I don’t know if the passage which I quote below ever made it into print. I have very few books by Doug Wilson, maybe three. However, I think it has application on the Abolitionists movement so I wanted to place it on the record. As usual, I quote more than a sound bite or sentence fragment to insure that readers will understand the context; especially since verifying my transcript will prove difficult for most folks.. The source of my quotation is from a four lecture presentation on Eschatology. This is from Lecture 3 “The Power of the Cross”. I think it was recorded in the early 1990’s. This quotation is not about Abolitionists (since they didn’t exist at the time of the recording) but is applicable to them. Lastly, the transcript was made using voice recognition in Microsoft Word and then edited by me. Thus paragraph breaks and punctuation were created by me.
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Romans 4:13
“13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. “
Now, a very simple, straight forward thing, what was Abraham promised? Not just lots of descendants, he was promised descendants like the stars in the sky, he was promised descendants like the grains of sand on the seashore. But how does Paul put that promise here? What was Abraham promised? The world. All right? And who is promised the world along with Abraham? “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed …”, OK, in other words, the promise to Abraham is fulfilled not just in what is given to Abraham, but what is given to Abraham through his seed. So, what was Abraham promised and what was Abraham’s seed promised? The world.
Let’s put another, let’s throw another verse here that you are very familiar with, but nobody believes. “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit heaven when they die.” (laughter) “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), not heaven, the earth. Abraham and his seed were promised the world.
Now this is a very important distinction, by what instrument were they were they to be given the world? Not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith; not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
Now let me, let me, throw a parenthetical comment in here, and I’m going to throw some turns out, you probably had a very similar experience with them. I don’t call myself a Reconstructionist but other people do, and when these other people say that you know Wilson’s a Reconstructionist, what do they mean?
They generally mean that I want to, and others like me, others of my ilk, want to march on Washington, institute biblical law, and impose it on everybody; wrapping it around their neck all the way down. Alright? Some sort of top-down thing. Well, that whole idea appalled me. It just, it just appalls me. There are Christians who do it and they’re called Dispensationalists. They’re the ones with Christian Coalition. They’re the ones with religious lobbying organizations. They’re the ones who are doing their big thing in Washington D.C.
The promise, and everybody thinks that because the politics is such an idol in our in our era, everybody thinks that if you if you believe that that the Christian faith is going to exercise universal dominion, everybody thinks that you’re running for Congress
It’s one of those bizarre things… I do believe that we are going to inherit the world. How? Through the righteousness of faith. Through the proclamation of the Gospel. The most important thing we can do for the recovery of godly order and civil decency is to bring about a reformation in the church. We don’t, we don’t need umm, we don’t need any more godly people going to Washington. H.L. Manchin, the erudite unbeliever said, “Trying to reform Washington by sending good people there is like trying to reform prostitution by staffing brothels with virgins.”
We just don’t fix things that way. Alright. You can send a good man to Washington, and the first thing that happens, is he grows in office. That’s the first thing that happens. He starts compromising. He starts going along to get along. We don’t, that’s not where the action is. The, Abraham, Abraham was promised the world. Abraham and his seed were promised the world; and it says not through law, but through the righteousness of faith. What does the righteousness of faith mean? It’s justification. It’s a response to the gospel. As we hear the gospel proclaimed, we believe the gospel, through that instrumentality; cultures, nations, peoples will be transformed and it will eventually be reflected in the political realm.
All right, but we don’t, we don’t go for the political realm, and try and reform the church. We reform the church, and through the Reformation of the church, will see the Reformation of families, towns, counties, entire nation, That’s, that’s what God calls us to but we don’t minimize the goal. You know, a lot of the people who are in Washington doing their thing, they want, they want our voice to be heard. They want as the saying goes, they want a place at the table. And I don’t, I don’t wanna place at the table. I wanna know who’s the cook. I just don’t want to place at the table, I want the table. I want the whole table and I want the Lord Jesus Christ seated at the head of it and I’m not gonna have anything to do with it until he’s honored and and honored at that position of headship. Now how is that gonna happen? It’s not gonna happen through me writing letter a letter to a congressman. It’s gonna happen through the work of reformation in the Church.
As the church has become sound and biblical that is, that is, what God tells us to do and there’s a promise attached to it. We know that this work of reformation that we’ve undertaken will not be unsuccessful, we know in the long haul, it will necessarily be successful because God’s promised He made a promise to Abraham. He made a promise to Abraham and to his seed. Every time someone’s converted, comes into the kingdom of God, there is God being faithful again, still to Abraham.
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My point in quoting Wilson is that he is saying the exact opposite of Abolitionists. Abolitionists want to reform the Church by passing laws in the States that will then enforce biblical law on the citizens with the hope that this will then lead to reformation of our culture. The biblical pattern is just the opposite; namely, start with the church and the revival of the church will lead to cultural and societal transformation. This was the pattern of the Reformation and it worked as long as the faithful were faithful.
The other question that begs asking is why not implement all biblical civil laws, why single out abortion as opposed to adultery, divorce, homosexuality, Sabbath breaking or disobedient children? Abortion, adultery, and divorce are just as common in the church as in world at large.
In the next few days, I plan on posting a transcript from David Chilton that answers my question about whom should we really start with if we want to reform our society and culture.