Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Body and Christ

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 18 of 32

Track: #18

Year:

Dictation Name: 18 The Body and Christ

[Rushdoony] Oh Lord our God we come into Thy presence mindful that the heathen rage against Thee, and take council against Thy Son, and against Thy kingdom. We thank Thee oh Lord that Thou who sittest in the circle of heaven’s dost laugh, that Thou dost hold them in derision. Oh Lord our God give us a holy boldness as we face these powers of darkness, and the blessed assurance that Thou shalt smite them with a rod of iron, and shall shatter them as iron shatters a potter’s vessel. Give us grace therefore to do the work of building, of reconstruction, so that all things may be conformed to Thee, and that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our lord, and His Christ. Bless us in this battle we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture lesson is first of all I Corinthians 6:13-20, and then I Corinthians 11:27-31, and our subject The Body and Christ, The Body and Christ. Our first text is from I Corinthians 6:13-20.

“13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.

15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

19 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?

20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”

And now from the eleventh chapter, verses twenty-seven through thirty-one.

“27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.

29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

30 For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

31 For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.”

Last time we discussed the significance of the body, and this time we again deal with the subject, and we shall continue still further, because the body has a central place in eschatology. WE are told very plainly by Paul that the body was created for the Lord, and for His purposes, and for His glory. As Paul declares in the 13th verse “now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” Our physical being has a function. This function is not for fornication, but for the service of God. We are called to be covenant members of His body. The covenant means a blood bond. We are in a covenant of grace, whereby God by His sovereign grace makes us members of His family, of the royal household. All men were placed in this position in Adam, and therefore Paul’s words concerning the body apply to all. The body of all men is not for fornication, but for the Lord; so that all men face the same penalty when they abuse the body, when they give the body over to ungodly purposes. The body is to be an instrument of God, and all else done with the body is sin. Sin invokes the covenant penalty of death, but the law is not ended when we break the law. The law then becomes a death penalty to us as sinners; we die to that aspect of the law as a death penalty, as a sentence against us when we are in Christ. But the law itself does not die.

Paul goes on to say the Lord is for the body, a very interesting clause which very few commentators pay much attention to. Clearly of course the full extent of the meaning of that amazing expression is beyond us. The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. What does it mean? Well we are, according to scripture, members of Christ, He is our redeemer. That means, literally in the Hebrew, our next of kin. Because we are the next of kin we are members of His family and under the authority of Jesus Christ as head of the covenant. Calvin says, and I quote: “since God the Father has united us to His Son, what wickedness there would be in tearing away our body from that sacred connection, and giving it over to things unworthy of Christ.” The covenant fact is that our bodies affirm either the covenant of death, or covenant with the Lord of life. Every act of our body is an act of membership, either in Christ, or in death.

Now for Paul this fact is determinative. The covenant relationship with God is a vital one, a determining one, and our physical as well as our mental acts affirm membership. Hence our Lord says that anyone who lusts after a woman in his heart has committed adultery, and just as God raised up Christ, so too he will raise us up by His own power, in the totality of our being. Hence the resurrection of the dead is a basic doctrine of scripture. The doctrine of the body says that we are Christ’s property in all our being. We are members of the royal family, and privileged to be so. We cannot take royal property and unite it with a prostitute, that is treason. In our union with Christ’s perfect humanity we are one body, in our union with a prostitute, or adulteress, or in fornication, we are again one body. Paul in fact cites Genesis 2 verse 24, “and the twain shall be one flesh” in this context. In other words he says “our union with Christ is comparable to the union of husband and wife. Our bodies belong to the Lord, they are His possession, and the covenant has made us one flesh with Christ’s new humanity.

The covenant is as vital as marriage in the unity that it creates, and in fact the pattern of marriage is from the covenant. Marriage is called a covenant, but the simple fact is, according to scripture, that our membership in Christ, our physical relationship to Him, is a more close and intense one than marriage. Because, Paul says, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, and which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” When two people marry they do not indwell one another, but our relationship physically and mentally to Christ is far more penetrating. There is the indwelling of the spirit, we belong to Him in a way husband and wife even cannot belong to one another.

The body is thus not an incidental matter. What we do with our body is very important, Paul says, to the Lord. Now it is interesting that the early church regarded certain sins as irremissible, there could be no remission of sins for three classes of sins, all having to do with the body. The first class of sins was sexual, every kind of sexual sin condemned in scripture, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, the death penalty applied. Therefore the early church said, to those who had committed such sins, we recognize that you have repented, if they had, but even though we receive you back into fellowship, you are in effect the living dead, and therefore you are barred from the communion table, some said for seven years, some said ten, as the symbol of fullness, 7 and 10; and in some areas it was for life. The same applied to a second class of sins that had to do with homicide, in which abortion was included, the third class was idolatry. Now it was not that those who had committed those sins and repented were not loved as much as any other, but since those sins invoked the death penalty in a Godly society, they were irremissible. They could not assume that life was the same, they live, but only by God’s grace, and therefore they had to recognize that even though they were saved, they would be in glory with the Lord, they were on a different footing, at least for a time, in this world. In other words, the early church said that what I Samuel 2:25 declares: “If a man sins against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?” Hence for them the seriousness of sins with the body.

Paul returns to this matter in the eleventh chapter when he deals, in I Corinthians 11:27-31, with communion; and Paul contrasts here profanity and discernment. He charges to the Corinthians, or many of them, with not discerning the Lord’s body, and therefore profaning it. Now the word “profane” is a very interesting word because it literally means “outside the temple”, in this sense more strictly “outside of Christ” the temple, the true temple. And discernment is discerning the Lord’s body, knowing and dealing with it. Those who assume that the table is a natural fact, and theirs, are profane; they who feel that it is up to man to determine the condition of his presence, or his absence, or how he can partake, or if he can partake, are profane; they do not discern the Lord’s body. Now discernment of the Lord’s body means more than knowing that these are the elements, they are of course, and the elements refer to Christ’s atonement.

But the meaning of discerning the Lord’s body is still more. In speaking of discernment of the Lord’s body in verses 28 & 31 Paul asks us to examine ourselves, to judge ourselves, to discern the Lord’s body. Because we are members thereof, and we have to see our bodies as member of Christ, set apart from a common to a sacred and a holy use. SO it is not enough to reverence the elements on the table, but we have to reverence the body which receives it, and which is a member of Jesus Christ, and so we are to examine ourselves, to judge ourselves. Have we indeed dealt with our bodies as the temples of the Holy Ghost? Have we regarded our bodies as God’s property, and not our own possession? It is eating and drinking unworthily which is condemned, failure to see ourselves as a part of Christ’s body, to see the church and others as well as apart of Christ’s body. We are to ask ourselves when we partake “what have we done with our body, our person which is Christ?” It is His possession, and with others who are His possession.

This is why throughout the history of the church where the Lord’s Table has been faithfully administered it has been proceed by particular, or general confession, or both. Because there is the self –examination, a self-examination in terms of “what have we done with God’s property, our person, our lives?” And as we go through church history and read these general confessions in the various liturgies they tell us a great deal of how men in the past saw discernment of the body.

To illustrate for example in Calvin’s Geneva’s service, these sentences set forth the ban and the premises of self-examination, and I quote: “Wherefore in obedience to this rule, and in the name and by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, I excommunicate all idolaters, blasphemers, despisers of God, heretics, and all who form sects apart to break the unity of the church, all perjurers, and all who are rebellious against fathers, and mothers, and other superiors. All who are seditious, contentious, quarrelsome, injurious, adulterers, fornicators, thieves, misers, ravishers, drunkards, gluttons, and all others who lead scandalous lives; warning them that they abstain from this table, lest they pollute and contaminate the sacred food which our Lord Jesus Christ giveth only to His faithful servants. Therefore according to the exhortation of Saint Paul let each of you examine and prove his own conscious, to know whether he have true repentance of his sins, and sorrow for them. Desiring henceforth to lead a holy and Godly life, above all, whether He putteth His whole trust in God’s mercy, and seeketh his whole salvation in Jesus Christ, and renouncing all enmity and malice, doth truly and honestly purpose to live in harmony and brotherly love with his neighbor.”

In the catholic missiles, besides the requirement of confession, and a general confession as well, we find such things as the prayer, and I quote: “Make me always adhere to Thy commandments, and suffer me never to be separated from Thee.” We cannot come to grips with the nature of our covenant union with Christ apart from these words. “For this cause, many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” What is Paul saying? He says “because many of you have partaken of the Lord’s table unworthily, without a due regard for the fact that you are members of Christ and your body and mind, all your being, is his property. Therefore, sickness has laid low many of you, and many among you have died.”

Now people in our time do not take those words seriously, but let’s remember this. I can remember many years ago when doctors ridiculed the idea that there could be psychosomatic illnesses. I can recall a doctor telling me that if any student dared raised the subject of the possibility of spiritual or mental causes having an effect on one’s health, in the course of a medical school class, he would be ridiculed by that professor; who would thereafter view him with suspicion. Now that was not too many years ago. Since World War II psychosomatic medicine has come into its own. We recognize now that a very large percentage of all ailments have a psychosomatic origin, but we’ve still blocked out what Paul says. We refuse to think seriously about it, because after all that’s really saying we’re going to be subject to a lot of sicknesses, and we don’t want to believe we are. But, “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.”

I believe that in due time we will recognize the truth of Paul’s word. Our bodies represent, as Paul makes clear, a membership; a membership either in Christ, or in death. Our bodies are always affirming something with our every thought and our every act. We have a membership with our bodies. That membership has total consequences. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that we are Thy possession, Thy property. Give us grace and strength day by day to treat that which is Thine with respect. Putting holy things to holy use, and knowing that that which is Thine, Thou wilt protect and honor. Make us therefore strong in Thy service, valiant in faith, and constant in all our efforts. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now, concerning our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] You’ve been referring to the body I think in a singular sense, in your lecture this morning, are we to understand that both in a singular and in a plural sense, as far as the Lord’s body is concerned, that is the body of the church?

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are as individual persons, members of Christ’s body. Collectively we are also members of Christ’s body. The Holy Spirit indwells within us as individuals, as physical beings and as a congregation in the Lord. There is an individual and collective possession, membership, and indwelling.

As I indicated I am going to return to the subject of the body next week, because this is of critical importance, it is a very much neglected area of the faith, and it is basic to eschatology; because the body is not apart from God’s eschatological workings in the world. That culminates of course in the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the body.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] Seems like God’s judgment, even if San Francisco isn’t leveled by an earthquake, that the disease they say are pandemic among the homosexuals over there {?}, that they’re almost killing themselves off by their sins to their bodies.

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good point. There’s no question that we are seeing judgment on sin today, on physical sin, physical judgment. And I think it is interesting that there is such a fervor when anyone calls attention to that fact. Phyllis Schafly has had a lot of flak from the press because she’s called attention to something that has been on the minds of everyone, and John Lofton’s excellent column of course made that point very beautifully, and upset more than a few people.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} Heard why Congressman Dornan, he said that, he was referring back to Leviticus, where the Lord condemned, one of the things was homosexuality, and a curse. This was funny because Mayor Bradley, he in his mayorship down in Los Angeles, he okayed a few marches and so forth, and then that Brown {?} he leads for the homosexuals, and that was the reason that they both lost the election, he said that.

[Rushdoony] Well Bob Dornan is a very plain spoken and outstanding man, an excellent Christian. I know Bob and think very highly of him. I trust Bob will soon be back in congress, we need more like him.

Any other questions or comments?

If not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God how great and marvelous Thou art, and how certain Thy ways and Thy victory. Therefore we wait on Thee, we look unto Thee, we move in terms of Thy word and the certainty of Thy victory, knowing indeed oh Lord that if Thou art for us, who can be against us? Give us the blessed assurance of Thy presence, Thy peace, and Thy victory day by day, so that we may face all of the {?} of life in the blessed assurance that Jesus Christ is Lord, in His name we pray, amen.