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.