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: Christ and all believers together form one man. We are inseparable from him, even as he is inseparable from the Father. This latter truth is explicitly taught in the opening lines of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Just as the Bible in many places tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ eternally existed, one with the Father as the eternal word before he was born into this world, so the Holy Spirit now informs us that we existed in the mind of God as being in Christ, even before the foundation of the world.

Listen to his announcement, Ephesians 1:3-5. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."

Guest (Male): Over a half-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'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled "Members." Your stomach cannot pump blood throughout your body if your heart stops working, and if your eyes go blind, you cannot see with your toes. You cannot function properly unless every part of your body fulfills its unique and essential purpose.

Believers are members of the body of Christ, and when we exercise our particular spiritual gifts, serve one another, and work together with unity of purpose, the church can function as a strong, healthy spiritual body. Are you helping the body of Christ function properly by fulfilling your unique and vital role in his church? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 12, we're looking at verses 4 and 5. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled "Members."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. How we thank thee that thou hast saved us and that we belong to thee. We recognize that we have no solid attachments in a world capable of crucifying Jesus Christ. But thou hast loved us and taken our wills and our hearts and minds out of this world and joined them to Christ.

This makes it possible for us to turn our wills, our hearts, and our minds back to this world, to know it for what it is and to live above it in triumph. Use the word that is now preached to build us in thy truth. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We continue in our study of Romans 12, verse 4 and 5, and I draw your special attention to the phrase "we are members one of another."

The Bible teaching concerning the true church and the relationship of the individual to it is very important, but it has been largely obscured by the church organizations as they have developed through the centuries. No other writer than Paul was given any revelation on this subject. He tells us in his Epistle to the Colossians: "the church, his body, which is the church, whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God."

When I realized that God gave these truths through Paul alone, I pondered the process whereby God revealed these wonders to him. Inevitably, I was carried back to the very first phrase that Paul ever heard directly from the Lord. Saul of Tarsus had come up to Jerusalem from his hometown of Tarsus, a thousand miles away. In those primitive days, it is very possible that he had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. News did not travel fast.

His father was a rich man who had paid the equivalent of $50,000 for Roman citizenship. Saul was sent to Jerusalem with letters to the influential leaders among the Jews. He arrived at a moment when they were fighting a losing battle with the rising flood of Christian truth, and they welcomed the brilliant young man who came out of the diaspora, the Jews living abroad. They told Saul of the division that had come, of those who were preaching against the dead weight of the law and saying that it was not necessary to go to the temple anymore.

This little band of strange men was turning Jerusalem upside down. They were strange because they were common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people who flamed with power that had never been seen in any group of people before. Individual prophets had appeared throughout Jewish history, but never before had there been a large company of people animated by the same desires, moved by the same love, and dedicated to the same purpose.

Moreover, these people declared that the change in them came from their trust in Jesus, whom they proclaimed as Messiah, crucified and raised from the dead. Saul of Tarsus was devoted to the faith of his fathers. He knew it only as it had been taught in the old law dispensation, and his reaction was understandable and immediate. The law said bluntly that anyone who spoke against it should be cut off from Israel.

In the old days, centuries before, such people were stoned to death. Saul was willing to go back over the centuries and revive that death penalty. Immediately, heavy persecution broke out in Jerusalem. The young church had been growing mightily. Its members were animated by love. Each believer realized that he was a part of a divine whole. No man dared call anything his own.

When food was distributed to the poor, it seemed to some that there was partiality shown to native Jews over those Jews who were visitors from the Greek world outside. The Holy Spirit commanded through the twelve disciples that seven deacons be chosen to supervise the distribution of food to the poor, and these men were qualified by the fact that they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

One of these deacons, Stephen, caught the attention of Saul of Tarsus and his band of zealots, and they brought him before the council of the leaders of Israel. They had false witnesses who twisted his words just enough to turn truth into error, and Stephen was called upon to answer their charges. Stephen's great speech in the seventh chapter of the book of the Acts summarizes the Lord's dealings with his people from the time he chose Abraham by grace and began his work in the family of Israel, a work that was to lead to the climax of the ages.

God chose the Jews for several reasons, one primary purpose being that the royal line of David should produce the Virgin Mary from whom Jesus Christ should be born. Stephen came to the climax of his address by reminding the leaders that they were the children of those who had killed the prophets and that they were a stubborn and rebellious people. The leaders were pricked to the heart, and Stephen was dragged from the council chamber to a place outside the city where he was stoned to death.

His dying words were, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Saul of Tarsus saw him die. Persecution began. Saul was carried along with the movement which he had helped to start. Suddenly, on the road to Damascus, Jesus Christ appeared to him and said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

Now, many years must have passed before Saul, transformed into Paul, knew the inner meaning of these words. But examine them. It is Christ speaking: "Why persecutest thou me?" Paul might have answered, "But Lord, they stoned a mere man." Christ answers, "They stoned me." "But Lord, his name was Stephen." Christ answers, "His name was Jesus Christ, living in Stephen. You have been persecuting me. Stephen has become a part of my body."

All of Paul's Epistles develop the truth that is in this little seed. The risen Lord Jesus Christ, whose physical sufferings ended forever the moment that he cried, "It is finished," announces that he, the ever-victorious Savior and Lord, together with saints and martyrs dragged to prison and death by their persecutors, and all the vast company of believers, constitute one complete man whom Jesus Christ calls "me."

That one man is the complete Christ. He, the risen head; we, the members. It was Augustine who gave to this mystic body the title "The Whole Christ." Listen to his description: "What is the church?" asks Augustine and answers it, "She is the body of Christ. Join it to the head and you have one man. The head and the body make up one man.

Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary. And what is the body? It is his spouse, that is, the church. The Father willed that these two, the God-Christ and the church, should be one man. All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of Christians constitutes but one man. Let us rejoice and give thanks," Augustine continues. "Not only are we become Christians, but we are become Christ.

My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given to us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are Christ. If he is the head and we are the members, then together he and we are the whole man. When the head and the members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised. For the whole Christ, head and body, is that just man against whom deceitful lips speak."

Now, when we understand this, we can understand why the Lord asks Saul of Tarsus, "Why persecutest thou me?" Christ and all believers together form one man. We are inseparable from him, even as he is inseparable from the Father. This latter truth is explicitly taught in the opening lines of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Just as the Bible in many places tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ eternally existed, one with the Father as the eternal word before he was born into this world, so the Holy Spirit now informs us that we existed in the mind of God as being in Christ, even before the foundation of the world.

Listen to his announcement, Ephesians 1:3-5. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."

In earlier chapters of Romans, Christ was presented to us as the federal head of the new creation in him. Now, the body is presented to us as members of Christ and members one of another. And this spiritual union and mystic unity was planned by God before the foundation of the world. It is not astonishing, therefore, that we find many traces of this truth in the Gospels themselves.

How could Christ the head have lived among his own for three years of ministry without revealing that they were a very part of himself? Let us look at some of Christ's statements about himself and about those who would believe on him, and immediately we will see how true this is. "I am the light of the world," he cried and proved it. His coming pierced the murky gloom of the human heart, just as on the first day of the reformation of the earth as recorded in Genesis, the light of God showed the chaos of the earliest judgment.

"I am the light of the world," Jesus cried, but the blind creation would not look at him, for it no longer knew what light was. And so God had to send John the Baptist ahead of him to announce that the light had come. We read: "He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not." "I am the light of the world," he cried, and the light illuminated every man in the world.

But all slithered away as crawling things do when a damp board is turned over. "I am the light of the world," he cried, and his healing rays brought life to those who were quickened to salvation. Yes, in many ways, he showed himself to be the light, piercing, convicting, healing, illuminating, warming. And then he prepared to leave the world. Well, was the world to be left without light? For Jesus warned them that he was to be the light of the world for no more than a brief time.

In John 9:5, we read it: "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Well, only as long as you are here, Lord Jesus? Yes, only as long as I am here. But I have made provision for the future, for I am leaving my body here. And now Jesus says, "You are the light of the world." Oh, what a challenging declaration! How it causes us to examine ourselves.

We see the world in gross darkness. Why are the shadows so dark? We are the present light of the world. What Christ was in the world when he was here, we are in the world since he has gone and left us to fill his place. Now, this same truth is in his declaration that he is life. "I am the life," he declared and proved it by giving life to those whom he had chosen to be his body.

In his final prayer to the Father, he reminded him of this: "The hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee, as thou hast given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." A Belgian commentator, Dr. Emile Mersch, has written brilliantly of this. Describing the peculiar nature of the Gospel stories of the life of Christ, he says: "The first feature which we note in the Gospel of Mark is the central theme. Everything in the account converges toward the death of Jesus."

"The same is true, though in a less striking degree, of the other synoptic Gospels. Not only is the death of Jesus recounted in much greater detail than any other part of his public or hidden life, but the narrative is centered from the very beginning upon the tragedy of Calvary. This death marks the disappearance of the historical Jesus, and yet it appears to be the principal part of the story."

"One would say that the author has only one purpose in mind, to explain exactly why the Savior, the subject of the story, is no longer on the scene." Well, we're not surprised at this, for we've been familiar with the story since childhood. Yet it's all so strange. Our authors set out to tell the story of a life, and immediately they focus all attention upon a death. They intend to reveal a person, and what they tell us only seems to hide him from our eyes.

They begin a narrative and then develop it as if the interest were to begin only after the ending should have been reached. This narrative is designed to accredit the preaching of the apostles. Yet it insists from the outset upon the seeming defeat of him who sends them forth. This is the Gospel, the good tidings that is to bring life to the world, and yet it opens with a saddening prophecy and summarizes its entire message in a death.

But the paradox vanishes and all becomes clear when interpreted in the light of the mystical body, the true church. Christ has a twofold life on earth: one visible and historical, the other invisible and mystical. The first is the preparation for the second, and the second is the prolongation of the first. In other words, he who said, "I am the life," went to the cross and died, bringing that life to an earthly end so far as his physical body was concerned, since that body was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven to take its place on the throne of God beside the Father.

But that life was to continue. Multitudes of human beings born in spiritual death were to be made alive through that one who is life and were to perpetuate his life on earth. So we see Jesus was the light and the church has become the light. Jesus was life and we are life. And again, he began something that was to be continued in us. He declared himself to be the Son of God.

He was God the Son, come into the world in order that we might become sons of God. I do not need to stress how Satan has sought to nullify this doctrine by spreading the error that all men are sons of God. The Bible so categorically denies this false teaching, and yet it is so persistent and widespread that it might be said to be the main heresy of our century. But when the eternal word was made flesh, Jesus Christ, God the Son, was here on earth in order to bring many sons to glory.

We are children of God, we read in Galatians, we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And in the Gospel of John, to as many as received him, to them he gave the authority, the permission, to become the sons of God. The relationship which originated in him before all time is perpetuated in us who are his. We read in the Epistle of John: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God, therefore the world knoweth us not because it knew him not.

But beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Dare we go one step further? He said that he was God, one with the Father, and then he drew us into himself in such a way that it's difficult to define the relationship in terms other than that of complete oneness. His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godlikeness.

Exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature. Everything that Christ is, we have become through regeneration and our union with him. As Jehovah said to Moses, "See, I have made thee God to Pharaoh," so the Lord God Almighty is not allowing this world to see God in any other way than revealed in us. He is the head, we are the body. We are individually members one of another and joined to him forever.

So it was that Christ prayed: "Oh Father, that they may all be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." And may God give us to know more of this oneness. Our God, we pray thee to bless and to use this message to thy glory in the hearts of all listeners. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Each one of us must recognize our unique role in the church and fulfill it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then will the body of Christ function properly to the glory of God. You have been listening to Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. We hope you've benefited from today's message entitled "Members." To listen to additional 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 "Members" or simply request message number R12-13. We'd also like to send you a free copy of our booklet entitled "Anxiety and Depression." So many people, even Christians, become overwhelmed by life's problems and difficulties and fall into a pit of anxiety and depression.

This free booklet will help you confront emotional distress with glorious Gospel truth. Jesus is able and willing to lift you from the depths of despair into the assurance of his love and a life of spiritual peace. Are you struggling to find emotional and mental health and wholeness? Ask for your free copy of "Anxiety and Depression" when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

We exist to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. The Alliance also produces the radio broadcast "The Bible Study Hour" featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and "Every Last Word" featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken.

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For more information or to make a contribution to help further our work, contact us by calling toll-free 1-800-488-1888. That's 1-800-488-1888. Write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Visit us online at alliancenet.org. Be sure to ask for a free resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reformed teachers and theologians, including Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martin Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thank you for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.