Grace and Apostleship

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.
Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: We would have no gospel whatsoever, if we were forced to sing, "Jesus paid it 90%, only 10% I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it late pink." That's no gospel. For you could never pay the fraction of 1% of the infinite demands of the righteousness of God. If we are to stand before Him, clothed in His righteousness alone, it must be in the garments of His grace. We must be made accepted in the Beloved. And this is just what has happened.
Guest (Male): The word is truth for God became. True teach we do, for that and straight. He which might we can to the work God has for us to do. The word is all the Christian needs to grow in grace and to put.
Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's Word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the weekly 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 will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled Grace and Apostleship. A doctor will not stop during a critical operation and say, "I did most of the surgery, wake up the patient, let him finish the job." The doctor has to do it all because the patient is both unqualified and unable to save himself. The same is true in the spiritual realm. We cannot do anything to save ourselves. Thankfully, Jesus completed the work of redemption and fully paid our debt of sin. He declared, "It is finished," and has saved us by His grace.
Guest (Male): The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans 1 and verses 5 through 7. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with the message, Grace and Apostleship.
Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. Bless Thy word as it goes forth and use it to open the eyes of the blind and to strengthen Thy children. We ask it through the merits of our Savior, and for His name's sake. Amen. We are studying together in Romans, the first chapter, and come to the fifth verse, "By whom we have received grace and apostleship." The Epistle that was written by a slave to saints about the Savior, which says that through Jesus Christ our Lord, we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name's sake. Now, if we are to understand the meaning of this verse, there are certain questions that must be asked and answered. First, we must find out whom Paul is talking about. He says that "we" have received grace and apostleship. To whom does that refer? A moment later, he includes all of the believers in Rome in the group, so that we can see that the group is larger than himself and his helpers. But we must also see that the group is much smaller than the human race. One of the saddest errors in biblical thinking is that which has drifted into the thought that everything in the Bible is for everybody. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In all the Bible, there is no word of comfort in time of sorrow for the unbeliever. There is no word of consolation in time of bereavement, no word of strength in time of weakness. There is no precious promise to which the unsaved soul may cling in life and in death. We are told that we who are believers sorrow not as others who have no hope. Everywhere the Bible draws a sharp line across the human race. Unfortunately, there have been those who have taken the Bible as though God had spoken all of it to all of the human race. This is not true. The offer of salvation is made to the whole of the race. The offer of God's grace is indeed universal. But the rest of the Bible is written only to those who have accepted the offer of grace and who have been brought under the pardon that was purchased when the Lord Jesus hung on the cross and poured out His blood as the efficacious payment of divine love to divine righteousness and justice. Only those who have been saved through this work are in the body of believers. And all those who are believers are saved. Therefore, the "we" is not an editorial "we" of the apostle, but it includes all who have been truly saved. Next, we note that through Jesus Christ we have received grace and apostleship. Now there are four things to note here. One, there is grace. Two, there is apostleship. Three, we have received them, past tense. And four, the grace comes before the apostleship. Grace is unmerited favor. As Paul wrote to Titus, it is the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man. Love that goes upward is worship. Love that goes outward is affection. Love that stoops is grace. We were not lovely or lovable. God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, the ungodly. We sometimes sing, "Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan. Oh, the grace that brought it down to man. Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary." Now if any individual thinks that he should go to heaven by natural right, he has never understood either the holiness of God or the sinfulness of sin. It would be a very good exercise for you, whoever you may be, to write down on a piece of paper so that your own eyes could see it in your own handwriting. "I," and put your name in, "truly deserve hell." Secondly, "Jesus Christ took my hell." Thirdly, "there is nothing left for me but His heaven." Now, someone may think that he does not deserve hell. And again, I say, if you do not know that you deserve hell by natural right, you have never understood the holiness of God or the sinfulness of sin. But the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead and ascended on high, is the author of our grace, and we rest in it, secure. He has dealt with our sin and is dealing with our sins. Our sin is forgiven, forgotten, cleansed, gone, atoned for, covered, blotted out like a thick cloud, cast into the depth of the sea, removed as far as the East is from the West, cast behind God's back, remembered against us no more forever. God has done everything for us. There is nothing left to be done. Jesus paid it all. We have received grace. And then after we have received grace, we receive apostleship. Oh, it is a terrible thing when men attempt to be apostles before they have received grace. There is a verse in the Bible which says, "When you look for the devil, don't forget to look in the pulpit." Now I will admit that that is my own revised version, my own translation. But the King James Version says it sharply enough. For there we read in 2 Corinthians 11:13 to 15, "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers." T.H.D., D.D. "Be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works." And do not think I am speaking of these degrees facetiously, I happen to have them, which makes it possible for me to say that they are not enough. How can a man be a false apostle? The answer is that anyone who is sent by Satan as a deceiver, or anyone who runs in his own might and power instead of being sent by God, is a false apostle. For grace must come first. If a man is born again, Satan cannot send him. But even a man who has been born again may run ahead of God and go out in his own strength when God has not sent him. Apostleship in the New Testament must be distinguished sharply from the priesthood of the Old Testament. The priests had their office by succession. There is no such thing as apostolic succession when we study the Bible. May I tell you how I was ordained of God to preach the Gospel? I never knew a conscious day in my life when I was unaware that I had been called to preach the Gospel. I was born in a home where there had been a mixed marriage. My father had been a Protestant, my mother a Roman Catholic. But from my earliest childhood there was upon me a sense that I had been called to preach. My father was a contractor, and I can remember vividly an incident that took place when I was five years old. It was on my fifth birthday. At the time my father was building a small hospital on the edge of our town. And he took me out to the place. I can remember walking up the wide, plank, slanting upwards, upon which the men were wheeling wheelbarrow loads of bricks for the construction of the chimney. The foreman on the job came down to talk to my father. He greeted me, and was told that I was five years old that day. The man handed me a five-cent piece, and asked me what I was going to do when I grew up. Without the slightest hesitation, I replied, "I'm going to preach." I knew it beyond a doubt. When I was eight or ten years old, I went to a special service at church one evening. A very famous preacher had come down from San Francisco for one night only. It was Jay Wilbur Chapman, just returned from his great campaigns in Australia. The crowds were overflowing our church. And I had given up my seat to sit on the floor near the front of the auditorium. I sat there watching the preacher with a strange calm that I can recall yet, but with an inner voice saying to me in tones that left no room for argument, "I have called you to do this kind of work when you grow up. You will stand in My name and preach before many people." Then there came the day when I passed through what men call ordination. I had preached in missions and on the street long before this, and in many a church. When I first crossed the continent on my way to Princeton, I stopped with friends in Kentucky and preached for a week in a tiny church near their home. I preached in the little churches around Princeton while I was at school. It was always, "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." Finally, the First World War came, and I entered the army in what was then known as the aviation section of the Signal Corps. Whenever I got a chance, I would preach. I had felt that I could not be a chaplain, but nonetheless, I had a message to give to those who were in such need. And then there came the day when I visited the Presbytery under whose care I had been a student. And one of the men proposed that I be ordained a year before my time. I was in uniform and had become a first lieutenant. And so they voted to ordain me so that, as one of them said, I might be able to minister if the need arose. Well, I would have ministered, never fear, with or without their ceremony. But I believe in discipline, and in church organization and in church order. But the moderator of the Presbytery asked me the questions. I answered them. And they told me to kneel down. Men came toward me, and one man was asked to make the prayer. I felt his hand come on my head, and then the hands of others touching my head, and pressing down on his, and upon the other hands. The ring of men closed in, and this man began to pray. It was a nice little prayer and had one pet little phrase in it. "Father," the man prayed, "guard him with thy love, guide him with thine eye, and gird him with thy power." I kept thinking about those three verbs: guard, guide, gird. It seemed as foolish as performing a marriage ceremony upon two people who had been living together for a quarter of a century, and who had had a family of children together. I knew that I had been ordained long since, and that the hands that had been upon my head were hands that had been pierced and nailed to a cross. Some time ago a woman presented her small son, aged 8 or 10, to me and told me that she hoped that he would be a minister. I think she was deeply shocked, and perhaps hurt when I said to the boy, "Don't ever be a minister if you can help it." She was startled and expostulated with me, but I kept on with the boy and I said, "Son, if you can ever be happy as president of a bank, or as head of a factory, or as pitcher for the New York Yankees, or as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or as head of the FBI, or as anything else on this earth, then God has never called you into the ministry." Then I said to the mother, "It's a great mistake to attempt to push a boy into the ministry. The Bible says that we are to pray the Lord of the harvest that He send forth laborers into His harvest. If we send them, they'll turn out to be ecclesiastical overlords, or denominational wheel horses. But if we ask God to send them forth, then they shall be sent by Him, and will be ministers indeed." Oh, there is a sense, of course, in which every Christian has an apostleship. We are all of us to be witnesses, no matter what our calling, our profession, our labor. A generation ago, there was a wealthy man in the Midwest who was an outstanding Christian layman. He was in the meat business. People used to ask him what he did. He would reply, "I am a witness for Jesus Christ, but I pack pork to pay expenses." Now everyone should thus speak. One man should say, if asked what he does, "Why, I am a witness for Jesus Christ, but I'm a carpenter, a banker, a doctor, or whatever it may be to pay expenses." A woman should say, "I'm a witness for Jesus Christ, but I'm a stenographer, a teacher, a housewife, or whatever it may be to pay expenses." Your apostleship differs in degree, but not in kind from the apostleship that was given by God to Paul. Now this grace and apostleship are not earned. They are received. The work has been done by the Savior. The way has been planned by the Father. The calling becomes effectual by the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is to answer to the grace that is offered to us. And that answer which we must give is obedience to the faith. God had a purpose for us, and that purpose is obedience of faith. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. There's a great difference between what the Bible calls faith and what the Bible calls faith. Now you may stop and say, "Why, the words are the same. Faith and faith." True. But there is a great deal of difference in a mental attitude and a spiritual attitude. Both may be called belief, but there is a wide difference between them. For example, I believe in Julius Caesar, and I believe in Jesus Christ. But oh, the difference between those two faiths! What does my belief in Caesar do for me? Nothing whatsoever. What does my belief in Jesus Christ do for me? Everything. The difference is that one is a mere faith of the mind, and the other is the faith of the heart. The faith that counts is the faith of obedience. It is unto this obedience of faith that we are called. We choose to desire what God has chosen for us to do. This is the purpose of the Christian faith. Now we are not saved in order to have a set of theological principles in our heads. We are saved in order to surrender our lives to Christ. We are to be mastered men and separated saints. The late Bishop of Durham, Handley Moule, wrote that "self-surrender taken alone is a plunge into a cold void. When it is a surrender to the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me, it is the bright home-coming of the soul to the seat and sphere of life and power." We must understand that Satan has two different counterfeits of the obedience of faith. He has one set of men who want doctrines without obedience, and another set who want obedience without doctrines. For doctrine and doing are like the two parts of salt. Salt is composed of two poisons: sodium and chlorine. If you should take either of the two poisons, you would die. But if you combine them properly, you have sodium chloride, and that is common table salt, without which there is no savor for our food, and indeed, no life and health to our bodies. Let us be careful then, not to seek a religious life without being surrendered to the great doctrines of revealed truth. Let us also be careful not to hold the great truths of orthodoxy without surrendering our bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable, our spiritual service. It is important to note that this phrase occurs both at the beginning and at the end of this great epistle to the Romans. For the last line but one of the Epistle speaks of the going forth of the commandments of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith. Old Dr. Samos put it well in his great hymn, "But we never can prove the delights of His love until all on the altar we lay, for the favor He shows and the joy He bestows are for those who will trust and obey. "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey." And the obedience is not an obedience to a set of ceremonies of human religion. When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, the veil was rent asunder, and the age of the ceremonial law was finished forever. Properly speaking, we do not have a religion anymore. When we realize that the word religion means a binding in the sense of religious duties bound upon the individual. In the English Bible, the word religion is twice used to translate the term Judaism, and twice to translate a Greek word that has to do with ceremonial observances, and which in its root comes from a verb meaning to wail, to frighten. The idea was that fear of the gods caused men to practice certain religious rites. There is none of that in Christianity. Sometimes when we see people occupied with religious forms and ceremonies, we fear that they have the false idea that they must placate some offended deity. But in Christianity, there is quite another idea. Our faith is not primarily occupied with what we do for God, but what He has done for us. We have received grace that flows from the risen, ascended, and living Lord Jesus Christ. We surrender our lives to Him so that we are occupied with the Savior and not with forms and liturgies. This is the obedience of the faith, to be occupied with Christ so that He comes to permeate our whole life. Furthermore, this life is to be offered to all men. The text now states that the sphere of this obedience is to be among all the nations. God has limited Himself to a work among the children of Israel between the days of Abraham and Christ. And in future studies, if the Lord wills, we shall see the reason for the choice of Israel, and for all the promises that have been made to that ancient nation. But today, in this day of grace, the obedience of faith is to be among all nations. The door of mercy is open to all. The believers are to go proclaiming the Gospel to all. There is no limit to the purpose of God, and there is no limit to the sphere of that purpose. And finally, all this grace, this apostleship, this obedience, this faith is for the sake of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What we do is done for Him. We read at times of some missionaries having a burden for lost souls. This is good, and an indication of the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, goodness, and faithfulness. But beyond this, the reason for all we do, for our submission, for our obedience, for our willingness to be bondslaves, is all for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sins were never forgiven because of ourselves. They are forgiven because of the Savior. John wrote in his first epistle, "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name's sake." Isaiah tells us that when we make the soul of Jesus the offering for our sin, He shall see His seed. He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. So we, as we witness, are in no small sense the midwives of faith that bring to birth the seed of Christ. We do it more for Him than for the babes. And thus we plead with you today, to come to Christ, to the obedience of faith, to receive the grace that is so freely offered to you. And when you come, the heart of the Savior will be gladdened that one more of those for whom He shed His blood, has come into the life that He so richly gives. And our God and Father, bless this truth to each heart in this hour. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, with all glory to Thee through the Savior. Amen.
Guest (Male): Jesus paid it all. Not 90% and the rest is up to us. By His grace, He washed us white as snow. And all we can do is receive the gift of life by faith and walk with Him in love and obedience. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled Grace and Apostleship. Listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse via the internet. Visit us 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 Grace and Apostleship, or simply request message number R1-7. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled Overcoming Fear in Witnessing. Does fear hold you back from telling your family, friends, and co-workers about Christ? This free booklet will help you overcome the barriers to effective witnessing so you can share the gospel clearly, in love and without fear. If you want to be a bold, confident witness for Christ, ask for your free copy of Overcoming Fear in Witnessing when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is the 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 full list of stations carrying our programs, visit our website, Alliancenet.org. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. If you have benefited from the 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, Martin Lloyd Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.