Living by Faith - Galatians

Salvation the Death of Autonomy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 7-19

Genre: Talk

Track: 07

Dictation Name: Tape 04A

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth; the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

Let us pray. Oh Lord our God, who hast revealed Thy glory unto us through Jesus Christ Thy Son our savior, we come unto Thee mindful of all Thy blessings, Thy gifts, Thy mercies; be favorable unto our land, make us again a godly people, restore us unto righteousness, and give us peaceful times and fruitful seasons. Prosper us and defend us, and make of us oh Lord a beacon light of grace unto all nations. Enrich us by Thy grace, make us strong in Thy word, ever responsive to Thy Spirit, and grant that Thy purposes for us may be made manifest, and that we respond with zeal to Thine every requirement. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is Galatians 3:7-14, our subject: Salvation the Death of Autonomy. Galatians 3:7-14.

“7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.

9 So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

To understand the Pharisees is to understand ourselves. The Pharisees wanted the best of all possible worlds; they sought at one and the same time to be both theistic, to believe in God, and to be humanistic, to have all the advantages that come out of being someone who believes in one’s autonomy. They were elitists. They had a sense of racial and of class superiority; but they were also very dedicated people who earned the leadership which they had. Not only did Phariseeism enter into the Christian church, but with Judaism over the centuries it retained an equivocal view of Christianity. It was both militantly opposed to it, and yet some of the Pharisees within Judaism held that Christianity was a weaker form of Judaism, used by God to bring the Gentiles to Himself. In fact, over the centuries there have been Rabbinic leaders, Pharisees, who have been ready to accept the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but not His messiah-ship.

An example of that currently is Dr.Pinchas Lapide in his book The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Rabbi Lapide says that there can be no question that Jesus Christ actually rose again physically from the dead. The evidence, he says, is clear cut and the witnesses were all good witnesses; they were all Jewish. But he says, the kingdom did not begin with the resurrection, it did not usher in all the expectation of the kingdom, a world in which all problems were settled and ended. Therefore, even though Jesus rose from the dead He was not the Messiah.

Now, this opinion has occurred over the centuries in Pharisaic circles within Judaism. There is a similar belief within the church in many fundamentalist circles. It is held that Jesus is now savior, but not yet Lord; in fact at one school, a Christian university, a professor was actually fired for asserting the Lordship of Jesus Christ. So we do see that Phariseeism has had a continuing influence. When Paul dealt with them, he was dealing with a problem that threatened to take over the church, a movement of tremendous power within the early church.

Paul answers these Pharisees by turning to Abraham. “No ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham?” Verse 7 of Galatians 3. Abraham was called, he was chosen by God’s sovereign grace, not by circumcision nor by law keeping. The basic doctrine of the Pharisees was that Abraham’s works of supererogation were so great that Abraham accumulated enough merit to save every Jew to the end of time. Thus there was a vast treasury of merit in heaven to which all Jews could apply to the end of time.

Now this doctrine was undercut by our Lord in one of His parables, because He spoke to this belief, this belief that was prevalent especially in His day, namely: the Jews were all saved, because they were Jews; because the works of Abraham had built up such a treasury of merit that no Jew to the end of time who was circumcised could ever escape salvation.

In Luke 17:10 at the conclusion of the parable aimed at this belief in works of supererogation, our Lord says: “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded ye, say: “We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do.” Our Lord was saying there that if a man do everything commanded by God in His word, he does not build up points with God. He has only done that which he was commanded to do, and he must say: “We are unprofitable servants.” This was a point of which John Knox the great Scottish Reformer was very mindful, because when he was on his death bed someone spoke to him and said it must give him a great deal of joy and satisfaction to know that his life had been so great, and his works so great in the sight of God. And Knox turned on the man, and told him that what he said came from the devil; that he was a sinner saved by grace alone.

This attitude, works of supererogation which our Lord spoke against, has been common in all quarters. More than once over the years I have encountered people who believe that they are entitled to a little leeway at times, because, well, “Think of all I have done for the Lord. I tithe, I’m an elder, I work harder than anybody else in the church, I am entitled to a little adultery now and then.” This kind of attitude is not uncommon.

Moreover, nations and races are routinely guilty of Phariseeism. By their works, by their accomplishment, their suffering, their cultural heritage, they see themselves not only as chosen by God but as an asset to God. Men see themselves and not God, as central to history. And this natural Phariseeism we find within Christendom and outside of Christendom. I know that in the forties when I was on the Indian Reservation I once asked some of the old Shoshone’s where their name came from, why they called themselves Shoshone. And they said: “We don’t call ourselves Shoshone, that is what other tribes call us.” “What do you call yourselves?” and the answer was: “We call ourselves the people.” and I found this was common in tribe after tribe. The name they had was given them by someone else, their name for themselves was The People. This is natural Phariseeism.

Paul turned to Abraham to undermine this perspective. Abraham was chosen, he was made just by God’s grace, not by his works. As Calvin said and I quote: “There is no place in the church for any man who is not a son of Abraham.” We are sons of Abraham, only through God’s grace. Not by blood nor by works. Moreover, one of the dangers that has cropped up within Protestantism is separating faith from grace. Paul tells us: “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Faith is not our work, our belief, it is the gift of God through grace, and God’s grace reveals itself in us by our faith.

It is dangerous to separate faith from grace, because faith then becomes man’s work. Luther at times gave room for such a view; for example part of his comment on verse 7 of Galatians 3 reads and I quote: “Faith is nothing else but the truth of the heart. That is to say a true and right opinion of the heart as touching God. Now faith only thinketh and judgeth rightly of God, and not reason; and a man doth think rightly of God when he believeth on His word; and when He will measure God without the word and believe Him according to the wisdom of reason, he hath no right opinion of God in his heart and therefore he cannot think or judge of him as he should do.”

Now Luther is right that a man doth think rightly of God when he believeth His word; but the heart hath no more truth, Luther to the contrary, than does reason. And grace can enlighten the heart and the reason alike when grace is present in a man’s life. Both the heart and reason are alike fallen, and when redeemed are still imperfect.

For Paul, the term: “The children of Abraham” is a moral term, not a racial one. God called Abraham not to establish a bloodline, but a faith line. In fact there is no true blood line of Abraham. According to Genesis 14:14, Abraham had in his household 318 armed men. When he took those men into battle against the kings of the east, he left the children, the male children, and the old men, in the camp. The old men to look after the livestock and the women, and the children. Now, we can estimate that there were at least as many children, and again as many older men. As a matter of fact, since the number of armed men might have been carefully chosen to make sure that the camp was not left defenseless, it could well be that not all the able-bodied men were taken. So we are safe in assuming that approximately a thousand males were present in Abrahams household in the Hebrew nation at its very beginning. Of these, subsequently one, Isaac, was of Abrahamic blood. So that, the blood line of Abraham at the beginning of the Hebrew peoples was 1/1000th percent.

So how can we talk about a Hebrew or an Israeli people being of blood, of the blood of Abraham? No, Genesis makes clear that it is a faith line, and Ishmael and others were separated in time. And this is why Paul goes to Abraham; the sons of Abraham, the children of Abraham are a faith line. All those approximately 1,000 males, were we are told subsequently, circumcised. They were Israel in its inception.

Then in verse 8, Paul continues: “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.”

The conversion of the Gentiles is promised through faith in the appointed seed Jesus Christ, according to Genesis 22:17-18. We are told that God had all the nations, the Gentiles in mind when he was dealing with Abraham. Abraham suffered, but he was also richly blessed; and we which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. No difference is made. We are on the same footing with God as Abraham was, because by God’s grace we are the sons of Abraham.

In verse 10, Paul continues: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.”

The curse is on those who are of the works of the law, as apart from grace. Works, in the Greek ‘ergon,’ activity, enterprise. Works are under a curse when they represent human activity apart from God and His sovereignty, His sovereign grace. Such works seek to vindicate man’s autonomy from God, and to justify man apart from God. They posit an order as possible outside of God, that man on his own can create a kingdom, a paradise on earth; and therefore they represent Genesis 3:5, the tempters program of every man as his own God.

Now Paul in verse 10 is quoting Deuteronomy 27:26 “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them, and all the people shall say amen.” This was a word given to the covenant people of God, when they were confirming the covenant before they went into the promised land. It is thus an affirmation of the covenant, not to a non-covenant people. It is preceded by the building of the altar and peace offerings, and in chapter 28 the curses and blessings upon disobedience and obedience are pronounced to the covenant people.

Thus, Paul like Moses is writing to a people who are also outwardly of the covenant. They are told of the curses on unfaithfulness, that their response cannot be works, but covenant faithfulness and covenant law keeping. It was sin in the desert that kept the Fathers from entering Canaan, and their sin had been autonomy, not theonomy. They had sought to go in apart from the commandment of God. But covenant grace requires covenant faithfulness. The obedience of grace is God’s work in us.

Works of the law thus in this context has reference to our autonomous acts. In verse 11 Paul says: “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God it is evident, for the just shall live by faith.” Again, as in Romans, Paul here quotes Habakkuk 2:4.

In verse 12 he again cites the Old Testament: “And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.”

No man is ever justified by the law in the sight of God, the just can only live by faith. “The man that doeth them shall live in them” is a verse from Leviticus 18:5, which is quoted also in Nehemiah 9:25, in Ezekiel 20:11,13,21. Now in Leviticus it is a part of a prologue to a description of a variety of sexual sins. Incest, sexual intercourse during menstruation, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and the like. Can any man imagine that Paul in quoting this was saying that those laws should be abolished? That all those sexual sins were legitimate? Rather what Paul says is that justification is through atonement, not the works of the law.

Paul tells us in Romans 3:9-31 that the works of Jews and Gentiles are all under sin, that none are righteous, no not one. To live by the law as out justification is to pass under the sentence of death of the law. The law is a curse, a sentence of death, for all outside of Christ. But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Being our substitute, accepting the death penalty for us; for it is written as verse 13 says: “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

All who imagine justification in any other way imagine a vain thing and are accursed. God’s purpose is that the blessings of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith according to verse 14. The promise of the Spirit again refers to the prophecies of the Old Testament. The just, Paul makes clear, can only live by faith.

Faith is evidence of God’s power in us; it is not easy believism, it is not our believing, it is God’s grace made manifest in us. We cannot allow either faith or works a place of determination. We cannot allow them to supplant grace in the plan of salvation. Christ’s atonement is our salvation, and we are justified by grace, but in autonomy we establish by our faith, or by our works, our means to God, to salvation. We say that it is our autonomous believing or our autonomous obedience rather than grace and theonomy which is valid.

In other words, Phariseeism makes us junior partners with God. With Phariseeism we say that our believing or our doing, gives us merit before God; it obligates God to do something for us, whereas according to Paul it is God’s grace that creates the faith and the works in us, so that we are simply manifesting God’s activity in us.

Phariseeism thus is anathema to Paul. So too is every doctrine that weakens God’s grace, God’s covenant, God’s law; the total ultimacy of Jesus Christ in our salvation. Only those are justified who live by faith, and men cannot live by his works and his believing, or anything else save the every word of God our savior. The cross of Christ obliterates our sin, and our claim to autonomy, to make us a new creation in Christ. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that through Jesus Christ Thy grace has been made manifest to us, and in us, and through us. Make us ever strong in Thy word and Thy Spirit, that grace may flow through us unto all peoples and nations; to all human need, and to fulfill every requirement of Thy word, that we may be a living, working, power-filled people in Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes.

[Audience Member] One question in my mind that is sort of, I think I understand it but its little fuzzy, when we are redeemed, as you mentioned we are imperfect. Now, could we in ourselves, are we still fully depraved but in Christ we are perfect? I mean, how does this go, are we better, I mean in our old nature, is it any better than it was before, we are a sinner you quoted, saved by grace, so our righteousness is in Jesus Christ and not in ourselves. I mean, how does this all fit in?

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all, before our salvation, we represent and we are the old Adam, we are a part of him, we represent a fallen nature totally; total depravity in other words. In other words the fall effects and governs every aspect of our being, that is what Total Depravity means, it’s a total infection of all our being. With our redemption, then there is a new man in us, a new creation, Jesus Christ. And it means that the whole of our lives is in process now, because immediately after our regeneration, our sanctification proceeds. It is under way, and it begins to grow in us. So that we are no longer governed by the Old man, but governed by the new. So there is as it were a new center of gravity, a new force, a new power in our lives. The old man has been judicially condemned to death, and he is dead. He is not entirely dead, because we are not perfectly sanctified, but he is no longer the governing strength in us.

So that, we from that point on have a new direction, and the mainspring of our life is to say like Jesus Christ: “Lo, I am come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do Thy will oh God.” This now is the primary function of our lives, so that we are a new creation. There are still elements of the old man in us, but that is in the process of being cleansed, we are outgrowing it, and with our death our sanctification is completed.

[Audience Member] In Romans 7, it says as war between two factions, the old and the new; now if we are a new creation, we have this new nature, and we have an old nature, is that right? We have two natures. Is the old nature redeemed at all, or is it the new nature that is taken the ascendancy to suppress the old nature? Now how does… this is the thing that I am asking, more.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the old nature has been judicially condemned, it is still not entirely dead as it were, but even as when a man is hung or executed the death is not normally instantaneous, it takes a little while, even though it is a matter of seconds. So, the old man is now dying in us.

[Audience Member] But it still hasn’t changed, the old man hasn’t changed, the new man is taking control more than the other completely dying; I mean a man is still a man humanisticly speaking.

[Rushdoony] But the dying man doesn’t have the strength and force.

[Audience Member] Right, in other words the other one is controlling him, and therefore it is dying, but it hasn’t changed in itself, is that right?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it hasn’t changed, but it is under the sentence of death. That is why a book like Gurnall the Christian and Complete Armour is so very, very wrong, because it assumes that there is an equality of the old man and the new man, and it is a perpetual battle until the day of death as though there were no difference; that is very, very immoral.

[Audience Member] And isn’t also in the holiness group, in other words that old man is getting better and better and better, it seems as though, and that is where the Pharisee and self righteousness comes, it is when we think we are getting better, instead of Chrsit having more control, I mean our new nature that he has given to us is more in control, and that is why our life is more righteous than it was.

[Rushdoony] Yes, is it is the new man in us.

[Audience Member] The old dies out, the flesh, the Spirit within… is renewed daily, in the likeness of Christ. I mean, is this… thank you.

[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience Member] Since the Pharisees were counting on the merits of Abraham for their salvation, what in their view was the purpose of the coming messiah?

[Rushdoony] To establish a world rule, a world-wide kingdom.

[Audience Member] And nothing more than that?

[Rushdoony] And to bring all the peoples into that kingdom. Yes?

[Audience Member] It had nothing to do with salvation, in a spiritual sense.

[Rushdoony] No, they did not see any need for salvation through the Messiah. They stressed His kingship.

Well, if there are no further questions, let us bow our heads in prayer. All glory be to Thee oh God, we thank Thee that Thou art our God and on the throne of all creation; that Thy word speaks to our every condition, that Thy word makes straight the way before us, and declares the things which make for Thy kingdom, Thy reign upon earth, throughout the nations, and through Thy people. Make us ever servants of Thy kingdom, and zealous by Thy Spirit, to the end that all things might be brought into captivity to Christ our Lord.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and… [tape ends]