W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

up the “new man” to walk in newness of life, and is wrought by the same power that raised Christ from the
dead.
(5) The burial is simply the normal counterpart of the metaphor, which represents sin as a person,
I. e., the old man, and its destruction by baptism, which means a purification, as the crucifixion of that old
man and the annihilation of his body. Of course as a logical sequence follows the burial. Oh, what a grand and
glorious description of our Lord's mighty work is the expurgation of sin forever out of the heart! Here it is
personified by the “old man” who is crucified and sepulchered forever; the burial being the normal counterpart
of the death which is superinduced by crucifixion.
Immediately preceding this wonderful description of sin's destruction and eternal elimination, we have a clear
revelation in that powerful triple compound (Col.) “apekdusic,” from apo, clear away, ik, off, and dus, to put on
as a coat Therefore we have its grand meaning in the glorious reality that the old man of sin, that we had long
worn as a garment, is not only put off, but thrown utterly away beyond the North Pole, so he can never get back
to trouble us any more. This mighty work is wrought by the baptism which our Savior gives with the Holy
Ghost and fire.
Paul was a man of greatest intellect ad most profound learning, having graduated both in the Greek colleges of
Tarsus, and the Hebrew Academies of Jerusalem. Therefore his masterly use of that wonderful Greek language,
the strongest in the world, as well as the most vivacious and versatile, as God had purposely prepared it for the
propagation of His Word into all the earth, is, in the good providence of God, to all Bible students
transcendently edifying and ineffably delightful.
It is felicitously used by the Holy Ghost, its infallible Author, for the illumination of all true hearts who are
delighted to sit meekly and lowly at the feet of Jesus, while He teaches them the deep things of God and the
wonderful things of the kingdom.
(6) In these Scriptures (Col.) we find this wonderful transaction of entire sanctification, wrought by the
baptism which Jesus gives with the Holy Ghost and fire, anteceded by the bold affirmation; “In Him dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily; for you are complete in Him, who is the head of all government and
authority.” In these bold climacteric affirmations, you see our wonderful Christ, who is sitting on the right hand
of the Father, and pleading our cause, really to us verifies the glorious heavenly Trinity in His own personal
writing. We are complete in Him alone, and do not need ecclesiastical ordinances, nor ministerial manipulations
of any kind to consummate our completeness, as we have it all in Him alone.
In His omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent intercessions for every son and daughter of Adam's ruined race,
pursuant to the wonderful and perfect vicarious, substitutionary atonement which He made with His own blood
on the cross of Calvary. He is every moment ready and waiting to settle the awful sin problem in every heart by
a radical expurgation. He is this moment ready to pour His Spirit upon you, thus baptizing you with the Holy
Ghost and fire. Sin is your own trouble, which here, in the bold imagery of Paul, is personified in the old man
(Rom.), whom Jesus crucifies till he is utterly dead and his rife is forever exterminated, and then buries into His
own death and leaves him there forever.
“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
“The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.
“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed Church of God
Is saved to sin no more.”