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

a hurry. Your heart is your spirit, your immortal self, filling your whole body. This spirit is the man
himself who fell in Eden, utterly losing spiritual life, and consequently literally and totally depraved;
the mind not utterly falling, as in that case they would have become idiots; the body not totally
falling, as in that case they would have dropped dead in their tracks. On this residuum of body and
mind surviving the Fall, Satan has built up great systems of materialistic and intellectual religions,
girdling the globe, serving as passports of his deluded millions into hell, being utterly destitute of
spirituality and salvation. I have seen many join the church on a merely intellectual confession of
faith. As well take in a lot of devils so far as salvation is concerned. Heart faith which brings
salvation always opens the mouth and tells its own story. The churches are filled up with poor, dead
dummies, a withering burlesque on Jesus Christ, who is here both to raise the dead and cast out all
the dumb devils. Oh, what a sensation would this bring into a great popular, dead, dumb church False
religion makes the church still and dumb as a graveyard. True religion makes the church active,
demonstrative and uproarious like a graveyard on the resurrection morn.
11. “For the Scripture says, Every one believing on him shall not be ashamed.” The masses of
church members are ashamed to pray at home and in public and talk for Jesus on the streets, from
the simple fact that they are full of sin. Get rid of all sin, and your shame is all gone forever.
12. “For there is no difference between Jew and Greek,” i.e., no difference between church
member and outsider, as salvation through Christ alone and by faith alone without church rites is free
for all. “For the same Lord of all is rich toward all who call upon him.” Calling upon the Lord is
praying. So you begin to pray and keep on, never stopping, and God will see that you get to be a
millionaire, rich as Crœsus in heaven’s gold; pearls and diamonds beautifying your very
physiognomy with holiness to the Lord.
13. “For every one whosoever may call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Oh, how the
generations have been dumfuddled by intriguing priests, playing off on them the church ordinances,
i.e., water baptism, sacraments and even multitudinous rites, ceremonies and institutions of their own
invention, inflating them with lying delusion that they can be saved thereby, — all a trick of the devil
to lead them away from Christ, who alone can save, and who can only be received and appropriated
by faith. You must remember that these counterfeit preachers all claim that they have faith, yet it is
nothing but dead, intellectual faith, peculiar to wicked men and devils, which never did have any
salvation. If they had the genuine spiritual faith of the heart, you would hear from them in a ringing
testimony to the power of Jesus to save to the uttermost, “as he who believes with the heart always
confesseth unto salvation.” Oh, the wonderful simplicity of the plan of salvation! You see from this
verse that you have to do nothing to be saved but “call on the name of the Lord,” i.e., begin to pray
now and keep on, never stopping. Rest assured, wonderful things will happen; you will shine and
shout, and in due time sweep through the pearly gates.
14-17. Here Paul beautifully elaborates the divine economy of salvation through faith,
superinduced by hearing the Word through the preachers sent of God, whose very coming is a
harbinger of heavenly benediction.
18. “But I say, Have they not all heard? yea truly: their voice has gone into all the earth and their
words unto the ends of the world.” How do we reconcile this statement with the preceding? But a