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

into hand, dashing in all directions, preaching and expounding the way of salvation, the Holy Ghost
wonderfully using their joyous instrumentality, utilizing the double miracle, empowering every one
to hear in his own language and every disciple to speak fluently in all of the languages of that
heterogeneous throng, thus restoring all the confusion at the Tower of Babel. Sad to say, heretic,
Catholic and Protestant have woefully perverted this beautiful 38th verse, adroitly turning it to
support the Popish dogma of baptismal regeneration, which has deluded and sent multitudes to hell.
In the E.V. “repent and be baptized” are grammatically and logically co-ordinated — a bald error.
In the Greek, “repent” is second person, plural number and imperative mood, applying to the entire
multitude, while “be baptized” is third person, singular, applying only to the subject of “repent.”
Hence, none are to be baptized but those who have repented. That simple fact knocks the Popish
dogma of baptismal remission beyond the North Pole. “Repent” is metanousate, from meta,
“change,” and noos, “the mind.” Hence, it means “change your mind.” You have no right to give this
or any other Scripture a more metaphysical interpretation, from the simple fact that the Bible is not
a metaphysical, but a spiritual book. Consequently, unspiritual preachers in all ages have run it into
heresy and nonsense and made it a passport to hell. When God created man He put His mind in him.
The devil, in the fall, succeeded in knocking it out and putting his old filthy carnal mind in its place.
Hence, change of mind, indicated by the word “repent,” means to get rid of the carnal mind and
receive the mind of Christ. The churches abound in people as ignorant of repentance as baboons, —
hosts of preachers in the same dilemma. You remember that sermon by John Wesley, which all
Methodist preachers are required to study, captioned “The Repentance of Believers”? That is in
harmony with the true meaning of the word. You have the carnal mind till you are sanctified wholly.
It is conquered and bound in regeneration, but destroyed in sanctification. The repentance of a sinner
and the consecration of a Christian are generally identical but specifically different. They are both
a giving up. The sinner in repentance gives up all of his bad things to the devil and leaves him
forever; the Christian in consecration gives up all of his good things to God to be used for His glory
forever. This is what John Wesley meant by the repentance of a believer, i.e., his entire consecration
of all to God for time and eternity. Hence, when repentance has finished its work you are not only
converted but sanctified wholly. I heard so many sermons preached from this text by unconverted
preachers when a boy I do thank God for His mercy which alone protected me from the horrific helltraps
they set to catch poor ignorant people like me. “Misery likes company.” They were in the
devil’s trap of water regeneration, and they did their best to catch all they could. Although repentance
not only invariably secures remission of sins but prepares you to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost,
the glorious positive side of entire sanctification and the climacteric achievement of the gospel
dispensation launched at Pentecost. If the Hydrolators (i.e., water worshipers, as abominable in the
sight of God as any other form of idolatry) would only take the whole verse, press and receive the
gift of the Holy Ghost they would come out right after all. But they pervert the first clause and throw
away the second. Consequently they have nothing left but the water. “For remission,” E.V., does
not necessarily mean “in order to remission,” as the Hydrolators construe it. When I was in
California last winter a man was hung for murder. He was not hung in order to commit murder, but
because he had already committed it. Hence “for remission,” not in order to get it, but because you
have it. The E.V. is right in harmony with the Greek. There we have it, “and be baptized every one
of you — unto the remission of your sins,” i.e., confirmatory of the fact. You can not confirm a thing
till you have it. We see from this wonderful verse which rings out the keynote of that salient response
to the cries of the panic stricken multitudes, the two distinct marks of grace in the plan of salvation,
i.e., remission of sins as a result of repentance and confirmed by water baptism and the gift of the