Proper Pride

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse. The Gentiles heard, and Paul won their obedience to these truths. Self was knocked off center, and Christ took its place, thus providing for a whole new circumference of living. May God give us to work in the same cause, to act in the same obedience, and bring others into the same chorus where all solo voices are drowned in the great swelling praise of him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. 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’ll be featuring on today’s edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled “Proper Pride.” The book of Proverbs warns us, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Lucifer was cast down when pride was found in him, and Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their self-righteous pride. And yet, as the apostle Paul indicates, there is such a thing as a proper manifestation of pride in the Christian life. What are the characteristics of this type of proper pride that is pleasing to God? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 15 and verses 17 and 18. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled “Proper Pride.”
Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We thank thee for thy love and grace, for thy never-failing faithfulness. We thank thee for thy care and keeping, and that thou hast given to each believer the wonderful privilege of working for thee by witnessing by our lives and by our words. Keep us in thine own integrity, that we may have truth in the inward parts and show forth Christ in our daily lives. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We come now in our study of Romans to the 15th chapter and the 17th and part of the 18th verse. “In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles.” Paul was proud of his work for God, which was the winning of the Gentiles to Christ so that he could offer them as a sacrifice to God. In the 19th century, there was a great religious controversy in England over the meaning of this text. I’m convinced that those were right who read it in this way. The argument concerned priesthood. Paul was apologizing to the Roman Christians for his boldness in urging them to do their duty. But he tells them that he is urging not a novelty, but something they already know. The grace that was given to him was that he was a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles. In the Greek, the word for minister was used of the priest going about his sacrificial duties in the temple. Paul was offering up the Gentiles to God. He was not talking about the offering that the Gentiles make, but the offering which the Gentiles are. Dr. Sandy of Oxford, writing on this, said, “The apostle conceives of himself as standing at the altar, and the offering which he lays upon the altar is the Gentile church, so far as it is of his founding or comes within his special province.” Oh, how this should cause every minister to be concerned for the nature of his congregation which he presents to God. How responsible each Sunday school teacher should feel for the students whom he is to present to God. How this should impel every parent to guide and train the child he shall present to God. Every individual Christian is concerned here. We do not live to ourselves. Therefore, each must be concerned about the impression which he makes on the lives of all whom he meets. If we are able to build something into the life of another man, we have that asset to present to God as a sacrifice. How wonderful this is, and how breathtaking in its creation of a sense of responsibility. It means that I have the opportunity of putting something of Christ into every contact that I make in life. We all know that a snarl breeds the spirit of a snarl. If we inadvertently make a slight error in driving and a man pulls up alongside at a traffic light and looks at us with a scowl and taps his forehead to indicate that we’re crazy, the old Adamic nature has the instantaneous desire to top him with a worse gesture. But because of the indwelling presence of Christ, we smile at the man and nod ruefully, which leaves him in some confusion and perhaps helps him to show more thoughtfulness and patience toward the next person who comes too close to his fender. Now you can multiply this illustration by a million and transfer it to practically every phase of human relationships. At every moment, you and I have the power to show Christ. This is what Paul did, and the result was a great company of believers whom he could offer up to God as a delightful sacrifice. And now he looks back over the work and says, “In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God.” This shows that there’s a place for pride in the Christian life, proper pride. We must understand, however, that the English word pride has two absolutely different meanings. Our tongue does not have the advantage of French, which has two words for two kinds of pride. *Orgueil* signifies haughty arrogance and inordinate self-esteem. *Fierté* means, among other reasons, self-respect, loftiness, high-mindedness. The Greek word from which our word pride or glory is translated is sometimes used for evil pride, but this cannot be the meaning in our text, for there was no guilt in Paul’s heart when he spoke of pride in his work. It was not pride in himself; it was pride in Christ. In fact, the most literal translation of our text would be, “I am boasting in Christ Jesus concerning God’s service.” He knew the great truth that it is not what we do for God that counts, but what we let him do through us. Many years ago, a child brought me an autograph album and asked me to write in it. Wishing to write something that might be useful through the years to anyone who read it, I kept this book for a day or two and then wrote this very sentiment which I believe perfectly expresses Paul’s glorying. I wrote, “It is not what we do for God that counts, but what we let him do through us.” Since that time, in the last 30 years or more, I have written that sentence in a thousand autograph albums. And still today, I know it’s true. It’s not what I do for God that counts; it’s what he does through me. Christ Jesus did not say, “Without me ye can do not very much.” He said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” Oh, how hard this lesson is to learn, but how necessary. Every moment we must yield the old nature for crucifixion by the Holy Spirit in order that Christ’s resurrection life may manifest itself in us. There must always be a clear recognition of what we are by nature. Sometime ago I noted in my shower that I could not turn the cold water completely off. No matter how I forced the lever, a trickle of cold water came through because the washer had become defective. As I looked at it, I realized that it was a picture of my own life. No matter how much I may wish my old nature to be eradicated, it’s still there, and as long as I live in this body, there’ll be a defective washer in my spiritual system. The power of Christ will come through, hot and cleansing, but there will always be the little touch of the human, a little trickle of self in everything that I think or say or do. But God has made provision for our complete cleansing from sin, and day by day, he mops up all the trickles through. Do not think for a moment that Paul differed from us. He had the same old nature that was capable of evil pride, but he was no less the minister of Christ, even though we sometimes see his evil nature shining through. He was clearly out of the will of God when he left Ephesus and pushed on to Jerusalem. Certainly he was out of the will of God when he took a Jewish vow and had his head shaved and went to the temple for days of purification until a Jewish priest killed a lamb and shed his blood in sacrifice for his purification. This was many years after God tore the veil of the temple in two while Christ was dying on the cross. Nevertheless, Paul’s will was set like a sail with an eager desire to catch every breath of the spirit so that he might be carried onward to the goal which was Christ. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, using himself and Apollos as examples. But he qualifies by saying in 1 Corinthians 4:6 and 7, “I have used myself and Apollos above as an illustration, so that you might learn from what I have said about us, not to assess man above his value in God’s sight. And may thus avoid the friction that comes from exalting one teacher against another. For who makes you different from somebody else? And what have you got that was not given to you? And if anything has been given to you, why boast of it as if it were something you had achieved yourself?” Now in his second epistle to the same church, he expands on this truth in chapter 4. “Therefore,” he writes, “having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” And now comes the climax of the teaching: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” Phillips translates it, “This priceless treasure we hold, so to speak, in a common earthenware jar, to show that the splendid power of it belongs to God and not to us.” Now there is the truth that describes me and you, each one of us. All that we have and are has been given to us as a gift from God. We are not the source of what we have any more than Enrico Caruso was the source of his voice. Going back to Paul, there’s a sense in which we can share his pride in the work which God gave him to do. How wonderful that he was faithful to the task that was set before him. If we ask what he really did, we find the answer spread across the pages of history as one of the outstanding influences in the development of mankind. In one sense, we may say that when Paul moved from Asia into Europe, he overthrew an empire and transformed a continent. The force was the force of Jesus Christ, but it was exercised in and through Paul with his full consent and eager participation. The argument that the world could not meet was the solid certainty of the gospel and its moral force. For when it reached the hearts of men, it transformed those men and they became new creatures in Christ Jesus. We may say that the greatest talent of Paul was his ability to enter a completely pagan city which practiced devil worship and gather a group of transformed believers in the name of Christ. He then hovered over them in prayer and with constant admonition and care lifted them from the most corrupt strata of heathenism to the highest level of Christian godliness and morality. True, his epistles show that these believers retained the marks of the quarry from which they had been digged, but it was also true that they were placed in the new edifice of the body of Christ, which was being built upon the foundation of the apostles. They were living stones, firmly set in the new structure, the church. We see the fornicator in the Corinthian church, but we also hear the Spirit saying, “I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” Paul told the Ephesians that they had walked formerly in the death of trespasses and sins, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that still worked in the sons of disobedience. But from that very state of death, God had made them alive, raising them up together with Christ and seating them in the heavenly places in him, so that they were now God’s poem, God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared beforehand that they might walk in them. No wonder Paul was properly proud of the work that God had done through him. Take, for example, an incident that occurred in Antioch in Syria. This great port city of antiquity was the shipping and receiving port for much of the commerce that passed between Asia and Rome. Situated on the Orontes river, Antioch was so sunken in moral degradation and filth that an orator in the Roman Senate described the moral laxity of the capital by saying that the Orontes had flowed into the Tiber. Yet after Paul and Barnabas had worked in that town for a few months, the lives of many people were completely transformed. And the heathen populace, seeing these transformed people, gave them a name, a glorious name, called them Christians. And they were first called Christians in Antioch. In spite of the fact that the precious name of Christian has been dragged in the dust and bandied about until it has little meaning for the world, nevertheless, this name can be a crystal goblet into which all the wine of the glory of Christ may be poured. Christian. He is a Christian. And when we know the glory of that name, we’re willing to be as little children, even as Christ said we should be, and accept the little play on the letters of the word in its English form. For they teach the children that Christian is Christ with the suffix “I-A-N.” And some children’s worker has used these as initials to spell out a great sentence definition of Christian: Christ Is All, I Am Nothing. And that makes a Christian. And here we must bring the whole matter out of the distant past and plant it firmly in our own circumstances, indeed in our own lives. In fact, anyone who studies the New Testament must approach it from the angle of experience if he is to comprehend its events or doctrines. God knows I am not lowering the value of doctrines. Indeed, I hold that the great statements of the essential doctrines which the church has forged through the centuries as barriers against alien thought are important statements and that we must guard even the form of expression. But beneath and beyond the statements of faith is the life of faith. We’re dealing not with a set of formulas but with life, divine life. When anyone approaches the New Testament, he must face this question before any other, namely: What type of personal faith is brought to view? And he is soon led to see that the lives of New Testament believers were miraculous, and he must hunger for the same miraculous life. We cannot reproduce the miracles which were performed before the New Testament was written, but we can reproduce the life of the New Testament believers and have spiritual experience as deep as any known by these members of the early church. Indeed, I’m convinced that our ability to understand the New Testament depends first of all on the extent to which we are able to enter into the experiences which transformed them. And when we have definitely known that the experience which transformed their lives has become our experience, we shall know with a supernatural knowledge that all our experience is founded on supernatural fact and we shall have met the Lord Jesus Christ in an encounter that shall never end. For that encounter will do something to our lives and to our minds. It will cause us to see his holiness and enter into his love, and will cause our minds to submit to the facts of his being. And then we shall have no difficulty in accepting the doctrines which form the skeleton on which the flesh of the life of faith is hung. Let me bring this to a close by presenting a fact that is often overlooked in the circles of conservative Christianity. Although Paul constantly worked with individuals, it was for the purpose of welding them into one body, the church, a new society upon earth. All too frequently, we lose sight of this most important fact. Paul was not training primadonnas. He was interested only in choral Christianity. The music of Christian truth is not that of innumerable individuals singing solos. Many years ago, I had the privilege of being taken backstage just before a performance of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Before the curtain went up, dozens of individuals walked about in the wings, doing vocal exercises, warming up their voices. Completely oblivious of the others, each singer concentrated on his own voice, and the bystander was engulfed in piercing discord. We’re all familiar with a similar effect in the tuning up of an orchestra before a concert where each instrument plays its own way. Too often the bystander in the world today looks upon the church as a group of frivolous amateurs, each individual concerned only with his little part. But the Lord Jesus Christ prayed that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. I repeat that, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. I pray that they may be one. Oh, somebody may speak about the dangers of a movement that seeks to call all believers together into a divine oneness. But in spite of the dangers, the Lord planned the church for just such a divine oneness. Everything that moves in that direction is from him, and everything that moves in the opposite direction, the direction of separation one from another, is away from him. This is the whole thrust of Paul’s message. The fact that he succeeded was the cause of his pride and glory. It was a divine gift, that pride and glory, based on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, glory of all glories. The Gentiles heard, and Paul won their obedience to these truths. Self was knocked off center, and Christ took its place, thus providing for a whole new circumference of living. May God give us to work in the same cause, to act in the same obedience, and bring others into the same chorus where all solo voices are drowned in the great swelling praise of him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. And our God and Father, we pray in this hour that thou shalt do this work within our hearts. We pray thee for the whole church of Christ, not merely for our own denominations or names, but for everyone who’s a believer in whatever organization that one may be. We pray thee for all the believers, all the church of Christ, those that worship in little mud huts and those that worship in great cathedrals. Those who see dimly and those who see clearly. Those who have salvation plus a great knowledge of theology, and those who have salvation in absolute ignorance of theology. Lord, bless thy church. Make us a pure church. We do not pray that we should be little groups of perfect people, but that the whole church may acknowledge its oneness. That we belong to thee, Lord, and that we should show thee forth in oneness. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Guest (Male): A proper sense of pride enables us to boast in our Lord Jesus Christ, glory in his love for us and his redemptive work on our behalf, and to take satisfaction in what he accomplishes through us. Today’s message was entitled “Proper Pride.” To listen to additional Bible teachings 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 “Proper Pride,” or simply request message number R15-22. The Bible declares that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. But what are the implications of the lordship of Jesus Christ for our lives today? We would like to make available to you a free CD message called “Jesus is Lord” by the great British theologian and pastor, Dr. John R.W. Stott. Dr. Stott preached this powerful message at one of our first Philadelphia conferences on Reformed Theology, and it’s our pleasure to offer it to you free of charge. Ask for your free CD copy of “Jesus is Lord” 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. We also produce the radio broadcast The Bible Study Hour featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and Every Last Word featuring the teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of our listeners. 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 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. When you contact us, be sure and 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 Drs. Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thanks for listening today. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.