Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

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

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: In the course of my ministry, I have counseled many young men about the matter of their position before the draft board. I myself, in my brash young days, left the theological seminary to enlist in the United States Army within a matter of days after Wilson had declared war on Germany in 1917.

The question of conscience in the matter simply did not cross my mind. I had been raised in an atmosphere where stories of war and soldiery were commonplace. But as the years passed by since then, I have learned much more about life, much more about the Bible, and I believe much more about the Lord Jesus Christ and the nature of the life he wants us to lead.

I have no way of knowing what I would have done in 1917 if I had then known all that I know now. In his providence, the Lord let me go into the army. I found a verse in the Psalms that was a great comfort to me. Psalm 118:17, "I shall not die but shall live and declare the works of the Lord." I did not then have the deeper knowledge of how to ascertain the will of God.

Announcer: 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, "Who Rules the Christian?"

When Galileo experimented with dropping weights from the leaning tower of Pisa, they fell to the ground because they were ruled by the law of gravity. Sinful humanity in rebellion against God is governed by the tyrannical laws of hatred, selfishness, pride, greed, lust, strife, envy, and a host of others. What is the ruling principle in the lives of believers that compels us to follow the path of faith and obedience to the Lord?

The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, Romans chapter 13, we're looking at verses three and four. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled, "Who Rules the Christian?"

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto the our Father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee for thine indwelling presence within the hearts of those who have bowed before thy will and received the redemption that thou has given us in Christ. We thank thee that thou has not left us to the light of human philosophy or fallen conscience, but that thou has given us thy word, illuminated by thy Holy Spirit.

In this hour, we pray thee to bless the going forth of thy word. May it find lodgment in each listening heart and produce good works that men may glorify thee, our Father, which art in heaven, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we ask it. Amen.

Today we go on in our studies of Romans 13 and come to the third and fourth verses. The whole passage is speaking about submission to the authorities of human government. And the text continues, "Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. He is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer."

Now, God has given us these ethical teachings because of his purpose for the Christian in this life. We are left here on earth after we have been born again, not in order to get us ready for heaven, but to be witnesses for the Lord in the face of this wicked world which crucified Christ.

The moment a man believes in Christ as his Savior, he is just as ready for heaven as he will be after a half a century of Christian living. Our readiness for heaven is Christ, and there is no other readiness for heaven. The Christian life is to be lived in this age. Again and again we are reminded of this great spiritual fact. The Christian life is to be lived in this world. The Christian life is to be lived in the body of this flesh.

Put all these three together and we find an inkling of what God is proposing to do through us. The laws that govern humanity are hatred, selfishness, pride, greed, lust, strife, impatience, arrogance, intemperance, and all the other ills that rise out of the flesh in the individual or in the combination of all the evil natures of united humanity.

All of these principles are turned upside down when a man truly believes in Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ enters the life. The seed of all the newness of life is there.

God is constantly at work forming Christ in us. The process will go on as long as we are in these bodies. We are here as his witnesses. We are to be the word made flesh, dwelling among men wherever his providence places us. We are, in short, supernatural beings in the midst of a natural world.

We are to combine the supernatural and the natural in such a way that men shall see our good works and glorify our Father which is in heaven.

But the way that we live is to make all comers see that there is divine life in us. We are to be a constant paradox, exciting the wonder of those who look closely. We are totally free from all law except the law of Christ. And yet, we are to be so obedient to magistrates and to all of human law that men will know that we are subject because of Jesus Christ.

This world is ruled by principalities and powers, under the lordship of Satan, as we read in Ephesians 6:12. And yet, we are freed from those powers and know no dominion except that of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Christian must never use his liberty in Christ as an excuse for anarchy. We are freed from all law in order that we may be subject to Christ, who in turn sets us in the midst of the world, subject to the earthly powers, which sometimes act in a most devilish way.

There is no authority except from God, as we read in the first verse of this chapter, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Bishop Anders Nygren of Sweden comments, "That does not say that all the authorities do will agree with God's will. There are good and bad authorities, God-fearing and Godless governments. There are some authorities that use their powers in harmony with God's will and others that misuse their powers and trample the will of God under their feet."

But Paul is not now talking about such distinctions. He is speaking of that which all authorities have in common, namely that they are instituted by God. That there are governments in the world is not an arbitrary invention of man. It is a fact ordained by God. Thus it is God who grants power to the governments. It does not at all follow that actions of the governments are ethically approved.

God uses even unworthy and culpable men as means to the accomplishment of his purposes. But on the other hand, the offenses of governments do not undo the fact that it is God who has given the power, even the power which they misuse, and that he can use even unrighteousness for the accomplishment of his purpose.

Now it follows naturally that any man, including the Christian man, who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and that those who resist will incur judgment. Furthermore, the judgment will come not only from the earthly authority but also from God.

In fact, the man who might disobey earthly authority and get away with it during this life, will face it hereafter as a sin of disobedience and will be judged for it. This civil disobedience will be a factor in the downgrading of the Christian in assigning him his eternal award, and it will be a factor in the manifest righteousness of God's condemnation of the unbeliever when the latter is judged according to his works.

In the light of this, we should consider our individual relationship to all law. At this point, we come face to face with the conflict between the individual conscience and the provisions of every government. It is possible for the human heart to swell with such pride that the individual deifies himself and counts himself above and beyond law. This is, of course, sin.

In the democracies of the English-speaking world, the United States, Canada, Britain and so on, there are rare points indeed where an individual conscience can find the weight of evidence such that he must put himself in opposition to the law.

Now at this point, I must discuss the question of pacifism. Again, this answer is not going to satisfy all our listeners. The weaklings who want to stand behind legalistic principles that are made for them by some other authority will find no refuge here.

We will not say that the church teaches one position or another. In the first place, the Bible shows clearly that the church is not to do any teaching. The church is to be taught. You who listen, you are the church. I am a teacher. God gives me the message. The Holy Spirit must carry. And where the message appeals to your conscience in the light of the word of God, then you must follow the word of God.

The only true teacher is the Holy Spirit, illuminating our minds, hearts and consciences through the word of God. No individual therefore may hide himself behind a church in either of the opposing positions.

The Reformed churches and many of the other larger denominations have long taken the position that the believer must bear arms and accept the responsibilities of war. The Quaker and Mennonite groups have taken the opposite position and have required their members to refuse to bear arms. I am convinced that no individual has the right to allow either of these branches of the church to do his thinking for him.

In the day when the consciences are revealed at the judgment seat of Christ, the individual will answer to the Lord for his own thinking and not for the barriers behind which he took refuge. It's interesting to note that the Constitution of the Russian Revolution, adopted by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1924, contains the following in its first article, quote, "In order fully to protect the achievements of the Workers and Peasants Revolution, the Russian Socialist Federated Republic declares it to be the duty of all the citizens of the Republic to protect their Socialist country and introduces conscription. The honorable right to defend the revolution by force of arms is bestowed only on the workers. Non-working elements have to carry out other military duties." Unquote.

Now this is, of course, a consistent position for an atheistic government. This position is an ancient one. Christ outlined this when he taught his disciples saying, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them."

Macaulay described the situation as he projected himself into the thought of the ancient Romans and put down for us how they thought about the death of Horatius, "For how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods." But there is another side.

In the course of my ministry, I have counseled many young men about the matter of their position before the draft board. I myself, in my brash young days, left the theological seminary to enlist in the United States Army within a matter of days after Wilson had declared war on Germany in 1917. The question of conscience in the matter simply did not cross my mind.

I had been raised in an atmosphere where stories of war and soldiery were commonplace. A cousin came to visit us in our California home in my boyhood days, and his uniform of the United States Cavalry was very glamorous to me. An older sister married an army officer who went on through the ranks to become a general. My father told me of a grandfather who had served in the Confederate Army, and of a more remote ancestor who was a young officer with General Daniel Morgan and who was wounded in 1781 on the Cowpens battlefield by one of Colonel Tarleton's Britishers.

I was little more than 21 when I enlisted. I simply did not have any religious or spiritual thoughts about the matter. I had not grown up as modern boys do in an atmosphere of the draft and the possibility of two or three years in Korea, Europe or some other part of the world.

But as the years passed by since then, I have learned much more about life, much more about the Bible, and I believe much more about the Lord Jesus Christ and the nature of the life he wants us to lead. I have no way of knowing what I would have done in 1917 if I had then known all that I know now. In his providence, the Lord let me go into the army. I found a verse in the Psalms that was a great comfort to me. Psalm 118:17, "I shall not die but shall live and declare the works of the Lord."

I saw planes fall and young men die in the midst of training. But it was as though they were actors on a different scene. It was not going to happen to me. I did not then have the deeper knowledge of how to ascertain the will of God.

Some of the change that has come in my thinking is the result of conversations with young men who have been through the war. I think of one young man who was born in Germany. At 12, he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. He was soon given a semblance of a gun. He was not more than in his earliest teens when Allied pressure began to crush his country, and it was a question whether he would be forced against the Russian or the American jaw of the vice as it closed relentlessly.

There are times in a conversation with such a man that more can be realized by watching the set of the jaw, the glint of the eye, the contraction of the fist, the firm resolve of the whole bearing, than can be learned from the words which come from the lips. Who knows what is being learned from the inner presence of the Holy Spirit, for this lad was a keen believer in Christ, while the outward circumstances are the crashing of an entire world.

A bomb had struck his own home, and he had stood afar while the flames roared from the house where he had lived from childhood. He had watched from a nearby hilltop as the great fleets of planes fought above him, and the anti-aircraft guns roared through the night. A boy can do a lot of growing up in such circumstances.

And now he's in this country, and there was the question before him as to his status with the American draft board. Calmly he said, "I will not fight." But I said, "Suppose they put you in prison?" "I will go to prison." But suppose they told you you'd have to leave the country. "I will go back to Germany or to some other country." But suppose in the future you should be married and have a family and you should see Russian soldiers coming against you. "I would let them come," he said.

But suppose one of them lifted up his hand against your wife or daughter. "I would move to stop him, but I would not move to kill him." But I said, "Suppose he killed you?" He said, "I would be in heaven." But your wife and children? He said, "God would be able to take care of them in his way."

Now there was a calm spiritual sanity about the young fellow which showed the depths of the work of the Lord in his life. This was the way the Lord had led him, and that was all there was to it.

Now another young man I know has a totally different attitude toward militarism. He volunteered in order to avoid the draft and soon was commissioned as a pilot. When the time came for his service period to expire, he decided to stay in the Navy. He spoke of the fact that so many of the fellows were counting the days until their term ran out so that they could return to civilian life. But he argued, "Who is going to defend this country in case of war? It's the young pilot who's capable and who knows the new techniques. Some of us must stay in and train the cadets so that we'll have a proper force."

And on another day he said to me, as he looked at his two hands, "I pray the Lord every day that I may never have to use the destructive power which I have in these two hands." Who is to decide which of these young men is right?

The latter is literally obeying those who have the authority over him. He is submitting to the whole armed process in which our government is involved. The other young man will have no touch of the business, no matter what the angle of contact. May it not well be that each of these two young men is absolutely right? If the Lord leads one of them one way and the other the other way, who is to say that there is a right and a wrong involved? If each says, "I know that this is what the Lord wants me to do right now," then each is answerable only to the Lord.

Now if we are honest, we must also consider this same general problem in its relationship to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States with reference to racial integration. I would be a coward if I failed to raise the question at this point and to answer it as I must render an account to God.

The listener should remember that a minister of Christ who is conscious of the burden of his calling, knows that there is a verse which states that those who have spiritual authority are keeping watch over your souls as men who will have to give account. It's possible for you to refuse to listen to such a word as this when it is given, but then the responsibility immediately passes from my heart to yours. I will have delivered my soul.

In the context of our chapter, there can be no doubt that the question of race relations is definitely related to the Christian's willingness to obey the authorities which God states are derived from him. The recent decisions of the Supreme Court are beyond question the law of the United States. And both on this ground and that of intrinsic moral right, they are also the law of God.

Recently I had the occasion to talk at some length with a devoted Christian who has long been a supporter of our radio work. A conversation with a group which included him revealed what all the rest of the group concluded was a fixed, utterly blind prejudice. He was the product of a provincial environment with an an unreasonable and callous fixation. But when I came to pray for him a few minutes after the conversation ended, I found my heart pouring out to him in the love of Christ, as I asked the Lord to give me all forbearance in judgment, and to give him all the light that he needs for moment-by-moment decisions in his life, as he faces the problems that confront him in his work and in his interracial relationships.

In other words, both in the question of bearing arms in war and in that of obedience to the supreme law of the United States, there is the problem of the individual conscience. In the course of our next two studies, I propose, the Lord willing, to study the whole question of race relationship in the light of the Bible, and then the problem of human conscience with reference to the law.

And we ask our God that thou shalt bless as we study the Bible together, that we may know thee better, that we may love thee more, that we may be yielded to thee, and stand wherever thou hast placed us to do the work that thou hast given us to do. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Announcer: Jesus Christ must reign supreme in the heart of every believer through the wisdom of God's word and the indwelling power and presence of the Holy Spirit. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled, "Who Rules the Christian?" 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, "Who Rules the Christian?" Or simply request message number R13-4.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled, "Abounding Grace." In his book, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," John Bunyan described his despair over the weight of his sin before finding peace in Jesus Christ. Perhaps like Bunyan, you feel the burden of your sin pressing in on you. You may feel that you have fallen so often and sinned so badly that you may have given up any hope of salvation. This free booklet will convince you that the superabundant flood of God's grace is available to cleanse you and give you peace. Ask for your free copy of "Abounding Grace" 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. For a complete list of radio stations carrying our programs, visit us online at AllianceNet.org.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. If you have benefited from this broadcast and would like it to continue, please prayerfully consider a donation to help us keep this ministry on the air. For more information or to make a contribution to help further our work, contact us by calling us 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 Doctors Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.