Living by Faith - Romans

The Faith Foundation of Morality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 45-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 045

Dictation Name: RR311X45

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Seeing that 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. Oh Lord our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy hand is ever upon us for good; that Thou art He who doth guide us in all our ways, and doth make all the evil in our lives work together for good; that Thou art able to take our sins and shortcoming and make them a means of blessing. And so we gather together to praise Thee, to rejoice in Thy government, and to dedicate ourselves afresh unto Thee, that day after day, with all of our heart, mind, and being, we may serve Thee with faithfulness and in joy. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is from Romans 11:1-6, our subject: The Faith Foundation of Morality. The Faith Foundation of Morality, Romans 11:1-6.

“11 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

2 God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying,

3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.

4 But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.

5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

Paul was writing to Christians who were still mainly of a Jewish origin; although increasingly numbers of them who were gentiles came into the church. Thus as Paul writes, he is writing with an eye on his Jewish readers, and also the gentile readers. The Jews were both respected and disliked in the Roman Empire. Their education and their abilities gave them clear advantages, so that even very important Romans expressed interest in Hebraic thought.

On the other hand, their privileged status under Roman law was a source of irritation to many; the fact that Judea was the center of a disproportionate amount of Imperial spending, and Jerusalem had been made into a model city, a particular beautiful and splendid one; and its faith protected and given a privilege greater than any other of the various religions within the empire, all this upset many.

On top of that, there was the Jewish separatism. Their strong sense of being separate from others. And this impressed the citizens of the Greco Roman Empire, and the subjects as well, as proud and arrogant, sometimes rightly so, and sometimes wrongly so. Thus Paul is writing in effect, in a mine field. He knows that if he says ‘God has cast away His people’ there will be great joy on the part of many. On the other hand, Paul’s concern is as a very intensely loyal Israelite, but above all his concern is the truth of God.

And so he answers the question, knowing the Old Testament fully, knowing that many verses like Psalm 94:14 declare: “For the Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance.” And so Paul says: “God will not cast away His people. Proof? I myself am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” The Jewish nature of the church, he said, is obvious; the Israelite character of it, there are Jews and Israelites alike in the church, and I am one of them. Of course, by the end of the first century there were, it is estimated, a half a million Christians in the Roman Empire, overwhelmingly Jewish, but increasingly gentile as well.

However, the Jewish character of the church did not end with the apostolic era, there were several Medieval Popes who were Jewish. The music of the churches, eastern and Catholic, is very heavily a reflection of the temple music, to the very tunes, to the language, and more. In the church of Armenia, even the words associated with the church are taken wholesale from the Hebrew. In Protestantism, more than a few hymns in our hymnals come from Ancient Israel. One of the hymns which is a favorite of mine, the God of Abraham praise, in its wording and its tune, goes back to Israel.

Paul therefore says: “God has not cast away His people.” He does not say ‘He has not cast away Israel’ but ‘His people.’ So he lays the ground work for a distinction between the nation and the people. Through the centuries the number of converts who have entered the church from Judaism has been very great; as a matter of fact the contribution to scholarship on the part of many of these converts has been very great. In Evangelical circles, the most widely read book on Jesus is The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim, deservedly a classic, written by a convert.

Thus, Paul makes clear: God hath not cast away His people, although the nation as the covenant bearer is rejected. A remnant he will say shortly, and does in verse 5, there is a remnant according to the election of grace. So God has taken His people and established a continuity.

In the second verse he says: “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias?” (or Elijah) “how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.”

Paul is laying the foundation here for a tremendous distinction. He says very clearly: “God hath not cast away His people.” Those of Israel whom God predestined to grace are not cast away, and he himself is evidence. Our Lord predicted in Matthew 24 that Israel as a nation was cast away for a long season, but to say that the nation is rejected as God’s covenant witness is not to say that all the people are cut off. The remnant establishes a continuity; God foreknew what Israel would, because history has no surprises for God.

Israel had been called to be a missionary people, but they had identified the covenant with their race rather than with God’s grace. And so, Paul makes a very significant point, he goes to Elijah. Israel was about to be condemned and disappear as a nation. In our Lord’s day what had been Israel was now Galilee, no longer an independent realm. After its destruction by Assyria it never again became a kingdom, it was just a district: Galilee. Now, Elijah had declared the destruction that was to come, and that there would be a remnant. This did not mean the end of Israel, except as an independent nation. As a nation it had been forever separated from God’s covenant. Judea reestablished itself as a covenant state, but never Israel. Did this mean that there were no longer an Israelite people who were in the covenant? Not at all. So Paul is saying by analogy, ‘Judea now is going to be destroyed as a nation; but does this mean that God has forsaken His people? No, He has forsaken the state. It has ceased to be a covenant state, but I have a remnant, and will always have a continuing remnant among these my people.’

Elijah had spoken of the hostility of Israel being so great, that they were destroying everything associated with the covenant, even to digging up the foundation rock of an altar. They wanted to obliterate everything that was of God. There is a parallel with regard to Judea, our Lord says in Matthew 24 that not one stone would be left standing on another of the temple, that in effect they were destroying the temple, although the Romans would do the digging.

Then in verse four we have God’s answer to Elijah: “But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.”

Now we are not to assume that there was literally a seven thousand group, because seven is a number in the Bible which is symbolic of fullness. God is saying “I have a reserve of all the people I need to establish my continuity, they may be seven thousand or seventy thousand, but I have my remnant, and the future is going to be built up by those who are my faithful remnant. I have reserved or kept to myself this force.” And even now Paul is saying, there is a remnant in Judea whom God has reserved unto Himself, so that though the nation is going to be destroyed, the Jewish and Israelite remnant will continue and will do its work.

Then we come to the sixth verse, the last in this section: “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”

We will stop there for a moment. What Paul is saying is, ‘this remnant is not a remnant because these were people who on their own were good. Not at all, they were good because God in His mercy redeemed them, made them a new creation. So it is by grace, not of works, not on the basis of their morality.’ When the Bible talks about works it can mean works of law, or moral works generally.

Then the second sentence in verse 6: “But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.”

If you look at any edition of the Bible except the King James, that sentence will be missing. All the modern translations leave it out, and a great many other passages as well. As a matter of fact, at the rate they are continuing, we are going to have a very short Bible, a Readers Digest condensation on the part of the scholars in another century or so; because whenever they find a manuscript that doesn’t have a verse they put a question mark, and sooner or later find reason to eliminate it. Now, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but there is a great deal of truth to it. Their premise is: “It is not in all the manuscripts and therefore it is of dubious character.” Well, of course these manuscripts were defective ones that were discards. The Received Text has this sentence.

The word ‘otherwise’ in the Greek can be rendered this way which makes more sense: “But if it be of works, then it is no more grace, since then work is no more work.” What does it mean? It is one of the key sentences in Paul’s development of Romans, and without it we lose a critical point. Let me say of the commentators, Charles Hodge alone treats it as authentic although he doesn’t say much about it.

What Paul has been saying, what our Lord said when he said: “By their fruits shall ye know them” and what James said is that faith without works is dead. And Paul made clear that faith establishes the law, that faith has fruits.

Now, what Paul is saying is, where there is no grace, there are no works, no morality; that if you take away the faith you take away morality; that where faith wanes, morality wanes; that where faith disappears good works disappear. The idea that men can be virtuous and moral and capable of doing good without faith in God is wrong. This is what Paul is saying. The divorce of faith and works has created the illusion that ungodly men can create a just social order.

Since the enlightenment, and especially since the French and Russian revolutions, this has been the premise of Western man, and the source of the decay of civilization. The Enlightenment saw two sources of morality, they said: “First, Christianity is necessary for the common man; of course it is mostly superstition, but those people need it, it is the only thing that will keep them in line.” John Locke said and I quote: “The taking away of God, thought even but in thought, dissolves all.” And for him, Christianity needed to be promoted as a good system of morality, whereby people could be kept in line, otherwise there would be anarchy.

Voltaire was strong on this point also. Doubts were legitimate, and unbelief on the part of the elite, the rational man, were necessary. But the thing to do was never to let the common man know there is no God, and we have the story how on one occasion Voltaire silenced his guests who were talking their unbelief, when his servant came into the room, because he said: “If he hears this kind of talk and believes there is no God, he will murder me in my bed and rob me of everything.” So Voltaire and the Philosophes, the rationalists generally, said: “Christianity is superstition, but we need it to keep people in line, we who are the elite, the rational men. We have a superior source of morality that the common man is incapable of, and it is reason. And by reason we can establish a rational morality that will enable us to behave and also to rule the masses.”

And so, the foundations were forged by these Enlightenment men for revolution, for an elite group managing the masses who were to be kept in ignorance and superstition. But then with Rousseau and others a third plan developed: “We will take away Christianity from the masses, after all it is nothing but superstition, because we have found the key, the way of inculcating, of teaching morality to the masses, and it is by means of a rationalistic education. Get them early, put them through state schools, and cram their minds with what the state feels they should be, and they will pick up then a rational morality.” This is the philosophy of public education, of public schools, they are anti Christian institutions, whose purpose is to provide a morality without God, without the Bible, and that is why the Bible has step by step been removed from the public schools. It has been felt that: “We can use them better without Christianity, because that makes them less receptive to all the glorious revolutionary progress that we have in mind.”

All this of course has been a revival of Greco Roman Paganism. Against all this Paul says: “No faith, no works, no morality.” It is that clear. There is no other source of morality, of good works, and to believe so is an illusion. And this is the faith of the whole of the New Testament, of scripture Old and New. James says that faith without works is dead, and in so saying he is summarizing the law and the gospels. Our Lord is strict on the fact that by their fruits shall ye know them. Morality without faith is like a tree without roots, it soon wilts and perishes.

So Paul is emphatic. If it be of works, then it is no more grace; since works is then nor more works. So to deny the faith is to deny both grace and morality, and this is what modern man has done. The results are all around us, and they are rapidly destroying the world. This is why the revival now underway is the hope of the future, because to reestablish things in terms of the word of God is to say that there is no righteousness, no morality, no good works, apart from faith in the Triune God. Let us pray.

Thy word oh Lord is truth, and Thy truth oh Lord alone can save men and society. We thank Thee that Thou didst send the truth, Jesus Christ, into the world, that we might know Him, might believe in him, and might become in Him a new creation. Bless us in our faith and works, and make us ever strong in Thy service. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Do you suppose the remnant was Christian?

[Rushdoony] The remnant? Yes, they were the apostles, they were the missionaries, the ones who went out, and the martyrs for the first generation or more was made up of this remnant… you mean in Elijah’s day? In Elijah’s day they did believe in the coming of the messiah, they did believe in the Lord, yes, and both the Israelite remnant and the Jewish remnant were that way, and God sent His men to instruct them and to prepare them for what they were going to endure.

[Otto Scott] Well, I think it is an important point, because it is not often sent; and the Falwell argument and others is that Judaism is equal to Christianity.

[Rushdoony] The Premill argument is that it is the nation rather than the people whom God is going to establish again in His covenant, and this is what Paul is denying here. He is saying it is His people that God has not cast away. He has just finished saying: “Yes the covenant nation is cut off, but the people, the covenant is always open to them.” The Premill argument thoroughly overlooks this distinction. Yes John?

[John] I was reading that nine volume series on the History of Philosophy by Copleston, and it is interesting, Copleston is a scholastic philosopher, Thomist in a sense, with the characteristic intent to be as kind as possible to the humanists, and even though he tries to be extremely kind and forgiving to what the humanist philosophers have said, in volumes 5, 6 and 7, just read those three volumes, you can really get a sense of the continuity between Rousseau and Kant, and (?), Schleiermacher, Hegel and all the rest of them, and it really comes out because in just a period of a little over a 150 years, the whole departure became self conscious in terms of getting away from scripture and away from God, and the tendencies that you talked about there in terms of Rousseau and Voltaire and the rest of them really come out in Copleston’s history, though not nearly as well as they could have come out had it been done by a Protestant scholar.

[Rushdoony] Well, it has been the insistence of most scholars that there can be morality without religion, and I believe Huxley in the 20’s wrote a book on that subject.

[Audience Member] It occurred to me, I’d listened to some Jewish commentators about what they are trying to do in Israel, and what they hope to do, and how they recognize their problems, but if in adhering to the Old Testament if they had taken seriously the law, just the law in the Old Testament, wouldn’t Israel be a whole lot better off today? I mean, they could’ve been storng just using the laws as a means.

[Rushdoony] If they used the law they wouldn’t have the inflation.

[Audience Member] Well, among other things, but there would be others too I am sure, they wouldn’t have communes and a lot of other things… But they could have been a very strong nation, couldn’t they, just adhering to that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, they would have been.

[Audience Member] Even without the faith?

[Rushdoony] Even without the faith, because if you abide by the law you gain a measure of strength, up to a point; but the problem with that position is that men will abandon the law if they don’t have the faith. It is impossible after a while to be faithful to something unless you believe in the God who gave it. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

All glory be to Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, who of Thy grace and mercy has called us to be Thy people, and has made us a new creation in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that we have an eternal security in Him, that Thou art He who dost make all things work together for good to them that believe, to them who are the called according to Thy purpose. Confirm us oh Lord in these things so that to the very marrow of our bones we know that we are Thine, and that in all things Thou art very near; and bless us as we serve 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.