Miscellaneous

The Offense of the Gospel

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-1

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: RR320A1

Location/Venue:

Year:

Our subject is The Offense of the Gospel. It is important to begin by defining ‘offense’. The basic meaning is something that outrages the moral or physical senses of men. It is a form of attack, and we speak of going on the offensive. It is also a breach of the social code. Gospel has been defined, narrowly, as the lives of Christ by the four evangelists, the whole of the New Testament and its teaching, the whole Bible as the good news that God speaks to us, and also as the good news of salvation.

Clearly, Christianity is an offensive religion. The attack against the faith has been mounting in the United States. Of course, in intellectual circles it has been underway for some time, however within the past few weeks a Kansas newspaper had an editorial reprinted which signals a new dimension of the attack. The whole point of the editorial was this: There is no such thing as truth. Anyone who believes that there is a truth about reality, about morality, is implicitly a totalitarian; one who seeks a repressive social order.

Now of course, that premise is nothing more than what the Marquis De Sade affirmed a long time ago. The only offense, he said, is Christianity. For him, every kind of crime, every kind of offense was legitimate because it was ‘natural’. He held that we cannot legislate against theft, rape, murder, incest, you name it; because all these things are natural. Only the supernatural is morally offensive, only Christianity.

Now this is a matter of editorial policy, reprinted, because it is held to be the new gospel; the gospel according to fallen man. Christianity is an offensive religion, if you doubt that ask the ungodly, as the homosexuals, as the pro abortionists. We are offensive. Christianity is offensive because it tells us that we are all sinners and at war with God. Those who want to be at peace with the world will sooner or later be at war with God, and those who want to work somehow peaceably with a fallen world will sooner or later have to change sides.

Calvinism is especially offensive, because it stresses the total depravity of man apart from Christ. To tell people that there is only one way of salvation, Jesus Christ, is very offensive; because so many people believe in do-it-yourself religions of their own making.

Of course there is more to the offense of the gospel. The Bible tells us about hell. And hell is nowadays not a popular subject, it never has been, and it is less so now, and is not even popular with pastors or congregations.

Now, we have reached the point where a clear statement of the faith is offensive even in the church. Now if this is not enough, start talking about things like predestination and you will see how offensive the gospel can be. Or ask your friend or acquaintance if they are saved, and you will easily find out how both you and the gospel are offensive.

People do not want to be told that they are sinners. I recall one man who said that there were some things he was ashamed of, and at that point I knew him well enough to agree with him; but basically, he said he was a pretty nice guy. I never asked his wife about that, I didn’t need to. And I didn’t have to, because God had already told me in His book what all men are like outside of Jesus Christ. As a long time pastor I already knew what even professing Christians can be, and without trying too hard.

So, what do we do about the offense of the gospel? We do not soft pedal it. But neither do we add to it by being personally offensive. I have seen some people try to witness to others so aggressively that I was embarrassed by their offensiveness; we must be personally inoffensive, and we must concentrate on the offense of the gospel. Men must be able and enable to see that there is a dividing line between truth and error, between good and evil. We can only then get effectively at the heart of the matter; man’s fallen estate and his need to know Christ as his savior.

The word ‘offense’ is in our Bible the translation of several Greek words. One word is ‘skandalon,’ a bait in a trap, is what it means. It is used metaphorically to mean something that arouses prejudice or hostility. We have it in the English as ‘scandal’. Christ is called in Romans 9:33 ‘the rock of offense’ a stumbling stone, the scandal to the world.

Another word is ‘proscomma,’ an obstacle, a stumbling block. In 1st Corinthians 8:9 Paul writes: “But take heed lest by any means the liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block to them that are weak.” In Romans 9:32-33 it is a word used of Christ, the stumbling block for the ungodly. (Proscoppei?) is related to proscomma, and has a like translating, as in 2 Corinthians 6:3 where we are warned against giving offense needlessly to bring blame on the gospel.

Offense thus refers to something that too the ungodly seems almost a sin, if they believed in sin. It is offensive, and the unbeliever sees the gospel, the Christian faith, the word of God, as offensive. This is a logical attitude, given their war against God we must avoid adding to that offense by our behavior; and we must remember that there can be no true peace between the ungodly and the godly. They are at war with us, they regard us as the great roadblock to man’s brave new world.

Well, with this knowledge of the Biblical meaning of offense, we have some perspective on the apostolic situation and ours. The gospel is a scandal, an offense, to the world. Fallen man sees himself as the naturally good man. He suppresses the knowledge of God that reverberates in all his being as Paul tells us in Romans 1:18-22, and affirms himself to be his own God, determining or knowing for himself what is good and evil. He is satisfied, despite some disquiet, that he is right and we are essentially wrong; our position is to him an offense and scandal, that men would so renounce their dignity and prostrate themselves to the God of the Bible.

I vividly recall one man for whom Christian faith was almost a matter of life and death because his course of life was killing him. And when I suggested the answer and suggested that he pray to God for His grace, he looked at me and said: “Rush, how can a man humble himself to pray?”

Our English word, scandal, as I have pointed out, comes from the Greek ‘skandalon’ an offense. To the fallen man, for people to believe the Bible, to embrace the scandal of the cross and to seek to convert them to such a faith is preposterous, and it is to them irritating. Whenever and wherever the Christian strength in a society wanes, the hostility to the faith comes out into the open; it is an intense hatred, that any group would propagate such a faith. This is what Paul is telling us in the first chapter of 1st Corinthians. He states that the gospel is to the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, to all people outside of Christ a scandal; a stumbling block, a source of irritation and anger. How can people believe such a thing? How can they propagate such a faith?

The Marquis De Sade expressed his faith most openly. He rejected God and Christ, and he held that there was only one crime, Christianity. All other, so-called crimes, he believed, should be legalized. And we do have groups working towards that end now.

In the 1960’s the works of the Marquis De Sade, long banned in every country in the world were re-printed, and the first of the volumes, running perhaps at 8-900 pages was given over, about half of it, to articles by prominent writers and theorists vindicating the Marquis De Sade as one of the greatest minds of the modern era.

One of our problems today is that too many Christians fail to recognize the offense of the cross. They want to live at peace with the world. They have so watered down the faith that it has become an inoffensive gospel of love, and the first article of their faith is: “God loves you, and God is love.” Well, God is love is a Biblical statement, but so is the statement that God is a jealous God, that He is a God of justice, a righteous God who is angry at sin, and much much more. We cannot use the Bible for idolatrous purposes, and whenever we take Biblical materials, extract them and say: “This is the Bible” we are guilty of idolatry. The whole word alone can be presented honestly.

The retreat of churches from the offense of the cross is a major one. More than a few congregations which profess to be Bible believing do not want any teaching from the pulpit about such things as predestination and hell. In fact, anyone who has ever so preached is held up for detestation.

I recall as a student a professor who had made his field of research Jonathan Edwards- for purely scholarly reasons, he didn’t believe anything Edwards believed- nonetheless remarked about Edwards famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And he said in all the years of his ministry, there were perhaps 6-7 sermons by Edwards about the wrath of God against sin, and this one sermon about hell. And yet he said, Edwards whose essential stress was to further benevolence and a benevolent stance in society, had been tarred as a preacher of hell fire and damnation. Well, this tells you how little the world wants to hear anything that would condemn anything about its approach to life.

It has been well said that in recent years, homosexuals have come out of the closet and Christians have gone in. That homosexuals can say the most arrogant and evil things without fear of contradiction, and Christians hardly dare speak of the gospel. Christ, Peter tells us, is the cornerstone to them which believe; but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense even to them that stumble at the word, being disobedient. The ungodly see themselves as wise and respectable, and they see us as a scandal to mankind. But they are the reprobate ones according to God’s ordination, to be Christ’s chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation means that we recognize that our faith is not a respectable one, not a respectable option, but a scandal to the world.

We separate ourselves from the ungodly because Christ requires it, because two cannot walk together except they be agreed, and because separation is a moral necessity. This requirement of separation is tied to God’s promise to make us His temple, and to be our God. Failure to obey Him in this means that we are alone before the world. The world’s central problem is sin, but the world does not want to face that problem. Just within the past week or two, trouble erupted in Chicago because in the cab headquarters there was a sign warning cabbies against picking up poorly dressed blacks after hours. Now it comes out that that was something the black cabbies were part too, they knew what some other blacks were like and how many had been robbed and murdered, but somehow bigotry is behind this supposedly, and not sin. It is environmental offenses, it is bigotry, it is economic injustice, anything but sin that is blamed for the problems of our time.

The world’s central problem is sin. God and Christ saves us by the atonement in Christ’s blood. The world wants to see its problems as political, educational, environmental, and anything but moral and theological. The world insists that Christ’s solution is simplistic; as Paul says it: “For the Jews Christ is a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” Again we see the gospel viewed as an offense, and viewed so from the first century A.D.

Now the gospel has not grown inoffensive and less distasteful to fallen man since Christ’s day. They crucified our Lord because He was an offense to them. When they sentenced our Lord to death, we are told, then did they spit in His face and buffet Him. Others smote Him with the palms of their hands saying: “Prophecy unto us, Thou Christ. Who is he that smote Thee?” They found Him offensive because He was the truth.

Remember, Pilot, a better than average Roman governor, said cynically and walked away: “What is truth?” They hated Him because they hated God; and they totally resented being exposed as sinners. Men today are more knowledgeable and more sophisticated in their humanistic faith; they disguise it often in their scientific rationalism, or with an air of sweet reasonableness whereby Christians are held to be the intolerant threat to society; but the hatred which crucified our Lord has only intensified. One of the Chalcedon associates lost his job not too long ago because he had objected to the training required of everyone, including himself, the manager in new age thinking. The man who conducted the seminar held that Jesus was a failure because there was so much negation in His thinking. At any rate, he was at least aware of what a great many Christians are not, that most of what our Lord had to say was negative. It was a condemnation of the scribes and the Pharisees, it was a condemnation of hypocrisy and sin wherever He saw it. He was the good physician.

The offense of the gospel is a very great one. The real problem for us is this: will we become offensive to God by our fearful compromises and by our irresolution as defenders of the faith? Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve. Thank you.