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

Lawgiver, making you a subordinate in the divine administration, helping God in the maintenance
of law and order throughout the universe. Hence the gross incompatibility of the slightest
disharmony with the law on your part. The children of the King are free from the law; yet they are
the paragon exemplars of legal obedience, conservatism and loyalty. When your will is lost in God’s
will, you enjoy the very freedom of God Himself, who is perfectly free to do everything good and
nothing bad. This is the very climax of perfect liberty.
16. “Do you not know that to whom ye present yourselves slaves to obedience, ye are slaves to
whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Man is a
dependency by nature, All attempts to assume independence have collapsed and ultimated in ruin;
i.e., the Eden independence winding up in the Fall, the Antediluvian in the Flood, the Patriarchal in
Egyptian slavery, the Jewish in destruction by the Roman armies; and in the clear light of prophecy
the Gentile destined to go the same way, ending in the great tribulation. Man would have stood under
any or all of these dispensations if he had been true to God. Human independence is but another
name for Satanic slavery. Entire sanctification makes you God’s slave. This is the identical word
applied by the Holy Ghost to God’s apostles and saints throughout the Bible. God’s slavery means
perfect liberty. If you were a slave on earth, and your master were perfectly good, infinitely rich, and
loved you enough to die for you, in that case you would be free and happy as an angel.
17. “Grace belongeth unto God, because ye have obeyed from the heart that type of teaching unto
which ye were committed,
18. “And having been made free from sin, you became slaves unto righteousness.” The
stupendous fact of your wonderful deliverance out of Satanic slavery, which means brutality here
and damnation hereafter, and have been transformed into the slaves of God, which means the highest
freedom in the universe, i.e., the very delectable and glorious liberty of God himself, is a grand
source of thanksgiving to God. Hence the apostle opens this sentence with a shout of triumph,
proceeding with a beautiful rehearsal of the glorious transformation, culminating in entire
sanctification which really makes you the slave of righteousness, i.e., perfectly subservient to
righteousness, having not the slightest affinity for unrighteousness.
DEPRAVITY SUPERSEDED BY SANCTIFICATION.
19. “For I speak after the manner of a man on account of the weakness of your flesh.” While in
these bodies, as Wesley well says, “we can only think, speak and act through organs of clay.” Sense
and phraseology must be simplified and adapted to the people. For this reason, the Old Testament
abounds in symbolism, and the New in parabolic and materialistic imagery and illustration. In
heaven Paul hears language incomprehensible on earth, doubtless because of its pure spirituality (2
Corinthians 12).
“For as ye presented your members slaves unto uncleanness and iniquity pursuant to
iniquity.”
This is a vivid description of the wicked living animal lives, afflictive and even suicidal to
themselves. God’s order reversed — the angel down in the mud and the hog on top! The brutal