Miscellaneous

The Place of Biblical Law in Society

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-1

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: The Place of Biblical Law in Society 10-14-87 1A

Location/Venue:

Year: 10-14-87

…for Thy kingdom. Give us grace to be humble concerning the things that concern us. [tape skips]

…that though the enemy is great, Thou art greater, and that greater is He that is in us and with us than he that is in the world. Make us ever receptive to Thy word, that by Thy word and Spirit we may be more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

In the past ten years, I have been in many courtrooms across the country as a witness for persecuted Christians, parents, pastors, churches, homeschools, Christian day care centers, and other Christian activities. Less than three weeks ago I was in a trial in a southern state which is not yet over, it is a major trial in an administrative court which can impose criminal sanctions on people. Several churches are on trial. The trial is getting no notice, it is held in a courtroom empty of all save the pastors involved. It is in a southern state, and as one of the older pastors told me: “We have a problem alerting people here to the danger. As long as they have a Democrat in the governors office all is well. Here we could elect the devil governor, and all our Christians would vote for him if he had a Democratic label.”

The trial was different from other trials because what was on trial was really the Bible. The issue was child abuse, and these churches were on trial because they refused to bow down not to a law, but to a welfare department regulation saying there could be no spanking of children, they could not be deprived of recess or any special privileges that other children might have. They could in no way be penalized for their misconduct.

In the course of the cross examination, a note that came through with witness after witness was this: the real problem was the child abuse manual used by all the churches, and that child abuse manual is the Bible. The Bible. From beginning to end it talks about chastisement and discipline and judgement, and it creates the kind of mentality the Deputy Attorney General felt that was dangerous to society. It is later than you think.

On the flight home I changed planes in Chicago. The woman who was in the seat next to me made me grateful that she was not my wife… (laughter) the minute she got on board she began to complain the door was open- we had not yet fully loaded or taken off and it made it drafty- she didn’t like the service, she had messages for the crew; she was a problem. As always, I travel with a briefcase full of books, and I was busy reading from the time I got on. However, when it was time to serve dinner I put my book up in order to eat, and she started a conversation. She wanted to know who I was and what I was reading and so on. I identified myself, the only thing that meant anything to her was that I did identify myself as a Christian. So to my dismay she identified herself as one… (laughter) I would have preferred her as an enemy of Jesus Christ. She identified herself also as, together with her husband, an officer of a major Christian organization in this country whose income is well over a hundred million dollars a year; “And,” she said, “Some of us are beginning to feel that there is a terrible evil going across the land and abroad, and we need another international conference at Lausanne to deal with this evil.” And I said: “What is it?” “It is all this teaching about lordship and dominion.” (laughter)

I did not tell her that she was talking to the wrong person, but she found it out. I said: “Well, I happen to think that is an essential note of scripture. The term ‘Lord’ is used more often concerning God in the Old Testament than any other term, and in the New Testament again the term most commonly applied to Jesus is again Lord. How can you bypass Lord and Lordship, and speak against it?” and she said: “Well, it imposes we find, a fearful burden on converts.” And I said: “What kind of a burden?” “Well,” she said, “so many of them when they are converted have all kinds of problems that sometimes they can’t overthrow, why I know so many who after their conversion are still on drugs, one 13 years.” And I said: “Then I would question whether they are saved.” And she said: “Oh, they are saved, they will tell you that. They were scared of hell and they came to Jesus.” And I said: “Jesus is not our savior from hell but from sin.”

[Audience] Amen.

[Rushdoony] And I said: “All these people are coming to Jesus for is that they want a fire and life insurance agent.” And she immediately beamed, and she said: “Oh that is the most precious term ever applied to our Lord.” and I said: “Jesus Christ gives us salvation, and salvation means deliverance and victory and health.” And I said that what these people were looking for was not salvation. Well, she got up and moved to another seat.

We have a problem. People do not want Christ as Lord, which means of course if they don’t want Him as Lord, they don’t want a law word from Him. They want Him there only to meet their needs as the great and ultimate resource for man, not as Lord over man.

My subject is the place of Biblical Law in Society. Now, to ask about the place of Biblical law in society can be compared to asking about the place of sun and oxygen in our material life, and such a comparison only dimly approximates the necessity for God’s revealed law in our social order. The Westminster Shorter Catechism number 14 tells us: “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” Which is simply the statement of 1st John 3:4 “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth the law, for sin is the transgression of the law.”

We are also told by the Lord that: “he that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” we are also told: “For by grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”

We are saved by God’s sovereign grace through faith, and we have not been saved to despise His law, His justice or righteousness, rather Paul says: “God beforehand prepared us and ordained our regeneration. He created us in Christ Jesus for good works. We crucify Christ afresh when we despise His law, and His word begins on the first page of Genesis, and goes through the last page of Revelation, because it is the word of the Triune God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

In scripture the word ‘justice’ is the same as ‘righteousness’ and justice, righteousness, is a moral order and religious fact. All law sets forth a moral order. When a law is passed, it says: “Thou shalt not do certain things, because those things are wrong.” and every law system being an expression of a moral code of a religious faith is an establishment of religion.

You can, and I believe should avoid an establishment of church, but you cannot avoid an establishment of religion. We have been in process of disestablishing Christianity as the law foundation of the United States, something that Justice Story in the last century, a Unitarian, acknowledged was the foundation of our legal system. But now we are establishing humanism. It is the law of our courts, of our bureaucracy, of our schools, and of too many churches.

The only kind of law that is acceptable from a Christian perspective is God’s law. Not humanistic law, not Buddhist, Islamic, or Hindu law, or any other kind of law. God’s law. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.

Now how does God build His house or kingdom? We have too long sought to establish God’s law order through the state or the church. Both are necessary, but very limited spheres under God. Scripture very specifically limits their powers. Thus, according to Numbers 18:25-28 the priest, the sanctuary, the worship center, received 1/10th of the tithe, or one percent of the believers income. That’s Numbers 18:25-28, look it up. God said it.

What does that do? It prevents the church from becoming a power center. It has a ministry, the ministry of the word and of grace; it cannot be the power center.

Then, the same was true of Civil Government, or the state. It was strictly limited in its powers, because its tax was simply half a shekel a year for all males 18 years old and older. It is in the King James called the atonement tax or covering tax, to provide a civil covering or protection. There is a long history and a great deal of research making clear: that was the civil governmental tax. Exodus 30:11-16. As a result, Church and state were severely limited in their powers. God does not allow us to create power centers on earth.

God’s kingdom has this characteristic: according to Jeremiah 31:33 “After those days saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This means that the central area of action is within the covenant family and its members, and with the believer as an individual person. The family is the cradle of life, it is man’s first church, school, government and vocation; and God’s law does not allow us to shift our duties to the state or to the church.

God has written His law in the tables of our hearts, with our regeneration, and given it to us in His enscriptured word, and the church is to be the barracks room, the training center, to give marching orders to the people of God to go forth and do the work of His kingdom.

This was well known to the early church in terms of 1st Corinthians 6 they set up courts. In terms of the law they set up hospitals, they set up homes for the aged who had no families, they set up homes for the homeless boys; they set up what we would call inns or hotels for traveling Christians, because in those days a hotel or a motel, whatever they called them, inns, were also houses of prostitution, and a girl came with the room- and if you threw the girl out they sent in a boy. So Christians had to be given to hospitality in the early days, in the New Testament times, and very quickly they built these places for Christians who were travelling. This was before they ever had a church building, they didn’t have one for two centuries, they were illegal.

To evade the fact that it is not the church or the state on whom God lays all the duties of His kingdom, but us as believers, us as families, is to evade God’s word and to be lawless.

A few years ago I told Bob Mumford why his work was so important. The church in the modern era has been possessed and obsessed with the star system, and the star system going way back to Henry Ward Beecher has been plagued with immorality. One figure up in front and everybody looking to him, so the church has been created like a concert hall or a forum or a stage, where the star performs. The early church was built like a palace, a palace audience room of the king, where the kings word was spoken. And when the word of God was read, everyone stood because it was the word of the king, and it was explained to them as marching orders. Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop in Constantinople had a 100,000 believers, and they supported 50,000 orphans and widows and aged people, and needy people. And Saint John Chrysostom preached to his congregation, he said: “We through our charitable activities have done these things, but I tell you I will accuse you before almighty God if you feel this absolves you from the responsibility to bring these people into your homes, to minister to needs as you see it, instead of saying: “Well, let the church or the parish agencies take care of it.”

God speaks His word to you. Our Lord declares: “6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.

9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.

10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:

11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.

12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;

13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.”

We must remember that in speaking of tradition, our Lord refers to man made laws; and it is not just the Catholics who have man made laws and traditions, and by the way, not just the Catholics who have Popes. There are hundreds of thousands of them across the board in Protestantism, pastors, church officers, or congregations in some instances, bullying pastors. In fact, over the years we have had some Catholic Prelates and Eastern Right Prelates on our mailing list, and one of them once said to me: “You know, they think we have authority as Bishops, but I wish I had as much authority as the Protestant churches, sometimes pastors, sometimes officers, routinely exercise.”

The Anthropologist Marvin Harris in Why Nothing Works, the Anthropology of Daily Life witnessed against himself and his own Liberal views, because he believes in abortion and he is not averse to homosexuals, but he tells us of the growing break down of our modern world; and the heart of the problem as he reports it is anti-natalism, anti-natlism o anti-birth, anti-life. And so he says: “With our anti-natalism, feminism has prospered because women rebel against the family and against children; and the homosexuals have come out of the closet.” (and let us add, the Christians have gone into it) And people now have a meager perspective on life, they live meagerly, they see everything that God gives to us as a blessing as a burden- children are such a burden. They don’t want more than one or two. And this meagerness of soul has led to a church in retreat, a rapture or escape orientation, and to a general surrender of the world to the devil and his forces.

God’s law is a plan and prescription for dominion in all of life. It is a statement of the means to victory for Christ’s Covenant people in their daily lives; in education, in the family, the school, the arts, the sciences, our vocations, church, state, and everywhere else; including our health. For we are told that if we hearken to God’s law, the Lord will take away from thee all sicknesses, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt which thou knowest upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.

The law of God is thus a charter and constitution for a decentralized society, in which the basic powers of government are exercised by God’s covenant people in their self government, in every sphere, in their families and in their vocations, in the tithe agencies they create to minister to a variety of social problems and needs. And so on and on. We cannot forget that social financing is a necessity. If God’s covenant people do not provide it, then the state must and will. Health, education and welfare are inescapable problems, and historically the Christian community has provided these; but we have retreated from that, and we have become so super holy with our absorption with spiritual things and with the forms of worship, and with a hundred and one items of business, so that we have become to spiritually minded to be of any earthy good.

In those cultures where the state does not fund social services, a breakdown takes over. In 18th century England because the church had collapsed, this was before Wesley, there were over 200 penalties, death penalties, for everything from stealing a loaf of bread on up- and it did not stop the problem. If you were starving, it was better to risk stealing a loaf of bread and perhaps getting away with it than dying of hunger. Either way, death was likely. Wherever the Christian community abandons its necessary task of government and help, other forces take over. Our Lord tells us, and we too often forget, we do not choose to remember, that service is power. Ye know that the princes of the gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them, but it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Our Lord is emphatic, service is power, Godly power, true power, and the gentiles saw it is brute strength, He said. But the modern state has learned something from the Christian community, namely that service is power. And the modern power state is built on social services, it has borrowed the ammunition of the church; and today the state services, instead of as with Christ and His community ministering in the name of Christ and serving to try to bring these people into a saving knowledge to the Lord and savior Jesus Christ, to make of them a new creation, the modern state only aggravates and enhances man’s sin by teaching him it is the environment, it is society, it is the economic system, not man which is fallen and sinful.

As Christians, we must recognize that first man must be born again, and there is no other way than Jesus Christ into God’s kingdom. Second, the living act. The living act. General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army said something of the churches that is still true: “The minute they convert a man,” he said, “they mummify him; and they put him in the pew with only enough motion left to reach for his wallet, and he can’t do that too well. And they don’t want any more life out of him, or any word from him, he is to submit to authority.”

But, when the Bible summons us to hear the word of God, the word ‘hear’ has the force of both hearing and obeying, of acting on God’s orders. Every word of scripture is God’s law. Because our Lord is God, every word He speaks is a command word; I do not like people who tell me the Bible is an inspiring book, because it is a command book, and sometimes it isn’t an inspiring book to me, because I don’t like to have my sins pointed out so bluntly as the word of God does.

But it requires us to hear, to read, to obey, and to act. We dare not, we dare not move in terms of anything except the word of God. We cannot give priority to our church structure, whatever our denomination holds, or its liturgy, or its lack of liturgy, or our authority as officers of Jesus Christ. No. We are people who must be commanded, who must obey. We are to be ministers. Our Lord declared: “Het that is greatest among you, let him be servant of all.” Service is power.

We are not to be as the gentiles are; but that is what we have become, and it is high time the church of Jesus Christ became His church, and repented of its pride and its gentile power. Thank you. (applause)