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

ROMANS
CHAPTER V.
1. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This verse assumes the hortatory form, urging us up, in view of the wonderful simplicity and
feasibility of justification by faith, that we all avail ourselves of the glorious privilege to enjoy
perfect peace and reconciliation with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If Abraham and his
contemporaries in a moonlight dispensation could have such a victory through anticipatory faith,
apprehending the promises and appropriating the vicarious atonement, how infinitely brighter should
be the victory of our faith, walking in the cloudless light of the glorious Son of righteousness, who
is already risen on the world with healing in His wings, flooding the whole earth with the
transcendent effulgence of the historic incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension!
SANCTIFICATION.
2. “Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and let us
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” The pronoun “this” is emphatic in this verse, indicative of
progress in the school of faith reaching terra firma, i.e., establishing grace where we hold our
ground, no longer retrogressing nor wavering through unbelief, doubt having been eliminated and
faith moving forward with the tread of a giant. Consequently we are again exhorted, not simply as
in the preceding verse to have peace with God, but to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God,” as we
have now climbed so high up the Delectable Mountains as to enjoy a conspicuous and inspiring view
of the Celestial City, if we will look through the telescope of doubtless faith. The hortatory phase
of these beautiful climaxes in the three first verses of this chapter does not appear in E.V., which has
the indicative mood of these verbs, the original being in the subjunctive. The fact is, Paul is here
leading us on and upward, beginning with clear Abrahamic justification by faith alone, and moving
on into the richer and more glorious experience of entire sanctification, followed by the climacteric
establishing graces of the Holy Spirit.
3. “And not only so, but let us indeed glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh out
endurance.” Tribulation is from the Latin tribulum which means the flail with which the farmer in
olden time thrashed. Hence the pertinency of this reference to Satan beating us over the head, back,
and limbs like the farmer beating out his wheat. We are exhorted to rejoice in all this because God
will overrule it to our good, making it an exceedingly valuable means of grace in perfecting our
susceptibility of enduring all the hardships, rebuffs, disappointments, troubles and trials which the
enemy can bring against us, thus developing a most invaluable qualification for the immeasurable
responsibility awaiting us in boundless eternity.
4. “And endurance, approval,” i.e., this indefatigable endurance of all the abuses and
persecutions which Satan can possibly turn on us is the very thing to work out the divine approval
of our hardihood, fidelity, loyalty and heroism — a most profitable curriculum in the school of
Christ. “And approval hope,” i.e., this divine approval of our endurance in all the troubles, trials and
persecutions amid this vile God-forgetting and Satan-ridden world, is the great salient confirmation
of our heavenly hope, actually working it out and making it a glorious eternal verity.