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

PAUL’S SANCTIFICATION.
20-25. (Galatians 1:15-22 and Romans 7.) Saul had long been a preacher of no ordinary ability.
Hence he was a fluent orator when thus powerfully converted under the impetus of a spiritual
Niagara. He preached Jesus boldly in Damascus, to the unutterable surprise of all who had trembled
with awe at the mention of his name. Luke’s scanning history is here elliptical, involving the
conclusion of an inward conflict, accompanied by divine leadership off to Arabia, where God taught
Moses forty years and sanctified him at the burning bush. John the Baptist was also taught in God’s
theological school, i.e., the desert of Judea, preparatory for his wonderful ministry. So Saul must
spend three years amid the wild beasts and Bedouins of the Arabian desert. Galatians 1:16:
“When God was pleased to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood,
but went away into Arabia.”
This is included in Luke’s narrative (Acts 9:22), “And Saul continued to be more and more fi]led
up with dynamite.” This is his Arabian experience of sanctification, testified in Romans 7:25, the
preceding chapter describing his conflict with inbred sin, while in the justified state. On the
Damascus Road the Holy Ghost revealed to him the Son of God, shining on him from without. In
Arabia (Galatians 1:15), He revealed to him Jesus within sitting on the throne of his heart. It is our
privilege all to have Pauline experiences, in which Jesus first appears to us, shining on us from
without in regeneration. Then it is our privilege to receive the Holy Ghost, our sanctification, who
in that case always enthrones Jesus in the heart and gives you the blessed consciousness that Jesus
henceforth sits on the throne of your heart, making your life a cloudless sunshine and lighting up
your entire being with the glory of His presence. Be sure your experience is Pauline; first Jesus
appearing to you and shining on you, and then revealed in you, sitting on the throne of your heart.
Saul did not dare to go up to Jerusalem, appear before the apostles and claim his apostleship, to
which Jesus called him when He met him, without receiving in addition to his conversion in the
house of Judas a clear Pentecostal sanctification, thus rendering him experimentally homogeneous
with the other apostles. Ver. 9: “And he mightily confounded the Jews, proving that He is the
Christ.” This was after he returned from Arabia. He is now a cyclone of fire and logic irresistible.
23. Hence the Jews can stand him no longer. The Greek reveals that they passed a vote, assuming
the form of a decree, to kill him. They secure the co-operation of Areta, the governor, who keeps the
gates guarded, so as to catch him if he endeavors to pass out, while the Jews ransack the whole city
to find him for martyrdom. His time had not come. The disciples slip him over the wall in the night
and let him down in a basket.
PAUL’S APOSTOLICAL RECOGNITION.
26-30. They had no mails nor telegraphs. News was slow and uncertain. His name had been the
terror of Jerusalem. They fear a strategem, and all stand aloof until Barnabas, his old neighbor (a
native of Cyprus, out in the Mediterranean near the Cilician shore), interposes in behalf of his
neighbor, schoolmate and brother, Saul of Tarsus. Doubtless Barnabas had attended the Greek
schools of Tarsus, in which Saul excelled; hence Barnabas, a preacher and prophet, eminent among