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

was but a conviction for the second work of grace, consequently I called them to the altar again to
seek sanctification, on whose reception doubts and fears all fled away and victory came to stay. We
have this very phenomenon in Paul’s experience. After preaching a very short, unknown period at
Damascus, he is caught in the battle with inbred sin. Thinking, like your humble servant who staid
there nineteen years, that he could fight it out on the line of legal obedience and good works, he
manfully enters the conflict, leaving the crowded metropolis and going off into the wild, sandy
deserts of Arabia, God’s celebrated theological school, where He taught Moses forty years and
sanctified him at the burning bush, preparatory for his great and responsible work, and John the
Baptist thirty years, filling him with the Holy Ghost and fire, indispensable to the precursorship of
Christ. This old solitary desert was celebrated in all ages as God’s prophetical college. Of course
such a man as Paul must pass through the curriculum of entire sanctification under the leadership
of the Infallible One. The connection does not permit us to identify the statement, “When God was
pleased to reveal his Son in me,” with the notable transaction on his way to Damascus, when the Son
of God was not “revealed in him” but to him, shining down on him from the bright firmament above.
Here we have the grand salient truths constituting the plan of salvation; i.e., in regeneration the Holy
Ghost reveals the glorified Christ to the soul of the sinner. Such is His majesty, beauty and glory that
no human spirit can resist the charm. Well did Charles Wesley say: “The worst of sinners would
rejoice could they but see thy face.” This is the technical moment when every soul gets converted,
i.e., the very minute when the eye of the human spirit rests on the glorified Savior revealed by the
Holy Ghost. Thus we see that Christ was revealed to Paul when he was converted; this Arabian
experience in which God revealed His Son in him being an entirely different transaction and
constituting his sanctification. The Holy Ghost is sent into this world to reveal and glorify Christ.
Therefore when you receive the Holy Ghost in sanctification, He always enthrones Jesus in the heart,
revealing Him to your soul sitting on the throne of your spirit, reigning within and without. While
this seventh chapter is the personal experience of Paul and all other sanctified Christians, we do not
reach the epoch of his receiving the blessing till verse 25, the preceding chapter constituting his
testimony to the battle with inbred sin, so vividly revealed by the law and so hotly and
uncompromisingly contested by the stalwart and heroic apostle, till finally reaching utter desperation
of his own efforts along the line of legal obedience, giving up in final desperation, he turns the old
man of sin over to the Lord Jesus Christ, immediately raising the shout of victory and testifying to
the glorious deliverance. While you read this chapter you will understand it better if you keep your
eye on Paul down in Arabia, wallowing in the burning sands and fighting inbred sin like a dog in a
yellow-jackets’ nest.
MATRIMONIAL ILLUSTRATION OF SANCTIFICATION.
1-4. While the Bible contains but one great compound fact, i.e., sin and its remedy,
accommodatory to our feeble and finite senses, while locked up in these houses of clay, it utilizes
an infinite diversity of imagery, beautifully and variantly expository of the wonderful redemptive
scheme. Since God is the Author of both nature and grace, there is perfect harmony throughout His
works in both departments. Consequently the deep and otherwise incomprehensible spiritual truths
revealed in the Bible are constantly elucidated with an infinite diversity of imagery, deduced from
the most common affairs and events of every-day life. The church of God throughout the Bible is
symbolized by a holy woman, and that of Satan, i.e., the fallen church, by a harlot. In these four
verses we have a grand metaphoric truth revealed under the figure of a woman becoming enamored