Systematic Theology - Church

The Church as Property and Function

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 30

Dictation Name: 30 The Church as Property and Function

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Our scripture is from the Book of Acts 5:1-11. Our subject, The Church as Property and Function. “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.”

We have been studying the doctrine of the church, not as exciting an aspect of scripture as many others, but all the same, very important. In the course of the many weeks that we have been studying this doctrine, and as we conclude it now, there are many important areas which I have overlooked. It is not because these are not important areas, but I have felt that our concern should not be the institution as such, but on the church as the Lord’s property and possession. This is not to say the institutional emphasis is wrong, but too often in our day, it is given the priority. Men are overly concerned with the church as an institution and too seldom with the church as the Lord’s property. The Lord, in Matthew 16:18 calls it “my church,” and again and again, Paul refers to the church as God’s property, not man’s.

For example, we are told, “For we are laborers together with God. Ye are God’s husbandry. Ye are God’s building.” 1 Corinthians 3:9. Then again, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” This is Ephesians 2:9-22, and again, one more, from 2 Corinthians 6:16-17. “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” In these and other verses, we are plainly told that we, individually, are God’s property and the church also is his property.

We are told and reminded very often that we are the temple of the living God, and we think this is a privilege, but we should also remember it is also a responsibility and a statement of ownership. God owns us. We are property, his property.

Now, in our world today, our property rights are very severely restricted so that we do not really fully appreciate what ownership means. We are regulated right and left. We are taxed. We are controlled. We can’t do with our own as we would like to, and the regulations increase every day, but when we’re talking about God’s property, the situation is very, very different, because God’s property means absolute ownership by God, and absolute ownership without any qualification. Now, this is what Paul the Apostle, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, knowing the Old Testament, meant when he talked about the doctrine of predestination. He was talking about God’s absolute ownership. He says, for example, in Romans 9:20-21, “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? (who do you think you are trying to talk back to God and argue with him as to what he can do with you? Or the world?) Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (no more than a picture on the wall can say to the painter, ‘You didn’t paint me right. I want you to redo me because I have a different image of myself,’ no more can we talk back to God). Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” Just as the potter working, decides what he’s going to make and makes it in terms of his needs, his purposes, so God makes us and the world and all things as absolute creator and Lord in terms of his purposes. We are God’s property. He has total property rights over us, and we have no claims against him, and Paul says that we and the church, alike, are God‘s property, and as his property, have no valid existence apart from him. Thus, position in the church is not an indication of degrees of power, but of service.

Now, let’s look more directly at our text, the episode of Ananias and Sapphira. The background is the closing section of the fourth chapter of Acts, beginning with the 32nd verse, “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” Now, we are often told, this tells us that communism was the way of life in the early church. Is this so?

The first thing that we note here is that it was voluntary. Second, what we need to remember is that our Lord had told the church, told his disciples, and we have it in Matthew 24 as well as elsewhere, that Judea was doomed. He had called attention to the temple and said, “As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another,” and it was literally true. It came to pass. Alright, he had also told them when to see the signs that this was going to happen, and to leave. Now, if you had residence in a particular city and you had advance knowledge that the city was going to be razed to the ground by the enemy, you’d get out. You would sell your property and get out. So, the members of the early church in Jerusalem did exactly that. They sold their properties. They put themselves in a liquid position. Many of them went elsewhere, but many stayed there because this was a populous city. This was where their friends and relatives lived, and they wanted to convert them. We must remember that the early church was Jewish. A strongly Jewish caste continued in the church for centuries. There was a zeal in the church in Jerusalem, to reach their own people, to convert them, and we do not appreciate the extent to which this was done. Now, they were in a liquid position and we know from church history, that not a one of these perished. When they saw the outbreak of the Jewish/Roman war, they got out of Jerusalem. So, their liquidity was important.

Now, when they sold their possessions, many of them, people of means, brought the proceeds from the sales and gave them to the Apostles, but this does not mean that they were required to do so nor that it was in every case, a total surrender of the assets. In fact, Peter tells Ananias, “Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” In other words, “You could have withheld as much as you wanted, but your sin is that you lied to God and to us, and you kept back a portion but claimed you were giving all so you could put yourself on a level with those who had given all. It was a matter of spiritual pride, and also lying to God.” And Peter says to Ananias, “Thou hast not lied unto me but unto God,” and the result was a miraculous judgment. Ananias dropped dead on the spot. He was taken out and buried immediately, and it was the universal rule in Judea in those days, a practice continued for centuries among Jews, and for a time among Christians, burial on the day of death, and Sapphira, repeating the lie, also dropped dead immediately.

Now, what we need to recognize here is that we have a miraculous judgment, but it does not mean that judgment of that sort has disappeared. It would be very wrong to make that assumption, but first, for a moment, let us consider some of the applications of the same principle. In Numbers 4:15, we have the law of God that no man could touch holy things, no profanation without penalty of death. Only God’s appointed men could move the ark. Any transgression meant death as with the two sons of Aaron in Leviticus 10:1 and following, Nadab and Abihu died. In 1 Chronicles 13-9 following, we have the case of Uzza and immediate death also. The analogy, of course, is to say, let us say, a guest room in our house, our friends are welcome. An uninvited guest who barges in in the middle of the night is a trespasser, he is a potential killer, it is illegal and we have the right, or used to under American law, to kill such a man, to trespass on that which is God’s and to lie to God, similarly invokes the death penalty.

We have another parallel, by the way, Joshua 7, the sin of Aiken. In fact, the words “kept back” that Peter uses is the same word, it’s one word, that we have in the Greek version of the Old Testament in Joshua 7 where it speaks of the sacrilege of Aiken.

Are such judgments gone? Well, the answer is no. They are still with us, not in the miraculous, instantaneous form, but operative in history. We are told that the wages of sin were and are always death. We know that when, for example, a person lives beyond his means, he winds up in bankruptcy. When a person lays waste his health, the result is sickness and death. When a people in any way transgresses the law of God with regard to their moral being or their physical being, the consequences are there, and this is true of institutions as well as men. As a people today, we are moving towards judgment. In fact, the whole world is. We are destroying out money and virtually every currency in the world is near death, and the situation grows grimmer each year as we refuse to change our character, our way of life, and our dissipation of assets. The papers tell us that right now Argentina has 148% inflation, and the interest rates are 200%. Well, this is the product of the kind of politics they have had for almost two generations. It should not surprise us. Whether or not Britain moves against Argentina and destroys its present plans, Argentina, unless it makes an almost miraculous reversal of its character and course, is doomed, and we would have to say we are not too many years behind Argentina. We, too, are following the same kind of deficit financing, endless appropriations, and bankruptcy.

There are consequences in history, and as a result, we must say that when men violate God’s property rights, God executes judgment upon them. We are not our own. We are God’s. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” The church is God’s, and men treat themselves, the world and the church as though, “It’s our property. We’ll do as we please.” This is why there is judgment. This is why the church today can claim numbers, but no power. It is impotent as it should be, because it has abandoned the source of power; the Lord, and so it clutters up the landscape.

Well, nations, too clutter up the landscape, and they disappear unless they mend their ways. I think in view of the present world’s scene, it would be foolhardy to predict which nations will survive in their present form by the year 2000, and so we have to say that when men transgress against God’s property rights with regard to themselves and the church, they are guilty of sacrilege, profanation, and judgment proceeds against them, not as dramatically as with Sapphira and Ananias, but nonetheless, it proceeds. Every time prices go up, it’s a judgment, for example, on the dollar, and on Washington D.C., and on all of us for tolerating what goes on.

Too often, we equate sacrilege in the church with things like the Black Mass. Now, that’s a very obvious and a fearful form of sacrilege, but what about humanism in the pulpit? And liberation theology, which is Marxism, sentimentalized and preached from the pulpit, and which now commands virtually every church, Catholic and Protestant, and what about state worship, bowing down to Caesar instead of to Jesus Christ? The Lord judges sacrilege in all these cases. Judgment in history today is proceeding in terms of Deuteronomy 28:16-68. Read it. It will tell you what is happening.

But besides sacrilege, Ananias and Sapphira were involved also in lying. They were lying to the Holy Ghost. In Exodus 17:2, Moses rebukes Israel saying, “Wherefore do ye tempt the Lord?” and Peter asks Sapphira, “How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” Christ here is seen as the Lord, very obviously. To lie to the Holy Ghost, to lie to God, is described in Matthew 12:31-32, as the ultimate and the most fearful sin. It reverses the whole moral order. You call good evil and evil good, and you carry that blasphemy directly to the throne of God. Men think twice, usually, before they lie to the tax collector, because they’re afraid of the consequences, but they’re not afraid of lying to God, and the church is not afraid of lying to God, and men join, promising their lives and their money, while thinking only of their social advantage in joining, and they stay in churches in terms of the personal advantages, not in terms of the truth. They pray when in need. They’re heedless of the need of the Lord’s work. They approach God and the church to use their faith as an asset to give an added dimension to their lives, but they do not see themselves and the church as the Lord’s property to be used at his discretion.

Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.” But too often, men do not see themselves as God’s property and they are ready to echo the words of Henley, the poet, his poet is Invictus, “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul,” and such men will use everyone and the church to serve themselves. If they have anything to do with the church, it is for self-promotion, and they will say the church must serve human needs, not God, but the church is God’s property. It is an aspect of his work, of functioning in history.

I said when I started that my concern was with the church as property and function. It is God’s property. What about the church as function? We tend to look at the church and men within it in terms of offices, the office of an elder, or a deacon, or a pastor, or bishop, or whatever we call the offices in our particular church, and we ascribe dignities and honors to these offices often in violation of God’s plain word, in Matthew 20:25-28, but what we call offices are really rather functions, callings, gifts given by God, and their purpose is to effect a ministry. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:27-31, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.”

Now, Paul does not call them offices, but gifts. There is a difference. They are callings. They are a function of the life of God in the church. When we emphasize office in the church, we are placing the emphasis on status, on rank, on position, on prestige, but the emphasis in scripture is on calling, on a gift, on service and action in Christ, and the difference is very great between the two perspectives. The church as an institution stresses office and status. The church as the Lord’s property stresses calling and gifts, faithfulness, service, and praise. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that we are property, and we are thine. The purposes of thy kingdom, the purposes of thy creation and calling of us are far greater than any purpose we, with our pride, could imagine. Give us grace to find our place in thy kingdom, to see the church and ourselves as thy property, and to see our lives not in terms of status and position, but gifts, calling, and service. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Just one observation, speaking of the judgment of the Lord still being enforced, I heard Pastor Lester Roloff speak two or three years ago in North Carolina, and he was telling of how, I believe it was “60 Minutes” did a program on the Roloff {?} and the trials he’d been in, and his going to jail, and that type of thing, and three different men who testified on the, I believe it was the “60 Minutes” program, one of them was a minister who was against Roloff, and maybe two others were state officials in some capacity. All of them spoke {?} of Roloff’s work, and I think one or two of them actually made fun of him and what they were doing. Well, between the time it was filmed and then the time it ran on the television, all those three men were dead and buried, and had died, none of them was older than possibly his late 50’s.

[Rushdoony] Yes, all of them unexpectedly dropped dead, and the coincidence there upset a lot of people in Texas. They don’t like to talk about it, and it led to the election of officials, pledge to supporting Roloff, and they’ve all reneged on their promises. This is the ninth year he is in the courts. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] When the individual lies to God, does he first lie to himself, or try?

[Rushdoony] What the individual who lies to God says, in effect, is what original sin in all of us makes us say, in terms of Genesis 3:5, when the tempter says, “Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining, for yourself what is good and evil,” and so the individual says, in effect, “I am ultimate. I am the center of the universe. What I want counts,” and so he’s going to use people. Now, God uses us, that’s his privilege, and he alone is all-wise and omnipotent so his use of us is valid, but we want to use God and we want to use men to serve our will. We want to manipulate them, and our purposes are evil when we seek to do that. So, lying to God is an aspect of saying, in effect, “I can fool you.” Yes?

[Audience] Well, then it’s possible to life your whole life as a lie.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, and most people do. All too many do. It’s when it becomes a self-conscious thing that it becomes pure evil, and it’s a deliberate high-handed, self-conscious thing.

[Audience] Is this the sin against the Holy Spirit?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Consequences?

[Rushdoony] You put yourself beyond forgiveness then. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with a brief prayer.

Our Lord and our God, it is good for us to be here. We commit ourselves into thine omnipotent hands. Thou knowest our needs, our burdens, our hopes. Do thou undertake for us and guide us, and use us to thy service, praise, and glory. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape