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

Why? Because his will was good to do it, but God kept him in other business, reserving the building
of the temple for his son Solomon. Perfect love puts you where you say “yes” to the will of God and
“no” to the devil all the time. While we abide in these tenements of clay, we are disqualified by
infirmities to render a perfect obedience. Hence, our perfection which God requires is simply that
of love, which delights to serve God on earth like the angels in heaven, despite a thousand failures
through physical and mental infirmities. God seeing the heart, takes the will for the deed, receiving
this heart perfection in lieu of perfect work.
GOD’S BRIGHT DAY AND SATAN’S DARK NIGHT.
11. “And knowing this time that it is already the hour when we should wake out of sleep: for our
salvation is nearer than when we believed.
12. “The night is far spent and the day draweth nigh. Therefore let us lay aside the works of
darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
13. “Let us walk circumspectly as in the day; not in revelries and drunkenness, not in
debaucheries and impurities, not in strife and jealousy, but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make no provision for the lusts of the flesh.” “Salvation” (v. 11) is in the final sense, involving
glorification of spirit, soul and body. Justification is primary salvation, sanctification full salvation,
and glorification final salvation. The apostle and his saintly contemporaries were on the constant
lookout for the Lord to return and translate them to heaven, soul, mind and body all simultaneously
glorified. The first day in the divine calendar was Eden blooming in its glory. This halcyon day went
into dark eclipse when humanity fell, so remaining to the present day, Satan’s dreary night
intervening and throwing its dark shadows over the whole earth, foreboding doom and damnation
already about six thousand awful years, chronicling the fate of multiplied millions, amid the darkness
deceived by the devil and plunged into hell. Glory to God, the star gleams of God’s millennial day,
already heralded by the Holiness Movement, the bright morning stars shining in every land, are
already bespangling every sky with the hallowed effulgence in Aurora splendors anticipating the
glorious Son of Righteousness rising upon this dark world with healing in His wings, bringing back
the Eden beauties, again to girdle the globe with the delectable splendors of God’s millennial day.
If in Paul’s time Satan’s night “was far spent” and God’s millennial day drawing nigh, oh how preeminently
true it is now, since we are eighteen hundred years nearer to the glorious fulfillment of this
inspiring Pauline prophecy. If it was pertinent then for them to “awake out of sleep” and regale
themselves for translation, amid the retreat of Satan’s night and the glorious dawn of God’s
millennial day, how infinitely more so is it now pertinent that we all awake, wash and dress and look
out for our coming King! The preparation now as then is entire sanctification, expurgatory of all the
debris of inbred sin, clothing us with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that people see, not our bodies, but
our clothes, and utterly lose sight of us, and oblivious to our personalities, see Jesus only
whithersoever we go.