Living by Faith - Romans

Christian Versus Totalitarian Morality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 51-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 051

Dictation Name: RR311ZA51

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.

Oh Lord our God we come to Thee mindful of all Thy mercies and blessings, and also of our needs. We beseech Thee that Thou who knowest us better than we know ourselves, would minister unto us in Thy mercy grace and wisdom. Give us those things which we have need of, and take from us those things which are harmful to us, that we might grow in Thee and might be strong in Thy word, and every faithful to Thy calling. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from Romans 12:14-21, Romans 12:14-21, Christian Versus Totalitarian Morality.

“14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.

17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Paul begins the letter to the Romans with a great declaration that the just shall live by faith. To live by faith means that in all our ways we are governed by our faith, by our belief in the sovereignty and predestination of God, which means His total rule. Therefore, because God rules totally, the sin of man can never prevail. God makes all things work together for good to them that love Him, to them who are the called according to His purpose; he takes the worst and the best, and out of them comes forth good.

Now the results of this for morality are far reaching. Everything does not depend upon us, it does not depend upon man. We do what God requires of us, and we leave the outcome to Him. We live by faith. We live by the faith that because God is on the throne, everything depend on Him, and our duty is to obey Him and leave the rest to Him. The more faithfully we live by faith, the less our anxiety. Our Lord makes this abundantly clear to us in the Sermon on the Mount, and we are told very definitely that we are not to be anxious about the morrow.

We can therefore contrast the ethics of anxiety with the ethics of faith. Faith trusts in God, that all will work together for good. The ethics of anxiety believes that because everything is in man’s hands, therefore we cannot even sleep because we have got to figure out a way; everything depending on us, we have to come up with the answers, we have to work things out. And of course the result is sleeplessness, because anxiety is concerned with all the possibilities, turning them over endlessly, as though all the possibilities are human options.

Because of the fall we are all prone to anxiety, and anxiety is the attempt to play God in our lives, to say: “All the answers are going to come from me, and if I only think hard enough and spend enough time awake turning this way and that in bed thinking things over, I will somehow work them out.” In anxiety, we are playing God.

Very aptly, this century has been called by some scholars as the age of dread, and the age of anxiety; different scholars using one term or another. Existentialism, cleaves to this kind of thinking. In fact Existentialism says if you are not anxious, you are not an Existentialist! Anxiety is the hallmark of the true Existentialist, according to the philosophers thereof. And this is logical. Existentialism, which is logical atheism, says ‘everything depends on us, and therefore we have reason enough to be sleepless and anxious, if everything does depend on us.’

But if on the other hand as the Bible tells us, everything depends on God and will work together for good when we walk by faith and in obedience to Him, we can then say with David: “I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou Lord only maketh me dwell in safety.”

The ethics of anxiety is totalitarian ethics. For good results, there must be total control and government by man, or by the human state.

Humanistic morality sees only one source of good, human action. For human action to produce good results requires total control and government of all factors, and the result is a totalitarian state. Christian ethics begins and ends with the sovereign predestinating power of the Triune God. Thus for us as Christians, our morality is not the ultimate source of good, it is simply our obedient response to ultimate righteousness, God. He is the determiner of all things, including our salvation. Our morality therefore is not an attempt at the ultimate government of all things, but our response to His grace and government, our thank offering for His providential salvation and rule.

Now this is the content of what Paul is telling us in these verses. He is not telling us that ‘love conquers all’ or that morality will make all things good, he is telling us what God requires of us, and the limits that God puts upon our action. So the very moral commandments that Paul gives us put limits on us. In verse 14 he echoes our Lords words in Matthew 5:44 when our Lord said: “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.” And so Paul says: “Bless them that persecute you, bless and curse not.”

Why? Because God is the one who is going to deal with evil, and therefore you do good as God requires you, knowing that your good is a limited good, that the effect of what you do is going to be limited, because ultimately it is the government of God that does all things. To do good in this sense is legitimate, and it is in our power. To execute vengeance is not a personal option, but a right reserved to God or to God ordained agencies, such as civil government.

Calvin in commenting on this said and I quote: “Arduous is this, I admit; and wholly opposed to the nature of man, but there is nothing too arduous to be overcome by the power of God, which shall never be wanting to us, provide we neglect not to seek for it. And though you can hardly find one that has made such advances in the law of the Lord that he fulfills this precept, yet no one can claim to be the child of God or glory in the name of Christian, who has not in part attained this mind, and who does not daily resist the opposite disposition. I have said this is more difficult than to let go revenge when anyone is injured, for though some restrain their hands and are not led away by the passion of doing harm, yet they wish that some calamity or loss would in some way happen to their enemies, and even when they are so pacified that they wish no evil, there is yet hardly one in a hundred who wishes well to him from whom he has received an injury, nay most men daringly burst forth into imprecations. But God by His word not only restrains our hand from doing evil, but also subdues the bitter feelings within; and not only so, but He would have us be solicitous for the well-being of those who trouble us and seek our destruction.”

In other words, the government is not upon our shoulders. We are not going to right every wrong and do every good that can be done; neither we nor the state, and whenever men attempt to do that, the result is totalitarianism, total control. But God says no. “You do what I tell you to do, you do what is right as I declare it to be, and leave the results in my hands. I am the Lord, the ruler.”

In obeying these commandments therefore we do not give evil free sway, but rather recognize God’s free sway brings justice and grace alike, and we leave it to Him. This is the meaning of the Sabbath rest required of us. The Sabbath means we take hands off our lives and our affairs, the world around us, in faith that God and His government shall prevail. These commandments require a practical Sabbath of us all our days. We do what is right, we don’t play God; we recognize that God requires us to obey Him, and He takes care of the results. Beyond a limited degree, we cannot govern affairs. We are to govern them where God tells us to, ourselves first of all, but we live by faith that God does rule; hence we bless, we do not curse. Because God is the source of vengeance.

This not a pacifistic nor a pietistic response, but it is one born in faith, in confidence in God’s total government.

Bless them which persecute you. The word persecute, ‘diokontas’ to pursue or hunt after, is the same word used in verse 13, ‘pursuing hospitality.’ Our pursuing zeal, Paul says, is to be manifested in Christian action, not vengeance. To bless means to return good for evil. Paul is here echoing our Lord’s words in Matthew 5:43-45 where our Lord says: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Then in verse 15, Paul says: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” This is a commandment to community. We cannot be unconcerned about others. Totalitarian ethics sees people as building blocks, as manure for the future. Totalitarians are unconcerned with what happens today, and they readily destroy people because they are concerned with a better human race and a better world sometime down the world. For this reason the French Revolution debated on how big a percentage of the people they should eliminate, murder, in order to have the right percentage of population. Similarly, the Russian Revolution decided which classes should be eliminated and wiped them out, and since then regularly eliminates anyone that might be a problem, by disagreeing. This is elitism, it is unconcerned with the person, only with its totalitarian mentality, to use all things to build its ideal world.

But what Paul says here is basic to the teaching of the Old Testament, we find it summed up in these words in the Talmud: “Let not any rejoice among them that weep, nor weep among them that rejoice.” In Proverbs 17:5 we are old: “Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his maker, and he that is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.” To rejoice at evil overtaking anyone, though merited is like mocking the poor. We can thank God for justice, only if we remember at the same time His grace to us.

Then Paul says: “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.”

To be of the same mind means to have a common concern one for another. To have the same goals for Christian community, to mind not high things was well described by Luther when he said and I quote: “The apostle means to say do not regard those who rank highly in the world, and do not be displeased with such as are despised. Take a cordial interest in those that are lowly, and have pleasure in them; so Saint Augustine says in his rule: ‘Do not boast of the high rank of wealthy parents, but of the brotherhood of poor brethren.’”

Now, a common slander over the centuries has had it that Christianity began as a slave religion and did not attract anyone of any note, of any caliber. Now, this was far from true, it attracted people high and low, rich and poor, and Paul is evidence of the fact that it attracted very important people; Paul was a figure of empire-wide note. Precisely because the church included extremes in its membership of rich and poor, important and unimportant, we have this commandment, the need to stress the requirement of community was important for the early church, because it was unusual in that it brought the great and the small, the rich and the poor, together in fellowship.

Not to be wise in our own conceits means not to be wise in our self importance. Condescend has changed its meaning, but in the Greek the word means ‘going along, ready to carry on or go along with men of a lower estate in Christ.’

Verses 17-18 give us a general summary of all of this: “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

We must be godly toward all men, and can only be so if we believe the results are in the hands of God. Proverbs 20:22 says: “Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee.”

Paul is constantly echoing the Old Testament, for example there are echoes here also of Proverbs 3:3-4 “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.”

If it be possible, God says, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. ‘As much as in you lieth’ means that we are to observe God’s requirements with all our being, with all the capacity of our being. We are emphatically not told to be passive towards sin, but that faced with evil, we are not to give back evil, but rather God’s grace and justice. Civil government and other agencies exist to give them back that justice for their evil.

Vengeance, Paul says in verses 19-21, belong to God. Recompense no man evil for evil he has said, and now he has gone on to say: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

When we are told ‘avenge not yourselves but give place to wrath’ we are commanded to give place to the wrath of God. In other words, just in terms of common sense, our vengeance, our wrath, can’t accomplish much; how much more so the wrath of God can accomplish? So apart from our moral duty, common sense says: “Give place to the wrath of God. God will right these wrongs, and you will only place yourself in the path of His wrath if you disobey Him.”

The Old Testament again here echoed, many, many verses. Some of these for example: Leviticus 19:18 “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.” And then we are told that our neighbor includes our enemies.

Again, Proverbs 24:29 “Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work.”

Again in Deuteronomy 32:35 “To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” This is a verse often quoted in the New Testament.

Again in Exodus 23:4 “If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.”

Again, Proverbs 25:21-22 “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.”

What are we told? Well, when we try to exercise vengeance and wrath, then we stay the hand of God; but if we leave wrath unto God, the Lord rewards us.

However, we must remember this: we cannot say that ‘love conquers all’ or that our morality changes the situation. What Paul is saying and has said is that God does, and for us to render evil for evil is to make evil victorious in that it now commands us, so that both sides are now evil.

But totalitarian ethics says that man’s government must govern all things, and man must right every wrong. But on the basis of what morality? Humanistic morality, which is evil. Men are unwilling to leave ultimate justice in God’s hands, and as a result with the Enlightenment for example, when this kind of humanistic thinking came into play, men first said that: “Well, no it isn’t any God out there who rights every wrong and makes history work together for good, it is nature.” And therefore the doctrine of poetic justice was developed, which meant that everything was done here and now, very quickly.

So, men re-wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Nathan Tate for example, rewrote King Lear to give it a happy ending, in terms of the doctrine of poetic justice. With Darwin of course, not only was God eliminated, but nature was made mindless, and so man and the state had to do it all. There was no justice now from beyond time nor from nature, but only from man, and the result was the totalitarian state. It has been theories of law which reserve all judgments with respect to good and evil to the state, and the courts say so now. Right and wrong are now what the states say they are, and morality now has not a God centered meaning, but a state centered one. Paul tells us that morality is what God says it is; he tells us that there are strict limits on the power of moral action, as well as on our exercise of moral judgement. The government of all things is in the hands of the triune God, not mine, not yours; because morality is a subordinate branch of theology, and moral law is an expression of God’s righteousness or justice, we cannot give to morality a totalitarian power. Christian morality is the expression of our life in Christ, not our attempt to play God. Let us pray.

Thy word oh Lord is truth. Keep us within the bounds of Thy word, ever faithful to Christ our Lord, that we might in Him be more than conquerors. Give us strength to give place to wrath, and to know that Thou art on the throne, and that according to Thy word, all those who are evil doers and do not find the atonement of Jesus Christ as their refuge will pay to the last penny. Great and marvelous are Thy ways oh Lord, and we praise Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes.

[Otto Scott] I have a comment and a question, the sermon reminds me of the Spanish proverb: “Living well is the best revenge.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good.

[Otto Scott] And the other is a question, and that is, some of the worst mistakes of my life have been efforts to do good, and I don’t really understand that.

[Rushdoony] Yes. (laughter.) Well, our worst mistakes are when we try to do good beyond our human capacities, but even when they are thoroughly good in a Christian sense, God makes them work together through it; we don’t always see that, but it is so. I know that one of the most horrible episodes very early in my life was when some people who were not Christians came to me for some council, they had a family crisis, a very serious one, a very painful and ugly one. I gave them the right council, I know to this day that everything that I counseled them was right; and everything would keep blowing up in their faces when they did what I suggested. So it went from bad to worse, until after a while… and they kept coming back, that was the thing that amazed me, they should have said they never wanted to see me again. But every time they came back and I very conscientiously in terms of scripture told them what I felt was the right thing to do, it blew up again in their faces. And I dreaded seeing them. Well, they wound up Christians! I can’t explain that, God did it, and finally things did work together for good. I heard that accidentally by the way, about 10 years later.

Now, that is the way it is. We cannot see the results, just as our actions cannot govern totally, as the totalitarian humanistic ethics would have us believe they do. So we cannot see the results of the good we do. So, from our limited vision, it very often seems to be a disaster, but we don’t see the beginning and the end in its totality. Yes?

[Audience Member] I can see how giving your enemy water and food can confound him, heap coals upon him, and how it can do a great deal of good; but if I understand the blessing, as a part of the meaning at least of blessing is to make happy, I can understand praying for change for Hitler and Stalin, but to pray for them to be blessed or be made happy is certainly difficult.

[Rushdoony] We are not to return evil for evil, but good for evil. Therefore we can bless him by praying for him, by giving him those things which are his due under the law of God. Respect for his life, for the sanctity of his home, for his reputation, we don’t bear false witness; for his property. Now that is what it means to return good for evil. In other words, he tries to hurt us or rob us, we try to maintain that position of good, and return only good for evil.

[Audience Member] I understand that, but the blessing…

[Rushdoony] Well, that is how you bless them.

[Audience Member] What does the word bless mean in this context?

[Rushdoony] One of its primary meanings as you indicated, is happy. Blessed are they, happy are they. So we work for their blessing, for their good, their welfare, generally. We don’t try to destroy them or do harm to them, we can’t play God. Yes?

[Audience Member] That also confounded me, I always hated the idea that Jefferson changed the Declaration of Independence from Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, because I know criminals that are extremely happy robbing banks; when he turned from property to happiness, I can understand his plank there, I don’t like that word either, because a lot of people are very happy doing evil.

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s questionable; they are going through the motions of being happy, but why is it that evil produces such mental distress and turmoil, and it leads them into self-destructive habits, narcotics for one among many?

[Audience Member] (?) the comedian seemed like he was real happy, but…

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes?

[Audience Member] How would you contrast the commandment to pray for God’s justice to be meted out to the evil doer, in contrast with praying for him to be blessed, it would seem like there is an apparent contradiction?

[Rushdoony] No, because when you pray for your enemies, you are doing what God requires for you. When you are praying for God’s justice you are praying for what God is to do; in other words, you are leaving that department to God, that He is the governor, the ruler. So you are thereby saying: “Lord, I take my hands off vengeance, and I leave it to you; and you in your wisdom may destroy these people, or you may lead them to salvation and to repentance, and to making restitution.” You leave the government then to God’s hands. So that is what praying for justice involves.

[Audience Member] Yet in doing that, how do we view our emotional state, when we are praying for blessing and justice, as you explain; in other words, we could be very upset about some particular situation, and the first thought that comes to mind is God’s vengeance is upon the thing, and of course there is a good deal of emotion involved in that.

[Rushdoony] That is right, but our emotions are not to govern us with the word of God, so whatever our emotions are, we obey. Our emotions may tell us that we don’t want to get up and go to work, but we do because we cannot live by our emotions. Yes?

[Audience Member] Wouldn’t… can’t this be Christ on the cross, you know: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Because man in themselves part from God, they don’t know, you know; in other words, they are doing it because their nature is to be sinful and so forth, and when we look at them as one deprived, we pray for them that they might see God and repent and so forth, this is the blessing we are talking about isn’t it; that would God bring judgement upon their sin, might bring about their salvation later on, so in essence it would be to our blessing, wouldn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer. Oh Lord our God, Thy word is truth, and Thy word is a joy and a lamp to guide our way, and to make light our days in Thee. Bless us to faithfulness, and prosper us in Thy service.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.