In every period of my ministerial life I have found many professes Christians in a miserable state of bondage, either to the world, the flesh or the devil. But surely this is no Christian state, for the apostle [Paul] has distinctly said: “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace.” (Rom. 6:14) In all my Christian life I have been pained to find so many Christians living in the legal bondage described in the seventh chapter of Romans – a life of sinning [going against God’s revealed will], resolving to reform and falling again. What is particularly saddening, and even agonizing, is that many ministers and leading Christians give perfectly false instruction on the subject of how to overcome sin.

 

     The directions that are generally given on this subject, I am sorry to say, amounts to about this: “Take your sins in detail, resolve to abstain from them, fight against them, if need be, with prayer and fasting, until you have overcome them. Set your will firmly against a relapse into sin, pray and struggle, and resolve that you will not fall, and persist in this, until you form the habit of obedience and break up all your sinful habits.” To be sure it is generally added: “In this conflict you must not depend upon your own strength, but pray for the help of God.” In a word, much of the teaching, and both of the pulpit and the press, really amounts to this: Sanctification is by works, and not by faith. I notice that Dr. Chalmers, in his lectures on Romans, expressly maintains that justification is by faith, but sanctification is by works. Some twenty-five years ago, I think, a prominent professor of theology in New England maintained in substance the same doctrine. In my early Christian life I was very nearly misled by one of President Edward’s resolutions, which was in substance that when he had fallen into any sin [known disobedience to the Divine will] he would trace it back to its source, and then fight and pray against it with all his might until he subdued it. This it will be perceived, is directing the attention to the overt act of sin, its source or occasions. Resolving and fighting against it fastens the attention on the sin and its source, and diverts it entirely from Christ.

 

     Now it is important to say right here that all such efforts are worse than useless, and not infrequently result in delusion. First, it is losing sight of what really constitutes sin, and secondly, of the only practicable way to avoid it. In this way, the outward act or habit may be overcome and avoided, while that which really constitutes the sin is left untouched. Sin is not external, but internal. It is not a muscular act, it is not the volition [act of the will] that causes muscular action, it is not an involuntary feeling or desire; it must be a voluntary act or state of mind. Sin is nothing else than that voluntary, ultimate preference of state of committal to self-pleasing out of which the volitions, the outward actions, purposes, intentions, and all the things that are commonly called sin proceed. Now, what is resolved against in this religion of resolutions and efforts to suppress sinful habits, and form holy habits? “Love [for God and others] is the fulfilling of the law.” But do we produce love by resolution? Do we eradicate selfishness {self-pleasing] by resolution? No indeed! We may suppress this or that expression or manifestation of selfishness  by resolving not to do this or that, praying and struggling against it. We may resolve upon an outward obedience, and work ourselves up to the letter of an obedience to God’s commandments [as the Pharisees, the men of the “law” did]. But to eradicate selfishness [self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-centeredness et al] from the breast by resolution, is an absurdity. So the effort to obey the commandments of God in spirit – in other words, to attempt to love as the law of God requires by force of resolution – is an absurdity.

 

     There are many who maintain that sin consists in the desires. Be it so. Do we control our desires by force of resolution? We may abstain from the gratification of a particular desire by the force of resolution. We may go further, and abstain from gratification of desire generally in the outward life. But this is not to secure the love of God, which constitutes obedience. Should we become anchorites [religious recluses], immune ourselves in a cell, and crucify all our desires and appetites, in so far as their indulgence is concerned, we have only avoided certain forms of sin; but the root that really constitutes sin is not touched. Our resolution has not secured love, which is the only real obedience to God. All our battling with sin in the outward life, by the force of resolution, only ends in making us “whited sepulchers” [good looking on the outside, but full of dead things on the inside]. All our battling with desire by the force of resolution is of no avail; for in all this, however successful the effort to suppress sin may be in the outward life or in the inward desire, it will only end in delusion, for by force of resolution we cannot love.

 

     All such efforts to overcome sin are utterly futile, and unscriptural. The Bible expressly teaches us that sin is overcome by faith in Christ. “He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” (1 Cor. 1:30) He is “the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Christians are said to “purify their hearts by faith.” (Acts 15:9) And in Acts 26:18, it is affirmed that the saints are sanctified by faith in Christ. In Romans 9: 31, 32, it is affirmed that the Jews attained not to righteousness, “because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works off the law.” The doctrine of the Bible is that Christ saves His people from sin through faith; that Christ’s spirit is received by faith to dwell in the heart. It is faith that works by love. (Gal. 5:6) Love is wrought and sustained by faith. By faith Christians overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. By faith they “quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” (Eph. 6:16) It is by faith that they “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14), and “put off the old man with his deeds.” (Col. 3:9) It is by faith that we “fight the good fight,” (1 Tim. 6:12) and not by resolution. By faith we “stand,” by resolution we fall. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” (1 John 5:4) It is by faith that the flesh is kept under and the carnal desires subdued. It is simply by faith that we receive the Spirit of Christ to work in us “to will and to do, according to His good pleasure.” (Philip. 2:13) He sheds abroad His own love in our hearts, and thereby enkindles ours. Every victory over sin is by faith in Christ; and whenever the mind is diverted from Christ by resolving and fighting against sin, whether we are aware of it or not, we are acting in our own strength, rejecting the help of Christ, and are under a specious [seeming correct but actually not] delusion.

 

     Nothing but the life and energy of the Spirit of Christ within us can save us from sin, and trust [faith] is the uniform and universal condition of the working of this saving energy within us. How long shall this fact be at least practically overlooked by teachers of religion? How deeply rooted in the heart of man is self-righteousness and self-dependence [self-sufficiency]? So deeply that one of the hardest lessons for the human heart to learn is to renounce self-dependence and trust wholly in Christ. When we open the door by implicit trust, He enters in and takes up His abode with us and in us. By shedding abroad His love He quickens our whole souls [mind, will, emotions] into sympathy with Himself, and in this way, and in this way alone, He purifies our hearts through faith. He sustains our will in the attitude of devotion. He quickens and regulates our affections, desires, appetites and passions and becomes our sanctification. Very much of the teaching that we hear in prayer meetings and conferences, from the pulpit and the press, is so misleading as to render the hearing or reading of such instruction almost too painful to be endured. Such instruction is calculated to beget delusion, discouragement and a practical rejection of Christ as He is presented in the Gospel.

 

     Alas! for the blindness that “leads to bewilder” the soul that is longing after deliverance from the power of sin. I have sometimes listened to legal [human effort] teaching upon this subject until I felt as if I should scream. It is astonishing sometimes to hear Christian men object to the teaching which I have inculcated [taught] that it leaves us in a passive state, to be saved without our own activity. What darkness is involved in this objection. The Bible teaches that by trusting in Christ we receive an inward influence that stimulates and directs our activity; that by faith we receive His purifying influence into the very center of our being; that through and by faith revealed directly to the soul He quickens our whole inward being into the attitude of a loving obedience; and this is the way, and the only practical way [the only way that actually works] to overcome sin. But someone may say: “Does not the apostle [Paul] exhort us as follows; ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’ And is not this an exhortation to do what in this article you condemn?” By no means. In that same 12^th verse  and then on into the 13^th verse of the 2^nd chapter of Philippians Paul says; “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do, of His good pleasure.” There is no exhortation to work by force of resolution, but through and by the inward working of God. Paul had taught them, while he was present with them; but now in his absence, he exhorts them to work out their own salvation, not by resolution but by the inward operation of God. This is precisely the doctrine of this article. Paul had too often taught the Church that Christ in the heart is our sanctification, and that this influence is to be received by faith to be guilty in this passage of teaching that our sanctification is to be wrought out by resolution and efforts to suppress sinful habits and therefore form holy habits. This passage of Scripture happily recognizes both the Divine and human agency in the work of sanctification. God works in us “to will and to do;” and we, accepting by faith His inward working, will and do according to His good pleasure.

 

     Faith itself is an active and not a passive state. A passive holiness is impossible and absurd. Let no one say that when we exhort people to trust wholly in Christ, we teach that anyone should be or can be passive in receiving and co-operating with the Divine influence within. This influence is moral, and not physical. It is persuasion and not force. It influences the free will and consequently does this by truth and not by force. Oh! that it could be understood that the whole of spiritual life that is in any man is received directly from the Spirit of Christ by faith, as the branch receives its life from the vine. Away with this religion of resolution! It is a snare of death. Away with this effort to make the life holy while the heart has not in it the love of God. Oh! that men would learn to look directly at Christ through the Gospel and so close in with Him, by an act of loving trust, as involved a universal sympathy with His state of mind. This and this alone is sanctification!