Living by Faith - Galatians

The Spirit and the Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 16-19

Genre: Talk

Track: 16

Dictation Name: Tape 08B

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 worshippers 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, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy truth governs and prevails, that all the attempts of men to evade the truth, to destroy the truth, and to live in terms of a lie are doomed; because Thou art on the throne. Grant oh Lord that as we face the burdens and the crisis of our time, that we do so in the knowledge that Thy truth governs all things, and Thy kingdom shall come, and Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Strengthen us therefore in our faith, that this day and always we may stand and be blessed in Thy service and in Thy praise. In Jesus name amen.

Our scripture is from Galatians 5:16-26. Galatians 5:16-26, and our subject: The Spirit and the Law. The Spirit and the Law, Galatians 5:16-26.

“16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Paul always writes with brevity and with impact. Although he sums up things, he does not generalize; he has very concrete problems and situations in mind. Here he contrasts lived gratifying the flesh, that is, human nature; versus a life lived in the Holy Spirit. We must never take a modern approach and read back our thinking into the Bible. We cannot see this as a depreciation of the physical side of life.

By the term flesh, Paul meant as was commonly meant then, human nature as against the new nature given in Christ. In verse 25 he tells us: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” His concern is this: some in the churches of Galatia were apparently claiming to live in the spirit, to be spirit-filled men, while guilty of many sins. At the same time they claimed to be faithful to the law. So we have these people who were attacking Paul, claiming to have the true version of the law, and to be in the spirit, and to say that Paul was against the law, and Paul was against life in the spirit.

Of course, consistency in critics is not very common. Any handle with which a person can be accused, indicted, is always welcome. But as we saw last time, and we shall see again, Paul in the 6th chapter says that his critics not only are not in the spirit, they are not living in terms of the law. As Paul tells us elsewhere, they have reduced the law to circumcision, they have given it a very limited scope. So, in the thirteenth verse of the sixth chapter, he says that they do not keep the law.

Now he gives a catalog; having made it clear that we are not justified by the law, but we are not lawless, he gives a catalog of the sins of antinomianism, as well as the fruits of the Spirit. The sins are violations of God’s law, and the fruits of the Spirit are in conformity to God’s law. Again, as we go into this catalog, it is important to remember that when Paul speaks of the sins of the flesh, he does not refer to things material or physical; he was not a Manichean, he was not a Dualist. Calvin in his day called attention to this fact, and said, and I quote: “It deserves notice, that heresies are enumerated among the works of the flesh; for it shows clearly that the word flesh is not confined, as the sophists imagine, to sensuality.”

Paul opposes Pharisaic externalism with the Holy Spirit and the law. The issue is inheriting the kingdom of God, as he says in the last part of the 21st verse. They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

The sins enumerated are contrary to the kingdom, and the virtues represent the life of the kingdom, and faithfulness to the law of God. The catalog begins with adultery. In the Bible it is an offense against the family, the basic institution, and is therefore treason.

Then Paul next cites uncleanness. This refers to the whole range of uncleanness, physical, moral, and religious. Fornication refers to lawless sexuality of any kind, and it can refer to prostitution. Lasciviousness is ‘mental lawlessness,’ it refers to an absence of restrain and decency. The word ‘idolatry’ as we have it in the Greek and in the English means the service of a phantom. Paul cites idolatry in other places, as for example in 1 Corinthians 5:10-11, and 1 Corinthians 10:7,14; declares it comparable to adultery, to consorting with prostitutes; that even as adultery is treason against the family, so idolatry is treason to God.

Then next, he cites witchcraft. Witchcraft is one of the most misunderstood words in the Bible; it is in the Greek ‘Pharmakeia ,’ our word ‘Pharmacy’ comes from it. It refers to dealers in drugs, in poisons, and this is what witches were. Our modern idea is altogether false.

Then, hatred. It speaks of man’s enmity with God, claiming to be his own god, and ‘Ereis,’ or it can be rendered ‘strife,’ enmity towards our fellow men. The word ‘emulations’ in the Greek means jealousy; and the word jealousy in the Bible has a double meaning, it can be both good and bad, it can be clean, it can be protective of justice. The Greek word is ‘Zelos’ which we have in ‘zealous,’ and zeal can be both good and bad, and of course here refers to ungodly jealousy. Wrath, or more accurately, ‘wraths’ means literally: smoking with rage, with hot passion, with anger. It refers to rage on false concerns. To give you an example of the kind of thing Paul was referring to and was meant by this word, we have only to look to the anti-nuclear people; they are continually in a rage in a false way. Environmentalists are often given to wrath or rage, smoking, over issues where they are altogether wrong.

Then Paul continues by referring to ‘strife’. Strife means factions, contentiousness, selfish ambitions; these are some of its meanings in the Greek. ‘Seditions’ is next, and it can be rendered divisions, thundering’s, and very literally, ‘standing apart from the community’. A person is guilty of sedition if they stand apart from the community. So the word ‘sedition is a very, very rich one in its meaning in scripture. People who will not get involved in community life to do things that are a part of life and community are seditious people in the Biblical sense, and sedition is one of the destroyers of the modern world.

Then we have ‘heresies’. It means literally: ‘choosing for ourselves.’ A heretic is one who pick and chooses; a heretic goes to the Bible and says: “This I like and I believe in, but this I do not like and I will not believe it.” So a heretic picks and chooses from what God says, and the rest he refers to the old covenant or another dispensation, and this is heresy; choosing, instead of taking all.

Then we have ‘envying’s’ which has reference to displeasure at the success of others, and scripture associates it with murder, which is next; the wish of envy is murder. And the murderous man because envy is associated with it, is one who refuses to allow anyone to be better than himself, it is the elimination of those we do not want. Drunkenness of course is obvious, it refers to the excesses of too much wine; revelings to rioting and drunkenness. For all such, they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

“But the fruit of the Spirit,” Paul continues in verse 22: “is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

The first word, love, is one of three Greek words for love. ‘Eros,’ as in erotic love, ‘Phileo,’ for friendly love, ordinary human love and affection, and ‘Agape,’ a word which some have called attention to as a rather strange word in the Greek because its meaning was unmerited love, grace, unmerited favor; a word little used in the Greek as it were, waiting for the scriptures; and it refers in scripture to the grace of God, the love He shows, even though we do not observe it; and we are called to show agape, such love.

‘Joy’ means delight, it is a benefit of grace. Our freedom in Christ is a benefit of grace, and it is an expression of this our delight with our life in the Spirit. The word ‘peace’ means harmony, so it conveys in its original, more than our rather limited meaning today for peace. In our day the word for peace has come to mean no war, it has been associated with pacifism. But there can be no war without an end to disharmony, and certainly although we are not at war with the Soviet Union, in no Biblical sense can we say we are at peace with them; the word refers to a harmony, a freedom from molestation, it has the implication of order and quietness.

‘Longsuffering’ is an obvious one, it has reference to patience and forbearance, a lack of rebelliousness. ‘Gentleness’ means kindness and very emphatically, serviceableness; a graciousness, a readiness to be useful, so that a gentle man in the biblical sense is a useful man, a serviceable man, a man who is ready to help, to put aside his private feelings for the good of others.

‘Goodness’ has reference to beneficial moral power. ‘Faith,’ to trustfulness, to faithfulness. We are faithful to God in Christ, and in Him to our responsibilities to the kingdom, to others to our various duties. Verse 23 begins with ‘meekness,’ again a word that has been much abused. I think most people assume that is means mousy, but in its origin it has reference to animals that are tamed, broken to harness, made useful. So the blessed meek are those who are broken to God’s harness, and are made useful in terms of His kingdom.

The word ‘temperance’ again has lost much of its force, and we refer it to non-drinking or being temperate in our drinking. But the word comes from a word that means strength; it describes the temperate man as the one who has strength in every area of his life, strength to control himself, strength to direct his energies without dissipation, strength to function and to be effectual, to be strong. So that the root of the word temperance and temperate is strength.

“Against such there is no law.” We fail to see Paul’s irony there. ‘You are talking about me being a law breaker, you who limit it to circumcision?’ and as he says in the 13th verse of the 6th chapter: ‘You are for circumcision, you are for Phariseeism, because it will enable you to escape persecution, you will qualify technically as a Jew, and gain the immunities the empire gives. Well, the law is much broader. The law covers all these things I have talked about, sins you are guilty of because whatever you say about the Spirit you do not walk in the Spirit, but you walk to fulfill the desires of your human nature. The law governs these things of which I have spoken,’ Paul makes clear, ‘things against which there is no law.’

“And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”

Here again we come to a word that with the rise of romanticism has changed its meaning. The romantic movement, far more than people realize, perverted the language. When Shakespeare uses the word affection, he uses it in the sense that we now have a word slightly different to indicate the same thing: ‘affectation.’ So that, when Paul is saying: ‘they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affectations, its pretensions.’ But romanticism made affectation something desirable; all you have to do is pick up Lord Byron’s collected works, or Shelley’s, and your realize that here were two affected asses; that they were given to a love of affectation, and so affection came to have a good meaning, and we had to have ‘affectation,’ a similar word with the same root to convey the meaning that affection once had. As a matter of fact, as late as 1828, although the new meaning was already there, Noah Webster in the 1st edition of his dictionary gave as one of the meanings of affection: ‘a symptom of a disease.’ ‘An affection of gout’ was a common phrase. The symptom of gout. So Paul is saying, they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the human nature with the affectations and desires, because the word ‘lusts’ as Paul used it could have both a good meaning and a bad meaning; now it refers to sexual desire, then it meant desire, good or bad, and he is saying: ‘it is the desires of the human nature, the fallen human nature, and its affectations which are crucified in Christ.’

“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

We know what we are, we are sinners saved by grace; and we no longer have to live a life of affectation and pretense. The world is always living a life of pretense. The life of men outside of Christ, the politics of men outside of Christ is a life of affectation, a pretense. But we don’t need that.

“Therefore, let us not be desirous of vain-glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”

The works of the Spirit lead us to look to God’s law and Spirit for our guidance. Not to one another, and to an affectation which will make us look better than others. That no longer is our standard. We are not trying to be conformed to the image men have of themselves and of others, and of what a person should be like, but to the image of God in Christ. We seek through the law and the Spirit to conform ourselves to this. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, Thy word is truth, and Thy word summons us to forsake, to abandon the affectations of human nature, in all its efforts to mask and disguise its sickness unto death; and to put on Christ, to walk in the Spirit, to rejoice that the law is now written in the tables of our hearts, to be Thy people in truth and in power. Bless us day by day to this purpose that we may every grow in grace and in understanding, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Do many of the new upgraded or modernized versions of the Bible put in these new interpretations of these old words that you have gone into?

[Rushdoony] Sometimes you will find one or two words properly rendered, but by and large these new versions are not translations; almost invariably they are paraphrases. Now a translation like the King James is a word-for-word rendering. If you look at your King James you will see that occasionally a word will be italicized. As you know from Spanish, very often words are understood in the form of a very or the form of a noun, and when it is such a situation they italicize because it is so literal a rendering. A paraphrase tries to translate the meaning. Sometimes it can be very illuminating as they try to give the general sense; the classic example which I have cited many times is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” which Goodspeed rendered, no one else picked it up unfortunately: “Blessed are they which feel their spiritual need, their spiritual poverty.” Now that gives the sense. But having occasionally given such an insight, what Goodspeed then did was to eliminate and substitute other words for anything that pointed, for example, to the atonement; and to other key doctrines of scripture. The weakness of paraphrases is, the paraphraser can read the meaning he likes into the text, and soften the force of what has been said.

Now, what we have to realize is that while these words have often changed, and in such a catalog we often find how greatly it is changed, it’s difficult for example to find a word today which will tell us what ‘peace’ means here, because the word peace has been so abused by the Peaceniks and others. Then we have to realize, secondly, that the restoration of meaning comes with a restoration of faith and character in a people; so that again and again since the authorized version was translated, the meanings have drifted dramatically from their original, and then have returned; so that to restore the meaning to the word ‘peace’ for example, you are going to have to see the destruction of our culture, a reestablishment of faith and character in people, and in our politics, in our life generally.

We have a particular problem because in our day, more than any other era, we’ve had a systematic assault on language by Marxists. When Congressman McDonald was still alive and associated with Western goals, they produced a big fat volume giving thousands of words there as the Soviets have reinterpreted them. And it is surprising, I sat down once when I was at the other end of the country sitting in someone’s study, picked up that book, went through so many words, and realized how great the erosion has become since the triumph of the Soviet revolution. So this is the problem with words. Our journalists do not help, they are so congenial to the alteration of the meaning of peace, and so many other things.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... critics of Christianity to argue that the Christians are against all natural life.

[Rushdoony] That’s very true, there is a total assault on all civilization as we’ve known it, they are not missing a single sphere; the Christian meaning of things is to be destroyed. Any other questions or comments?

Here is another thing, since I got onto the subject of language that I would like to add. Our reading today because of our educational system and the direction of our culture, the two things coming together, is vastly poorer. For example, before you had motion pictures, words had among their functions to convey not only meaning, but pictures. If you read for example the older novelists of the last century and of the early years of the novel, you find what now will be edited out in any popular printing of some of their works, whole pages describing a scene; the dress of a heroine described in great detail, because words then were intended not only to convey meaning, but also pictures. Now we don’t want the picture, and in detective stories especially, the pictorial element is totally eliminated, there is virtually no description, it’s the situation that you are to see. So that words have been impoverished to a very great extent because we have had a bad educational system combing with the rise of television and motion picture films.

Now I don’t think we can blame simply the motion picture industry and television for that, the educational system at the same time was limiting and impoverishing the students, so that the same relish for words was gone. To illustrate, it used to be a delight on the part of writers not only to convey pictures but sounds; so that a good deal of the writing of poetry and novels was written for reading aloud, for parents to read, for a person to read together, to relish something; and sounds were intended to be conveyed that would evoke what was given. A classic example of that is a line in Tennyson, (at least it is my favorite) where in referring to bees he wants to get the sense of the buzzing sound of the hive. The line is this: “The murmur of innumerable bees.” We’ve lost our appreciation of another area of language. Its pictorial, and its vocal qualities. All that can be evoked. So that we have stripped the language progressively, and now we are producing the greatest illiteracy in our history, and they are busy doing that now in Europe, John Mark tells me, on a scale that is surpassing ours.

Well, if there are no further questions or comments, let us bow our heads in prayer. Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that as we face the evils of our time, that all these things and all the nations are as nothing before Thy justice, Thy power and majesty, Thy truth. Teach us so to walk day by day, that we move not in awe or fear of man, but in awe and fear of Thee and in joy at Thy grace, Thy majesty and power, and delight in the certainty of Thy victory, and of our victory in Thee.

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]