thy shoulders, and we rejoice oh Lord in the glorious fact that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Our God we thank Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Audience Member] I was thinking about the original form of government and the manner in which they appoint kinds, it is a religious ceremony, and whoever gets the throne submits to Jesus Christ; is that right? When we hear of the induction into office of a new ruler in Britain, a religious form is read, and it is a vow taken to submit to Jesus Christ, is that correct?

[Rushdoony] That is still true in Britain, and it is still true in this country in that the president and others are required to take an oath of office. The meaning of an oath is that you affirm the covenant, and you invoke all the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28. That is what an oath of office is about; an oath is a religious fact, it is constitutionally required, and it was required because the framers knew that it was an affirmation of the covenant. So, inescapably throughout the western world all the forms are there.

Now, what these mean is simply this: by an oath of office and by the coronation rite in Britain and elsewhere, the judgement of God is invoked upon a people for disobedience to the word of God. So it is inviting judgement.

[Audience Member] Now, supposing an atheist wants to become a citizen, he doesn’t have to swear under God, is that correct?

[Rushdoony] No, he doesn’t any longer.

[Audience Member] God is no longer mentioned in some cases.

[Rushdoony] In many states, God is no longer mentioned. In some states, when you take the oath of citizenship, God is mentioned. However, whether they do or not, an oath is a religious fact. There is no escaping it, it is a covenant fact; there is no such thing as an oath outside of the Biblical world, it doesn’t exist; it is a covenant fact. Yes?

[Audience Member] I don’t understand predestination, Jesus said that we are free to come to Him, and that if we accept Him He will accept us, that is free will…

[Rushdoony] No, that is not free will, it is responsibility.

[Audience Member] We can choose or not to choose if we are predestined…

[Rushdoony] Yes, but free will, free will is a philosophical concept which means freedom to do as one pleases. Only God has an absolute freedom.

[Audience Member] Do we not have freedom to choose or not to choose Christ?

[Rushdoony] We have responsibility, we have a limited, secondary freedom, that is all. You didn’t choose the day of your birth, the place of your birth, the race, the nationality, the place, nothing; or the aptitudes you inherited.

[Audience Member] Alright; if we are predestined, why bother? We are predestined to be Christian or not to be Christian.

[Rushdoony] Because, as I pointed out, we are told in scripture that we are also responsible, that there is a coincidence of causality, that we do not have the right to choose between predestination and responsibility, we are to believe both.

[Audience Member] Then what you are saying if I understand it correctly is that we are predestined, but in a broader sense, the details are left to us?

[Rushdoony] No. We are totally predestined, and yet we are totally responsible.

[Audience Member] I just don’t understand how we can be predestined…

[Rushdoony] I’m sure you don’t understand, but to understand it you would have to have the mind of God. Nobody understands a great many things that we deal with every day, electricity, digestion; we give it names, but we don’t wait until we understand electricity, and until we understand digestion to turn on the light switch or to eat. Life would stop if we said: “I will do nothing until I understand it.”

[Audience Member] …we cannot understand what predestined means?

[Rushdoony] I think we can understand as we believe more and more. As Saint Anselm said: “I do not understand in order that I might believe, but I believe in order that I might understand.” In other words, faith is the first step towards understanding. Yes?

[Audience Member] That connection, there is a very important verse in Acts 17:30, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:”

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good. Yes, you had a question?

[Audience Member] We come back to the incredible beauty of it all, that we don’t understand; if we did have all the answers and understood it all, everyone would be Christians.

[Rushdoony] Very good point, yes. It is an act of faith. First and always, faith proceeds understanding. Yes?

[Audience Member] Aren’t these homosexual churches based on the theory that God made them that way, therefore it is alright?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and it is the only point at which they are ready to say God did anything. They are free willers to the ‘nth degree, but they want to excuse their condition by saying: “God made me that way.”

Well, I think the response that we should say: “Well, God made us to go after you and do you in.” Yes?

[Audience Member] When Christ on the cross said “forgive them Father for they know not what they do,” what about their responsibility in that instance, what was the meaning of it?

[Rushdoony] Our Lords words on the cross were with respect to the Romans, the soldiers. The leaders of the people there, and the mobs who were gathered knew what was being done. Here was one who came as the Messiah of Israel, as one who was the Son of God, and they were rejecting Him. The Roman soldiers were just doing their duty, so He said: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Then you must remember the meaning of the word forgive; the word forgive is a legal term in the Bible, and in the Greek form it can mean two things, normally it means: “Charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered.” So that if somebody commits a sin and they make restitution, then the charges are dropped. It can also mean on occasion, and it does as Schilder pointed out in this particular case, the word on the cross: “Charges deferred for the time being.” So our Lord says of the Roman soldiers: “Father, defer the charges for the time being, for they know not what they do.”

So, that is the meaning there. Yes?

[Audience Member] Back concerning the whole discussion of predestination, I found it very helpful in the understanding of my free will or our free will, being secondary, from the standpoint that scripture teaches, that the natural man is at enmity with God, and therefore has no inclination to seek Him whatsoever, being in the nature of Adam, but where Christ says in John 15:16 “Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you” it makes it very clear that once we have been chosen, then it is clear that we have the desire to make that choice ourselves. And I know that doesn’t explain predestination as such, but certainly it is a comforting explanation of the scripture.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very true.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I remember a professor that said about the subject, some said it is deterrent to missions, but I was told that in the early days of, you know when the missions were really strong and scriptural, Presbyterians played a great role in mission works, and the Presbyterians were those who believed in predestination, and they had great success in their missionary work. So it is not a deterrent to missions.

[Rushdoony] It is not a deterrent, in fact when I was on the Indian Reservation in the 40’s, I went believing in predestination, but finding it a difficult doctrine to try to explain or deal with to people; and I very quickly found, and I have never forgotten, it was a profoundly moving experience, that since I was the only minister or missionary for a hundred miles in any direction I had a great many dying people to deal with, and their questions pushed inevitably at predestination, so that I was dealing with it over and over again with dying people; people who were sometimes in great pain and suffering. And the thing that startled me, and I have never forgotten, and it reminded me what Calvin said, that this doctrine is given not for disputation, not to be argued about, but for the comfort of the saints. These people who were dying, they would come to faith in many instances, just as I dealt with the subject in answer to their questions and turned to the verses, because apart from it, it meant that every bit of pain they were experiencing was meaningless; but to believe that there was a sovereign God who determined everything, every twinge of pain, every suffering they had, and that He did make it work together for good to them that loved Him and were called according to His purpose, suddenly gave meaning to all of life and to their pain. I found it a powerful means of converting people.

Yes?

[Audience Member] There is always the subject of the evil, and evil people too, because when you take away predestination, it leaves them free to do what they want, and that is not true.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it gives freedom to evil in the universe and makes it sovereign in its sphere.

[Audience Member] If you want freedom then you have got to give evil freedom.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer: All glory be to Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, who has made all things and is the master builder, has ordained all things in terms of Thy holy and all righteous purpose; give us grace to move in terms of Thy calling, Thy purpose, and Thy justice, and to rejoice in all Thy ways.

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.