Romans, vol 1: Man's Ruin: Exposition of Bible Doctrines

By Donald Grey Barnhouse

Romans is based on Donald Barnhouse’s renowned series of radio broadcasts on the epistle from 1949 until his death in 1960. Demonstrating the author’s acute understanding of Romans and heart for effective preaching, these classic studies reverently expound even the most difficult passage in a clear way. Examining the Letter to the Romans phrase by phrase, Barnhouse elucidates the Scripture with reference to both its immediate context and the Bible’s overarching truths. Barnhouse’s zeal for a universal appreciation of the epistle fuels his commentary and invites all readers into a deeper understanding of the life-changing message of Romans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781467467339

Donald Grey Barnhouse

DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE (1895–1960) was a renowned evangelical preacher and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Most famous for his radio broadcasts and public speaking, Barnhouse also founded, wrote for, and edited Revelation and Eternity magazines.

Book preview

PREFACE

When I first became pastor of the Philadelphia church where I still serve, I began my ministry by preaching on the epistle to the Romans. My first Sunday in that pulpit found me giving an exposition of the first verse of the epistle. The second Sunday I started with the second verse; and, as I did not finish by the time it was necessary to pronounce the benediction, I said, as I had when I had been teaching history in the university, We will suspend our study at this point, and will begin from here in our next meeting together.

For three and one half years I never took a text outside of the epistle to the Romans. I saw the church transformed; the audience filled the pews and then the galleries; and the work went on with great blessing. But just as important as the transformation of the church, there was the transformation of the preacher. The disciplined necessity of treating every verse in an entire epistle formed habits of study that organized the mind of the preacher for the whole of his task.

After more than twenty years, there came a renewed opportunity for a widespread radio ministry. I decided to begin expository studies in the epistle to the Romans. In this series, I have never used even a page of the notes which had served me twenty years before. And where I had then taken approximately 140 Sunday periods for the epistle, I soon discovered that it was going to take much more this time. In fact, it will be noted that the present volume contains twenty-seven studies on the first chapter of Romans alone.

This fact leads me to make an observation on the method of study which I am using. I believe that the only way to understand any given passage in the Word of God is to take the whole Bible and place the point of it, like an inverted pyramid on that passage, so that the weight of the entire Word rests upon a single verse, or, indeed, a single word. Thus I have not called this volume and the ones to follow a commentary, but rather expositions of the Word of God; expositions which take as their point of departure the book of Romans and range through the whole of the Bible in order to bring all of the correlated truth of the Word to bear on each line and word of the epistle. Thus, it will be discovered in later volumes that I have spent five or six chapters on a single word in order to bring the whole teaching of the Bible to bear on a particular doctrine which may be mentioned in Romans in no more than a single word or phrase.

It should be realized also that these studies have been prepared for immediate delivery, and that I was never more than eight or ten studies in advance of the actual moment of broadcast. And, even as I write this preface to the first of several printed volumes, I am now working on the messages that cover the last ten verses of the fifth chapter of the epistle. As the nature of my conference work takes me out over the nation, and at times abroad, I am forced upon occasion to carry some of my material with me and write these messages far from my study, and with only twenty or thirty reference books with me. I have been forced, by this fact, to rely much more upon the Word of God itself, than upon any other commentaries. In all cases, I have read the thirty or forty leading commentaries, from those of the Reformation time and of the Puritans, to the modern commentaries, including those of unbelievers. In many cases, however, I had nothing more than a work sheet with the passage of Scripture in some twenty translations, in English, French and German, my Greek testament, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, and the Englishman’s Greek Concordance.

It will be noted that, at times, I have made very wide use of the expository works of other men. It would have been presumptuous for me to write a new message on The Just Shall Live By Faith, when Boreham was available. I, therefore, lifted several pages directly from him. That is the only such acknowledgment I need to make in this volume.

If the reader finds that I have repeated a sermon illustration it must be remembered that six months passed, in radio time, between the first of these chapters and the last.

Finally, I must make reference, apologetically, to a book review which I read recently in an English weekly. The reviewer noted that an author stated in his preface that he had not edited the volume from the time the various chapters were given in public speech. The reviewer implied, nay, he stated flatly, that an author should have more respect for his reading public than to treat them so shabbily. I must state in defense of my following the same procedure, that if I had been obligated to find more time to prepare these studies for the printer, they would not have appeared in print at all. I am under the monthly drive to complete four more of these studies, to edit an entire edition of Eternity, to prepare eight fresh messages for my Sunday pulpit work, to carry on a very voluminous correspondence, and, in addition to travel many tens of thousands of miles each year, preaching approximately 400 times. The spirit might be willing but the flesh simply cannot work more than sixteen hours a day on the average. I am indebted, however to Miss Virginia Baker and to The Rev. Howard W. Oursler for their work on the mechanics of the manuscript.

Perhaps a word of thanksgiving should be expressed to the large radio audience who sent in contributions to see that these messages were continued on the air. Without their support the impetus for the carrying out of the writing of these messages would not have existed. So it is to their gifts and their prayers that I am indebted for this volume.

If you are blessed in any way by what you read, I lay you under the solemn bond and spiritual obligation to pray for me, that God will give me what He sees I most need.

Donald Grey Barnhouse

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

It is with some astonishment, and even more gratitude to God, that we issue this second edition. Readers evidently consider the work to be of lasting value. It has been a joy to me, while traveling over the world, to find that it has been a means of blessing to so many. In many countries, missionaries and national pastors are adapting these studies to their preaching. For all this we thank the Lord who thus proves Himself, once more, to be the God of all grace.

The reissuance of this volume, with the help of a valued editorial secretary, Miss Antha E. Card, makes it possible to correct typographical errors, and to soften one or two unloving judgments written in days when the Lord had not whittled me down as much as He has done in the interim since I began to present these studies.

There is still so much whittling to be done that I crave from each reader who is in any wise blessed by the reading of this book, that he will daily remember me in prayer, that the Lord may continue His grace to me.

D. G. B.

Philadelphia, Pa.

January, 1959

I

THE POINT OF DEPARTURE

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BOOK

Many years ago, in the early days of radio, an incident took place which I may well recount as a crystallization of the aims and purposes I have before me in undertaking this task: the exposition of the epistle to the Romans. In a certain city in central Pennsylvania, listeners were attemping to get my program from a distant station that was broadcasting on a wave length so near to that of another station that the two programs sometimes became confused. From New York a certain minister was preaching his sermon at the same time that my Bible study was going forth. Friends told me that a woman who was trying to unscramble the two broadcasts said, If I hear a voice talking about the dignity of human personality, I know that I have the New York station. If the voice says that a man must be born again, I know that I have Dr. Barnhouse from Philadelphia. Within that exaggeration there is a profound truth, and within that truth there is the expression of the ministry which I seek to exercise. I am convinced that the ministry which seeks to exalt mankind can, in the end, do no good for mankind. On the contrary, the ministry which will reach the truths of man’s complete ruin in sin and God’s perfect remedy in Christ, can best reach the heart of the need of the human race and can bring the only remedy that can heal the heart which God has declared to be humanly incurable (Jer. 17:9).

And with the continent of the Bible before me, why have I chosen to direct your attention to that epistle of Paul’s which was sent originally to the Roman church? It is because the epistle to the Romans has the most complete diagnosis of the plague of man’s sin, and the most glorious setting forth of the simple remedy of justification by faith apart from the works of the law.

Perhaps, however, the reason for my choice of the epistle to the Romans lies in part in a sentence that was written by the Swiss commentator, Godet, who has pointed out that every movement of revival in the history of the Christian church has been connected with the teachings set forth in Romans. He writes: The Reformation was certainly the work of the epistle to the Romans and that to the Galatians, and it is probable that every great spiritual renovation in the Church will always be linked, both in cause and in effect, to a deeper knowledge of this book.

We know, of course, that complete transformation in the life of Martin Luther came when the verse, The just shall live by faith, laid hold upon his heart from the reading of the first chapter of Romans. We know that Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed in that little London prayer-meeting in Aldersgate, when the truths of Romans were being set forth. These indications of the power of the Word of God in working through the doctrines taught in Paul’s greatest epistle should awaken our attention and lead us to see that time spent in their study will be worth while.

Luther wrote: The epistle to the Romans is the true masterpiece of the New Testament and the very purest gospel, which is well worth and deserving that a Christian man should not only learn it by heart, word for word, but also that he should daily deal with it as the daily bread of men’s souls. It can never be too much or too well read or studied, and the more it is handled the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.

One of the greatest fathers of the church, Chrysostom, had it read to him twice a week. Coleridge said that the epistle to the Romans is the most profound writing that exists. The latter thought must not frighten the reader, for it is most certain that the truths of this epistle are those which have entered into the hearts of many simple men and given them a light and a life which was utterly beyond their natural capacities.

A scientist may say that mother’s milk is the most perfect food known to man, and may give you an analysis showing all its chemical components, a list of the vitamins it contains and an estimate of the calories in a given quantity. A baby will take that milk without the remotest knowledge of its content, and will grow day by day, smiling and thriving in its ignorance. So it is with the profound truths of the Word of God.

FOR ALL MEN

There is in the book of Romans that which will delight the greatest logician and hold the attention of the wisest among men, and there is that in the book of Romans that will bring the humblest soul in tears of repentance to the feet of the Saviour, will give him the knowledge of the true value of his soul in the light of eternity and a true concept of the dignity of human personality when it has been lifted by the grace of God.

What was it that turned the simple Bedford tinker into the great John Bunyan? Certainly not the intellectual capacities of a Francis Bacon; certainly not the literary gifts of a Shakespeare. But in prison John Bunyan laid hold on the truths that are set forth in the epistle to the Romans; or, to be more accurate, the truths which are in Romans laid hold upon John Bunyan, and gave us his transformed life and his clear insight into the pilgrim progress of the human race as a camp of displaced persons, uprooted from their natural home and on their way to a far country which is not of this planet, either in its roots or in its ideals.

Sometimes Bible study is made difficult for people because they attempt to study the Book in ways that are too technical for their state of spiritual growth. There is an analogy in the way that some teachers of high school English attempt to teach the drama of Shakespeare. If Hamlet be taken in a class of adolescents and studied in technical fashion as the teacher may have learned it in a graduate seminar, and if attempts are made for junior minds to psychoanalyze the great Dane, there is bound to be boredom and perhaps the creation of a distaste for Shakespeare for all of life. Charles Lamb got around this difficulty by taking the story of Shakespeare’s dramas and writing up the plot in easy, readable English so that anyone could at least know what the story was about. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare has formed an admirable introduction for young beginners to the writings of the great poet because they present simply, directly and with charm the whole story. Once knowing the main outlines of the plot, it is possible to go into the details and comprehend some of the subtleties of the developing drama.

TO THE CHURCH AT ROME

So in studying the epistle to the Romans, it is helpful to understand what may be called the doctrinal plot of the book. What is it all about? The book has been called a treatise and it comes to us in the form of a letter. It was addressed, originally, to the little church that had been established in imperial Rome. Paul had never been to the capital of the empire, but he had a great desire to go there for he knew there were Christians in that city, and he wanted to teach them the truths which God had revealed to him. No one knows how the church at Rome had become established. Certainly none of the twelve disciples had been there, for this Paul tells us in no uncertain terms in the closing portion of his letter. In talking about his own experiences, and recounting the geographical areas in which he had already preached, Paul says: Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation. But, as it is written, To whom He was not spoken of, they shall see; and they that have not heard shall understand (15:20, 21). This disposes, of course, of the idea that Peter had been to Rome and founded the church there. How then may we account for this church at Rome? We can readily understand that in the complex movements between the capital and the distant points of Empire many Christians traveled on business, even as all America moves to New York or Washington, and that little by little a small band of believers had gathered together in the simple fashion of the early church, to break bread and remember the death and future coming of the Saviour.

Indeed, it is recorded in the second chapter of Acts that there were travellers from Rome in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. It is certainly possible, even probable, that these men returned to Rome and established a church in the capital of the Empire within a matter of weeks. In many of his epistles there is revealed the fact that the heart of Paul was moved as soon as he heard of a group of believers in any city. He began to pray for them, he wanted to visit them. Thus it was with the church at Rome. For many years, he tells them (15:23) he had had a desire to come to Rome to preach where no disciple had been before him. It was in anticipation of this proposed visit to Rome that he wrote this letter to pave the way for his coming among them.

In studying the epistle to the Romans, the procedure I shall follow may be likened to two different views of a farm. A man who has just purchased a farm, has the opportunity of flying over it to get a view of its contours from the air. He sees the overall picture of fields and woods and farm buildings. After this he begins his work on the farm, and year after year he goes from field to field, plowing, disking, harrowing, fertilizing, planting, cultivating, harvesting. As time goes on, he learns to know that farm as well as he knows the curve of his child’s cheek. He will remember a thousand details that he learned while going about his daily farm work. He will know the soft spots that must not be plowed too early in the spring lest the tractor bog down. He will know the heavy clay point where his plowshare was torn out of the ground. He will know the wood lot and the orchard, the copse where the pheasants hide, and all the other things that go to make up the pleasant life of the good earth.

First, we fly over the whole book, so to speak. Later, we may put in the plow at the very first verse and begin to go down the furrows until the whole field has been turned over once. There will be need for further harrowing and cultivating by the individual student, but it will well repay the labor because this is the greatest of all the epistles. Here you can enter into rich knowledge of the plan of God.

FROM PAUL

Paul, the writer of this epistle, had been a Jew named Saul who had been brought up to know the law. He had fallen into the common assumption of the Israel of his day that his people had a patent and a copyright on God, and that God belonged only to the physical descendants of Abraham. Paul was not an anti-Semite; he was a Semite-anti. God had to lift him out of the narrowness of his position and make him see that God and salvation were not restricted by race, but that the love of God included the whole wide world, and every son of Adam, no matter whether the flesh were black or white or brown.

In the beginning Saul had been the enemy of the Christian faith. He was the bigoted persecutor, who killed anyone who did not agree with him. All who followed the Lord Jesus became the object of his hatred. It was this man whom the Lord God stooped to save, and through whom He would bring blessings to the world by unfolding the truths which had been so long announced and overlooked.

Paul, as a Jew, knew that great promises had been made to Abraham, the father of all who believe. Paul, as a Christian, wrote the epistle to the Romans in demonstration of the truth of two of the greatest promises of the Old Testament: individual salvation and universal salvation. God had said to Abraham, In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed (Gen. 12:3), and, In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Gen. 22:18).

It would be a poor, forlorn world if there were not the hope that some day, somehow, there would come peace and righteousness upon this earth. The tragedy is that men seek to get it by human means instead of in the way that God provides. The work of Paul in this epistle was to speak to the little church which had been founded in the chief city of the world, and, through them to tell all men everywhere that those promises were now being fulfilled.

In the book of Romans, the first eight chapters and the last five chapters set forth that salvation which is for you and me today, a salvation to which all the families of the earth are eligible. The ninth to the eleventh chapters are to remind the world that there shall be national, governmental blessing and righteousness upon the earth, not through any League of Nations or United Nations, but through God’s dealings with the Jews.

In this day, the middle of the twentieth century, we see the Jews beginning to return to Palestine and the flag of Israel unfurled over the earth once more. We must recognize the hand of God in this. The ancient promises have never been abrogated, and God still purposes to bless this earth, even the remotest nations, through His people Israel. Indeed there is no hope for this world until the plan of God is brought to full fruition and until the Jews shall become what we might call the colonial administrators of the creation of God.

There, then, in brief is the story of this great book: salvation for individual souls from any stage of sin, and ultimate salvation for the nations through the intervention of God in Christ.

The human writer of the epistle was Paul, who had been the Jew, Saul of Tarsus. But the writing cannot be considered a mere product of human thought any more than the Lord Jesus Christ can be considered the mere human product of the body of the Virgin Mary. As our Lord was conceived by the Holy Spirit and came forth from the womb of the Virgin, born into this world without a human father, and thus called the Son of God, so the epistle to the Romans, like all other portions of the Word of God, was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the mind of the writer and came forth as the spotless Word of God. The virgin mind of man became the resting place of absolutely divine ideas, as the virgin body of Mary became the nesting place for that holy thing which was to be born of her. Thus, as we turn to the book of Romans we turn to the eternal Word of God.

Paul could never forget the pit from which he had been digged. The Lord had taken him out of the miry clay and put his feet upon the rock, and for him all things were new. He could never forget it. It is impossible to understand the epistle without remembering this. What man can forget when he has been delivered from the bondage of sin into the glorious liberty of the children of God? Everyone who has traveled by air knows the lilting sensation that comes when the grinding friction of the wheels on the runway suddenly ceases and the plane is airborne. Ten thousand times more is the joyous emotion of the soul when there comes the full realization that our chains have been loosed forever, and that we stand justified in the sight of the God of all holiness who by nature must hate sin and who has now, because of the redemption provided in the death of His Son, made Himself known as love toward the sinner.

THE SERVANT OF CHRIST

This is why Paul styles himself as the servant of Jesus Christ. In the original language there is a figure of speech hidden in the word which is worth bringing forth. Paul calls himself more than a servant. He calls himself a bondslave of Jesus Christ. The phrase goes back to a ceremony described in the book of Moses.

The early men of Israel had in their economic system set forth in the laws of Moses, regulations governing the man who got into debt. He became the property of his creditor, in very fact, his slave. But the slavery had a termination. When the seventh year rolled around, all of these slaves were liberated and could go forth once more as their own masters. Some of them, however, realized certain things about their own lack of ability to maintain themselves in the rugged economy of a cruel world. They remembered that when they had been their own freemen they had not eaten well, but that now, under kind masters, they were well-housed and well-fed. They looked toward their future freedom with some trepidation as they realized that they might soon be, once more, in a life of hunger and cold.

No doubt there were some who sought to escape the bondage of hard task-masters, but there were others who knew the kindness and love of their master’s heart. The Law provided a way for them to remain as slaves to their kind masters. Such a one could go to his owner and tell him that he desired to remain a slave. He would then be taken to the tabernacle where the priest would lead him to the doorpost and bore a hole in the lobe of his ear with an awl. From that time on he was the slave of his master. He was known as a bondslave. He could have been free, but he chose to remain as the slave of a kind master. Wherever he walked, his ear proclaimed the character of his master.

The story has been told in one of the hymns of Frances Havergal.

I love, I love my Master,

I will not go out free,

For He is my Redeemer;

He paid the price for me.

I would not leave His service

It is so sweet and blest;

And in the weariest moments

He gives the truest rest.

This is the song of Paul in the opening lines of his epistle. I love, I love my Master, I will not go out free.

TRUE FREEDOM

There is hidden in this descriptive word, bondslave a great truth concerning the inner nature of true liberty and true freedom. We are in a world where wars must be fought to protect man from bondage and to restore to him at least a minimum of four freedoms. Before Adam fell, man knew the reality of freedom. He had all things except the one small fruit that remained as a token of his dependence upon God the Creator. It was because our first parent wanted freedom from God that he declared the independence of the human race and lost all our freedoms. Ever since that time men have been enslaved by a thousand masters, and chiefly by the fears and dreads of their own hearts. Slavery to self is a bondage that includes all other slaveries, and there is no freedom apart from the work of God who wrought so effectively in Christ to set men free.

In the midst of their bondage, men—unwilling to accept the true freedom that comes through the death of Jesus Christ and His purchase of our souls from their bondage to self, sin and Satan—have been guilty of building up a system of counterfeits that they might pass off as freedoms. Until they come to Christ all other freedom is a will-o’-the-wisp.

Men talk about freedom to worship. There is no such thing outside of Christ. Do not misunderstand. I would fight to the death to protect your right to make a fool of yourself religiously. It is only in a civilization greatly influenced by the New Testament that such a freedom could arise. How many men have been killed by those who wished to force them into some religious slavery! There is no bigotry or intolerance as bad as religious bigotry and intolerance.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

But we must remember that freedom to make a fool of yourself religiously rises from the words of Jesus Christ who held out His hands to Jerusalem, saying, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee! How oft would I have gathered thee to My bosom as a hen gathereth her chicks; but ye would not (Luke 13:34). There was never any thought of coercion with Christ. He loves men and wants them to love Him in His way freely. And He will weep as long as men remain away from Him. Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life (John 5:40). Out of the tolerance which began in the precepts of Jesus Christ, there has come a license which allows men to do as they please religiously. We fight for their folly, knowing that the only way to win them is to let them go until they are stopped by spiritual hunger, and then we can, perhaps, get them to taste of the bread of life.

To talk about the freedom of religion in God’s sense is akin to talking about the freedom of love. What freedom is there in love unless there is the consent of the beloved? If a man cries that he wishes freedom to love and the woman does not desire his approach, it becomes a monstrous thing. There is, in like manner, a freedom of religion that is merely attempted rape. Men seek to lay hold on God in ways that are foreign to His holiness. Christ said, No man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6). And he that climbeth up by any other way is a thief and a robber (John 10:1).

And how shall there be freedom from want when the soul refuses the inflow from the springs of Calvary? We read from time to time of the suicide of people who have been considered rich and successful. Men of distinction end it all. They never lacked a meal or a luxury. But they could not have freedom from want because they had never humbled themselves to say, The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want (Ps. 23:1).

And how shall there be freedom from fear if there is death in the heart? The clutching torment that walks as close companion to so many lives can be removed by nothing other than the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. The Spirit has said, Perfect love casteth out fear, for fear hath torment (1 John 4:18). And it is His love, not ours, that takes away the fears. And this love comes to us with His gift of life.

And what will be our freedom of speech if the Lord has not touched our hearts, out of whose abundance the mouth speaketh? Of course, you may say what you please today. This is the twentieth century, and you are on that portion of the earth where liberty of babbling is still assured. But the time will come when every mouth shall be stopped, and all the world shall be brought guilty before God (Rom. 3:19). Of what use is freedom of speech to the dumb? The only voices of men that will be heard at the judgment bar of God will be those who have learned to sing the song, Unto him, who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood (Rev. 1:5).

The epistle to the Romans will tell us how we may have the one freedom that will bring all other freedoms; and, if we will stand like Paul the bondslave of Jesus Christ, we shall have entered into the truth that makes men free, and we shall be free indeed.

II

BONDSLAVE AND APOSTLE