Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

little Holiness bands) throughout Syria, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Cilicia, Lydia, Mysia,
Macedonia, Achaia and many other countries. Hence God, in His providence, had thus long
postponed his cherished enterprise of preaching the gospel in the world’s metropolis.
14. “I am debtor both to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the unwise.” The Greeks in
every ramification of culture and civilization (i.e., poetry, oratory, philosophy and the fine arts) had
stood at the top of the world the last five hundred years. Meanwhile, through the Alexandrian
conquest, she had given to the world the most wonderful language of all ages, in the providence of
God the vehicle for the transmission of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. Hence the
Greeks enjoyed a universally recognized pre-eminence above the nations of the earth, all others, even
the Jews, contrastively denominated “barbarians.” Paul was God’s cosmopolitan missionary, like
Bishop Taylor at the present day. God help us to feel that we, too, are debtors to all men
indiscriminately.
15. “Thus, according to my ability, I am ready to preach the gospel even unto you who are in
Rome.” The Spirit of the Lord was then profoundly impressing Paul that his long-anticipated visit
to Rome was not only a verity, but soon to be realized. Hence it was only three years from the date
of this writing till, to the infinite delight of his heart, he entered the world’s emporium, “in the
fullness of the blessing of Christ.”
GOSPEL DEFINED.
16. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the dynamite of God unto salvation
unto every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” How fortunate we are to have
a clear, unequivocal, lexical definition of gospel, than which the inspired vocabulary, except the
Divine epithets, has no more important word; since on this a world of theological controversy has
accumulated with the roll of ages. Here we have every problem solved and controversy circled in a
clear and unequivocal definition furnished by the infallible Author of revealed truth. The Greek word
here used by the Holy Ghost to define “gospel” is dunamis, i.e., dynamite; a word recently
introduced into the English vocabulary by the men of science, who discovered the most wonderful
and paradoxical of all the mechanical powers in the scientific and artistic world. Ransacking the
Anglican vocabulary of 150,000 words, and finding none adequate to reveal their wonderful
discovery, they went to the classic Greek and took the very identical word used by the Holy Spirit
to define gospel. Hence it is a simple and indisputable fact that gospel is nothing more nor less than
“the dynamite of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” People universally stumble over
the sheer simplicity of Bible truth; e.g., wagon-loads of books have been written by learned
theologians in an attempt to tell the world what the gospel is. Millions of brains have grown dizzy
studying over these controverted exegeses, and wound up utterly puzzled, dumfounded and farther
from the truth than when they began. The six thousand sectarian denominations in the world all try
to make us believe that the respective creed of each is the Gospel, which is utterly and
demonstratively untrue. They are every one wrong. The Gospel is no creed, confession, theology,
dogmatism nor ritualized ecclesiasticism. Neither does it consist in scholastic learning, oratorical
power, natural gifts nor theoretical magnetism. It is simply the dynamite of God which reaches the
heart through faith alone, as you see this is the only condition specified, and blowing all sin and
debris out. When the awful convicting truth of the Sinai Gospel is faithfully preached, revealing hell