Who Said That?
Sunday, June 3, 2007 at 06:48PM 
Who Said That?
"This [the obedience of the One] was our Lord's death, as an act of obedience. 'He became obedient unto death, yea the death of the cross.' He was, of course, always obedient to His Father, but it cannot be too strongly stressed that His life before the cross, His 'active obedience,' as it is called, is not in any sense counted to us for righteousness. 'I delivered to you,' says Paul, 'first of all, that Christ died for our sins.' Before His death He was 'holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.' He Himself said, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' Do you not see that those who claim that our Lord's righteous life under Moses' Law is reckoned to us for our 'active' righteousness, while His death in which He put away our sins, is, as they claim, the 'passive' side, are really leaving you, and the Lord, too, under the authority of the Law?"
Please leave your answer (guess) in the comments section below. No google searches, please.
Kim Riddlebarger
This comes from Donald Gray Barnhouse's Romans: Expositions of Bible Doctrines, Eerdmans, 1966). III.105. Barnhouse was a dispensationalist (as some of you noted, he often quotes Newell's commentary on Romans approvingly) and advocated a Keswick view of sanctification. It is amazing how much Barnhouse's view sounds like some of the federal vision folk (i.e., the denial of the imputation of Christ's active obedience). But in this case, Barnhouse's denial of Christ's active obedience is the fruit of his dispensationalism.
Reader Comments (22)
He doesn't understand properly the nature of the Law; Christ's perfect fulfillment of its demands in His sinless life; and the complete fulfillment of its penalty in His once for all sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the elect. And lastly, Newell also fails exegetically to rightly divide Romans 5:12-19.
To correctly understand forensic justification, we must also correctly understand the doctrine of imputation clearly (His active and passive obedience).
The 1689 says is so clearly - Chapter 11: Of Justification:
<i>1. Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; <b>but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith,</b> which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God. (Romans 3:24; Romans 8:30; Romans 4:5-8; Ephesians 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:30, 31; Romans 5:17-19; Philippians 3:8, 9; Ephesians 2:8-10; John 1:12; Romans 5:17) (emphasis mine)</i>
<b>AND the great Puritan divine John Owen:</b>
<i>"That which we plead is, that the Lord Christ fulfilled the whole law for us; he did not only undergo the penalty of it due unto our sins, but also yielded that perfect obedience which it did require. And herein I shall not immix myself in the debate of the distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ; for he exercised the highest active obedience in his suffering, when he offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit. And all his obedience, considering his person, was mixed with suffering, as a part of his exinanition and humiliation; whence it is said, that "though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."</i>
I think the inaccuracy of many dispy writers, is that if they really understood the first Adam as our federal head in transgression AND the last Adam as our federal head in propitiation - it would force them to leave behind the sandy foundation of dispensationalism and embrace the rich biblical beauty and history of covenant theology.
I greatly enjoy your blog Kim...
Sola Fide,
Campi
Col. 1:9-14