Romans, vol 7: God's Heirs: 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: 9781467467391

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.

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PREFACE

With God’s Heirs we present the seventh volume of Dr. Barnhouse’s exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.

Several years ago Dr. Barnhouse asked a number of outstanding Bible teachers and preachers what their favorite chapter in the Bible was. Realizing that needs differ at different times of life, and that this choice was something like asking a father to choose his favorite child, nevertheless Dr. Barnhouse posed this situation: If each of them were to be wrecked on a desert island, and if there were to be but a single chapter of the Bible washed up in the wreckage, what chapter would they like it to be? Five out of the twenty who replied chose the eighth chapter of Romans.

Dr. Barnhouse himself chose Romans 8 as his favorite chapter. His reason was that it clearly sets forth God’s complete remedy in Christ for man’s complete ruin in sin. Not only did this chapter set before him the fact that he was redeemed, but that he was a child and heir of God. Furthermore, he rejoiced in the fact that nothing could come between him and his Savior. In Christ and in God he was safe forever.

It is our hope that those who read these pages will come to this same realization, that they are children of God through Christ Jesus, and as children His heirs, never to be separated from Him.

I take this opportunity to express my thanks to my colleague the Rev. Herbert Henry Ehrenstein, who carefully edited the text, and to Miss Olive DeGolia, who prepared the text for publication.

—Ralph L. Keiper

Director of Research, Evangelical Foundation

I

NO CONDEMNATION

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus … For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1, 2).

We are entering our study of the eighth chapter of Romans in the order of the English translation, though I know the Greek begins with the negative which would almost force us to translate the opening verse, No possible condemnation is there, therefore, for those who are in Christ Jesus. I shall begin with the thought involved in the word therefore.

Some time ago I saw a beautiful pair of hinges which had been made in colonial times. The door was a large one and the ironmonger who had wrought out the hinges had scope for an artistic design. There were three curling flanges which were fastened to the framework of the house, and which held the weight of the door. Their slender, graceful curves arched one above the other, and time had melted their grace and their solidity into real charm. If I may use this set of hinges as a figure of speech I will say that the word therefore is a threefold hinge which fastens all that follows in this epistle to the framework which has gone before. There are three flanges which jut back into chapters 3, 6, and 7. Because of the truth of justification (chapter 3), because of our union with Christ (chapter 6), and because of our complete identification with Him (chapter 7), there is therefore now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus.

JUSTIFICATION

How could there be condemnation for those who have been justified? I repeat, justification is that act of God whereby He declares an ungodly man to be perfect while he is still ungodly (Rom. 4:5). This is the basis of all true growth in the knowledge of God; it is the foundation of all true holiness. It is my measured opinion that confusing santification with justification is the cause of more false doctrine than any other error that has ever been committed by religious thinkers. Even to think of santification as an integral part of justification is to give some credit to the Adamic heart. God declares a man to be wicked, helpless, undone, ungodly in every part of his being. God announces that He proposes to save some men and to join them to the Lord Jesus Christ forever. He reaches down and touches them when they are dead in trespasses and sins, at a moment when they have no thought of Him, no concern for Him, no thought of their need, no thought of salvation. He plants within them saving faith, and by the Holy Spirit gives them the Spirit of conviction that makes them feel their need. It appears to them as though they were seeking God, when in reality that very seeking is the first mark that true and eternal life has already been planted within them by God, and they have already been marked by Him as His own forever.

Some human agent, already one of His own, brings to them the knowledge and terms of the gospel, often in a distorted fashion, sometimes in a way that is even contrary to the simplicity of the gospel as it is in reality. The first faint stirring of new life that has been given in irresistible grace has made itself known in the horrible nest of the Adamic nature. God, all the time, has been doing the work in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and on the books of Heaven He has already written all of the sins of that individual to the account of Christ, and has written the perfect, divine righteousness to the account of the sinner. Some of these sinners-become-saints think that they have done it themselves; think that they have given their heart to God as some evangelists put it, or that they have accepted Christ—of their own wills. The new birth is entirely the work of God, and a man has been saved, generally, for a long time before he has the remotest idea of the nature of what has happened to him by the grace of God alone.

A CONNECTING LINK

In the light of justification, which forms the heart of the last part of chapter 3 and the whole of chapters 4 and 5, we can see the force and power of the hinge that connects the present high glories of the child of God with the foundation of all these glories. It is the justifying act of God based on the redemption that was provided by Christ when He hung on the cross, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, when He bore the chastisement of our peace and healed us from the defeats of sin by His stripes (Isa. 53:5).

The sainted Marcus Rainsford, almost a century ago, wrote that "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," because the propitiation for our sins has already been provided, offered, and accepted in Heaven.

JOINED TO CHRIST

There is also now no condemnation for us because of the way God counted all of those whom He thus justified as being joined to the risen Lord Jesus Christ forever in the totality of His being. It would be as impossible for God to strike Christ as it would be for Him to strike us who are in Christ. You and I who are in Christ were in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, chosen in Him (Eph. 1:4). We were in Christ in His birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. We are now in Christ as He is seated in Heaven and is making intercession for us. We will be in Christ when He arises from the throne and comes back to remove us from the earth. We shall be in Christ forever in all the glories of His eternal reign. Because of these truths there is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus.

We are dead to the law and married to Christ, even though our present condition continues to have in it that which discharges thoughts and desires of evil as a boil discharges pus. There is absolute triumph prepared for us, and expected of us. The victory that was won by Christ on the cross is to be exercised by us in our daily living. There is no allowance made for the nature of our old Adam; it is totally condemned and delivered to be crucified. But when we have come out into the life of triumph and know the joy and power of victory over the outward acts of our Adamic nature, we still are aware of the seepage of evil that taints all of life. Yet in spite of that seepage there is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus.

NO JUDGMENT AGAINST US

Having seen the gripping reach of this therefore that lays hold of all the foundational truth that has been set forth in this epistle, we turn to the glorious meaning of the time-word in our text, and look upon the fact that there is, therefore, now no condemnation for us who are in Christ Jesus. That there should be no condemnation for us in the future when we are practically with Him, we can understand easily. But we must lay hold by faith on this great fact that God Himself, at this very moment, has no judgment against us whatsoever.

It is impossible for God Himself to find a flaw in the righteous position of any believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. If a stumbling drunkard went into a rescue mission an hour ago and was made alive in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation for him in this moment, even though his headache may continue for some hours. There was no condemnation for the Philippian jailer the instant he had believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, even though he had held a suicide’s sword a few instants before (Acts 16:27).

Now, in this very moment, there is no condemnation for me, nor for you, if you have trusted in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The awareness of this present glorious liberty and freedom is one of the greatest spiritual forces that can ever be unloosed in the life of a believer. I can understand that some Christians have had their emotions strained to the utmost upon the realization of this force of the love of God placing the believer in a position of no condemnation at this very present instant. There are those who sometimes criticize the emotional outbreaks of some people at the knowledge of their position in Christ. I recognize clearly that there is a counterfeit religious ecstasy which arises from the flesh apart from the truths of the Word of God. But the existence of the counterfeit is one more proof of the reality of the original. I can remember a hymn which I heard years ago. Its music may be criticized as lacking in form, its words as lacking in poetic beauty. The cynic may call it doggerel, but the fact is that great truth caught hold of a heart that was not endowed by nature with great musical talent or poetic gift, and in a way that some might call uncouth or uncultured that heart sang:

Like a mighty sea, like a mighty sea,

Comes the love of Jesus, sweeping over me.

The waves of glory roll, my joy I can’t control,

As the love of Jesus, comes sweeping o’er my soul.

A soul that comes to the full realization that he ought to be in Hell but that in reality the Lord Jesus took his hell, and that there is, therefore, now, now, NOW no condemnation for him because he is in Christ Jesus, is likely to be quite moved by the truth. If members of the human race are permitted to yell because their team won a football game, because their candidate was elected, because they have won fifty dollars on a horse race, because their drilling has produced a gusher, let us shout for joy that because we are in Christ Jesus, there is, therefore, no condemnation for us NOW.

A DOUBLE NEGATIVE

The order of the English translation was followed in considering this text, with the emphasis on the basis of freedom from condemnation. The Greek is almost startling in its declaration. Literally it would read something like this. Not a whit therefore now of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The only translator who has approximated this is Phillips, but he has done this at the expense of leaving out the great connecting word therefore which we have already seen is of so great importance. He opens his paraphrase of this chapter as follows. No condemnation now hangs over the head of those who are ‘in’ Jesus Christ.

The negative is much stronger than the ordinary word used for no or not. It is an emphatic form, rendered even more emphatic in that it is the word used for the beginning of the sentence. We do not have distinct words in English for the differentiation of this idea. In French such a distinction exists; il n’y a pas would be a simple negative, there is not, but il n’y a aucun is a special negative, there is not one. The Greek is like this. It would be correct to bring out the strength of the passage by translating it, Not any therefore now of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When God says a thing is positive we may be sure that it is positive; when He says that a thing is negative we may be sure that it is negative. It is the Lord who tells us that our yea should be yea and our nay, nay (James 5:12). He is trying to teach us to be like Himself. When He makes a statement we may be sure of its truth, down to the last final detail. It is interesting to note that there are two common words in Greek for the negative, ou and me, all other negatives being combinations of one or the other of these with particles. There are times, however, when both of these words are used together, ou me. In the Gospels this double form of absolute negative is used five times on the lips of men, and each time a close study will reveal that the men were mistaken. It was this double emphatic negative that Peter used (Matt. 16:22), when he told the Lord He should not die, This shall not be unto thee. But it was. Again Peter used this double emphatic negative when he said, I will not deny thee (Matt. 26:35). But he did. Some said (John 11:56), What think ye, that He will not come to the feast? But He did. Peter said (John 13:8), Thou shalt never wash my feet. But He did. Thomas said (John 20:25), Except I shall see … I will not believe. But he did.

On the other hand our Lord Jesus used this solemn double negative on forty-six occasions. It is impossible to distinguish these usages from one of the simple negatives in our translations, but a close study of the Greek of these forty-six passages will show us that in every case the statement of the Lord was fully true, or that it concerns a promise of something that will be, such as My words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:34, 35). How vain is the threat of man, and how empty his attempts to prevent a thing that shall come to pass. How certain, on the other hand, is the promise of the Lord.

MUCH CAUSE FOR CONDEMNATION

While the negative that is used in our text is no more than a strong combination of the first of these negatives, we can be sure that there is no condemnation against us now and forever. Later in the chapter, the Lord will take up the legal principles that are involved and will furnish us with a technical, judicial explanation to demonstrate that judgment could never be passed upon us. We are in Christ and we are safe.

The matter will become even more certain to our hearts if we will realize the things that are not said. We do not read that there is no cause for condemnation in us, but that there is no condemnation for us. Certainly there is cause, and aplenty, for we have a score of charges that have been brought against all members of the human race, and a number of statements which have shown our participation in the fallen position of the race, even after we have been saved.

Yet there is now no condemnation against us because we are in Christ Jesus. The Lord is addressing men who are sinners, though we are not condemned for our sin, and cannot be because we are in Christ Jesus. It would be just as possible to condemn Christ as it would be to condemn a man who is now in Christ.

UNCONDEMNABLE

Furthermore, it is not said, as Rainsford has pointed out, that there are no faults, no failures, no infirmities, no inconsistencies, no fleshly corruptions; but it is said that there is no condemnation. As we go on through the epistle, we shall see that the last five chapters are almost exclusively devoted to exhortations to righteousness, and expressed in such terms that it is impossible to hold otherwise than that these Christians in Rome were filled with the things they were exhorted to abandon, and practicing the things they were commanded to leave. Yet, in spite of this fact, there was no condemnation against them, as there is none against us now, from the moment that we are in Christ. And why? Because the Lord Jesus has already suffered all the condemnation due to the sins, infirmities, failures, faults, inconsistencies, and corruptions belonging to our sinful, fallen nature. And there is therefore now no condemnation to the children of God who trust in Him.

Therefore, in spite of what we may have been as sinners, or in spite of what we are as saints, there is no condemnation for us because we stand uncondemnable, as being in Christ.

The reason why there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus is set forth in our text. God has introduced an entirely new set of principles; the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us from the law of sin and death. We were the slaves of that law of sin and death; but by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and the other phases of God’s work which center in that death, we have been emancipated from the slavery that was ours by nature.

THE RED SEA CROSSING

It is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has made us free from the law of sin and death. An illustration can be drawn from the passage of the children of Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea. The law of gravity was working to keep the waters of that sea in their bed. When the moment came for the Lord to show His deliverance, the new principle of the blowing east wind entered the picture. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided (Ex. 14:21). The law of gravity was pulling these waters down as much as ever, but the miraculous power of the law of the east wind made the children of Israel free from the law of gravity which would have pulled the waters over them, as it did upon the unregenerate Egyptians.

So it is that the law of sin and death in our lives can pull in but one direction. There is no possibility at all that sin can ever be anything other than sin. It is impossible that any man who is in sin and death can ever have anything whatsoever of life until God intervenes. Then the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus blows its force against the law of sin and death. Immediately, though we are surrounded by death and it is even within us by nature, we are freed from its pull and it becomes possible for us to live in triumph over sin.

THE MEASUREMENT OF THE LAW

There has been a full presentation of the truth that the law is holy, and just, and good (7:12). It has been established that the law was given as a thing impossible of fulfillment, brought in for the purpose of establishing a standard of measurement that would reveal the imperfections of every man, thus stopping every mouth and bringing the whole world guilty before God (3:19). And it has been shown in many ways that the law is incapable of making any man holy. It is as impossible for the law to make any man holy as it is impossible for a ten-foot pole to make a man ten feet tall. A ten-foot pole can do nothing but be a ten-foot pole, and show up the shortness of the man who stands beside it, and the law can do nothing but be the law and show up the sin of the man who stands beside it. The moment either of them tries to do anything about changing a man they are found to be helpless—weak because of the flesh.

Just here may best be seen the wonderful work that Christ does for us and the Holy Spirit does in us. At the moment we are condemned because we have come short of the glory of God, the Lord Jesus Christ takes the guilt of our sin, is condemned in our stead, and then, in His risen life we are made a part of Him. Henceforth we are no longer measured by our own insufficient height, but the Lord Jesus Christ is measured for us. In that moment the Father sees us accepted in the Beloved. In the moment that we are born from above, made a partaker of the divine nature, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us. He is the same moral and spiritual height as the Lord Jesus, and there can be no condemnation for us since Christ is measured for us, and the Holy Spirit is seen to be within us. And it is Christ and the Holy Spirit at whom God now looks in us. Now, our text shows us, God begins to cause us to grow into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).

QUICKENING LIFE

It is wonderful that Paul changes back at this point from the third person to the first. In the first verse there is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus. But immediately he puts himself in that place and sets forth the basis of his own emancipation. He knows, as every true child of God knows, when the indwelling life and power enters in. It is impossible to have the quickening life of the Holy Spirit without being aware of it. It is interesting to note the word that is used for the coming of that life. You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). The same term is used by the obstetrician to describe the first movements of a baby in the mother’s womb. The doctor says that the baby is quickened. So it is with the life that is ours in Christ. It must make itself known. There may be stirrings before full birth, there may be awkward moments of heaviness, but the life that is there must manifest itself.

Now in order that we may understand how it is that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed us, it is perhaps best to look first at the law of sin and death from which we are freed. The law of sin and death is, first of all, the moral law, the Ten Commandments.

PRESENT DELIVERANCE

But the reference in our text is not only to the law that was given by Moses; it is also a reference to that law which Paul found in his members, that, when he would do good, then evil was present with him (7:21). This, another law was in his members, warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which was in his members. (7:23). If anyone thinks that we have shown that this is the law of innate corruption and that there will be no deliverance until the Lord delivers us by death or transformation of our bodies at the return of the Lord Jesus, we answer that final deliverance will occur then. Present deliverance is already ours in that this inbred corruption can neither incur our condemnation nor bring about our separation from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

Thus we have been delivered from the present power of the law of sin and death by the coming into our being of the Holy Spirit, and His law of life in Christ Jesus. Just as the root of every sin is to be found in every child of Adam, so the root of every grace and all power is to be found in the life of every child of God who has been made alive in Christ. For the life with which we have been made alive is none other than the life of God. We have been made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).

COMFORT FOR THE BELIEVER

What I wish to stress for the comfort of every believer is that every phase of this divine life is within him from the moment of his new birth. A young officer of the United States Marines once came to me with a problem. He had been saved in his childhood, but he had never been grounded in the Word. He had gone into our armed forces and, drawn down into the whirlpool of the life about him, he had fallen into sin. After he had heard me preach he came to me with tears in his eyes and with anguish in his voice. The Spirit had convicted him of his laxity, his sin, and the coldness of his walk. His exact words were, Now, I know that a Catholic can go to his priest and get absolution for his sins, but what about us? What happens to my sins? How happy I was to point him to the Word of God, and to bring him anew to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We went, together, to 1 John 1:9 and read it. If we confess our sins [and I explained that the confession was to God Himself in the presence of the Holy Spirit] He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He saw that, but continued, But what is to keep me from falling back into sin and continuing in it? I don’t want to have to keep confessing the same things over and over.

Then I took him to our text in Romans. I showed him what the Lord Jesus had done for him on the cross, and what the Holy Spirit had been given to accomplish. He looked at the text and repeated, ‘Free from the law of sin and death,’ yes, that’s it; that’s what I want. And I said to him, Does it say that He will free you or that He has freed you? He saw that it was in the past tense, and I told him that it was like money in the bank that had been deposited long ago to his credit. If he had been living in poverty while the credit was there, it was not the fault of the Holy Spirit who had provided the credit. It was there, as it is there for every believer; living assets of life in Christ Jesus; available now.

II

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:3, 4).

We have shown that the law was divinely given, and that it was holy, just, and good. We now see that it was weak through the flesh. Does this mean that something divine can be limited by something that is human? Or that God has voluntarily limited Himself so that things which He intently desires cannot come to pass? I believe that any such conclusions are a travesty of spiritual theology and a negation of ultimate truth as it is revealed to us in that divine consubstantiation where God shows Himself underneath and with the material Word of the Bible revelation of His purpose and His heart.

THE WEAKNESS OF THE FLESH

This weakness of the flesh of which our text speaks has made it impossible that any divine demand shall ever be fulfilled in us without the intervention of divine grace to provide the means of fulfillment. No man has ever bridged the gulf of his old nature in order to pass from death to life. Only the divine intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ can take us across the depths and bring us into our desired haven. It is the weakness of man’s flesh that makes it necessary for the Lord to do all for us. There is nothing that we can do for ourselves.

Again, the weakness of the flesh has made it impossible that man can ever do anything effectively for man. Just as I can do nothing for myself, so man, individually or collectively, can do nothing for others or for society as a whole. This is why the human intellect can never solve the problems which arise from the sum total of all of the sin of mankind. Some men have thought that education could bring man out of his difficulties, but education has never done it and can never do it.

Over forty years ago, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, delivered an address on the value of education in the solution of the world’s problems. He became quite visionary and said that he could see, in his mind’s eye, the great dismantled warships of our