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

ROMANS
CHAPTER VI.
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION.
The Pauline argument on justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and
appropriated by faith alone, pursuant to the Messianic covenant, which God renewed with Abraham,
honoring him with the paternity of faith, antithetical to the Divine paternity of grace — faith and
grace being counterparts of the same glorious plan, representing respectively the human and divine
side — is the most elaborate in all the Bible, beginning with verse 19, Chapter 3, and closing with
Chapter 5, in that irresistible, sweeping conclusion exultantly triumphing in the transcendent,
superabounding grace of Adam the Second, who has swept every conceivable difficulty from the
field, defeated sin, death and hell, and thrown wide open the pearly gates and issued His royal
amnesty proclamation to the ends of the earth, offering to every fallen son and daughter of Adam’s
race grace and glory, world without end, without money and without price. Following this sledgehammer
logic on justification, he now takes hold of the sin-principle, goes down into the
subterranean regions of the soul and shows up its utter eradication by the omnipotent grace of Adam
the Second.
1. “Then what shall we say? Must we abide in sin in order that grace may abound?” Here Paul
takes by the throat this hell-hatched, hackneyed argument of the carnal preachers, i.e., that God is
glorified by inbred sin abiding in us to keep us humble and magnify the grace of God by forgiving
us when we are overcome by the tempter and yield and sin. He literally eradicates and annihilates
this silly Satanic argument, setting out with a flat denial.
2. “It could not be so.” Not as E.V., “God forbid,” which is a strong imprecation, but as the
Greek gives it, a positive and unequivocal denial. Hence the advocates of this carnal dogma (and
their name is legion) are forced into the attitude of flatly contradicting Paul and the Holy Ghost.
“How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Sin is conquered and bound in regeneration,
but killed in sanctification. Hence a truly sanctified man can no more commit sin than a dead man
lying in his grave can rise up and throw rocks at the passers by. You must remember the Bible is a
common-sense book. While sin is dead in me and I can not commit it, yet it is equally true that I can
commit sin, and if I do not watch and pray, I will. Why? though sin is dead the devil its author is not
dead. Armies of demons throng the air ready every moment to put sin back in the heart after it has
been destroyed. The house can not burn down, because there is no fire in it. Yet it can burn down,
because the incendiaries are lurking round seeking an opportunity to burn it. Good Lord, save us
from rushing into foolish, irrelevant conclusions! So long as we are in this world we are in the
enemy’s land, liable at any moment to be attacked and killed. This world is no “friend to grace to
help us on to God.” Yet it is literally and positively true, as here we have it stated, that Adam the
Second is more than a match for Adam the First, and ready to slay him in a moment pursuant to your
consecration and faith.
3. “Do you not know that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his
death?” While there is a beautiful symbolism in water baptism, typifying the baptism of the Holy