Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: The justified man shall live by faith. The justified man shall feed from heaven and breathe from heaven by the faith of the Son of God.

Why are there so many weak and stumbling Christians? The answer is clear: They are not living by faith.

Why are there so many unhappy Christians? The answer is clear: They are not living by faith.

Why are there so many confused Christians? The answer is clear: They are not living by faith.

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 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 Life by Faith.

If you have ever seen a newborn calf on a dairy farm, you may have noticed how quickly he begins to get milk from his mother. A calf immediately and instinctively knows how to get the milk he needs to live. Living by faith is the source of spiritual nourishment and growth for Christians.

And yet, this does not come naturally or instinctively to us. What does it mean to live by faith, and how can we learn to live this way every day? 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 a message entitled Life by Faith.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto you, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank you that you have saved us by faith and that you have given us this gift of faith in order that we might live, moment by moment and day by day, drawing all our life from you.

Use your word in this hour to build and strengthen the hearts of those who listen. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

We are studying in the Word of God in the first chapter of the Epistle to Romans and have come to that great text: The just shall live by faith. The words have made their impact on multitudes of individuals and also on our times. The just have learned to live by faith and are growing daily in the knowledge, even in the midst of a world where the unjust live by defiance of God.

If we are to understand more of the meaning of this text, which ranks among the greatest of texts, we must understand the simple meaning of the words.

For words mean different things to different people. A bottleneck means one thing to a glass manufacturer and another thing to a mass production manager who is held up by lack of one or two parts. A ball means one thing to a debutante and another thing to a sportsman. Even among men, a ball may be something to throw, something to kick, something to hit with a tennis racket, or something to hit with a golf club.

In the same way, the word just means different things to different people. The Oxford English Dictionary gives us its very first definition of the word: That does what is morally right, righteous, just before God, just with God, or simply just. Righteous in the sight of God, justified.

And unhappily, it is forced to conclude this first definition with the statement, "Now chiefly as a biblical archaism." Yes, the word just is an archaism, something that is out of date with men, but it is not out of date with God.

We must never forget that the devil is constantly at war with words. Satan is called a liar and the father of lies. A liar must of necessity deal principally with words. In order to put his evil purposes across, Satan is constantly tinkering with the vocabulary of our languages.

Originally, a word has a meaning that is crystal clear and as pure as distilled water, and then the devil begins to add little meanings of his own, until a good word becomes something that is obnoxious.

The dictionary's second definition of the word just is, "Upright and impartial in one's dealings, rendering everyone his due, equitable."

Now, by the time the fifth definition is reached, we find that the word means, "Conformable to the standard or to what is fitting or requisite." And if we study some of the meanings that have become obsolete, we find that men have, at different times in our literary history, applied the word to such ideas as honorable in one's social relations and well-adjusted clothing.

Unfortunately, we cannot get away from the meaning of equitable and fair, even though such a usage of the word is a dilution that has become a poisonous adulteration. To call a man just who is simply a fair and honest man is a distortion of language.

It is somewhat like the story of the little boy who asked his father the meaning of the word ethics. The father answered the boy in this fashion, "Well, Sammy, it's this way. Suppose a customer comes into the store and gives me a $10 bill. Then he starts for the door. Just as he is about to go out, I discover that he has really given me two $10 bills that were stuck together. Ethics, my boy, means, 'Shall I tell my partner?'"

Well, we have shown at some length that the righteousness of man and the righteousness of God are two entirely different kinds of righteousness and are not to be compared, except to say that human righteousness is beneath and different from divine righteousness. The same thing is true with the concept of justice.

Indeed, in the New Testament, there is no difference between righteousness and justice. When I first began to study the Bible in foreign languages, I was greatly disturbed by the fact that there seemed to be confusion between these two words.

All the verses which I had memorized concerning the righteousness of God and his just requirements, I discovered that the French and German translations, for example, used the same word for both righteousness and justice. I hurried to the original language and found that the Greek word was the same in all instances. It is our language that has made a difference between the idea of righteousness and the idea of the righteous man who shall live by faith.

Now I hope that this makes it more simple for you to understand that the just man who is to live by faith is none other than the man who has been made righteous by the work of God through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The man who is just, only in the human definition, can never live by faith because he has never become alive in Christ through the exercise of saving faith.

In the third chapter, Paul will tell us that the righteousness of God is apart from the law. That is, it has nothing to do with man's obedience to a set of precepts. If it were so, it would no longer be God's righteousness, but it would be man's righteousness. It would be something that man had done instead of something that God had conceived and provided by grace.

The sinner, whether wicked or good in man's definition, whether unrighteous or righteous as man sees it, whether unjust or just from the human point of view, can become righteous, just, justified, only by an act of God. God's grace provides this righteousness as a gift, and it is his own righteousness.

It is not merely a righteousness which God approves, but a righteousness of which man is incapable, since it is God's own righteousness, as he declares over and over again. So, "The just shall live by faith" means that the man who has been justified through the Lord Jesus Christ shall live by faith.

Now, before we go any farther, it might be well for you to ask yourself if you are a justified person. It is useless to talk about faith and living by faith if you are not in the classification of human beings to whom such an outworking life is possible because it has been communicated to us in the beginning by the act of God in our regeneration, when we have come to the place where we abandon any hope of salvation through our own merits or efforts, and have come to trust in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

But if your hope of heaven rests uniquely in the fact that Christ was wounded for your transgressions, bruised for your iniquities, that the chastisement of your peace was upon him, and that you are healed from all of sin's effects by his stripes, then you can with confidence proceed with us in our study.

It makes no difference from what background of sin you may have come. God begins with a man exactly where the man is willing to be found by him and takes anyone along from the point of first faith to the point of final triumph.

So, if you are ready to understand that "the just shall live by faith" does not mean that the good man shall live by faith, but that the redeemed sinner of whatever category shall live by faith, then we are ready to proceed.

Secondly, we shall consider what it means to live by faith. There are three ways in which the verb may be understood in its present context. The verb to live in the Bible is used of the past, of the present, and of the future. In order for us to understand what it is to live in any tense, we must understand what faith is.

It does little good to give it dictionary definitions. If we look under faith, we find that it refers to trust, confidence, and belief. If we turn to belief, we find that it gives us trust, confidence, and faith. If we turn to trust, it refers us to faith, confidence, and belief, and so on around the circle.

There is one sentence on the subject in the dictionary, however, that is very worthwhile. The Oxford English Dictionary, telling of the development of the word believe, points out that it is pure Anglo-Saxon and that originally it meant faith and nothing else.

But as our language emerged from French and Anglo-Saxon, the word believe became much weaker than faith, so that belief in God no longer means as much as faith in God. Belief now means in popular usage, the mental acceptance of a proposition, statement, or fact as true, on the ground of authority or evidence. Assent beyond observation, on the testimony of another, or to a fact of truth on the evidence of consciousness, the mental condition that is involved in this assent.

But that belief is weaker than faith in general usage, and that is demonstrated by a quotation from Wordsworth, who wrote in his Excursion of, "One in whom persuasion and belief had ripened into faith."

I'm going to repeat the quotation from the Anglican Bishop O'Brien, which I quoted in our last study: "They who know what is meant by faith in a promise, know what is meant by faith in the Gospel."

"Those who know what is meant by faith in a remedy, know what is meant by faith in the blood of the Redeemer. They who know what is meant by faith in a physician, faith in an advocate, faith in a friend, know too what is meant by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ."

When we take such a sentence as this, we can go back of what the dictionary says, and can know that the meanings of belief and faith, which the world's lexicographers find archaic or obsolete, are still real and vital for those of us in whom the life of God has been planted.

True faith will contain everything that the mind can bring of assent, and everything that the heart can bring of love, confidence, and trust, and everything that the will can bring in obedience and determination. It is going out of the whole soul and spirit of man toward the God who communicates the faith to us as the gift of his grace.

We say, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Now what is this belief? Certainly much more than a mere mental assent.

Perhaps the best illustration of the word is found in an anecdote that I have frequently related. In the early days of the Gospel in the South Pacific, there were many missionaries killed by the natives who were in a state of savage cannibalism.

Finally, John G. Paton arrived at his destination in the New Hebrides. He came to the island at the moment when there was a terrible epidemic that had decimated the population. He entered into the huts of the sick, and he began to care for them. He buried their dead and cared for the ill, and when the epidemic had passed, he was received by all and began to take up his life with them.

He began to listen to their speech and write down in his notebook all the words and phrases which he learned. There came a time when he decided that he would begin to translate some of the Gospel stories into their language. But to his dismay, he discovered that there was no word in his book for faith, confidence, trust, belief. Well, you're certainly not going to get very far in translating the Bible without such words.

And so he turned his full attention to finding something that would convey the missing idea, and nothing availed. After some time of frustration, he went on a hunting trip with one of his helpers. They shot a deer-like animal and several smaller game, and started to carry their kill back to the house of the missionary.

The equatorial weather was oppressive, the hill in which they hunted was trackless. They arrived at the house almost exhausted. They dropped their heavy burden, and then cast themselves down on the grass to rest.

The native said after a moment, "Oh, it's good to stretch yourself out here in the shade." The missionary revived on the instant. Excitedly, he had his companion repeat the sentence again and again. And when the Gospels were ultimately translated, this was the word that was used to convey the idea of faith and belief.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever stretches himself out upon the Lord Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Stretch yourself out on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." And again, "If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and in your heart stretch yourself out on the fact that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved."

"For with the heart one stretches himself out unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation."

If we have all this in our heart as we proceed, it will be possible for us to enter into some of the deep riches that lie before us now. "The just shall live by faith."

Well, for our past experience, the just have passed out of death and into life by faith. In the past tense, we may thus set it forth. The human race, according to God's definite declaration, died the second death when Adam sinned.

At the moment of the fall, death passed upon the race, and man was spiritually separated from God. Just as physical death is the separation of the soul and spirit from the body, so spiritual death is the separation of the soul and spirit from God.

This took place for our first parents when they disobeyed God, and all of their offspring, including ourselves, were born separated from God. The one great problem concerns the method of getting men back into union with God. This cannot be by and of the human or Satanic devices that have been imagined in the false religions.

The true God is not propitiated by any sacrifices, ordinances, or religious works of man. He is not satisfied with any system of changing your psychology by changing your way of thinking. It is impossible for the separated soul to come into tune with the infinite or to realize oneness with the creation or to hold the thought that there is harmony if we decide that it shall be so.

God himself has to provide divine righteousness for the sinner, and he has done that through the sacrifice of his Son on the cross. We read it in Acts 4:12, "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

Woe unto the man who attempts to be saved by any of the psychological religions. The just shall pass out of death and into life by faith. The just shall begin to live by faith. The just shall come to life by turning away from any hope within self and by stretching oneself out on the finished work of the Savior.

Now, the second phase of this great truth is that when a man has passed out of death and into life, he is to continue to live by faith. The justified man shall draw his breath from the air of heaven, and not from the pestilential miasma that infects the atmosphere of this earth.

We are in the world, but not of it. Therefore, if we are to live, we are to live from heaven by faith. There's a very great illustration of this to be found hidden in a word of Paul's to the Corinthians.

In the 15th chapter of First Corinthians, Paul speaks of those who saw Christ after the resurrection, and concludes the list with this statement: "Last of all, he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."

Now there are six words in the English that translate the single word in the Greek: "One born out of due time, ektromia." It is a word that is found no place else in the New Testament, though the Septuagint does have it for Job 3:16, where Job is bewailing his sufferings and asking why he did not die when he was born.

And then increasing his complaint says, "Or as a hidden untimely birth, I had not been as infants, which never saw the light." It is also used for Solomon's statement that if a man's soul is not filled with good, an untimely birth is better than he.

Now in our English speech, because of our Puritan heritage and the Victorian influence, certain words became taboo for public usage. I believe that America has advanced enough in the use of every kind of vocabulary for me to use words without shocking people, especially if they are Bible words, and if their understanding is going to bring light to the heart of God's children.

To speak plainly, Paul used the word that is best translated what we might call today, an incubator baby. Let us translate the verse with that term and see how it brings light. Paul speaks of Christ having appeared to various groups, and finally, "To me," he says, "as to a premature baby."

The Christian, says Paul, "is in the dark womb of this life in the age of darkness that is ruled by the prince of darkness." We will be born into the light at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will have our perfected life from that time on.

But, says Paul, "God let me see the risen Lord Jesus Christ in advance of my time. On the road to Damascus, the Lord ripped me from the womb of earthly things, and let me behold the glories of heaven. Then he put me back into earth to breathe out my days in service for him until he should remove me at the end of my day to the eternal dwelling place in glory."

And, just as the incubator baby must have a special atmosphere that is not the chilling atmosphere of this earth, so the Christian must realize that he was born for heaven, though he is forced to live here on earth for a few years. He must have his air from heaven, he must have his food from heaven. And that food and that air shall be communicated to him moment by moment, through the faith of the Son of God.

There is a hymn in our hymn books which is terrible, but which is true. Isaac Watts sang a prayer asking the Lord to, "Kindle a flame of sacred love, in these cold hearts of ours." And then he went on to sing, "Look how we grovel here below, fond of these trifling toys. Our souls can neither rise nor go to seek eternal joys."

"In vain we tune our formal songs, in vain we strive to rise. Hosannas languish on our tongues, and our devotion dies. Dear Lord, and shall we ever live at this"