Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Narrator: The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: As a believer in Christ, I could have nothing whatsoever to do with any type of prohibition law for anything. But as a believer in Christ, I have a strict law of love in my own life that prevents me from doing anything that might hurt another.

More often than not, the baby Christian who has just come out of the world is more scandalized at the narrow legalism of some believers than at the normal life of the believer in the world. A true Christian should never parade his abstention from anything if he is doing it for Christ's sake.

When I am offered tobacco, I simply say, "I don't smoke." I know that you cannot generally win such people by being shocked at the things they do. And I also know that they will listen to you if they come to understand that you have a real interest in them and that you love them. This is the law of the Christian life. And if we love the Lord Jesus, we'll be willing to live this type of life as he takes over the reigns of our heart and governs our wills.

Narrator: Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry, which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.

The application of God's word, as taught by Dr. Barnhouse, is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago. The message we will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled "The Christian Conscience."

When Martin Luther was ordered by a church council to renounce his writings against the Roman Catholic Church, he replied that he could not do so because his conscience was held captive by the Word of God. The conscience of every believer must likewise be captivated by Holy Scripture, both in essential issues of the Christian faith and in secondary matters of Christian liberty.

But what role does the conscience play in the Christian life and in our relationship with other believers? The Scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 14 and verse 13. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "The Christian Conscience."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We bend over Thy word and recognize at once that we cannot discern or understand unless Thou shalt bless us and touch our hearts. These things are not to be understood by the natural mind, but by Thy Holy Spirit.

Therefore, we pray Thee, speak to us in Thy grace and strengthen us for our daily tasks of living. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

Our text continues in the study of the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 14 and verse 13. "Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother." The Revised Standard Version is a superior translation at this point. The Greek word, *krino*, is the same in both cases.

But it had a wide sweep of usage that makes it better to avoid the old word "judge" and to understand the nature of our decision when passing judgment. Judge not. Judge rather, is a call to every believer to stop passing judgment on any other believer and to pass a severe judgment on self.

We are to let every other believer do as he thinks best, praying for him and loving him. And we are to live in such a manner that we never put a stumbling block or hindrance in his way.

When a believer tells a lie, we are to recognize that it is a lie. But remember that we do not know the extenuating circumstances of his life. We are to pray for him, love him, and seek to live in such a manner that he will be drawn closer to Christ, who is the truth, and who will end lying in the believer who is brought closer to the Lord.

When a Christian brother steals, we are to hate his dishonesty, but love him, and be careful that our ostentation does not tempt him to greed. Rather, our example should bring him nearer to Christ, so that he will be given strength to overcome the greed that moved him to steal.

Someone may object that this double attitude is impossible. "It's all very well," they say, "to talk about loving the sinner and hating sin, but it can't be done." I answer that such people are deceiving themselves if they say this. For they live day by day with their own hearts, hating the things that they do, but loving themselves.

For many years I hated some of the things that I did, but I never hated myself. I loved myself even when I said that I hated myself. We all have this split personality attitude toward ourselves. God tells us that we must have it toward all believers.

Surely when we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we shall hate the evil in his life, but love him even as we love ourselves. Then we shall desire his growth, and shall do all we can to build him up so that his conscience may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and he may learn to live in the glorious liberty of a child of God.

With this 13th verse, the main thrust of the argument changes. Now that the truth of Christian liberty has been established, we are to learn how Christian liberty is to be used.

Comparatively few Christians advance to the point where they have enlightened Christian consciences. Too many follow the dictates of a church and never learn to live in the light of the Word of God as illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

Some unbeliever may cry, "Bravo!" at this point, and say that he has the right to live according to his conscience and that he will answer to God for it. It's quite true that he will answer to God, but there is no verse in all the Bible that allows an unbeliever to claim liberty for his conscience.

A short while before Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, he wrote to the Galatians. In Galatia, false teachers were circulating a doctrine of legalism, and were teaching that the works of the law were a part of the individual's salvation. One of the most severe passages in all the Bible is to be found at this point. Paul did not say to them, "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own soul," as he does to the Christians in Rome.

Rather, we read him saying, "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed." And as though that were not enough, he solemnly repeats it, "As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed."

But though there is no liberty of choice for an unsaved man as to how he should be saved, there is liberty of choice for the believer as to how he shall live in his moment-by-moment relationships to all those around him. To the unsaved, there is the exclusive finality of the gospel of salvation through Christ alone.

And there is salvation in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. To the believer, there is the utmost liberty in our walk as we move toward the Lord and our eternal home.

It is as though the unsaved mass of men are in a broad plain, bounded by mountains that are absolutely impassable, except through one narrow defile, which is the cross of Jesus Christ. As soon as men pass through that canyon of the cross, they find themselves in another broad plain with the distant city of God on the horizon.

From the cross to the city of God, there are 10 million paths, intertwined with each other. And the Christian must walk as he believes the Lord wants him to walk. No man may direct another's walk from the cross to the city of God.

We may advise, we may tell of our own experiences, we may pray, we may point to the Word of God, we may seek to enlighten, but we may never command the conscience of another believer.

Now when we understand this, we can see how deep are the evils of Puritanism, Victorianism, and all other forms of religious legalism.

God is desiring to build individuals in their consciences. If you set a standard of legal principles for another, you are seeking to bind the conscience of that soul. The soul is to grow by the light of the Lord, not by regimentation by other Christians.

In his commentary on the Romans at this point, Charles Hodge wrote, "We should stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and not allow our consciences to be brought under the yoke of bondage to human opinions."

There is a strong tendency in men to treat as matters of conscience things which God has never forbidden. Wherever this disposition has been indulged or submitted to, it has resulted in bringing one class of men under the most degrading bondage to another, and in the still more serious evil of leading them to disregard the authority of God.

Multitudes who would be shocked at the thought of eating meat on Friday or of buying and selling on Sunday, commit the greatest moral offenses without the slightest compunction. It's therefore of great importance to keep the conscience free, under no subjection but to truth and God.

This is necessary, not only on account of its influence on our own moral feelings, but also because nothing but truth can really be good. To advocate even a good cause with bad arguments does great harm, by exciting unnecessary opposition, by making good men who oppose the arguments appear to oppose the truth.

By introducing a false standard of duty, by failing to enlist the support of an enlightened conscience, and by the necessary forfeiture of the confidence of the intelligent and well-informed. The cause of benevolence therefore, instead of being promoted, is injured by all exaggerations, erroneous statements, and false principles on the part of its advocates.

To call something sinful when it is in fact innocent, is an error in morals and is a practical evil.

As the pastor of a church in the center of a large city, I have ministered to multitudes of students across the years. Many come from other cities and states, and from various denominations. Those with whom it is hardest to work have been brought up in a home and church atmosphere of advanced legalism.

Some churches even require a covenant to be signed by their members that they will not take alcohol in any beverage form, use tobacco in any way, attend the theater, movies, or dances. Some prohibit the playing of cards, the use of cosmetics by women, membership in lodges, and impose any number of other prohibitions.

In all such cases, the churches are making decisions for their members, and they fail to attain spiritual growth through the work of the Holy Spirit enlightening them through the Word of God. It's always more difficult to lead such people into deeper spiritual life. Their consciences are propped up by outside forces instead of being developed by inner growth.

It is possible to raise mushrooms in such circumstances, but oak trees must grow outside where strong winds blow on them.

In a meeting of young missionaries out on the foreign field, I taught the great truths of grace and strength through Christ. A young woman who had been brought up in the atmosphere of ultra-Puritanism asked, "How can these things be? I've been taught all my life thus and so, and now I'm confused."

I replied, "This is very good. For I do not think that it's possible for there to be a strong Christian life that has not passed through a state of confusion. We must begin with negative thinking about ourselves. We are nothing, we can do nothing, we can be nothing. Christ is everything, and he furnishes all the life and the power."

There will come the time, it is almost like sinking, when we feel that our head is going underwater, and we feel pressure is in our ears, and then we find that we're floating, carried along by the current. So it is in the development of the life of God.

We turn away from every form of legalism and suddenly we discover that we're being carried along by the grace and power of the Lord. Our confusion is the result of clearing away all earthly supports and launching the soul on God.

The question now arises, which is central in our text. We may have come to the place in life where we see the Lord as the goal and the way of life. We see clearly that in following him, we have fullest liberty. At this point, we must bring all our thoughts and ways into severest judgment.

We no longer judge others in anything they do, but we judge ourselves most carefully. We are to observe narrowly all our life and conduct, our choices, our ways, in order that a weaker brother shall not fall because he is following us.

The Greek word used here for stumbling block comes from that which is an obstacle or a hindrance on a rough road. Let there be nothing in our life that could be an uneven place on the road which might cause someone following us to stumble and fall.

The second Greek word in our text is *skandalon*, which has given us our modern word "scandal." In the original language, it was the common word for a snare or a trap. Put the two words together and we have the full meaning of the verse. We are to order our lives in such a way that they may be neither a cause of stumbling or a place where someone else might be trapped.

Many years ago, I knew a man whose life was transformed because of an incident that took place on the afternoon of a certain New Year's Day. In a suburb of Philadelphia, this man went the rounds of several homes to greet friends and wish them a Happy New Year. He took with him his little boy, who was not over five years old. At some of the houses, there was a bowl of punch that was heavily spiked, and the man took a few too many drinks.

On the way home, he passed through a public park. It had been snowing, and the snow lay heavy on the ground. As he walked on, he heard his boy call, and turned around to see what was the matter. The slanting sun revealed his crooked, weaving path on the walk. The boy was trying to take giant steps in order to put each foot in the print in the snow that his father had made before him. The boy shouted with glee and said, "Look, Daddy! I'm walking right in your steps!"

The man told me that it sobered him more quickly than a dozen cups of hot coffee. He caught the boy to him and carried him home, and he never took another drink from that day forward. The reason was that he loved his son.

Now, the committed Christian has the same attitude toward all those who have named the name of Jesus Christ. Just as it is morally wrong to call an innocent thing sinful, so we must understand that it is spiritually wrong for us to do something that may be innocent, but a cause for stumbling in some other person.

The Christian life, because it is as broad as Jesus Christ, becomes as narrow as a razor's edge as we walk it. But the narrowness is only in what we do and not in what we think.

I can look to the Lord and thank him that I have been delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Then I can see him smile as I refuse to do something that would be perfectly innocent for me, because I know that it might not be innocent for someone else.

As a believer in Christ, I could have nothing whatsoever to do with any type of prohibition law for anything. But as a believer in Christ, I have a strict law of love in my own life that prevents me from doing anything that might hurt another.

Now this leads us to yet another question: Who is the brother for whose life I must be careful?

Sometimes the people who say that they're scandalized by the conduct of another believer need to be scandalized. They need to get out of their narrowness and enter into the broad liberty of the children of God.

Many years ago, I led a Bible conference for young people at Montrose in Pennsylvania. About 200 young people were present, and two or three older people. A day or two after the conference began, two old ladies came to me, seemingly very shocked, and told me that some of the girls were not wearing stockings.

Now remember this was about the year 1928. I looked these dear old ladies straight in the eye and answered, "The Virgin Mary never wore stockings." They gasped for a moment and said, "What do you mean?" I answered, "I mean precisely that. The Virgin Mary never wore stockings in her life. Stockings had not been invented. As far as we know, stockings were first worn by prostitutes in Italy about the time of the Renaissance."

After some time, one of the ladies of the nobility appeared in stockings at a court ball, greatly to the scandal of many people, but within a few months, however, everyone of the upper classes was wearing stockings, and by the time of Queen Victoria, stockings had become the badge of the prude. These ladies, who were holdovers from the Victorian epic, had nothing to say.

I did not rebuke the girls who were not wearing stockings. Within a year or two of that time, most girls in the United States were going without stockings in summer, and nobody thought anything about it. Nor do I believe that this was a step in the disintegration of moral standards in the United States. Times were changing, and the step away from Victorian legalism was all for the better.

Now there's an important principle involved in this incident. We are not to be concerned about those who are old in the faith and well established, not only in faith, but sometimes well established in the rut of a non-biblical legalism.

Another incident may cause us to think in unusual directions, and for our good.

A young woman of my congregation met a girl in her college class who had almost no religious background. Child of a divided family, in no wise concerned with religion, she'd come to college age without any church affiliation and had not been in church services more than two or three times in her life. The Christian girl got her interested. She started attending church, was finally saved during her senior year in college.

Shortly after graduation, the two girls, with several others, went together on a trip to Europe. The girl from my church was to attend a Christian convention for a few days in Switzerland. The other girls were to leave her there, go on to Venice, and pick her up on their return.

On the morning when she was to be delivered to the convention, she appeared without any makeup. The young Christian cried out, "You've forgotten your makeup!" The Christian girl explained, perhaps with a little embarrassment, that the people at the convention she was going to attend did not wear makeup and that she was conforming to their practice. The young Christian was scandalized.

If that had anything to do with being a Christian, she didn't want it. The girl from my congregation said afterwards, "I decided then that if omitting makeup would cause my sister in Christ to be scandalized, I would never omit it again, lest I should cause her or others like her to be scandalized."

More often than not, the baby Christian who has just come out of the world is more scandalized at the narrow legalism of some believers than at the normal life of the believer in the world. A true Christian should never parade his abstention from anything if he is doing it for Christ's sake.

When I am offered tobacco, I simply say, "I don't smoke." I know that you cannot generally win such people by being shocked at the things they do. And I also know that they will listen to you if they come to understand that you have a real interest in them and that you love them.

This is the law of the Christian life. And if we love the Lord Jesus, we'll be willing to live this type of life as he takes over the reigns of our heart and governs our wills.

Now our God, we pray Thee, that Thou wilt bless this truth to each heart. Give us, we pray Thee, to know Thee better and to love Thee more and to walk in Thy way, following after Thee. That men may not see us walking, but Jesus Christ in us, in all his love and compassion. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Narrator: As brothers and sisters in Christ, we must stop passing judgment on each other in matters of conscience and resist putting any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of another Christian. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled, "The Christian Conscience."

To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free, 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled, "The Christian Conscience," or simply request message number R14-26.

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