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

emain forever. This monster is inbred sin. Jesus wants to kill him and utterly put him away forever,
thus making you free from sin.
8. “But if we died along with Christ, we believe that we shall live along with him,
9. “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion
over him.” We are here portrayed, by the inspired apostle, going with Christ to Calvary and there
being nailed to the cross and crucified with Him. None but disciples of Christ go to heaven. If you
would be His disciple you must follow Him in the great salient facts of His personal experience. You
must follow Him to the manger and be born of the Spirit in utter obscurity and contempt of the
world. You must follow Him to the Jordan and receive the Holy Ghost descending on you and filling
you. You must follow Him as He climbs Mount Calvary, and there be nailed to the cross, bleed and
die as He did. You must also follow Him in His glorious resurrection, transfiguration and triumphant
ascension. After Christ had died He had the perfect and eternal victory over death. All the powers
of the Roman Empire could never have killed Him again. Just so this wonderful experience of entire
sanctification, crucifying the old man and burying him deep into the atonement, sinking him away
into the “sea of forgetfulness,” never to be heard of again, thus “destroying the body of sin,” makes
us just as free from sin as Christ was from physical death after He had consummated His work and
exhausted all of His resources, so far as He was concerned, becoming powerless as a fleeting
shadow.
10. “For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” This
verse continues to tighten up the preceding argument, confirming more and more the triumphant
assurance of the gracious possibility for us to be as free from sin as Christ is from death. These are
paradoxical revelations. Yet we have but to believe and God will see to their verification.
11. “Thus you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ
Jesus.” Hitherto the apostle has been on the divine side presenting the mighty works of God in the
destruction of the sin-principle in the human heart. He now turns over to the human side, telling us
how to get it. This “reckon” means consider, believe, reason, et cetera. It is a verb in the imperative
mood, plural number, and present tense. Good Lord, help us to obey this commandment and “reckon
ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” See the emphatic adverb “indeed” obliterating every possible
doubt. Now will you do this “reckoning”? Rest assured God will make it good. When I crossed the
Atlantic Ocean the second time, we were confronted by an awful storm five days and nights; no
glimpse of sun, moon, nor stars, but mountain billows lashing the clouds and rolling over the ship.
We were mid-ocean, the storm striking us five hundred miles this side Gibraltar and letting up a
thousand miles east of New York. Yet our noble ship with her thirty-six boilers shot through the
storm like an arrow, landing precisely on time according to the reckoning of those sturdy old German
sailors. If human reckoning can be relied on amid ocean storms, certainly we can depend on divine
reckoning amid all the storm of probationary life. So you make the reckoning. He who has
commanded you to “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,” will certainly make the
reckoning good by killing sin outright, so dead it will never kick again. Shall I make this reckoning
when I know sin is alive in me? Of course, with the painful consciousness that sin is alive in you as
big as a rhinoceros, you muster courage to “reckon [it] dead indeed.” You have nothing to do but