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

salvation, both negative and positive. We have but one human condition specified, and that is that
we get it all through faith “in his blood.” Thorough repentance must put the sinner on believing
ground, where he can be justified by faith; while complete consecration is indispensable to put the
Christian on believing ground where he can be wholly sanctified through faith alone, precisely as
he when a sinner received justification through faith alone. Satan’s preachers are always crying out
“obedience.” It is a fond trick of the devil to deceive people by good things; e.g., obedience is good
and commendable in its sphere. The truth of the matter is, true faith inspired by the Holy Ghost is
always obedient, whether in the justification of a sinner or the sanctification of a Christian. Right
here comes in the devil’s tricky delusion in fixing the eye on the obedience instead of on Christ, and
thus running the poor devotee into idolatry, which is your inevitable fate if you depend upon
anything but Christ to save you. It is only Satan’s counterfeit that does not obey God, the genuine
being always gladly obedient to every ramification of the divine administration. “Unto the
manifestation of his own righteousness, through the remission of the sins which are passed;
26. “Through the forbearance of God, unto the manifestation of his own righteousness at the
present time, that he should be righteous and the one justifying him who is of the faith of Jesus.”
What a burning emphasis we have here on the fact that the sinner in justification does not receive
his own righteousness, the normal fruit of legal obedience, nor the absolution of an interceding
priest, administering church ordinances and ritualistic obligations; but he receives the righteousness
of Christ Himself, God’s own righteousness, purchased by the vicarious death of His Son, not at
some future period, but now conferred on the humble, believing penitent, the very identical
righteousness of Christ Himself, and appropriated through faith without works.
27. “Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No; but through the law of
faith.
28. “For we conclude that a man is justified by faith without works of law.” How astonishing
that, in the face of so much positive, clear and unequivocal inspired affirmation that justification is
by faith alone without any works of any law, after all we see nominal Christianity burdened to death
with human legalisms. Poor old Romanism got so heavily loaded centuries ago, that she not only got
slowed down into a standstill on the track, but as the way to heaven is up-grade, and the way to hell
downgrade, the tremendous gravity of her mammoth institutions reversed her wheels, so for many
centuries she has been running perditionward with an appalling velocity. You have but to look
around you and see the Protestant churches already burdened into a standstill, and yet competing
either with other in the manufacture of ecclesiastical institutions unheard of in the Bible. The
gullibility of poor, fallen humanity in religion has been proverbial in all ages, and, oh, how
universally manifest at the present day, when, amid the universal fulfillment of the latter day
prophecies, this old wicked world is so fast ripening for destruction, everywhere augmented and
expected by fallen churchisms, furnishing a thousand substitutes for the precious blood of Jesus and
the refining fire of the Holy Ghost. How triumphantly and irrefutably does this verse forever
annihilate all the claims of human legalism, uncontrovertedly establishing the great fundamental
Bible truth of justification for all men through the free grace of God in Christ, received and
appropriated by faith without deeds of law; i.e., water baptism or anything else on the line of legal
obedience.