Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: In a stream of water, it is rarely possible to distinguish the drops that came from the original spring. In a stream of ideas, it is always possible to distinguish the clear flow of truth from the muddy waters of error. We have in our hands the word of God as our constant measure. The word of God is truth. There is no spiritual truth apart from the word of God.

Men attempt to dilute the truth with the little streams of their own imaginings, but the great stream flows clear and limpid for all who will come to its banks with surrendered hearts.

Singing: The Word of God has for us to do. God's Word is all a Christian needs to grow in grace and to put deeds.

Guest (Male): 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 outreach, 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 Just Shall Live by Faith." There once was a monk who lived every day terrified by God. Enslaved by the religious superstition of his day, he could only see God as a just and holy judge who would condemn him. But one day, he came across this verse in scripture: "The just shall live by faith."

How did this short phrase of six simple words transform this frightened, superstitious monk into a bold champion for the gospel and change the course of world history? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 1 and verse 17. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with the message entitled "The Just Shall Live by Faith."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank Thee in this hour that Thou hast made us the justified ones in Christ, and that Thou hast made it possible for us to live by faith and by faith to live.

We pray Thee that in this hour Thy word shall come to many hearts, and that it shall cause us to grow in Thy truth. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When we studied together the verse which says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, I pointed out that there were various Greek words for power, and that the one which is used in the famous introduction to the Epistle to the Romans is *dunamis*, from which we get our English words dynamo and dynamic and dynamite. It is the explosive power of God.

The text which we have before us today furnishes one of the great historical illustrations of the truth of that fact. In the 17th verse of the first chapter of Romans, we read, "The just shall live by faith." That verse altered the course of human history.

Almost any historian will agree that this verse has had as profound an effect upon our history as has the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence. This text brought much of the church of Jesus Christ out of the wilderness of wanderings and back to the path of the truth of God. It is this text that made the Protestant Reformation.

There have been those who, in ignorance of the laws of history and logic, have imagined that the Protestant faith began with Luther and Calvin. The error comes from a failure to distinguish between the church organization and the church organism. History can study outward forms of ecclesiastical organizations, but it must be in the field of theology that the question of truth is decided.

Let us look at the two for a moment, and we shall be better able to understand how the truth of our text rocked the world. I began my career by teaching history in a university, and I remember enough of what I taught to know that it cannot be claimed with honesty that one church is older than another.

If we speak of the age of a church organization, how can it be said that either the Greek Orthodox Church, for example, or the Roman Catholic Church antedates the other? They had simultaneous and mingled origins, and they came to the place where they divided. A flowing stream struck a rock and divided into two branches. Which is the original? Can one be said truthfully to rise higher than the other?

And if this be said of a division of organization, how much more can the argument be sustained in the matter of the organism? We have likened the organization to a dividing stream. Let us liken the organism to a straight highway. You have seen at times a road that goes straight before you to the far horizon, unbending, unswerving, without even the slightest deviation from the compass direction. Truth is such a highway.

There is no compromise in truth. It is unbending and follows the compass point to the pole star. Far out in the wilderness, men find themselves off the road and following winding trails which run this way and that across the desert. Who is on the right road? An observer in a plane or a man with a very good map could tell immediately that the true straight road lay in a certain place, and that all those who were on the winding paths were off the main highway.

If we go to the Bible, we find the great straight highway of truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal word, said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Now Christ has never changed. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Men have wandered from him. In fact, during the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire, almost all of the church wandered off into the darkness of the medieval years, and it was rare to find anyone believing in the simplicity of the truth.

Here and there were single souls who followed the straight road of truth. Here and there were little groups which walked in the clear light of the divine revelation. Many of the fathers of the church were solidly in the path of justification by faith apart from the works of the law.

There is Augustine, cleaving to the straight path, occasionally walking on the shoulder of the highway or even going a few steps out of the way, while never swerving from the fixed direction. Savonarola, Peter Waldo and the Waldensians, the Albigensians, Tyndale, Wycliffe, John Huss, Morning Star of the Reformation. And then at a moment when much of the church was in a terrible morass, wandering about in desperation, Luther came and led a vast company back to the highway.

Oh, he may have carried a little wilderness baggage with him, but our text planted him solidly in the great highway of revealed truth. Do not think that Luther and Calvin were the authors of the evangelical faith. To hold such an idea is as foolish as to claim that the American ideal of democracy began with our protest against Hitlerism. The biblical Christian is always a Protestant, against anything that departs from the truth of God.

We protest against any thought that leaves the straight line of truth. We are ever seeking to walk in the highway of truth and life. The fact that Luther and Calvin protested means that the ideas they held were deep in the sacred texts of scripture, waiting to be rediscovered by some of those who were wandering off the highway. Our text, "The just shall live by faith," blasted out the barriers that kept them from the road of truth, and soon multitudes were walking in joy and salvation, as the word of God entered and brought its light.

The origin of truth is truth. All of the churches have some sort of common origin in Christ. Later, there has been departure. And if we may revert to the former figure, each stream has been fed by other springs, which give to each its own characteristics. Thus it is with all the churches, whether Greek or Coptic, or Syriac, or Roman, or Protestant.

Whatever there is of truth in any one of them came from the original source of Christ and the word of God. Whatever there is of error in any one of them has come from the other springs that contaminated them along the way.

Boreham of Australia has written a volume of sermons on the texts that made history. I'm going to quote at some length from his study of Martin Luther's text, for he has set forth the historical background better than I have seen it done elsewhere. It goes without saying that the text that made Martin Luther made history with a vengeance. When, through its mystical, but mighty ministry, Martin Luther entered into newness of life, the face of the world was changed.

It was as though all the windows of Europe had been suddenly thrown open, and the sunshine came streaming in everywhere. The destiny of empires were turned that day into a new channel. Carlyle has a stirring and dramatic chapter in which he shows that every nation under heaven stood or fell according to the attitude that it assumed toward Martin Luther.

"I call this Luther a true great man," he exclaims. "He is great in intellect, great in courage, great in affection and integrity. One of our most lovable and gracious men. He is great, not as a hewn monolith is great, but as an Alpine mountain is great. So simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting himself up to be great, but there for quite another purpose than the purpose of being great. His life to flame as a beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world. The whole world in its history was waiting for this man."

And elsewhere he declares that the moment in which Luther defied the wrath of the Diet of Worms was the greatest moment in the history of men. Here then was the man. What was the text that made him? Let us visit a couple of very interesting European libraries. And here, in the convent library at Erfurt, we are shown an exceedingly famous and beautiful picture. It represents Luther as a young monk of four and twenty, pouring in the early morning over a copy of the scriptures, to which a bit of broken chain is hanging.

The dawn is stealing through the open lattice, illuminating both the open Bible and the eager face of its reader. And on the page that the young monk so intently studies are to be seen the words, "The just shall live by faith." "The just shall live by faith!" "The just shall live by faith!" These then are the words that made the world all over again.

And now, leaving the convent library at Erfurt, let us visit another library, the library of Rudolstadt. For here, in a glass case, we shall discover a manuscript that will fascinate us. It is a letter in the handwriting of Dr. Paul Luther, the Reformer's youngest son. In the year 1544, we read, "My late dearest father, in the presence of us all, narrated the whole story of his journey to Rome."

"He acknowledged with great joy that in that city, through the spirit of Jesus Christ, he had come to the knowledge of the truth of the everlasting gospel." And the Reformer's son continues the story. "In the city of Rome, there is a cathedral church of St. John of Lateran. In it is a famous staircase built in three sections, or rather there's an ancient staircase with two parallel staircases, one on either side. People walk up the staircases to the left and to the right. But on the one in the center, pilgrims on their knees climb painfully step by step, reciting prayers as they go."

"On two or three of the stairs, there is a covering of plate glass, through which can be seen red stains. At these steps, the anguished pilgrims stoop and kiss the glass over the stairs." I myself have stood on one of the side staircases, or at the bottom and top, and watched them as they came with anguish and grief upon their faces. But it was a place of great joy to me as I stood there. I remembered that one man reached the middle of the staircase and thought of the text which we have before us today.

"The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith." It was Martin Luther who was reciting prayers there, when the Holy Spirit broke in on his mind with the glorious words of the text, "The just shall live by faith! The just shall live by faith!" He leaped to his feet and went on his way rejoicing.

The story in the library of Rudolstadt, in the handwriting of his son, concludes, "Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenberg, and took this as the chief foundation of his doctrine." The picture in the one library and the manuscript in the other have told us all that we desire to know: "The just shall live by faith."

The words do not flash or glitter. Like the ocean, they do not give any indication upon the surface of the profundities and mysteries that lie concealed beneath. "The just shall live by faith," cries the prophet Habakkuk. "The just shall live by faith," says Paul, addressing a letter to the greatest of the European churches. "The just shall live by faith," he says again in his letter to the greatest of the Asiatic churches. "The just shall live by faith," says the writer to the Epistle to the Hebrews, addressing himself to Jews.

It is as though it were the sum and substance of everything, to be proclaimed by prophets in the old dispensation, and echoed by apostles in the new, to be translated into all languages and transmitted to every section of the habitable earth. Indeed, Bishop Lightfoot as good as says that the words represent the concentration and epitome of all revealed religion.

"The whole law," says Lightfoot, "was given to Moses in 613 precepts." David in the 15th Psalm brings them all within the compass of 11. Isaiah reduces them to six. Micah to three. Isaiah in a later passage to two. But Habakkuk condenses them all into one: "The just shall live by faith." And this string of monosyllables that sums up everything and is sent to everybody, the old world's text, the new world's text, the prophets' text, the Jews' text, the Europeans' text, the Asiatics' text, everybody's text, is in a special and peculiar sense Martin Luther's text.

We made that discovery in the libraries of Erfurt and Rudolstadt, and we shall, as we proceed, find abundant evidence to confirm us in that conclusion. For, strangely enough, the text that echoed itself three times in the New Testament, echoed itself three times also in the experience of Luther. It met him at Wittenberg, it met him at Bologna, and it finally mastered him at Rome.

It was at Wittenberg that the incident occurred which we have already seen transferred to the painter's canvas. In the retirement of his quiet cell, while the world is still wrapped in slumber, he pours over the Epistle to the Romans. Paul's quotation from Habakkuk strangely captivates him. "The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith."

"This precept," says the historian, "fascinates him." "For the just then," Luther says to himself, "there is a life different from that of other men, and this life is the gift of faith." This promise, to which he opens all of his heart, as if God had placed it there especially for him, unveils to him the mystery of the Christian life. For years afterwards, in the midst of his numerous occupations, he fancies that he still hears the words repeating themselves over and over again.

"The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith." Years pass. Luther travels. In the course of his journey, he crosses the Alps, is entertained in the Benedictine convent at Bologna, and is there overtaken by a serious sickness. His mind relapses into utmost darkness and dejection. "To die thus, under a burning sky and in a foreign land." He shudders at the thought. The sense of his sinfulness troubles him. The prospect of judgment fills him with dread.

But at the very moment at which these terrors reached their highest pitch, the words that had already struck at Wittenberg recur forcibly to his memory and enlighten his soul like a ray from heaven. "The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith." Thus, restored and comforted, the record concludes, he soon regains his health and resumes his journey.

The third of these experiences, the experience narrated in that fireside conversation of which the manuscript at Rudolstadt has told us, befalls him at Rome. Wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to all who shall ascend the so-called Pilate's staircase on their knees, the good Saxon monk is painfully creeping up those steps, which, he is told, were miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome.

Whilst he is performing this meritorious act, however, he thinks he hears a voice of thunder crying, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, "The just shall live by faith! The just shall live by faith!" These words that twice before had struck him like the voice of an angel from heaven, resound unceasingly and powerfully within him. He rises in amazement from the steps, up which he is dragging his body. He shudders at himself. He is ashamed at seeing to what a depth superstition plunged him. He flies far from the scene of his folly.

Thus, thrice in the New Testament and thrice in the life of Luther, the text speaks with singular appropriateness and effect. This powerful text, remarks Merle d'Aubigné, has a mysterious influence on the life of Luther. It was a creative sentence, both for the Reformer and for the Reformation. It was in these words that God then said, "Let there be light, and there was light."

It was the unveiling of the face of God. Until this great transforming text flashed its light into the soul of Luther, his thought of God was a pagan thought. And the pagan thought is an unjust thought, an unworthy thought, a cruel thought. Look at this Indian devotee, from head to foot, he bears the marks of torture that he has inflicted upon his body in his frantic efforts to give pleasure to his God.

His back is a tangle of scars. Iron spears have been repeatedly run through his tongue. His ears are torn to ribbons. What does it mean? It can only mean that he worships a fiend. His God loves to see him in anguish. His cries of pain are music in the ears of the deity whom he adores. This ceaseless orgy of torture is his futile endeavor to satisfy the idol's lust for blood.

Luther made precisely the same mistake. To his sensitive mind, every thought of God was a thing of terror. "When I was young," Luther tells us, "it happened that at Eisleben on Corpus Christi day, I was walking with the procession, when suddenly, the sight of the Holy Sacrament which was carried by Dr. Staupitz, so terrified me that a cold sweat covered my body, and I believed myself dying of terror."

All through his convent days, he proceeds upon the assumption that God gloats over his misery. His life is a long drawn-out agony. He creeps like a shadow along the galleries of the cloister, the walls echoing with his dismal moanings. His body wastes to a skeleton, his strength ebbs away. On more than one occasion, his brother monks find him prostrate on the convent floor and pick him up for dead.

And all the time he thinks of God as one who can find delight in these continuous torments. "The just shall live," he says to himself, "by penance and by pain. The just shall live by fasting. The just shall live by fear." "The just shall live by fear," Luther mutters to himself every day of his life.