Living by Faith - Galatians

God’s Prerogative

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 6-19

Genre: Talk

Track: 06

Dictation Name: Tape 03B

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth; seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto The Lord and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.

All glory be to Thee, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, who in Thy grace and mercy has redeemed us, and given us such great and marvelous promises in Jesus Christ. We pray our Father that Thou wouldst arm us by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, that as we face the darkness, the evil, the depravity of this world, we may face it in Thy power, and therein be conquerors. Make us ever mindful that we have been called not to defeat but to victory, that we have a work to do in Christ Jesus. Make us ever faithful to our calling, in His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is Galatians 3:1-6, our subject: God’s Prerogative. Galatians 3:1-6.

“3 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?

2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

4 Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.

5 He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

The controversy between Paul and the Pharisees in the church was essentially over Biblical faith. For the Pharisees, their rules had gained a place for them as mediators to God and to the Bible. By way of answering these Pharisees in the church, Paul again and again cites the Old Testament. Here in verse 6 he cites Genesis 15:6 “And he, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now in the first century A.D. in Judaism, both those whom we would call the Conservatives and the Liberals, although the titles do not fit, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were non-Biblical in doctrine. Both had adapted their faith to other premises. The belief by the Christians in the resurrection drew the Pharisees to them, so that it was easy for churchmen to accommodate their Christian faith to Phariseeism. They had many important Pharisees within the church, and to oppose so important a group was something many hesitated to do; these were, after all, prominent learned men.

So it seemed as if the church would either be destroyed or reabsorbed into Judaism as a sect. Paul was the man who stood against this. He spoke not as a peacemaker or a diplomat, but as a prophet. He wrote in Calvin’s words and I quote: “To penetrate into the consciences of men.”

Now when Paul begins in verse 1, he does not address them as he does other groups to whom he wrote as ‘brothers’ but as ‘foolish Galatians.’ Foolish; ‘senseless Galatian’s’ it can be rendered. Irrational, incapable of common sense. If they are not in the truth, he will not call them his brothers. He writes with vehemence, he speaks with authority to reprimand.

“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you,” Now, the word ‘bewitched’ can be rendered ‘fascinated’ or ‘deluded’, deluded with flattering words, words indicated to make them feel they are important, and ‘of course you will appreciate this truth.’ Paul, instead of making them feel they are important as heretics are wont to do; heretics usually flatter people. Paul instead speaks, cutting them down in size, telling them that they are fools, that they are senseless; that they have been made into dupes and pawns.

Now Paul does not mean that they are not guilty, he does. But he is telling them they are not the profound and able thinkers they imagine themselves to be. Then Paul asks a series of questions, to challenge the premises of the Galatians. His first is a kind of rhetorical question: “Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” What does he mean by this? How was Christ set forth?

The word that Paul uses, may have reference, the language, to something that was common in those days, and subsequently became common in Medieval Europe, and to a degree still in Catholic communities; religious processionals. Pagan processions carrying the God’s, the savior God’s of paganism, were very common on occasion in the Roman Empire. Paul may have an indirect reference to this kind of thing. The word evidently is ‘prographo.’ Graph we understand, to write; pro, before. In other words, Christ was set forth openly before them.

Now, this can mean that he was set forth by preaching and by the gifts of the Spirit; but Paul is more specific: “Openly portrayed as crucified.” Long ago, John Brown had an excellent commentary on this, he said and I quote: “It is not impossible that there may be here an allusion to the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, in which the death of Christ is “showed forth” — in which, by the significant emblems of bread and wine — broken bread and poured-out wine — broken bread eaten, and poured-out wine drunk, are presented to the mind through the medium of the senses, these truths, “that Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, suffered and died in our nature, in our room, and for our salvation, and that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Now, this may be the key, because crucifixion was a very common fact in the Greco Roman empire. It was an ugly fact, a gruesome, painful, horrible death; refined by the Romans to make it as painful as possible. The very thought, the very mention of crucifixion, was to the minds of anyone in those days a symbol of ultimate defeat. But then to have the sacrament of the Lord’s table, and this presented as the great sign of victory, of a risen, a resurrected Lord; of one who through the instrumentality of the Spirit was responsible for the power manifested in their midst, the miracles they had witnessed, was a very dramatic way of showing that the crucifixion which the world saw as defeat was a great victory and a triumph.

Having said this, Paul then goes on to another question in verse 2: “This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”

“This only” he says, in other words: “This one question will reveal your error and your inconsistency.” This second question is the crucial one for Paul. He tells them, he reminds them that they came to the faith as sinners; the gift of the Spirit preceded their law keeping. Now they are reversing God’s order, and they say that good works and the keeping of the law, the results of grace, are the cause of grace.

Now Paul opposes gospel and grace to the tradition of the fathers. Faith and the Spirit came from the hearing of the word. “By grace are ye saved by faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Only one answer was possible to this question of Paul’s. The gift of the Spirit was an act of grace.

The issue in all of this is: Who is the created power and life in the universe? Is it God or man? If man by his works can save himself, if he can contribute even to a degree to his salvation, then man can obligate God. He can say to God: “I have done this, and you owe me salvation.” He places God in man’s debt. Man can then add to the creative force in the universe, he can add to things ultimate, because he then himself is ultimate. Man can then add his law to God’s law, because he is a determiner. In other words, to have admitted this premise of the Pharisees would have been to accomplish what the tempter was trying to do in Genesis 3:5 ‘Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining for yourself what is good and evil; you shall have a part in the ultimate determination of all things.’

Now Phariseeism seemed to be very holy. It seemed to be extremely strict, going further than anyone else, or any other group; but it was an attempt to marry God and Satan, heaven and hell, and it would have been the destruction of Christianity.

Paul moves on now to the third question: “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”

They had begun in the Spirit by the preaching of the word of faith. Are they now going to trust in their own human nature? The word ‘perfect,’ ‘are you being perfected, are you moving from trust in God to trust in yourselves as a higher way?’ Are they senseless enough to believe this is a better way? The words ‘are ye so foolish’ can be translated also: ‘are you to such a degree irrational?’

Then the fourth question in verse four: “Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.” The word ‘suffered’ there has in modern English a connotation that is not in the original, because words do change, and their meanings become limited. The word is essentially neutral, so it would be better to render it: ‘have ye experienced such great things in vain?’ as Machen rendered it. There is no record of a persecution in Galatia, and Paul makes no reference to such a one; so what he is saying is: “Have ye experienced as much as you did as Christians in vain, if it be yet in vain?”

In the fifth question: “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”

Now, ‘worketh miracles among you’ can also be rendered: ‘implants in you miraculous powers.’ In other words, instead of Paul limiting it to certain miracles that took place in Galatia, he is telling them: ‘Every one of you represents a miracle; a miracle between what you once were, and what you are now; what happened? Was this the accomplishment of something you did over a long period of time by your law keeping, or was it something that happened with the preaching of the word and the grace of God unto salvation?’ and this question restates the question in verse two, but expands it to include the power now present in the life of believers, and this power is the gift of the Holy Spirit, not of human action. All the Pharisees should have this power, if it were the work of man.

It is interesting now as we look at verse 6 that verses 6 and 9 were cut out of the New Testament among many other passages, by Marcion. The Marcionite heresy concerning which I wrote a position paper last year, saw two Gods involved in the Bible; the God of law and of justice in the Old Testament, the God of wrath and anger, and the God of love and sweetness and light, the God of the New Testament. Now, since then Christendom has rejected the idea of two God’s that Marcion advocated, but dispensationalism has continued the Marcionite heresy, Antinomianism has continued it; and in effect, the Bible has been rent asunder.

But Paul as we shall see more next time, is insistent on the unity of the Bible, and in verse 6 he says: “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted” (or imputed) “to him for righteousness.” There has only been one plan of salvation from the beginning of the Bible to the end of time, salvation by the grace of God through faith. The law is covenant law, it is given to believers to keep; all men are under it because it is what God requires of His creation. But God gave it as a gift to those whom He saved to know the law, not only as it is in their conscience, but as it is before them; and then with the gift of the Holy Spirit be written in the table of their hearts, to be a part of their own nature to keep and to obey.

As a result, Paul cites Abraham because it was after God declared that Abraham was justified that he was circumcised, and the whole point of the Pharisees was that to be a Christian (that is, the Pharisees in the church) you first had to be circumcised and keep the law, and then after a while you could be received into the church. This made Christianity a sect of Judaism. But it was only after God declared Abraham justified that he was circumcised; and we read about that in Genesis 17:10-27. Faithfulness to the law is thus a result of justification, not the cause of it. Paul does not cite Abraham to set aside the law, but to show salvation is by grace, and it then results in works.

It is significant that this Pharisaic idea was present in the Maccabean revolt; because in 1 Maccabees 2:52 we see that faith is made a matter of works; and the same is true of one of the greatest of the current Orthodox Jewish commentaries on Genesis.

Calvin however said of Galatians 3:6 and Genesis 15:6 and I quote: “that person is righteous who is reckoned as such in the sight of God. Now, since men have not righteousness dwelling within themselves, they obtain this by imputation; because God holds their faith as accounted for righteousness. We are therefore said to be “justified by faith, not because faith infuses into us a habit or quality, but because we are accepted by God. But why does faith receive such honour as to be entitled a cause of our justification? First, we must observe, that it is merely an instrumental cause; for, strictly speaking, our righteousness is nothing else than God’s free acceptance of us, on which our salvation is founded.”

Paul uses Abraham to show that the Pharisees are wrong, that justification is the same in the Old Testament and the New. Paul opposes men who claim to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and in some manner, no doubt, these Christian Pharisees did. However, by allowing man’s work to have a part in Man’s justification, they were implicitly humanistic. Genesis 3:5, the tempters program, was entering the church through them. If to any degree ultimate determination is allowed to man, then man is placed to that degree in the God head; and of course this is what Arminianism does.

It is sad that the atheist’s very often see this better than churchmen. Lancelot Law Whyte, in his book: The Universe of Experience said: “It has long been held” (now here is an atheist saying this is nothing new that I am saying) “It has long been held that whoever denies God asserts his own divinity. In dropping God, man recovers himself. It is time that God be put in his place, that is, in man, and no nonsense about it.” And Whyte was right. To the degree that we infringe on the sovereignty of God; to the degree that we allow man any determination in the scheme of things, any ultimate determination; to that degree we assert man’s freedom and sovereignty as against God. This is why Paul attacked the Pharisees. Man has a secondary freedom, a secondary responsibility; he is not the determiner of all things, God alone is.

Others might feel that the Pharisees were good, moral churchmen, whose views should be accommodated since they were faithful in so many things. Paul sees such accommodation as surrender. It is not man’s prerogative to surrender what belongs to God; no more than I have a right to give away your property, or you have a right to give away your neighbor’s property, have we a right to surrender God’s prerogatives to man.

Men as sinners refuse to take sin too seriously; other priorities govern them rather than God’s law. As Christians, men are prone to rest content with the fact of salvation, rather than to insist on the full integrity and purity of their faith. Men are prone to be intolerant about their real or imagined prerogatives and rights, and indulgent about God’s prerogatives. Not so Paul. Not so Paul.

Let us pray. Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for Thy word and for Thy faithful servants like Paul who have made the way straight before us. Teach us to walk therein faithfully, zealously, and in the confidence that this is the way of victory; that this is the way of truth and justice, and that Thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Bless us in our service in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions; yes John?

[John] Can covenant law, Rush, can it also be seen as common law? Or a law common to all men?

[Rushdoony] The common law as we have it in the English legal tradition is really biblical law; so that as Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and a few others have shown, the old Common Law simply embodied the Bible and a few other old customary legal traditions. Yes?

[Audience Member] In that case, would that put Canon law as a pharisaical law?

[Rushdoony] Would that put Canon law in the realm of Pharisaic law? No, because true Canon law, and Canon means rule, is applying Biblical law to specific instances; so that Canon law was the attempt by the early church when confronted by a very real situation, to say: ‘how shall we regard this in terms of God’s law?’

Now, when you examine Canon law for example, in the early councils of the Christian church and for centuries thereafter, you realize that they were dealing with sometimes fearful situations created by Barbarian invasions, by lawlessness on a grand scale, and trying to say: “Now, here we have a critical problem, how does Biblical law fit a particular case?” and then, when they made a decision and it was found to be agreeable in terms of theological analysis, it became a canon. Well, in the late middle ages, a great deal of Canon law became extra Biblical, however the premise of Canon law is that it is the application of scripture to specific cases. The Protestant churches have Canon law, but they have avoided the term, and they will call it ‘Legal Precedents’ and they will have volumes of it, some of which are excellent; others of which are bureaucratic in their implications rather than Biblical. But the premise of Canon is, you take the ruler, scripture, and you apply to a specific case.

To give you an instance, there are all kinds of situations at the time of the fall of Rome, involving girls, young women, who had been raped. Now what was their standing, and how were they to be considered and treated by men within the church? Was a prospective bridegroom to say: ‘I don’t want her,’ or if she was a virgin who was giving herself to the service of God, what later came to be called a nun, was she disqualified, or what was her status? And of course it was a very difficult decision, and they ruled incidentally that she could not be denied the status of a virgin, that she had to be treated as such, and anyone who refused to was guilty.

Now, that is what Canon law was in its origin and its inception; it dealt with very difficult, trying situations, and tried to deal with them realistically. A great deal of protection for western man disappeared when Canon law was increasingly disallowed by both Protestant and Catholic countries, because while there were abuses, a great many liberties came out of it. I couldn’t document this, but I have seen various hints and indications that our constitutional premise that a militia, drafted army, can only used to suppress insurrection, repel invasion and enforce the laws of the union, comes out of course of the Magna Charta, and the provisions there came out of Canon law.

So, Canon law has had no friends in our time, but there can be a good case for it. One more comment to indicate what the situation is: It is like taking constitution law as it appears in the Constitution, and then judging it as it appears on the Warren and Berger Supreme Courts, and saying: ‘That’s constitutional law.” Well, there’s a difference. Yes John?

[John] It seems, the reason I asked those questions is because I have been reading a lot about English Common Law and Common law, etc, as it relates to certain passages in the constitution, because the constitution is supposed to be guaranteeing one’s right to common law. And it was interesting that the Magna Charta in the minds of most of the modern historians of the Common law just seems to scream almost full bloom in the brow the English in that era, and they never go into the background of that era, or why a particular set of (appearances?) should come about, I think there is in (?) Concise History of Common Law there is less than four-five paragraphs dealing with the origins of the Magna Charta; and yet he himself admits it is the most important cornerstone in English Common Law.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Of course there is a great deal of downgrading of the Magna Charta now. I think that would be valid only if you say that there is nothing radically new in the Magna Charta, that it represents a current of thinking that was present and continued, and slowly made itself felt; so it was not necessarily the dramatic instance of the Baron’s meeting with John that produced something full blown.

[John] It is almost as if the main and major premises in the Magna Charta were a fact of Common Law, and the meaning of the Baron’s between Baron’s and John simply made it manifest and got it written down in a concise form so that everyone got it straight between them. There is that sense that I get even from reading the stuff that I have been.

[Rushdoony] So much, so very much of our thinking today is governed by what something has become. An illustration of that is natural law. In some corridors you can get into a real battle with some people because they defend natural law; and what they are defending is the enlightenment concept of it as something inherent in nature, rather than the early medieval doctrine that the natural law is the Old Testament and the Gospels; in other words the Bible. It is the law over nature because the God of nature made all things in conformity with His word, whereas in terms of the Enlightenment and going back to a Greek kind of thinking in part, it is something that is inherent in the universe.

So, there are many Catholic thinkers who are defending the enlightenment doctrine, when they think they are good medievalists. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us bow our heads in prayer. Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thy word is truth, that Thy word governs all things, and Thy word is written into the very essence of all being, into every atom of creation. According to Thy word the stars in their course fought against Sisera, and they fight now against the Soviet Union, against Washington, London, Peiping and all the Capitals of the world; for Thy word shall prevail and Thy will shall be done, and we praise Thee our Father. Make us ever joyful in Thy rule.

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… [Tape ends]