Overcoming Bondage To Sin
By Charles G. Finney
In every period of my ministerial life I have found many professed Christians in a miserable state of bondage, either to the world, the flesh, or the devil. This is no state for a Christian to be in. Romans 6:14 clearly says, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace."
Erroneous directions generally given on this subject amount to about this: "Take your sins in detail, resolve to abstain from them, and 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." Much of this teaching erroneously amounts to this: Sanctification is by works, and not by faith.
Such efforts fasten the attention on the sin and its source, and divert it from where it should be – on Christ. In fighting sin through resolution, 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. Sin is that voluntary, ultimate preference of a state of committal to self-pleasing out of which the sin proceeds.
What is resolved against in this religion of resolutions and efforts to suppress sinful and form holy habits? Do we eradicate selfishness by resolution? No. We may suppress this or that expression or manifestation of selfishness by resolving not to do this or that, and praying and struggling against it. We may resolve upon an outward obedience, and work ourselves up to the letter of obedience to God’s commandments. But to eradicate selfishness from the breast by resolution is not possible. The effort to obey the commandments of God in spirit – in other words, to attempt to love as the law of God requests by our force of resolution – is impossible. "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10). We do not produce love by resolution.
There are many who maintain that sin consists in the desires. If it does, 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 the gratification of desires in the whole of our outward life. But this is not to secure the love of God, which constitutes obedience. Even if we isolate 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 sepulchres. 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.
Victory Through Faith in Christ
The Bible clearly teaches us that sin is overcome by faith in Christ. "Christ Jesus…is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Acts 15:9 speaks of Christians having their hearts purified by faith. 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 of the law."
The Bible doctrine is that Christ saves His people from sin through faith (Eph. 2:8); that Christ’s Spirit is received by faith to dwell in the heart (Eph. 3:17). It is faith that works by love (Gal. 5:6). Love is wrought and sustained by faith. By faith Christians overcome the world (1 John 5:4). It is by faith they "quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" (Eph. 6:16). It is by faith that they put on the Lord Jesus Christ and put off the old man with his deeds (Eph. 4:22-24). It is by faith that we fight "the good fight" (1 Tim. 6:12), and not by resolution. It is by faith that we "stand" (2 Cor. 1:24); by resolution we fall.
It is by faith that we receive the Spirit of Christ to work in us to will and to do, according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). He sheds abroad His own love in our hearts, and thereby enkindles ours (Rom. 5:5). 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 delusion. Nothing but the life and energy of the Spirit of Christ within us can save us from sin, and trust is the uniform and universal condition of the working of this saving energy within us.
How deeply rooted in the heart of man is self-righteousness and self-dependence? 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 soul into sympathy with Himself, 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.
Some Christian men object to this teaching saying that it leaves us in a passive state, to be saved without our own activity. 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, to overcome sin.
Someone may say: "Does not the Apostle exhort as follows: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure?’ And is not this an exhortation to do what in this article is condemned?" By no means. In Philippians 2:12 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 inworking of God. Paul had taught them while he was present with them; now in His absence, he exhorts them to work out their own salvation, not by resolution but by the inward operation of God.
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 and 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 inworking, will and do according to His good pleasure. Faith itself is an active and not a passive state. A passive holiness is impossible. Let no one think that when we exhort people to trust wholly in Christ we teach that any one 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! The religion of resolution is a snare of death. Away with the 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 involves a complete sympathy with His mind and desires! This is sanctification.