Donald Grey Barnhouse - Romans: Expositions of Bible Doctrines

Romans 1:1-32

Expositions of Bible Doctrines
Taking the Epistle to the Romans as a
Point of Departure

by

Donald Grey Barnhouse

Published 1959 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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

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.

Donald Grey Barnhouse

Philadelphia, Pa. January, 1959

.

Rev. 1:5

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).