Living by Faith - Romans

The Only Root

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 47-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 047

Dictation Name: RR311Y47

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 give thanks unto Thee that thy ways with us have been grace and mercy, that day after day Thou hast surrounded us with Thy protecting care, that in Thy wisdom Thou hast guided us in the difficult places, and made us strong where we are weak, and delivered where we are vulnerable, and protected where we feel defenseless. And so we come into Thy presence to rejoice in all Thy providential care, and to praise Thee as we ought; grant that by Thy word and by Thy Spirit we may be empowered for Thy Spirit, and to enjoy Thee forever, in Jesus name amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Romans 11:13-24, our subject: The Only Root. Romans 11:13-24.

“13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:

14 If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them.

15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?

16 For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.

17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;

18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.

19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.

20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:

21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.

22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.

24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”

There is a very bad habit in church and pew, in dealing with scripture and the content of preaching. It concerns people who are not there. Pastors have a habit of preaching against people who are not there, they are absent, and they rail about them to the people who are sitting there. That is certainly misplaced preaching, and very common is that kind of high order of spiritual blindness and stupidity on the part of listeners, who as they leave will say: “That was a wonderful message, just what my wife, or husband, or such and such friend needed.” Of course, they don’t need it.

Now too much of the churches effort is directed against people who are not going to hear them anyway, and that is wrong; it is empty negation, a waste of time, and it isn’t what the pulpit is for. Now, all too many people go to Saint Paul and assume that he is guilty of the same blindness and stupidity. They assume that so much of what we have been studying in Romans and elsewhere as well, is Paul talking about the Jews and what is happening to the Jews, and what they are; and the truth is as we are beginning to see, are we not, Paul is talking about Christians. And he is telling them very plainly: “Look, such things have happened here, and I am telling you this because this is what is going to happen to you unless you change your direction.”

So that, a great deal of nonsense has been written about Paul’s teaching concerning the Jews, when the whole point of the teaching is: “Be not high minded, but fear.”

Thus, we have to see Paul’s words as dealing with the church. He tells the church very plainly in Calvin’s words and I quote: “The vengeance which God had executed on the Jews is pronounced on the Gentiles, in case they become like them.”

And Paul says: If you are only thinking about these people, you are becoming a Pharisee, and the vengeance of God is going to fall upon you.

In verse 13 Paul begins by saying he glorifies his ministry to gentiles by success, because success will speed the salvation also of Israel. For Paul, the conversion of all the gentiles and the Jews is basic to history. He sees the triumph of God, he sees that all enemies shall be put under his feet, and the last enemy death shall be destroyed with the second coming. So Paul sees every kind of opposition eliminated, every kind of evil brought under control, every tribe, tongue and nation converted, and then the last enemy, death, is to be destroyed.

Now Paul says ‘I am an instrument in that goal, God is using me, and therefore as I succeed in what I am doing, I magnify my own ministry; and as I point out to you what must be done and make you instrumental in it, I am magnifying myself and calling attention to how God is using me and calling me.’

Then in verse 14 he speaks directly about the present, and he says: “If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them.”

He was not expecting any great turning in his lifetime; some of them. And of course he did. And his hope was to provoke them to emulation, to a recognition of what was happening, and where God’s power was manifest in his day. The fact that Paul’s realization is something in the future, that his hope is going to be deferred for centuries, does not deter him from doing what he must do. The fact that his success is going to be a limited one does not deter him. The duties are ours, the results are always in the hands of God.

Then in verse 15 Paul says: “For if the casting away of them” (of Israel) “be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”

He compares the future restoration of Israel to Christ, and he says that it is comparable to the resurrection from the dead. He has in mind Ezekiel 37:1-14, the vision of the valley of dry bones, of Israel being no more than a valley of dry bones, but by the word of God bone is joined to bone and sinews appear, and flesh, and life; and so he says the conversion of Israel will be life from the dead. He does not say that this is an end of the world event, but a future event, and that the conversion of Israel will be life from the dead in a double sense, first Israel is alive in Christ and again in the covenant, and second it is life from the dead to the Gentiles also, because it adds to their ranks a strong body of covenant men.

So, Paul says, if when cursed Israel contributes to the world wide spread of the faith, how much more so with its restoration?

Then in verse 16 we come to a critical verse, a very important one: “For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.”

First the frame of reference. It is to the law of the firstfruits which we encounter in many passages in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 23:10-11, in verses 15 and following of Leviticus 23, of Numbers 15:18-21, and a good many other passages.

In the ceremony of the firstfruits, the person brought the first fruits of his work, if he were a workman, or the firstfruits of the harvest, and he gave them to the Lord. They were waved before the Lord at the altar, signifying that all our lives must go before the altar for dedication. The tithes of course represent the firstfruit also, of our monetary income, or of our produce; ten percent off the top must go to the Lord as the firstfruits, and this was to represent the totality. It did not mean that then 90% we could take and spend in self indulgence, but that giving the firstfruit we declared that the whole was to be holy. It was all to be used in God’s service.

The old offertory hymn of William Walsham How sets forth the concept very well. “We give Thee but Thine own, whatever the gift may be. All that we have is Thine alone, a trust oh Lord from Thee.”

So that, the offering of the firstfruits as well as the offering of the tithe which is the same thing, indicates that we are not out own, nor anything that we have is our own, that we belong to the Lord, and we give ourselves symbolically in the firstfruits, in the tithe. We confess that we have been bought with a price, that we are totally his. The firstfruits therefore represent the whole. Jesus Christ is described as the firstfruit, as the image of the invisible God, and the firstborn of every creature, so that he is both God and man.

Now, when God looks at us He sees Jesus Christ, so that we are innocent. We are cleansed from sins, we are forgiven in Him, because we are members in Him. It is because the firstfruit is holy, therefore the lump is also holy; and if the root be holy, so are the branches. The root determines the tree.

So, if we are members of Christ, then we are holy because Christ is holy. But the sad fact is, and something which warps the interpretation of Romans and much else in the New Testament, is that very few commentators will say that the firstfruits are Christ, or that the root is Christ. Whether they are modernists or fundamentalist, they say it is Abraham or it was Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You have to go back to the early church, almost, to find anyone who says that it is Jesus Christ, and in the early church even a commentator with sometimes wild ideas like (Origin?) said it was Jesus Christ.

But pull book after book from the shelf, commentaries, and they will say: “Of course, it is Abraham. He is the natural father of Israel, and the spiritual father of us all.” Abraham is the natural root, but Paul is speaking about something supernatural, he speaks of the cutting off of the natural branches, and it can be questioned whether he here stresses natural origins. And Abraham gave birth to many non-covenant peoples. Is he himself therefore holy in himself? Did he as the root, and the firstfruit communicate holiness to all that were born of him? Far from it.

Now in verse 28, which we will consider more next time, Paul does say as concerning the gospel, they, Israel, are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the elect they are beloved for the Fathers sake. We won’t go into it except to say, certainly here the fathers are considered because they were the forbears naturally of Israel, and God has been patient with them. But this is a different thing from saying they have communicated holiness to these people, who are enemies of Christ.

Our Lord speaks of Himself as the true vine in John 15:1-6, and He says: “All the non-fruit bearing branches are going to be cut off and burned.” John the Baptist earlier had said that God was laying an ax to the root of the tree, natural Israel. Isaiah 1:10 speaks of the coming Messiah as the Root of Jesse. Revelation 5:5 speaks of Jesus Christ as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and the Root of David. Revelation 22:16 we read: “I Jesus have sent my angel to testify unto you these things in the churches, I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.”

In verse 18 Paul tells us: “Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.”

Who is supported, who is given life? Is that root Abraham, is Abraham giving us life? Is he making us a new creation, or is it Jesus Christ? This is an important point, especially when we are told that we are engrafted into Christ. There is no reference to Abraham when Paul speaks of our engrafting into the tree. We are transferred from the wild root Adam to the true root, Christ. To call Abraham Isaac and Jacob or Abraham alone the holy root, is to create a very different and false perspective on the church and its future. For one thing it favors the Scofieldian view, for another it favors the old Pharisaic view.

For example, men like Sanday and Hedlum, two prominent Church of England scholars of the last century, we have so surprising a statement as this and I quote: “Saint Paul gives in the this verse the grounds of his confidence in the future of Israel. This is based upon the holiness of the Patriarchs, from whom they are descended and the consecration to God which has been the result of this holiness. Israel the divine nation is looked upon as a tree; its roots are the patriarchs, individual Israelites are the branches, as then the patriarchs are holy, so are the Israelites who belong to the stock of the tree, and are nourished by the sap which flows up to them from the roots.”

Now this was the old belief of the Pharisees. The holiness of Abraham would save every Jew to the last day of history, according to some of them. Why? They believed that Abraham was so righteous that his superfluous merit would save every Jew ever born of him. Every Israelite. Works of supererogation is the term for it. A Pharisaic doctrine.

But lo and behold, this doctrine appears in the interpretation of this verse, and amazingly more often among protestants. Ironic. And it shows the lack of any sensible thinking; this is a Pharisaic view. Paul says we are holy before God because we are members of Christ, our root, and our holiness does not come from Abraham, it comes from Christ and from the cross of Jesus Christ.

In verses 17-21 Paul speaks of our engrafting into Christ. Now the whole passage makes clear, that he is not talking about a natural inheritance from Abraham, but a supernatural one from Christ, because there is nothing natural about this tree we are grafted into.

Israel is pruned out, but long after these branches are pruned out and are dead and have turned to dust, they are grafted back in and they live. Could that happen in nature? Besides, all this time those Israelites have been in Abraham as it were, they are sons of Abraham; no it is the engrafting into the true root, Jesus Christ, which alone makes them holy. This is not a natural fact, it is a supernatural fact. And yet, men like Sanday and Hedlum, and John Murray the Orthodox Presbyterian, have all said it is Abraham. We must not be Pharisees in our view of our place. The pruned branches are cut off because of unbelief; not unbelief in the patriarchs, not unbelief in Abraham. Israel was not pruned off because they did not believe in the root Abraham, but because they did not believe in the root Jesus Christ. Therefore Paul says: “Be not high minded but fear, for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not Thee.”

Therefore Paul concludes in verses 22-24, we stand only in the grace of God. He is able to graft us when we are dead in our sins and trespasses into Christ, and He is able to take dead Israel and graft it back into Christ, who is the tree of life, and is able miraculously to make Israel and the gentiles alike come to life. The first fruits, the root, is Jesus Christ.

The church is now the Israel of God, Paul says in Galatians 6:16, because we are grafted into Christ. And Paul in Romans 12:1-8 speaks of believers as one body, many members, and this is the development of the tree image, the branches; Christ as the body, Christ as the head, Christ as the tree, Christ as the root. Abraham cannot save us nor give us life if we are grafted into Him.

Now, our particular heritages, whatever our national, racial background may be, are God given and not to be despised. We must remember that the Bible gives chapters to genealogies, and it is not always the genealogy of the Messianic line. So God is saying family is important, national heritage is important, it is not to be despised; but it is not to be idolized.

Israel saw itself as the one source. The churches have tended to see themselves as the one source; but it is Christ; and it is outside of Christ that there is no salvation. God is not limited to any one church or to any one nation, or to any one race. God makes clear in Amos 9:7, as Amos spoke to Israel, God reminded Israel through Amos: “I am able tomorrow to call out the Ethiopians and make them my chosen people, and drop you.” It is all of grace.

God is the one exclusive source of salvation, and of life. The image of the life giving tree is important, it is not our decision for Christ that saves us with minimal moral obligation thereafter, it is what God does that saves us, and we receive it. Our Lord says: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

Catholics and Protestants, like Jews before them, seem to believe that abiding in them is everything, or almost everything. Well, attendance to church and faithfulness to a good church is good, but with all too many who do those things, knowledge of Christ, knowledge of the Bible, knowledge of the dominion mandate is minimal, and also a very weak and almost non-existent doctrine of the Spirit prevails.

To see Christ as the tree of life means an exclusive devotion and service. It means that every area of life and thought is then for us governed by God’s law word. It means further that neither we as persons, as churches, nor as nations are the goal and center of history, nor God’s exclusive instrument. God uses men, churches and nations, but He cannot be used by them. Israel was cut off because of false beliefs, and so too will be all churches and nations because of unbelief. There is only one true tree or root for man, and none other: Jesus Christ.

Let us pray. Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that there is one true root, and that Thou hast grafted us into the root, Jesus Christ. separate us oh Lord from all false loyalties, to things which we idolize and put between ourselves and Jesus Christ. Make us faithful to those things to which we should be faithful, and to the degree we should be faith; but above all make us strong in our Lord that we might serve Him with joy and with gladness, knowing that we are holy only because He is holy, that we are strong only because He is strong, and that we have power only because He has power. Bless us in Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] Rush, in verses 21 and 22 it might appear that a person could lose their salvation, where he says: “take heed lest he” lest God, “also spare not thee.” And also at the end of verse 22: “Otherwise Thou also shalt be cut off.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, but you see here he is not talking about individuals, but the nation of Israel and the church. So he is saying to the church: “You can be cut off. Israel has been cut off.” A lot of Israelites have been saved, several hundred thousand as Paul was writing were probably Christians, they were the backbone of the church. So, he is not talking about the particular individual, but the institution. The Gentiles, the Israelites, and their institutions. Yes John?

[John] I’ve just a fuzzy little problem in terms of judgement, there are a couple of things that you said that triggered this whole thing, but all judgement between Christ’s first advent and His second advent is principally Christ’s judgement, is that not correct? Christ is the judge between the advents there?

[Rushdoony] Well, the entire trinity is involved in it, and we have to look at the whole point of it. In the Old Testament era, judgement began at Sinai, although there was judgement before it, the flood for example; but, a particular form of judgement began at Sinai, it culminated with the fall of Jerusalem. What was it? It was the shaking of the nations. Paul tells us in Hebrews: “The things which are are being shaken, so that the things which cannot be shaken might alone remain.”

So the shaking shook out a lot of Israel. Then the final shaking destroyed the nation, but preserved, and a large number of them were preserved because they heeded Christ’s words. Alright. Now we have another great shaking, Paul tells us, from the fall of Jerusalem to the end of the world, the shaking of the nations and everything within them. Now in this shaking the churches and the nations are shaken, and a lot will be shaken out and will disappear, because only those things which cannot be shaken, which are grounded in the root, Jesus Christ, shall remain.

So, the purpose of the shaking is to get rid of the trash as it were, or the Bible puts it: “The chaff” you shake the wheat and the chaff blows away, and the good grain remains. It is the same image with the nations, they are going to be shaken, they are going to be destroyed, but they are not unshakable.

[John] If the judgement from Sinai to the fall of Jerusalem resulted in the leaven which went into the origin of the church as we now know it, and that church as it grows is also involved in the judgement until the end of time.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, exactly; the church has no privileged status of exemption from judgement, Israel went through it, and the church has to go through it. That is what Paul is saying. But all people read is, that is why I made that statement, listening to a sermon and saying: “It fits somebody I know.” And the church has been doing this. “Boy, God really gave it to Israel, they had it coming.” They did, but what about the church? Doesn’t it have it coming? Hasn’t it blown its opportunities? Why else is the church going through what it is today? Yes?

[Audience Member] In other passages of scripture Israel is referred to as a fig tree, and in this passage Paul talks about them being an olive tree, a national olive tree, and the gentiles being a wild olive tree. Is there any reason for the changed imagery?

[Rushdoony] Well surely, there is a great deal of change of imagery in the Bible. Satan is compared to a lion, seeking to devour; Jesus Christ is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. So we cannot say it is hard and fast, the particular context determines it. So there are times when Israel is compared to a tree and the nations are compared to trees, but Christ is called the tree of life. No one else is. So, He is the tree of life, this is the life giving tree. And of course the Christmas tree, because it is Evergreen is celebrated as the tree of life at Christmas, it is used for that, and the olive tree similarly doesn’t lose its leaves, so it was an ancient symbol of the tree of life.

[Audience Member] …Jewish, I was wondering why he wouldn’t call it a fig tree, because that is what they used for their own imagery.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the idea if I may just add an interesting little touch, when I was on the Indian Reservation, they, the Christians there, took the image very seriously; they couldn’t get an evergreen, a Christmas tree because of the deep snow so you couldn’t get up there at Christmas; they used a sage brush because it was always the same the year round, so it could pass as a tree of life.

Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us bow our heads for the benediction. Oh Lord our God how great Thou art, and how perfect Thy way. Give us grace in the time of shaking that we may establish ourselves on those things which are unshakable, even Christ our Lord and Thy word. 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.