God’s Remedy: Romans 3:21–4:1-25
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Part Three of Barnhouse’s commentary, entitled God’s Remedy, looks at Romans 3:21 – 4:1-25. After the sobering examination of mankind’s unrighteousness and God’s justifiable wrath, Barnhouse discusses the “righteousness of God manifested in Christ. What could not be produced by man is here seen as provided for man.”
God’s Remedy includes the messages “Righteousness Without the Law,” “Redemption,” “The Blood of Christ,” “Faith Apart from the Law,” “The Progress and Growth of Faith,” and 32 others. Throughout Part Three, Barnhouse develops the concept of God’s Grace in the New Covenant, and points to the hope in Christ for all mankind; “That is why I say that Christianity can be expressed in the three phases: I deserved Hell; Jesus took my Hell; there is nothing left for me but His Heaven.”
Top Highlights
“Why is it called ‘the righteousness of God?’ There might be several answers to this question, and since all of them are true, they are probably all parts of the complete answer which we will only know fully when we have been made like Him. The righteousness of God is specifically His because of the nature of His being. He is the One who is righteousness in Himself. But also because it is His righteousness, He must demand it of us. The righteousness which He is must be the righteousness with which He surrounds Himself. Therefore He must demand of us a righteousness equal to His own. However, since none of us can produce this righteousness, it is proper to call it the righteousness of God because it is also the righteousness which He provides freely for us.” (Page 7)
“If Christianity were a religion founded by Jesus Christ a bare nineteen centuries ago, then it would not be worth the trouble of considering it for a moment. But if it were founded by God the Father in conjunction with His eternal Son before the world began, then it is an entirely different matter. Herein, of course, lies the fact of the exclusive finality of revealed Christianity as the only true faith. All other religions are the gropings of man after God. The faith that is in Christ is God’s revelation of truth from Himself, in the terms and in the manner He wished us to have the truth.” (Page 195)
“Every religion, except that which was brought down by God himself in His planning for Jesus Christ and in the coming of Jesus Christ, is marked by something that man is supposed to do for God. But the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, and has shown us that God has done everything for man. That is the great difference between the faith that has been revealed from Heaven and the faiths that originate with men.” (Pages 11–12)
- Title: Romans: Vol. 2, Part 3: God’s Remedy, Romans 3:21–4:1-25
- Author: Donald Grey Barnhouse
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 1954
- Pages: 387
Donald Grey Barnhouse (1895-1960). Probably the best known and most widely followed American Bible teacher during the early middle decades of this century. Born in Watsonville, California, he gained his training in a broad variety of institutions including Biola, Princeton Seminary, Eastern Seminary, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1927 Barnhouse accepted the pulpit of Tenth Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia, and it was from this church, where he continued the rest of his life, that he built his national and international empire. As early as 1928 and continuing through most of his career he spoke over radio networks of up to 455 stations, using the Bible expository method of teaching. The popularity of these broadcasts and later telecasts led to many invitations to conduct Bible conferences, and the increasing demand of these conferences led him, after 1940, to be absent from his pulpit six months a year. Also serving as an outlet for his sermons, Bible studies, essays, and editorials were the two magazines which he founded and edited, Revelation (1931–49) and Eternity, which continues to the present.
Barnhouse’s theology was an eclectic yet independent mix of dispensationalism, Calvinism, and fundamentalism. As a dispensationalist he developed elaborate eschatological schemes, yet he departed significantly from much dispensationalist teaching. His fearless and brusque attacks upon liberal Presbyterian clergymen led the Philadelphia Presbytery to censure him in 1932, yet he opposed the fundamentalist concept of separation, and in his later years gradually grew more mellow in his relations with the Presbyterian Church and the National Council of Churches.
